The day's gleanings
Jerry Coyne relates that Birds are getting smaller. Most students use Wikipedia, avoid telling profs about it When I talk...
Posted by David Dobbs at 8:40 PM • 0 Comments •
Neuron Culture
David Dobbs on science, nature, and culture.
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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. In August 2010, I'll be moving to London for a year to work on the book. I'll also serve as a senior fellow at City University London's MA science journalism program.
You're encouraged to check out my third book Reef Madness: Charles Darwin, Alexander Agassiz, and the Meaning of Coral, which traces the strangest but most forgotten controversy in Darwin's career; subscribe to Neuron Culture by email; see more of my work at my main website; or track Twitter feed, my Google Reader shared items, or my Tumblr log, which gets it all.
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Recent Posts
- I've moved to Wired
- A food blog I can't digest
- Sullivan & Jefferson on blogospheric chaos and the press
- Ozzy! Ozzy! Ozzy! -- Neuron Culture's Top 5 in June
- Aglitter in the net: reading, writing, genes, and leaving your desk
- Tourette's, goalie timing, and downside & upsides
- An interview in which I'm on the wrong side of the table
- Paul Bloom: Pleasure is a by-product
- David Foster Wallace is, indeed, Smarter than You Think
- Best sit in a soft chair to read this
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- PEMBE MASKE on Are "orchid kids" the same as "gifted children"?
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- PEMBE MASKE on "Push" science journalism, or how diversity matters more than size
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Evolution:
Gold in the tweetstream
Category: Genetics & genomics (incl behav genetics)
I'll try doing this now and then, maybe regularly, to gather the more notable tweets I get in my twitter...
Posted by David Dobbs at 6:41 AM • 0 Comments •
From Out-N-About: latest web notables
Category: Brains and minds
We'll start with the science, cruise through J school, and end with healthcare reform or bust. Genetic material Willful...
Posted by David Dobbs at 2:34 PM • 0 Comments •
Does depression have an upside? It's complicated.
Category: Genetics & genomics (incl behav genetics)
Despite all the complexity, it's that simple: Sometimes, for some people, depression ramps up constructive thinking; for other people (or at other times for the same people for whom depression sometimes brings insight), it smothers it. Did Virginia Woolf's bipolar depression bring her insight and creativity? Quite possibly. Yet in the end it drowned her.
Posted by David Dobbs at 2:16 PM • 11 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Rice, alcohol, and really fast evolution in humans
Category: Evolution
Really fast evolution, this time driven by agriculture.
Posted by David Dobbs at 6:59 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Rebooting science journalism -mixed-metaphor notes on the upcoming yakfest
Category: Journalism & media
Ask not whom to kill, but how sci journalism and/or sci journalists might adapt to a new environment.
Posted by David Dobbs at 11:48 AM • 5 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Are "orchid kids" the same as "gifted children"?
Category: Genetics & genomics (incl behav genetics)
The concern dominating the Motherlode commenter thread responses, and in a few other places as well, is whether the "Orchid Children" of my title are what many people call "gifted" children (defined roughly as very smart kids who have behavioral issues requiring some special handling). The short answer to this question -- that is, whether by "orchid children" I mean smart-but-difficult -- is No.
Posted by David Dobbs at 3:12 PM • 26 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Coming sort of soon to a bookstore near you: "The Orchid and the Dandelion"
Category: Genetics & genomics (incl behav genetics)
I can finally broadcast the news with which I've been bursting for two weeks now: Houghton Mifflin/Harcourt, publisher of many a fine book over the decades, will be publishing "The Orchid and the Dandelion" (working title), in which I'll explore further the emerging "orchid-dandelion hypothesis" I wrote about in my recent Atlantic story.
Posted by David Dobbs at 9:33 AM • 23 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
On the reading table lately
Category: Brains and minds
Ricks -- who earlier wrote Fiasco , a devastating indictment of the run-up to the war, makes three things quite clear: The surge was not about more soldiers, but soldiers doing different things -- protecting the populace rather than hunting the enemy. ... First-rate history of science here, and a fascinating look at Harry Harlow, a monkey researcher whose powerful but sometimes disturbing experiments in the middle decades of last century helped replace a cold behavioralist view of infancy and childhood with the theories of attachment and bonding that still rule today.
Posted by David Dobbs at 7:00 AM • 0 Comments •
Morning dip: Obama on fascistic healthcare, Razib on religion, & other notables
Category: Brains and minds
As Obama explains, world leaders are puzzled that healthcare gets painted with a Hitler moustache. and other news.
Posted by David Dobbs at 6:27 AM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
