Clever Gonorrhea Movies Bother Wild Ticks
Taming The Wild by Evan Ratliff (National Geographic): I love the idea of the 'foxdogs', the foxes bred by Russian geneticists which sort of act and look like dogs - they have floppy ears and love human attention, etc. Every six months or so, there's a new article on them by other clearly fascinated writers, and this is one of the better ones, which has actually talked to some of the scientists involved. [via]
The Rising Dangers Of Ticks by Maryn McKenna (Self): Ticks are little parasitic arachnids that live in the wilderness, and that very commonly pass on blood-borne diseases like Lyme disease. However, though most people have at least a dim awareness of Lyme disease, there are several other diseases passed to humans by ticks, and people should be more aware that they exist, because it could save lives.
Clever Hounds by M.K. (The Economist): It turns out that sniffer dogs are not quite as good at sniffing out things as we think; at least, they're quite influenced by what are probably unconscious cues given by their handlers (and more so than they're influenced by hidden sausages). [via]
Bother Me, I'm Thinking by Jonah Lehrer (Wall Street Journal): If you have ADHD and you made it to university, you're probably an excellent creative thinker; the inability to focus means that you are more likely to combine different thoughts in productive ways.
Gonorrhea Has Picked Up Human DNA (And That's Just The Beginning) by Ed Yong (Not Exactly Rocket Science): There's human DNA in the genome of gonorrhea. This is sort of unsurprising - bacteria are quite happy to steal DNA from here, there, and everywhere - and sort of surprising - human DNA is pretty well guarded, and it's not clear where the gonorrhea would have picked it up.
The Day The Movies Died by Mark Harris (GQ): If you're over 25, Hollywood mostly ignores you, because you're too picky and too unlikely to go to the movies (this goes double for you if you're female). The reason there are so many sequels and movies based on comic books is because teenage boys aren't picky - they'll go and see crappy movies. And Hollywood is so risk-averse now that most movie people thought Inception was a vanity project for Christopher Nolan, and were baffled that it was a success, mostly because it didn't fit into their standard categories (even though it had bankable stars, it looked stunning, was from a very successful director, etc). And executives generally haven't even greenlit any movies in the style of Inception as a result of its success; they think it was just a fluke.