Brave New World

This morning I opened the newspaper before I went to work, as I do four out of five days. The front page of the New York Times had four science articles on the front page, and each triggered an emotion.

1.  The InSight landing on Mars. Emotion: Super cool! Awesome. Look what a brilliant group of people can do with $800M. Still, awesome!
2. Nursing Homes in France use Robots to Befriend those with Dementia. Emotion: Hmmm. This in interesting. I think. Maybe. I guess there is a shortage of people to do this kind of work, but people befriending robots seems really sad. Yet, if the people can't tell the difference, I suppose a robot is better than nothing. Is it different than little kids playing with dolls or stuffed animals? (The photographs in this article are amazing.)
3. A Doctor in China Reports that He Created Genetically Edited Babies. Emotion: WTF? Do I want to live in a world like this? This is creepy and outlawed in the U.S. and everyone who knows this guy is distancing themselves from him.
4. Someone Wrote a Mathematical Analysis on Crumpling Paper. Emotion: Huh? I am smart enough to understand this? And what about people who didn't study math in college? But still, kind of cool. Maybe I'll understand it better if I read it again. 

Scientific change appears to be taking place at break-neck speed. Even for me-a liberal/progressive from Seattle with a STEM degree whose married to a doctor--the news today seemed overwhelming. What can this mean to people living in the Opioid Belt, where people are overdosing on synthetic painkillers or meth? How can they grok this pace of change?

I suppose someone could argue that meth-heads don't read newspapers, especially the science pages with articles about crumpling paper. But Mars? Genetically altered babies? Those stories should make it to the major news channels.