Tuesday evening roundup

Peru feels the environmental damage of oil contamination.

What's the deal with North Korea.

The manliness crisis hits the military.

What?? Antibiotics in my organic apples?

Alright, I'm sorry I dissed the bugs. Bugs are pretty cool.

Women make great business decisions.

I love this quote about brain-technology analogies:

Because we do not understand the brain very well we are constantly tempted to use the latest technology as a model for trying to understand it. In my childhood we were always assured that the brain was a telephone switchboard. ('What else could it be?') I was amused to see that Sherrington, the great British neuroscientist, thought that the brain worked like a telegraph system. Freud often compared the brain to hydraulic and electro-magnetic systems. Leibniz compared it to a mill, and I am told some of the ancient Greeks thought the brain functions like a catapult. At present, obviously, the metaphor is the digital computer.

John R. Searle, MINDS, BRAINS AND SCIENCE, p 44

Your weight issues are your weight issues. Nobody else is imposing them on you by virtue of being thin. On a cattier note, I have to love this New Yorker cartoon.

And just when I questioned the quality of the New Yorker, they gave me a phenomenal "Shouts and Murmurs" (almost never happens) and a very decent piece by Lena Dunham. As much as I don't care for "Girls," (disclaimer: I haven't seen much of it because I couldn't take the first twenty minutes I did see), I have to admit that she's a talented writer. And there's no denying she's had an impact on discourse. Anyway, some parts of the article I loved:

After what feels like decades of making ill-advised forays into Spartan Chinatown living rooms and pretending to enjoy wine, I have met someone I love and respect, and I want to make decisions that honor and consider him. It would be a mistake to create a situation that compromised his comfort or made him less likely to squeeze me all night long.

I'm sorry but I love that. I love an open statement that it's perfectly legitimate to accommodate a special person in your life. I also found this terribly lovely:

Once, in a friend’s office, I saw a childhood picture of her husband on which he’d drawn a thought bubble saying, “I can’t wait to meet you, it’s going to take a long time, and there will be a lot of trouble along the way, but this is how it must be.” It struck me as impossibly romantic, the nicest thing you could say to someone, really.

Why am showing these signs of sappiness? That's so not me. But I'm just feeling sappy.