Get Outta Here!: “…[S]omehow a city whose residents have long been scorned for their churlish behavior is now being praised for adopting rules and laws that govern personal conduct, making New York an unlikely model for legislating courtesy and decorum.” (New York Times )

The Tissue-Industrial Complex: “Most of us have tissue or blood samples on file somewhere, whether we know it or not. What we don’t typically know is what research they are being used for and how much money is being made from them. And science may want to keep things that way.” (New York Times Magazine)

“Most prisons are notorious for the quality of their cuisine (pretty poor) and the behavior of their residents (pretty violent). They are therefore ideal locations to test a novel hypothesis: that violent aggression is largely a product of poor nutrition. Toward that end, researchers are studying whether inmates become less violent when put on a diet rich in vitamins and in the fatty acids found in seafood.” (New York Times Magazine)

“When the National Geographic Society announced to great fanfare last week that it had gained access to a 1,700-year-old document known as the Gospel of Judas, it described how a deteriorating manuscript, unearthed in Egypt three decades ago, had made its way through the shady alleys of the antiquities market to a safe-deposit box on Long Island and eventually to a Swiss art dealer who ‘rescued’ it from obscurity.

But there is even more to the story.” (New York Times )