links for 2005-07-20

“Ms. [Carly] Simon still possesses one of pop music’s friendliest and most intelligent voices, one that expresses a lot more feeling than the bratty tough-girl shout that dominates female pop singing today. By turns impassioned, sisterly and maternal, she

“One gene was long known to promote faithful pair bonding and good parental behavior in the male prairie vole. Researchers discovered how the gene is naturally modulated in a population of voles so as to produce a spectrum of behaviors from monogamy to po

“Thoughtful cosmologists have long wondered about the apparent friendliness of the universe to carbon-based life forms like us. The notion that the fix must be in from a creator, however, has always been rejected as unscientific thinking. It’s the job o

‘Danica McKellar, the actress best known as Winnie Cooper on the television series “The Wonder Years,” … may also be the only actress, now or ever, to prove a new mathematical theorem, one that bears her name.’

“If you scare easily, maybe you’d better not read this column. Then again, maybe a good scare is really what you need to get your immunization against tetanus up to date.”