Let’s just add it to the long list of daunting challenges we are facing these days…

clipped from www.nytimes.com “These jellyfish near shore are a message the sea is sending us saying, ‘Look how badly you are treating me,’” said Dr. Josep-Mara Gili, a leading jellyfish expert, who has studied them at the Institute of Marine Sciences of the Spanish National Research Council in Barcelona for more than 20 years. The explosion of jellyfish populations, scientists say, reflects a combination of severe overfishing of natural predators, like tuna, sharks and swordfish; rising sea temperatures caused in part by global warming; and pollution that has depleted oxygen levels in coastal shallows.

Two new papers illustrate the continuing power of Stanley Milgram’s shock experiments — and the diverse interpretations they still inspire.

I’ll never forget the powerful impact that learning about Milgram’s experiments had on me as a young man. Surely it was part of my strong belief in questioning authority. If you’re not familiar with these ground-breaking experiments in which subjects were encouraged to inflict terrible pain on another person, I urge you to read this article.

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A moral hypocrite convinces himself that he is acting virtuously even when he does something he would condemn in others.

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Can hookworms protect against allergies? In a quest to find out, David Pritchard infected himself.

This article literally makes me queasy. The thought of worms working their way around inside my body makes me want to throw up and completely grosses me out. Yet I have suffered most of my life pretty badly from allergies. I take Claritin all year, and now that I have moved to a farm it appears there are more allergens here than that medicine can overcome. The sneezing fits every morning are getting tiresome.

So, as disgusted as I am at the thought of having hookworms, I still find myself truly intrigued by the possibility of significantly alleviating my allergic symptoms. Could I overcome my aversion? Would the benefits outweigh the yuck factor, not to mention the health risk of parasites?

I’ll think it over. Hard. I’m really not sure I could go there . . .

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We tend to remember news that accords with our worldview, and discount statements that contradict it.

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Lore Sjöberg is hilarious. I’ve listened to his Alt Text podcasts for Wired for years (his dry delivery style makes the audio performances even better than reading his commentaries). In fact, with George Carlin’s passing on my mind, it strikes me that Sjöberg is something like the George Carlin of geek technology. This commentary isn’t his very best, but it’s a good sample of the way he skewers traditionally accepted ideas.

Humans have been attempting to send messages to the stars since … I’m going to say the early ’70s. I mean, theoretically some caveman could have yelled, “Hey! Stars! You suck!” a hundred thousand years ago, but he was an idiot. But of all the messages sent into space, which ones are good? Which ones conform to quality standards? That’s what I’m here to tell you.

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So, this title caught my attention — Your Brain: The Missing Manual. Very clever. I didn’t buy my brain, but it sure is a complex tool that I wish I knew how to use better, and there’s no user’s guide, either. I haven’t read this book, so I can’t comment on it, but I am curious about it and will look into it.

Red wine may be much more potent than was thought in extending human lifespan, researchers say in a new report that is likely to give impetus to the rapidly growing search for longevity drugs.

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It doesn’t always seem that my brain is working better the older I get (anecdotal evidence I’ve observed might even suggest the opposite at times . . .), but the NYT says it is: “Older Brain Really May Be a Wiser Brain.”

“If older people are taking in more information from a situation, and they’re then able to combine it with their comparatively greater store of general knowledge, they’re going to have a nice advantage.”

Nice to hear some good news, for a change, about aging brains.

“It may be that distractibility is not, in fact, a bad thing,” said Shelley H. Carson, a psychology researcher at Harvard whose work was cited in the book. “It may increase the amount of information available to the conscious mind.”

So, when things that once seemed to be simple to call to mind no longer are, it’s not necessarily that we’re losing our edge. We may actually be gaining new, greater advantages that are not so easily noticed.

Some brains do deteriorate with age. Alzheimer’s disease, for example, strikes 13 percent of Americans 65 and older. But for most aging adults, the authors say, much of what occurs is a gradually widening focus of attention that makes it more difficult to latch onto just one fact, like a name or a telephone number. Although that can be frustrating, it is often useful.

Older really is wiser. I never really believed that when I was younger, but it makes perfect sense to me now

The cognitive revolution is not going to undermine faith in God — it’s going to challenge faith in the Bible.

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