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David Dobbs on science, nature, and culture.
I write articles 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, and am working on my fourth book, The Orchid and the Dandelion, which expands on my recent December 2009 Atlantic article. My previous books include 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.
You're encouraged to subscribe to Neuron Culture by email; see more of my workat my main website; or check out my catch-all-streams Tumblr log.
Category: Economics
An article from the Standard ponders why, despite widespread recognition that the country needs health care reform, we may not get it: Though it's clear we need reform, it's easier to scare people about what they MIGHT supposedly lose (their present coverage) than to see how a new system will improve things.
Posted by David Dobbs at 11:14 PM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Healthcare policy
Will's argument is apparently this: The government does not need to make a profit and ... therefore it will deliver the same service for less money. That's unfair! Is this really the best argument they can mount against the public option?
Posted by David Dobbs at 9:56 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Economics
The big cost was clearly in paying two or three guys to make racket spraying goop in our basement for 3 or 4 days.
Posted by David Dobbs at 7:07 PM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Healthcare policy
"That orange line headed heaven-ward? That's our deficit. All those other lines dipping down? That's our deficit if we had the same health care spending per person as France, Germany, Canada, and the UK (all countries, incidentally, with higher life expectancies than our own)."
Posted by David Dobbs at 1:55 PM • 0 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: Healthcare policy
The evolving Swine Flu story [Effect Measure] The skinny on a scary run of deadly swine flu, from people who've been doing this a while. ... Eli Lilly Tops List of Drug-Company Pay to Vermont Docs Altogether, 78 drug companies spent just shy of $3 million dollars in payments to health professionals in Vermont last year.
Posted by David Dobbs at 7:51 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Brains and minds
To motivate himself to train for a marathon, Obama's budget director, Peter Orszag, set up a penalty: If he didn't hit his training targets: His credit card would make a contribution to a charity or cause he hated:
Posted by David Dobbs at 3:03 PM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Economics
Dan Rather supposedly had balls. George W Bush supposedly had balls. They're looking pretty puny next to what we're seeing from Stewart and Obama. This is a realer kind of steel.
Posted by David Dobbs at 10:00 AM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Brains and minds
The dynamics these instruments claim to represent and control are almost impossibly arcane and complex -- but they got boiled down to formula that, while flummoxing to normal people, had just the right combination of complexity and simplicity -- complexity apparently solved -- to convince mathematical investor types that they solved essential problems and put risk in a bottle.
Posted by David Dobbs at 11:06 AM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Economics
Back in October a study found that high testosterone levels were associated with higher levels of financial risk-taking. Now comes the blowback, as Andrew Sullivan notes:
Posted by David Dobbs at 10:05 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
ERV 04.06.2010
Oscillator 04.06.2010
Bioephemera 04.05.2010
White Coat Underground 04.06.2010
Applied Statistics 04.06.2010
