Now on ScienceBlogs: My Mother's Hairbrush and the Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
David Dobbs on science, nature, and culture.
I write on science, medicine, nature, culture and other matters for the New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, Slate, National Geographic, Scientific American Mind, and other publications. (Find clips here.) Right now I'm writing my fourth book, The Orchid and the Dandelion, which explores the hypothesis that the genetic roots some of our worst problems and traits — depresison, hyperaggression, violence, antisocial behavior — can also give rise to resilience, cooperation, empathy, and contentment. The book expands on my December 2009 Atlantic article exploring these ideas.
I've also written three books, including Reef Madness: Charles Darwin, Alexander Agassiz, and the Meaning of Coral, which traces the strangest but most forgotten controversy in Darwin's career — an elemental dispute running some 75 years.
If you'd like, you can subscribe to Neuron Culture by email. You might also want to see more of my work at my main website or check out my Tumblr log.
September 26, 2008
Category: Brains and minds
This week's Science is particularly rich in stories, it seems. These stories require a paid subscription, alas -- but the...
Posted by David Dobbs at 2:05 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
September 19, 2008
Category: Science
PsyBlog has a delightful article discussing whether louder music increases alcohol consumption. It turns out it does, and surprisingly, there seems to have been quite a few studies done to examine the effect.Posted by David Dobbs at 6:55 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
September 16, 2008
They are virtually indestructible. In recent years, scientists have subjected tardigrades (which are also known as water bears) to extreme temperatures, ranging from 155ºC to -200ºC. They’ve deprived the creatures of food and water for years at a time and zapped them with incredibly toxic levels of radiation. But, just like a Timex watch, water bears keep on ticking. Earlier this month, scientists reported that a colony of tardigrades had even managed to withstand the vacuum of outer space.
Posted by David Dobbs at 11:41 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
September 15, 2008
Quite bizarre. No evidence one way or another whether (or how) this might actually affect us. But it's an odd...
Posted by David Dobbs at 12:37 PM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
September 11, 2008
Category: Environment/nature
A friend asked me the other day why he hadn't heard more this year about the question of whether global warming was driving more and bigger hurricanes. The Knight Science Journalism Tracker suggests he's just not reading the right papers. It brings a good round-up of how coverage on that question has shifted:
Posted by David Dobbs at 7:08 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Gotta love this. The geeky (but attractive) blog Radio Bantik: Days in the Life of an Alpha Geek, runs a...
Posted by David Dobbs at 6:51 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
An amusing (and revealing, when Carrell asks McCain about pork) look at Steve Carrell's on-the-job training as a political journalist on the Daily Show.
Posted by David Dobbs at 6:12 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
September 9, 2008
Category: Education
I've often wondered why there wasn't more focused discussion on a great paradox in the way public-school teacher contracts are structured in this country. On one hand teachers seek to be considered as professionals; on the other, they seek (and generally get) union contracts that structure their employment like that of trade unions or cops. Paralleling this paradox are my own mixed feelings as a parent with kids in school: I feel the best of my children's teachers are not paid enough but find it enormously frustrating -- well, make that maddening -- that the worst ones have tenure and seem essentially unaccountable for their incompetence, much less fire-able. Maybe I wasn't looking in the right places, but public discussion of this, at both the policy and the media level, seemed close to nonexistent.
Posted by David Dobbs at 9:41 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
From the "Where Do They Find the Time" Dept, via Clive Thompson's collision detection: Chinese scientists unveil "the anti cloak"...
Posted by David Dobbs at 6:10 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Today's Very Short List Science item is one I am happy to have dug up and, as it were,...
Posted by David Dobbs at 4:35 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
PZ Myers 02.01.2010
PZ Myers 02.01.2010
Tim Lambert 02.01.2010
Martin R 02.01.2010
Greg Laden 01.30.2010
