Here are some of this week’s Human Nature short takes on the news. To get them in real time, subscribe to the HN Twitter feed .
1. Is youth a kind of wealth? Should you pay more for health insurance so old folks can pay less, in the name of equality? http://bit.ly/EE2pl
2. Runaway Toyotas http://bit.ly/143rMA don’t help us get comfortable with automated cars. Expect more such oops stories as we delegate driving.
3. Now that we can test for genetic susceptibility to harm from vices http://bit.ly/TeDi0 , we’ll use this to find out what we can get away with.
4. Cell phones as microscopes: http://bit.ly/2zZWRj Another step in the relentless consolidation of gadgets to 1 handheld ( http://bit.ly/3Qe1MM ).
5. Fascinating challenge to Judaism as inherited trait: http://bit.ly/2mI1dg Is racial self-definition of who’s a Jew religious discrimination?
6. US kids too fat/unfit for military? http://bit.ly/20pyQX Bah. More jobs are automated or remotely operated, e.g. drones ( http://bit.ly/2ScJzO ).
7. Fruit juice is as bad as soda: http://bit.ly/1kMCzt Just as I feared. “Natural” isn’t a sure guide to morality—or to healthy eating.
8. War against the machines, traffic-cam version: http://bit.ly/1zJKV2 Humans will win these elections … till machines get the right to vote.
9 . Experts using “panda viagra, panda porn and pelvic-thrust exercises” to make pandas mate. http://bit.ly/DBqhZ Pathetic. Let this species die.
10. Using pot munchies to sell sushi: http://bit.ly/1W43xn Commercial integration will legitimate marijuana more effectively than politics can.
11. Uproar over doctors group letting Coke fund its education site:
http://bit.ly/45lzcW
Are soda makers heading toward tobacco’s pariah status?
12. The fierce urgency of now can blind you:
http://bit.ly/2O3JQi
Gay marriage backers should delay such showdowns till old folks have died off.
13. Dog-scent lineups: http://bit.ly/38Gtza Like polygraphs ( http://bit.ly/3E4i7e ), a device to make you think you’ve been caught and confess.
14. Muslim creationism more flexible than Christian version: http://bit.ly/4669dR More evidence that creationism is mostly attitude, not theory.
15. Reframing of mental disorders from either/or to spectra: http://bit.ly/43PYsy Good move. The brain is hugely complex with lots of gray area.
16. Sleeping while your copilot minds the instruments is banned by airlines “but is allowed on military planes.” http://bit.ly/2hEhkF Why?
