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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.
April 30, 2009
Category: Swine flu
This interview with CDC virologist Ruben Donis echoes nicely some of the themes I and others have been trying to hit in this swine flu coverage: the mystery about where this virus came from and where it is going; its weird novelty; and the need for an aggressive but parsimonious approach to solving this puzzle.
Posted by David Dobbs at 11:36 AM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Medicine
In his morning news roundup at Slate today, Daniel Politi hits what seems to me -- this morning, anyway -- about the right tone, which is that the events of the last 24 hours are encouraging. (Though I wouldn't throw out those flu masks just yet.)
Posted by David Dobbs at 10:27 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Swine flu
"Where the hell it got all these genes from we don't know," says Robert Webster, a flu virologist at St Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee. "But this is a real super-mixed-up virus.
Posted by David Dobbs at 6:31 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
April 29, 2009
Category: Medicine
It'd be nice to think otherwise. But even as WHO moves to Phase 5, recognizing that there is sustained...
Posted by David Dobbs at 9:03 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Brains and minds
If learned helplessness is depression, It follows that intentionally producing that state through torture is to intentionally make someone quite ill. Arguments about torture's definitions aside, this would seem to be not okay.
Posted by David Dobbs at 1:34 PM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Education
As I've noted before, the U.S.'s health-care and education systems share some fundamental flaws: In both medical care and schooling we spend far more than other countries and get substandard results. Here's the latest data on the education end.
Posted by David Dobbs at 1:16 PM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Swine flu
Some of the better and/or overlooked coverage from the last 24 hours or so
Posted by David Dobbs at 12:13 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Medicine
As the news mounts and things move closer to home, one feels internally the debate that Buzz and Woody had at one point in Toy Story, where Buzz, trying to calm Woody, says, "This is no time to panic!" and Woody responds, "This is a perfect time to panic!" The news will give fodder -- and talking heads will give arguments -- for either response.
Posted by David Dobbs at 10:47 AM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
April 28, 2009
Category: Art
In a few slender leg bones and fragments of milk-stained pottery, archaeologists recently found evidence of one of the more important developments in human history: the domestication of horses. Unearthed from a windswept plain in Kazakhstan, the remains were about 5500 years old, and suggested that a nomadic people now called the Botai had learned to ride a creature that had captured mankind's imagination thousands of years earlier.
Posted by David Dobbs at 9:48 PM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Medicine
Via emails, comments, and so on, quite a few people offered their own explanations for why mortality might be higher in Mexico (as of yesterday), the subject of my Slate piece.
Posted by David Dobbs at 6:56 PM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
