Weekly Webcrawl: It’s been a heck of a (2) week(s)

Hi friends — I’m sorry I missed last week’s webcrawl. I really have no excuse, since I was technically locked inside my house all day and should have had plenty of time to do it. But I was glued to CNN, texting my friends in Newton and Watertown, and generally trying to stay calm as the city of Boston launched one of the largest manhunts in our nation’s history. But things are mostly back to normal, whatever that means, so here we are, back on the webcrawl wagon again.

A few of my favorite science stories and blog posts from the last two weeks:

  1. How not to die, from the Atlantic: Two doctors take on the tragedy of end of life care
  2. Play for all kinds of possibilities, from the New York Times : David Dobbs beautifully shows us how human play may drive evolution
  3. Why was the Texas fertilizer plant so deadly?, from Scientific American: The title pretty much tells you what you need to know
  4. “I think I’ve just thought up Something important”, from The Loom: Carl Zimmer’s tribute to the Nobel Prize winner Francois Jacob, who passed away over the weekend
  5. Shut up, brain!, from You’ve got some science on you: Fellow Boston science writer Tom Ulrich discusses one of my favorite topics: falling asleep.
  6. Consciousness After Death: Strange Tales From the Frontiers of Resuscitation Medicine, from Wired: Okay, I haven’t actually read this one yet, but I’m really excited to!

And finally, here’s a great video of what a capuchin monkey thinks about unequal pay for equal work: