The Ed's Up #72

On the Origin of Colourful Monkey Faces

"The guenons are known for their beautiful and diverse faces. De Brazza’s monkey has a white moustache and beard, and an orange sun rising on its forehead. The crowned guenon: dark eyeshadow, a black quiff, a pair of white forehead highlights, and a luxurious golden beard. The red-eared guenon: a drunk’s pink nose, a black brow ridge, white tufts around its eyes, and—yes—red ears. Every species of guenon, and there are between 24 and 36 of them, has its own distinctive facial marks. (Image: William Allen et al.)
 

 

More good reads

• Thousands of people are ordering viruses from Eastern Europe to deal with intractable bacterial infections. Azeen Ghorayshi on the long-discussed promise of phage therapy and why it’s slow to catch on.
• This NatGeo cover story by Joel Achenbach on why people doubt science will never stop being timely
• "The water in my heart has fallen" and other expressions of mental illness in non-English languages. By Maanvi Singh.
• “It is a cold, wet, sharp, splashy, slush-creating, hypothermia-inducing abomination, a wrongness falling over the world. A better name for it would be “airborne depravity.”” Kathryn Schulz ranting magnificently about the phrase “wintry mix”.
• Stunning explainer from Carl Zimmer on why measles is so contagious (and why Ebola is not).
• “It’s much easier to scare people than it is to dispel fears.” Seth Mnookin on talking to vaccine resisters
• “Their memories were vivid, clear—and wrong. There was no relationship at all between confidence and accuracy.” Maria Konnikova on our misplaced faith on our inaccurate emotional memories.
• Harper Lee is publishing her second novel, a sequel to To Kill a Mockingbird. Megan Garber has a thoughtful analysis of the news.
• A 21st century tragicomedy: one man's quest to rid Wikipedia of exactly one grammatical mistake
• Shock as UK MPs reach sensible decision reached over mitochondrial replacement. WHERE WILL THE SENSIBLENESS END? Ewen Callaway explains the science behind the technique; Mark Henderson writes about how the vote is a triumph for public engagement

More good links will be released in tomorrow's linkfest on Not Exactly Rocket Science.

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And that's it! Thanks for reading.

-Ed