Jonah Lehrer is an editor at large for Seed Magazine. His first book is Proust Was A Neuroscientist. Buy it here.
September 30, 2006
Category: Culture
Sometimes I'm amazed at the pockets of ignorance lurking in our midst. This is the sad story of a Texas art teacher who got suspended for taking her class to the museum. Her crime? Letting her innocent pupils glimpse some...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 11:33 AM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
September 29, 2006
Category: Culture
It's Michael Kinsley day here at the Frontal Cortex. Over at the Guardian, Kinsley has another stupendous piece lamenting the sharp division that American newspapers (especially the NY Times) try to draw between fact and opinion. According to a column...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 2:46 PM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Culture
No, I'm not talking crystal meth, and that much hyped syndrome, methmouth. I'm talking about your cholesterol medication, or your blood pressure pills, or your Prozac. From Steven Dubner: Dr. Reiss [Dubner's dentist] told me that tooth decay in general,...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 11:08 AM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Culture
It's not particularly difficult to expose the incoherence of current Republican policy. But few do it with the wit and brio of Michael Kinsley: It was, I believe, Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) who first made the excellent, bitter and terribly...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 10:48 AM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Culture
It's one of the grandest experiments in American democracy since the invention of the paper ballot, and nobody seems to care. Many municipalities are now moving towards electronic voting, and the results are starting to trickle in. So far, things...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 10:20 AM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
September 28, 2006
Category: Neuroscience
Special K - active ingredient ketamine - is an illegal club drug that was originally used as a medical anesthetic. But now scientists are reporting that it might be a useful ally in the fight against depression: Researchers at the...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 2:40 PM • 5 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
When it comes to stocks, ticker symbols seem to be extremely important. Instead of evaluating a company's financial fundamentals, investors get seduced by cute abbreviations. As the WSJ notes: For at least two years, Harley-Davidson Inc.'s investor-relations folks had thought...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 12:11 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Neuroscience
I'm fascinated by the fashions of mental illness. Every few decades, there is an epidemic of a new brain affliction, while an old disease quietly fades away. Mother's Little Helper (aka Valium) is replaced by the polite contentment of SSRI's....
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 11:10 AM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: My So-Called Life
Sorry for the absence. I was giving a talk in NYC, where I had the pleasure of meeting PZ, Chris Mooney and Lisa Randall. (I was talking about how Walt Whitman anticipated the neuroscience of today.) I also had the...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 10:10 AM • 6 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
September 25, 2006
Category: Neuroscience
Go to Yale for free. Yale University said on Wednesday it will offer digital videos of some courses on the Internet for free, along with transcripts in several languages, in an effort to make the elite private school more accessible....
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 10:55 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Neuroscience
It's a shame that exaggerating the extent of brain differences between men and women can be such a boon for book sales. (Call it the Mars and Venus phenomenon.) This publishing truism has been most recently demonstrated by Louann Brizendine,...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 10:36 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Neuroscience
If anxiety is the new depression, then weed might be our next miracle drug. And no, this isn't the same seedy crap you get from your local delivery service. I'm talking about medically targeted spliffs, designed to only affect your...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 10:05 AM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
September 23, 2006
Category: Neuroscience
William James would have loved this paper. Then again, maybe he'd be dissapointed: Neuroscientists investigating a young woman with epilepsy believe they have stumbled on an explanation why some people feel a ghostly presence nearby or develop paranoia or persecution....
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 11:48 AM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
September 22, 2006
Category: Culture
According to Ann Veneman, the executive director of Unicef: "Women do 66 percent of the work in the world, produce 50 percent of the food, but earn 5 percent of income and 1 percent of the property."...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 5:29 PM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Culture
With all the debate in Congress over illegal immigration, this paper is bound to cause a serious brouhaha. I haven't read the manuscript yet, but the numbers cited in the abstract are certainly thought-provoking. Economics is ultimately a study of...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 12:45 PM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Neuroscience
Ever since David Hume - our first great psychologist - it has been a well known fact that causation is a figment of our imagination. Although we perceive event A as causing event B, this perception is an illusion: necessary...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 11:46 AM • 7 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
September 21, 2006
Category: Culture
...is being a crack dealer. You make much less than minimum wage, and have to live with your mother. Steven Levitt explains....
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 4:15 PM • 8 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Culture
An excellent op-ed by Nina Plank on ways to reduce the amount of dangerous E. coli in our food supply. The answer is stupendously simple: feed cattle what they were meant to eat. E. coli O157:H7 [the strain responsible for...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 10:45 AM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
From the Times: Mr. Chavez [President of Venezeula] brandished a copy of Noam Chomsky's "Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance" and recommended it to members of the General Assembly to read. Later, he told a news conference that...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 10:08 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Culture
So the state of California has launched a frivolous lawsuit going after automakers for producing greenhouse gases. The lawsuit contends that the greenhouses gases, mostly carbon dioxide, emitted from cars is a public nuisance and that automakers should pay for...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 10:05 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
September 20, 2006
Category: Neuroscience
Porn is a big business. Every year, Americans spend $4 billion on video pornography, which makes the industry larger than the N.F.L., the N.B.A. or Major League Baseball. When you include Internet Web sites, porn networks and pay-per-view movies on...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 12:25 PM • 23 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Culture
Looks like even the camera - that tool of verisimilitude - is leaving the reality based community. HP just introduced a digitical camera capable of "slimming photos". After all, who needs to diet when you can just admire pictures of...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 10:48 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Thomas Friedman's take on energy policy grows more urgent by the day. In his latest column (Times $elect), he aims at American agricultural subsidies for sugar farmers. If I could eliminate one government subsidy or tariff - here the effect...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 10:18 AM • 5 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Culture
One of the more unfortunate side-effects of the endless creationist controversy is that it dehumanizes Darwin: he either becomes a biological prophet - the Newton of life - or a Faustian devil, a thinker who sold his soul to discredit...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 10:15 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
September 19, 2006
Category: Culture
I was raised on Costco farmed salmon, those mealy slabs of pinkish fish protein. My first bite of wild salmon was a revelation. It was a different species of taste, so rich and oily and strong. You could practically taste...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 10:58 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Culture
One of the few accurate criticisms of An Inconvenient Truth was the way it deliberately avoided difficult policy prescriptions. For one thing, there was no mention of a high carbon tax, one thing our country (and atmosphere) desperately need. (And...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 10:11 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
September 18, 2006
Category: Culture
Peers matter. According to two recent economics papers, the behavior of our peers determines our own. Alexandre Mas and Enrico Moretti looked at worker productivity: A 10% increase in average co-worker permanent productivity is associated with 1.7% increase in a...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 11:01 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: My So-Called Life
Is nothing sacred? I'm starting to wonder if nutrionists are the scientific version of fashion designers, and make sure to contradict their claims every few years or so, just to stay cutting edge. Anyways, I like breakfast. Noting gets me...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 8:21 AM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
September 16, 2006
Category: Culture
From David Remnick's outstanding profile of Bill Clinton in The New Yorker (not online): "'I keep reading that Bush is incurious, but when he talks to me he asks a lot of questions,' Clinton went on. 'So I can't give...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 3:04 PM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
September 15, 2006
Category: Neuroscience
David Buller's book, Adapting Minds, is in the news again. I agree with Mixing Memory that many of Buller's specific debunkings - such as his full-throated attack on the cheater module - seem flimsy. (And trust me, I was prepared...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 12:13 PM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Culture
The always interesting Sharon Begley has a WSJ column today on the new scientific journals that only publish negative results. A handful of journals that publish only negative results are gaining traction, and new ones are on the drawing boards....
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 9:58 AM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
September 14, 2006
Category: Neuroscience
Over at the Loom, Carl Zimmer reflects on 18th century science, lightning, and the nervous system. The question of when scientists first realized that our nerves used the same stuff as lightning bolts - a completely outlandish idea - has...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 12:53 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Culture
From the WSJ: Nature, one of the world's most prestigious scientific research journals, has embarked on an experiment of its own. In addition to having articles submitted for publication subjected to peer reviews by a handful of experts in the...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 9:17 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
September 13, 2006
Category: Neuroscience
From The Atlantic: Studies indicate that Asian students achieve some of the highest scores in the world in math and science comparisons. However, owing to excessive focus on memorization, done solely for the purpose of passing tests, these gloomy idiot...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 12:14 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Culture
According to the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a Starbucks Frappuccino is equivalent in calories to a McDonald's coffee plus 11 of their creamers and 29 packets of sugar. A venti Caffè Mocha with whipped cream is calorically...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 9:55 AM • 7 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
September 12, 2006
Category: Culture
From Dean Baker: If physicians in the United States received the same pay as physicians in Europe, this step alone would save $80 billion a year from the country's health care bill - approximately $800 per family....
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 1:41 PM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Neuroscience
It's not that rich people sleep more hours per night - although they often do - it's that they are more efficient at using their time in bed. In other words, they are less likely to toss and turn. I...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 10:49 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Culture
In honor of the start of football season, I thought I'd blog about one of my favorite economics papers. It's by David Romer of UC Berkeley, and it should be mandatory reading for every sleep-deprived NFL coach out there. The...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 10:23 AM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
September 11, 2006
Category: My So-Called Life
I have had the tragic privilege of living in New York during 9/11 and London during 7/7. The two events are, of course, incomparable, if only because the falling skyscrapers puncutated our lives without warning. I still vividly remember the...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 11:36 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
September 8, 2006
Category: Culture
Spy shots of a new BMW that runs on hydrogen have just been released. Back in 2004, BMW promised that they would have a hydrogen car ready in 4 years. Seems like they might keep their word (unlike GM and...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 10:25 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Culture
For me, one of the most heartbreaking images of Katrina was a picture of a dying dog, resting underneath a junked car. At a certain point, the press photographs of bloated human bodies floating on the greasy Louisiana water became...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 10:12 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
September 7, 2006
Category: Culture
Any bets on what Bush will drive (or get driven in) once he gets out of office? My hunch is a Hummer. But Clinton is about to become the proud owner of a Mercury Mariner Hybrid. If Hillary weren't running...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 5:07 PM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Neuroscience
Cognitive Daily brought my attention to an interesting study about consumers and health care. Simply put, Americans are terrible at knowing when we are getting good medical treatment. Our satisfaction with our doctors bears no relationship to how good our...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 11:10 AM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Culture
Seed just posted a video of a "salon" between Noam Chomsky and Robert Trivers. These are two deliriously smart men, and it's worth checking out......
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 11:06 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
September 6, 2006
Category: Neuroscience
Over at Slate, Gregg Easterbrook proposes an audacious hypothesis: the rise of television viewing among infants is responsible for the current autism epidemic. The idea is wholly speculative. No scientist has shown a link between autism and television, but so...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 12:59 PM • 7 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Neuroscience
An excellent review has just been published in Nature Reviews Neuroscience on the relationship between enriched environments and the onset and severity of nervous system diseases. A consensus seems to be emerging: putting rodents in enriched environments - cages with...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 10:51 AM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
September 5, 2006
Category: Neuroscience
Jerry Vlasak is a dangerous lunatic, a spokesman for domestic terrorists. He is also a trauma surgeon living in Woodland Hills: Vlasak's views are so incendiary that he is banned from ever visiting Britain. He has been arrested on a...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 11:05 AM • 20 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Culture
How long before this is on YouTube? Videotape of the moment Steve Irwin was hit by a stingray's tail shows the Australian naturalist pulling the barb from his chest, his manager has said. "The tail came up, and spiked him...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 9:39 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
September 4, 2006
Category: My So-Called Life
Bill Simmons is right: I'd put Season 1 of "The Wire" against anything. The first three seasons of "The Sopranos." Seasons 1 or 2 of "24." The first seasons of "NYPD Blue," "ER" or "Miami Vice." You name it. I...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 11:25 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: My So-Called Life
It was the final exam of my freshman year. I was taking Intro to Psych, and I had just pulled an all-nighter. After a few minutes, I began to notice some odd paper shuffling off to my left. The kid...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 9:55 AM • 5 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
September 1, 2006
Category: Culture
The talented Elizabeth Gould of Princeton has done it again: she has produced another study documenting the power of structural plasticity. This time she studied marmoset fathers. She compared the brains of first time and experienced fathers with males who...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 12:57 PM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Culture
The economists Alberto Alesina, William Easterly and Janina Matuszeski have recently published a working paper analyzing the "artificiality" of Iraq's borders. Their conlusion is sobering: Iraq is a fake state, a lingering blot of colonialism that merges different ethnicities together...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 11:32 AM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Culture
My vacation is over. Your humble blogger is now back to work, complete with some awkward tan lines and a slightly jet-lagged brain. I'd thought I'd begin by making sure everybody read Richard Rorty's scathing review of Marc Hauser's new...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 10:15 AM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
