Weekend Reads 11/7/15

Reality Sucks

It’s true that the debate exposed a division within the country. But the division isn’t between the press and the public. It’s between people who listen to evidence—reporters, policy analysts, and many Democrats and Republicans—and an impervious, defiant wing of the GOP.

Oxytocin makes socializing feel fun, just like marijuana

Oxytocin has kind of a touchy-feely reputation, often being portrayed in the press as the hormone responsible for bonding and trust. But a more nuanced view holds that it's a bit more mixed. It actually functions to intensify whatever emotional state we already inhabit or enhance social ties within a clique to the detriment of anyone outside.

Anti-Abortion Activist Rob Schenck Now Opposed to Christians Owning Guns

After personally seeing the bodies of the Amish schoolchildren prepared for a funeral after being gunned down in 2006, he began to realize he needed to care more about life outside the womb, too.

Schenck, 57, credits two other catalysts that led him to devote half his time to the issue of gun violence. He lives in the neighborhood of the Washington Navy Yard, where a shooter killed 12 people in 2013. And he was encouraged by Lucy McBath, the mother of Jordan Davis, an unarmed black Florida teen killed in 2012, to speak out.

How NASA Is Steering New Horizons Toward a Tiny Space Rock in the Kuiper Belt

2014 MU69 is small enough that it could nestle into the crook of Cape Cod, and currently is about as far from New Horizons as Saturn is from the Sun.

That’s not even squinting distance. And yet, New Horizons’ earthbound navigators need to steer the craft to a near collision course with the object.