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In search of lost heterosexuality
“Luca was gay”(in Italy Luca is a male name) is the title of a song that will compete at the next Italian musical festival of Sanremo in few days.Unluckily the regulation of the competition forbids circulating lyrics and music of the songs before the show begins, but this time the title and some previous public
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Special lecture: Jeff McMahan on Cognitive Disability and Cognitive Enhancement
Friday 27 February, 12.30 p.m. – 2.00 p.m.Venue: Seminar Room 1, Old Indian Institute, 34 Broad St, Oxford, OX1 3BD Abstract: There are some members of the human species whose cognitive capacities and potential are no higher than those of higher nonhuman animals. I will seek to explain why it is important for our understanding
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Transparent brains: detecting preferences with infrared light
Researchers at University of Toronto have demonstrated that they can decode which of two drinks a test subject prefers by scanning their brains with infrared light. (Original paper here.) The intention is to develop better brain-computer interfaces for severely disabled people, but there are obvious other applications for non-invasive methods of detecting what people want.
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Born believers?
The latest issue of New Scientist features an article by Michael Brooks on the evolutionary origins of religious belief. Brookes spends most of the article considering the relative merits of the two main contending hypotheses. On one view, religion is an adaptation selected for its role in promoting cooperation; on the other, it is a
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Educating children on matters of food
As evidenced by recent declarations by the Children’s Secretary (see here and here), the British government is determined to fight childhood obesity and to initiate nothing less than a “lifestyle revolution”, resulting in more children leading a healthy and active life. With this aim in view, a free cookbook was recently distributed to 11 year-olds by
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Achievement and the welfare of children
A report commissioned by the Children’s Society claims that the aggressive pursuit of individual achievement is damaging the interests of children in the UK: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/7861762.stm The principal author is Lord Richard Layard, whose book *Happiness: Lessons from a New Science* (Allen Lane, 2005) is the best account of the last few decades of research on
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Which issues are moral issues? The Case of Egg Freezing
The link in the Guardian reads "Fertility experts warn about morality of egg freezing". In the Telegraph the word "moral" doesn't appear in the headline, but does appear in the lede (the first sentence of the story, which is supposed to summarize the essential facts): The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists and the British Fertility Society
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EightFourteen is enoughAs the Guardian reports, what started out as the more usual happy, wonder-of-modern medicine story of octuplets born in California has turned a little bit sour. It turns out that the 33 year old single mother of the eight newborns who lives with her parents, has six children already, the eldest of whom is seven.