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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.
Category: Art
Perhaps because I so enjoyed the time I spent at sea learning about fish, I particularly enjoyed this collection of Nick Cobbing's photos of ice, sea, and people who work them — scientists, fishermen, adventurers
Posted by David Dobbs at 1:54 PM • 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
I can only hope he'll as vigorously ask people such as Mitt Romney what exactly is wrong with offering more attractive insurance options to the almost 75 million people who are un- or under-insured.
Posted by David Dobbs at 3:05 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Brains and minds
I often find it awkward to switch between blogging or twittering and engaging deeply immersive physical activities. This hiatus, for instance, started when I went fishing last Tuesday on Lake Champlain for salmon.
Posted by David Dobbs at 1:51 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Environment/nature
"CAP Senior Fellow Tom Kenworthy covers the latest science in an American Progress column this week, explaining the problematic feedback cycle: higher temperatures from global warming increase the risks of wildfires, and increased fires release more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere:"
Posted by David Dobbs at 3:37 PM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
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: Culture of science
Nold came up with the idea of fusing a GSR machine, a skin conductance monitor that measures arousal, and a GPS machine, to allow stress to be mapped to particular places. He then gets people to walk round and creates maps detailing high arousal areas of cities.
Posted by David Dobbs at 7:14 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Brains and minds
"If you stick a robot--I don't care if you're talking about grade school kids or high school students--if you put a robot in the middle of the room, there is something captivating about the technology."
Posted by David Dobbs at 9:50 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Art
Kew Gardens is trying to collect and bank the seeds and pollen from 10% of the world's plants -- a nice 21st-century continuation of a stunning collecting effort that started in the 1700s. The Guardian has put up a nice photo gallery of some of the seeds they've collected so far.
Posted by David Dobbs at 9:58 AM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Food and Drink
Now this makes my day: I've been nominated for a James Beard Foundation Journalism Award. Beard, foodees know, was a...
Posted by David Dobbs at 2:38 PM • 6 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
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