A chestnut, on a tree in Japan. (Flickr: Yuichi Tokutomi)

“Deoxyribonucleic asshole” is about right. James Watson, credited as co-discoverer of the molecular structure of DNA, is auctioning off his Nobel Prize medal in a fit of pique over his recent shunning for being a racist, sexist, jerk.

• Harassing citizens doesn’t prevent crime. Following the near-elimination of “stop and frisk” police patrols, New York City has seen a slight drop in crime rates.
• The touch, the feel. A global history of cotton and capitalism.
• Incentive structures matter. Why abusive police are impossible to remove.
• “To say that black people have made progress would be to say they deserve what happened to them before.” Chris Rock on racial politics in America.
• Except when it doesn’t. “My Vassar College faculty ID makes everything okay.”
• Bookmarked. A new open-access, peer-reviewed repository for biology curriculum, Course Source.
• Not sure if awesome or deeply worrying. The One Laptop Per Child people dropped a bunch of tablets in an Ethiopian village, and village kids taught themselves to use them.
• Godspeed! NASA test-launched a new spacecraft this week.
• Looks promising. The plan to restore chestnut trees to American forests.
• Evolutionary cahoots. The mutations that made plague bacteria deadly to humans are coupled with mutations that make them friendlier to fleas.
• Which means, probably, not a lot. Straight-identified men and women are more likely to show capacity for same-sex romance if they have higher levels of progesterone.
• Or any subcultural linguistic affectation, really. The quest to define “gay voice”.
• I can’t even. In a rush to prepare dinner? Try a shrimp cannon.