How can you stop the worst water crisis for 1,000 years?

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The best of the week’s long reads in science and technology, the water crisis in the American West and the things doctors won’t tell you about the menopause.

Extinction | Should we care if the human race goes extinct?

Let nobody say that Marginal Revolution ducks the big questions. Yes, we are OK with extinction. “The likely scenario is a glide path in which most people adopt bionic and germ-line modifications that evolve into post-human cyborgs. I see nothing objectionable in this. I delight to think of the marvels that future generations may produce. I see no reason to hope that such marvels will be produced by beings indistinguishable from myself.” (Alex Tabarrok, Marginal Revolution, 400 words)

Menopause | Pause

What is it like to go through menopause? “Hot flashes are the least of it. I am not here to talk about hot flashes. You begin to lie. You have the urge to shoplift and if you drive an automobile you have the urge to ram your car into the car in front. Nothing can prepare you for this. The one thing no one will tell you is that these feelings and this behavior will last 10 years. That is, a decade of your life. Ask your doctor if this is true and she will deny it.” (Mary Ruefle, Granta, 1,300 words)

Drought | Water crisis in the west

The Colorado River enters a 15th year of drought. Experts say the American West is suffering its worst dry spell in 1,000 years. But the crisis is also man-made. Farmers in the Western states have defied nature for 150 years, importing and diverting billions of gallons of water each year for their crops, often with the help of government subsidies. Cities have courted extravagant population growth. Now nature is calling their bluff. (Abrahm Lustgarten and Naveena Sadasivam, Pro Publica, 5,800 words)

Ethics | After lethal injection

American states seek alternative execution methods if the Supreme Court bans Midazolam for lethal injections. Oklahoma, “the nation’s laboratory for capital punishment”, plans to suffocate prisoners with nitrogen. According to a state senator: “When they first proposed it, I said: I’ve never heard of such a thing, but I suppose that might work. Not that I’ve ever executed someone. But I assume somebody must have done some research.” (Maurice Chammah et al, Marshall Project, 5,200 words)

Surveillance | The hypocrisy of the internet journalist

The business model for most online publications is invasive surveillance. Journalists are central to the process. They are paid for luring readers to websites where spyware can be implanted. “For years, as a writer at Wired, I watched more companies put tracking cookies and scripts in every article I wrote. Unlike most of the people I worked with at Wired, I understood the implications of what we were doing.” (Quinn Norton, The Message, 1,770 words)

Trials on trial | How to rig a clinical trial and fool millions

A science journalist showed that by using a tiny sample, measuring for lots of variables, and deciding what you are looking for after you see the results, you can convince the world chocolate will make you slim. The author hired 16 people on Facebook, fed chocolate to five of them for three weeks — and found “proof” that chocolate helped weight-loss. Newspapers around the world ran with the story. However, the ethics of performing a study to hoodwink the media have been called into question, with some saying the deception was ‘shameful’. (John Bohannon, io9, 3,075 words)

Artificial intelligence | Lust and the Turing Test

We can debate whether machines with artificial intelligence can ever become conscious, but that is a philosophical question. The practical question is whether an intelligent machine can behave like a conscious being. Can it pass a Turing test for behaviour? If it does, we will treat it as conscious. Films such as "Her" and "Ex Machina", with artificial intelligence as the love interest, are only slightly ahead of their time. (Christof Koch, Nature, 1,074 words)

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