Hi there all you wonderful people! You are all looking especially dominant and sexually desirable this week. Have you been participating in activities intended to move you towards your ideal mass? No? I lightheartedly question the veracity of that statement in order to exaggerate the sincerity of my previous observation!

Got some really interesting stuff to share this week, unlike other weeks, in which, frankly, just between you and I, I was really phoning it in.

Please at least pretend you are surprised and shocked by this revelation. My ego responds to compliments just like yours does, only more so.

First off… well, I guess I better get this over with right away. No sense in beating around the bush, even though honestly I am ashamed to even bring it up, because it might seem like I am bragging or putting myself forward, and if that was the impression I gave, well, I would just blush so hard… but here goes anyhow.

Turns out, according to a recent study, people consider easily embarrassed people more trustworthy.

The funky folks at University of California Berkeley proved this, and to me, it makes perfect sense. Someone who is easily embarrassed is someone who demonstrates a capacity to feel shame, and we naturally consider such a person to be trustworthy because we figure, deep in our animal brains, that said shame will keep them from doing bad things. This goes more than double for someone who blushes. That goes right to our primate minds, from back when our emotions were expressed more by blushing and flushing than by facial expression.

The cynical part of my mind wonders if this means that being able to fake being embarrassed easily or even blush on cue would be a golden treasure for professional liars like con men, actors, or bankers.

Turning to the world of medicine, we have the mildly surprising news that apparently, pig to human tissue transfers are “imminent”.

Well, to be more specific, human trials might well be imminent. And by imminent, we mean they could start as soon as only two to three years from now!

Not exactly piping hot news right off the transom. Stupid sensationalistic science journalism. But still, pretty interesting nevertheless.

I confess, I have not thought about animal to human tissue transplants in at least a decade, probably two. I mean, how long has it been since that baboon to human heart transplant? 27 years? It really feels like news from the past.

And to be honest, I have been paying so much attention to things like tissue engineering and stem cell research that seem like they are the wave of the future that thinking about animal tissue transplants seems positively bizarre.

But our love of pork produces an awful lot of dead pig parts that right now just get thrown away. If we could turn waste into human life, that would be a truly amazing piece of modern medical alchemy.

Obviously, though, Muslims and Jews are not going to go for it. What could be more traif than having a piece of pig inside you forever?

Finally, from one of my favorite scientific frontiers, namely brain science, rejoice, cynics and pessimists : optimism is a brain defect.

Or at least, that is one interpretation of the data from a recent fMRI study by a team of English and German scientists. The story is sadly poor on the exact details, instead choosing to waste column inches on explaining why excessive optimism might be a bad thing.

Well duh. Excessive anything is, by definition, bad. And we all know how irrational exuberance lead to the 2008 financial meltdown.

Well, that, and evil old white men stealing from everybody.

And being a depressive, I can tell you all about how the opposite can be just as bad if not even worse. Excessive pessimism leads to depression, lack of motivation, inability to make decisions, passing up genuinely good opportunities, isolation, social incapacity, and in general, a human being who is not functional at all.

From my admittedly biased point of view, it is obvious that a certain degree of irrational optimism is actually beneficial, as it provides a buffer that makes it tougher for life to get you down and keeps you filled with hope for better so you can keep going until it actually does get better.

Sounds a lot better than crippling depression to me. Maybe you take foolish risks, but you take smart ones too.

Maybe it all evens out somehow.