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Forgotten Cannibals Kidnapped Doorway Mirage Galileo

A Toad-Eat-Toad World, And Other Tales Of Animal Cannibals by Natalie Angier (New York Times): Northern Australia is overrun by cane toads. And not only are they ugly and toxic, but they’re cannibals. As tadpoles, they enjoy eating tadpole eggs. And midsize toads often try to lure younger toads into their mouths. So how the hell have they evolved to be cannibals?

Kidnapped At Birth by Robert Kolker (New York Magazine): Carlina White was kidnapped at 19 days old by a heavyset woman pretending to be a nurse. She was never found. Until, one day, trying to get a license, Carlina was accused of having false ID - this eventually made her realise that the woman she thought was her mother had actually kidnapped her. You do feel for White - it must be very disorienting to be in her situation, and the article does spend a fair amount of time dealing with her confusion in dealing with her actual and fake mothers. [via]

How Walking Through A Doorway Increases Forgetting by Christian Jarrett (BPS Research Digest): It seems as if walking through a doorway makes your brain start a new ‘episode’: this makes it harder to remember things that happened before that ‘episode’. At least, according to this interesting research! (which did include an experiment testing whether remembering was a result of simple context or starting a new episode)

The Forgotten Hero by Tim Layden (Sports Illustrated): For years, Williams College (a smaller university in Massachusetts) had unofficially retired the number 50 for their football team. And, because the reason was in the mists of time, nobody really knew why. Layden goes back and discovers why - a quarterback called Mike Riely, who was one of their best players until he was struck down with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, and who bravely struggled to finish his degree and help coach the team, even though he knew he didn’t have much time left. [via]

The Mirage by Sean Wilentz (The New Republic): Wilentz here gives an interesting history of American post-partisanship, the idea that American politics should rise above petty partisan politics. In Wilentz’s telling, postpartisanship has been a feature of US politics since almost immediately after independence, and that it rarely if ever works - all it does is dilute opposition to the other side’s plans.

In Search Of Galileo by Dan Falk (Cosmos): *high voice* Galileo! *low voice* Galileo! Falk makes you jealous, telling his tale of wandering about Italy looking for the places where Galileo lived and worked. Sounds like a great time! But also the article is a good intro into the staggering scientific breakthroughs Galileo achieved - he figured out, for example, that heavy objects fall just as fast as light objects, was the first to think of looking at planets through telescopes, etc.

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