Obama’s Breast Lines Touch Sex Squid
Why Is There Sex? To Fight The Parasite Army by Carl Zimmer (The Loom): One weird puzzle about evolution is sex - why would that have developed? Why is it that we go through the whole schmozzle with dinners and foreplay and reproduction rather than just clone ourselves? Turns out that the reason why is parasites. If we have sex, our offspring have a new, odd assortment of genes, and this makes it harder for parasites to attack us.
Breast Friends by Catherine Price (Slate): When it comes down to it, milk is pretty weird. Why do we drink the milk of other animals? Why do we feel funny about breast milk ice cream? Price here gives an interesting reflection on the history of milk, and on changing conceptions of milk and how the animal-ness of breastfeeding once made people think women were more animalistic than men.
The Giant Squid: Dragon Of The Deep by Brian Switek (Smithsonian): The giant squid - the kraken - was a legend, the dragon of the seas; it was only in 1857 that a zoologist put together enough evidence to argue that it really existed, and it’s only been in recent years, with things like automatic video footage of hunting behaviour, that we’ve really started to know much about them.
Obama’s Original Sin by Frank Rich (New York Magazine): Good explanation here of what Obama’s done wrong in his time as President, and why many liberals are pretty disillusioned with Obama - he fundamentally hasn’t done enough to stimulate the economy and keep unemployment down (and it’s really obvious that this is the case, from the point of view of Australia, where a big stimulus and prompt action pretty much stopped a big recession) and hasn’t done enough to change the banking industry and stop another GFC from happening 10 years down the road. [via]
Read Between The Lines by Taylor Burns (Cosmos): What is it that makes human unique? Why do we build cathedrals and write blog posts, and not sheep? In the end, it’s hard to prove that there’s anything whatsoever that is unique about us - there’s pretty much some other animal with each of our more prized abilities out there somewhere. So it’s not the particular parts of us that makes us unique; something about us must be more than the sum of our parts.
Why Is A Touch On The Arm So Persuasive? by Christian Jarrett (BPS Research Digest): Touching someone on the arm makes them, more often than not, feel positive emotions towards you! So why is this the case? Article doesn’t quite answer the question, but it does get closer at answering the question: it doesn’t matter if you’re touched on the arm by a human or by a robot, it still has the same effect - you still feel the same positive emotions. So watch out for robots touching you on the arms - they’ll do that to lull you into a false sense of security right before they revolt against their human masters.
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