Your genes at work.

Okay, so maybe not your genes. Put differently, maybe not your genes. Still, biology's pretty weird, isn't it?

A couple of quotes hit me from those stories, though. First:

Brown and Nobles calculate that the approximate area needed to produce ethanol with corn to fuel all U.S. transportation needs is around 820,000 square miles, an area almost the size of the entire Midwest.

They hypothesize they could produce an equal amount of ethanol using an area half that size with the cyanobacteria based on current levels of productivity in the lab...

So all we need to do is cover 410,000 square miles of land with bacteria. Great! Energy problem solved! Because they'll friggin' eat us! Hooray!

Next, your brain:

Human errors are often put down to a momentary loss of concentration. But it now appears that sometimes a localised change in brain activity can be involved.

So, the big surprise is that your brain may be involved some how in your thought processes? Astounding! Somebody call Guinness! I know I'm going to need some stout after that.

Honestly, I don't know which is less shocking: lack of perspective from scientists, or lack of awareness from civilians.