Jonah Lehrer is an editor at large for Seed Magazine. His first book is Proust Was A Neuroscientist. Buy it here.
November 30, 2006
Category: Culture
You'll live longer. From the latest Nature: Regular, moderate consumption of red wine is linked to a reduced risk of coronary heart disease and to lower overall mortality1, but the relative contribution of wine's alcohol and polyphenol components to these...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 4:22 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Culture
So David Brooks is now a swing voter. He's grown so disenchanted with the Republican leadership that he has started giving them advice on how to woo him back. For the most part, I agree with his advice and support...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 11:18 AM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Culture
Until he became a global warming skeptic and an environmental advisor to the Bush White House, I'd always been a fan of Michael Crichton. His scientific dystopias always made for excellent pool-side reading and, when he was good, he could...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 10:51 AM • 6 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
November 29, 2006
Category: Culture
Maybe I'm just ignorant, but this sort of body-language interpretation, as featured in the NY Times today, struck me as about as scientific as palm reading and hand-writing analysis: Tonya Reiman and Maxine Lucille Fiel do not know much about...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 6:12 PM • 6 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Culture
It's ironic that scientific research on animals has ended up becoming an important source of evidence against animal research. After all, it's only because we sacrifice chimps that we understand the deep connections between the chimp brain and the human...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 12:48 PM • 32 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Culture
At last, an auto show that doesn't revolve around thirsty V-12 engines and gigantic SUV's. The L.A. Auto Show, which starts today, is notable for the debut of several environmentally friendly vehicles. And these aren't just futuristic fantasies. For the...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 11:56 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Culture
Obama is coming to town! Since I live in New Hampshire, that also means that Obama is going to run for President. (I suppose Obama might also just have a soft spot for Manchester. . .) So what am I...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 11:39 AM • 9 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
November 28, 2006
Category: Culture
Fun for the whole family. If Judith Rich Harris is correct, then kids should have the same accent as their peers, not their parents. According to this quiz, my childhood friends in Southern California were actually from the Midwest. (Or...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 11:59 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
There's a thorough article in the Times Magazine on the persistence of the "achievment gap" in public education. The conclusion of the article is rather simple: the "achievment gap" persists due to a series of entrenched inequalities, but very good...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 10:55 AM • 14 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Culture
This is a briliant idea: Youtube for test tubes. Instead of trying to translate the methodology of experiments into technical prose, why not just videotape the experiments? Most of the time, science is just a fancy form of manual labor,...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 10:17 AM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Culture
I had no idea such things were even possible: One day (far off, no doubt), it may be possible to go into a laboratory on Earth, create a "seed" -- a device that could grow into a universe -- and...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 10:05 AM • 10 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
November 27, 2006
Category: Culture
Jacques Barzun was right. Once upon a time, Christie's auctioned off great literary manuscripts. I'm particularly covetous of this Proust galley: Ah, how times change. Christie's is now auctioning off a masterpiece of our own disenlightened and decadent age, a...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 5:18 PM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Culture
Peter Singer, a bioethicist at Princeton, is the brain behind the animal rights movement. He has provided their sole moral argument - animals have the same rights as humans - with a rigorous philosophical foundation. But now he appears to...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 4:19 PM • 16 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Culture
Last week, I wrote about how the Nintendo Wii is the first emotional video game system, since it forces your body to become involved in playing the game. (Fans of Wiliam James and Antonio Damasio will know what I'm talking...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 10:59 AM • 5 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Culture
What ever happened to the public intellectual? Yesterday, Tom Wolfe expended a few thousand breathless words on the New York Times editorial page bemoaning the construction of another condo on the Upper East Side. Wolfe will no longer have an...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 10:39 AM • 5 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Neuroscience
The power of self-fulfilling prophesies: According to Vietnamese astrology, your year of birth shapes your chances in life. Some years are good luck, others are bad luck, and your prospects for health and professional success are dim if you happen...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 10:14 AM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
November 24, 2006
Category: Culture
Regardless of your political stance on abortion, I think we can all come together and agree that this fetus should be terminated. A boy has been born in Chile with a fetus in his stomach in what doctors said was...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 6:11 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Culture
Tis the season to be generous, to count our blessing and and remember the more needy. In that spirit, it's worth noting that conservatives are more generous than us liberals. According to a new book by Arthur Brooks, a behavioral...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 9:51 AM • 12 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Neuroscience
Thanksgiving is a wonderful holiday with a regrettable meat. Turkey is the sawdust of protein, a big bird with a bad breast-to-leg ratio, which means that you have to dry out the breast before you can fully cook the leg....
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 8:32 AM • 11 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
November 22, 2006
Category: Culture
Since we came up with a pretty good "Best Science Books of All Time" list, it's only fair that we contemplate the worst science books, too. John Horgan has already gotten started. His list isn't a bad beginning, although I...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 11:51 AM • 11 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Culture
Speaking of Los Angeles, the city just announced that they are weaning themselves off cheap coal power: Southern California is gambling its future power needs on its constant sunshine, wind and the ability of engineers to effectively harness those and...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 11:07 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Culture
There are few arguments quite as futile, or fun, as debating the merits of cities. I've spent many hours discussing the virtues of New York City pizza versus Mexican food in Los Angeles, or the views from the Brooklyn Bridge...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 10:38 AM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Neuroscience
Over at The American Scene, Ross Douthat argues that scientists should try treating our spiritual experiences of the divine as literal events. In other words, the crazy people who see God might not be crazy: Atheistically-inclined scientists and philosophers have...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 10:28 AM • 15 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
November 21, 2006
Category: Culture
The MILF phenomenon, biologically explained. From the National Post: Female chimpanzees become more sexually attractive as they age, even into old age, according to research published today. By studying the mating habits of our closest living evolutionary cousin, anthropologists from...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 2:37 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Culture
Did you know that 1 percent of hospital patients account for nearly a quarter of all medical expenses? This graph is a sobering glance at the real problems facing our health care industry. It's the 80-20 rule come to life:...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 10:35 AM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Culture
In the new New York Review of Books, there is a fascinating review of Nancy Segal's new book on twins. (Caveat: I haven't read the book yet.) The review is full of choice anecdotes like these: The "Fireman Twins" were...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 9:57 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
November 17, 2006
Category: Culture
Here's a perfect example of The Winner's Curse at work. From Bill Simmons, writing about the Boston Red Sox bid for Japanese pitching phenom Daisuke Matsuzaka: My favorite part about their $51.1 million bid was that they originally wanted to...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 5:15 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Neuroscience
I've got a short essay on the Nintendo Wii, William James and Antonio Damasio over at seedmagazine.com. It's fun for the whole family. (And don't believe the Sony Playstation 3 hype, unless you really care about how realistically your basketball...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 12:19 PM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Neuroscience
Milton Friedman was a magnificent economist, and I'll defer to other economists to sing his praises. But it's worth noting that, besides being an evangelical for free-markets, he was also a proponent of the rational-agent model. Those two facts aren't...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 10:45 AM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Culture
For whatever strange reason, Crescent City, California is prone to tsunamis. In 1964, the town was devastated by a freakish tidal wave. Yesterday, more than 24 hours after a massive earthquake rocked the coast of Russia, another wave rolled into...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 10:22 AM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Culture
This is the most depressing story I've read in a while. I normally don't worry about the fate of my future grandchildren, but Elizabeth Kolbert's new New Yorker article kept me up late last night, fretting about their dismal world....
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 10:11 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Culture
Richard Powers just won the National Book Award for his new novel, The Echo Maker. Powers writes science fiction at its most literal and important level: he interweaves scientific sub-plots (the nature of consciousness, the genetic code, the curvature of...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 9:50 AM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
November 16, 2006
Category: Culture
How long before professional cyclists start swallowing concentrated resveratrol? And will we ban red wine as an illegal performance enhancing substance? An ordinary lab mouse will run about one kilometer -- five-eights of a mile -- on a treadmill before...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 3:11 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Culture
When Al Gore started to run for the presidency in 2000, he was thin. By the time the race was over, he had gained a lot of weight (like Clinton in 1992), and then he kept on gaining weight in...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 1:27 PM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Culture
Have I mentioned that I love lists? They bring order to an inchoate world. Anyways, here's a rather arbitary list of the Top 40 Bands of the year, as chosen by some music bloggers. There's a lot I agree with...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 12:22 PM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Culture
Larry Summers was wrong. It's not about innate cognitive differences, it's about fertility: Many studies have shown that women are under-represented in tenured ranks in the sciences. We evaluate whether gender differences in the likelihood of obtaining a tenure track...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 10:19 AM • 9 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Culture
Now that we've got a sizable number of Democrats in Congress who aren't pro-choice, people have begun to wonder what sort of rhetorical and philosophical position the Democratic party should take on abortion. Some argue that Democrats should resort to...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 10:15 AM • 13 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
November 15, 2006
Category: Culture
In the 1920s, Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin sent an animal-breeding expert to Africa in hopes of creating an army of half-man, half-monkey soldiers. Attempts both to inseminate women with monkey sperm and impregnate female chimpanzees with human sperm failed. That's...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 1:48 PM • 6 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Culture
I think the Democrats should insist on revampling the Medicare drug bill. It's just plain silly that the government can't negotiate directly with the drug companies for lower prices. After all, the government negotiates big discounts for drugs for Medicaid...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 9:16 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Culture
Phantom limbs are one of the strangest phenomenon you'll ever hear about. As far as I can tell, phantom limbs were first described by Herman Melville, who gave Ahab, the gnarly sea captain of Moby Dick, a "sensory ghost". Ahab...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 8:55 AM • 5 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Culture
3 lbs, the new neurosurgery show on CBS, premiered last night. My initial reaction: good, but no Grey's Anatomy. The show is derivative to the point of banality - if you're a fan of medical dramas, you can literally predict...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 8:39 AM • 9 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
November 14, 2006
Category: Culture
John Tierney, the libertarian replacement for William Safire, is quitting his op-ed post in order to become a science columnist and blogger. For those of you without Times $elect: This is my last column on the Op-Ed page. I've enjoyed...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 10:39 AM • 9 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Culture
According to Oxford University Press, the official overseer of the English language, the word of the year is "carbon neutral". The rise of carbon neutral reflects the growing importance of the green movement in the United States. Erin McKean, editor...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 10:36 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Culture
It's the latest Starbucks advertising campaign: they are handing out free subway passes and movie tickets in the hope that all the niceness and holiday cheer will be contagious: Starting today Starbucks is surprising its customers with free gifts. The...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 10:10 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
November 13, 2006
From Newsweek: Rove's miscalculations began well before election night. The polls and pundits pointed to a Democratic sweep, but Rove dismissed them all. In public, he predicted outright victory, flashing the V sign to reporters flying on Air Force One....
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 11:46 AM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Culture
There are so many depressing studies on energy policy that I thought it was worth highlighting an optimistic one. The Rand Corp. just produced an analysis which predicts that alternative energy sources (like wind, solar and ethanol) could furnish as...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 11:30 AM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Culture
When Republicans talk about their plans for health-care, they are talking about people like me. My insurance plan has an extremely high deductible ($5000) which discourages me from excess "consumption" of health care resources. (This is known as the "moral...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 11:09 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
November 10, 2006
Category: Culture
This is why you don't cheat. From the WSJ: Gerrymandering was supposed to cement Republican control of the House of Representatives, offering incumbents a wall of re-election protection even as public opinion turned sharply against them. Instead, the party's strategy...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 9:08 PM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Culture
Scientists have constructed the world's first artificial gut: Constructed from sophisticated plastics and metals able to withstand the corrosive acids and enzymes found in the human gut, the device may ultimately help in the development of super-nutrients, such as obesity-fighting...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 5:41 PM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Neuroscience
Ogi Ogas is a Ph.D candidate in neuroscience at Boston University. He was also a contestant on Who Wants to Be A Millionare, where he used his knowledge of neuroscience to win a cool $500,000. Learn about how he did...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 10:38 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Culture
As loyal readers of this blog know by now (I'm talking about you, Mom), I've got a soft spot for gas taxes. In fact, I'm pretty convinced that America needs a higher gas tax, phased in over several years (so...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 10:10 AM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
November 9, 2006
Category: Culture
GM has already killed off one electric car - the EV1 was a product tragically ahead of its time - but the company is now committed to building an improved version: The new car, to be unveiled as a prototype...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 12:59 PM • 15 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Culture
I know too much schadenfreude isn't good for you, but I just couldn't resist posting this little excerpt of Rovian braggadocio from NPR last week: SIEGEL: We're in the home stretch, though, and many would consider you on the optimistic...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 12:15 PM • 6 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Neuroscience
Adaptation is a well known principle of psychology, and yet political strategists have always ignored it. Simply put, sensory adaptation is why you don't notice your underpants: your mind has adapted to their presence. It's a way taking certain constants...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 10:20 AM • 5 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
November 8, 2006
Category: Culture
Here's an odd factoid: If Virginia and Montana go Democratic, the prediction markets called every race correctly. It's also worth noting that Tradesports currently gives George Allen a 4 percent chance of retaining his Senate seat....
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 10:45 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Culture
I'm skeptical of these sorts of psychological models - an important part of the terrorist strategy is to not have a coherent strategy - but it's certainly a noble effort: Imagine that we had a mathematical formula that could be...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 10:35 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Culture
Abraham Lincoln summarizes the election: "You may deceive all the people part of the time, and part of the people all the time, but not all the people all the time." That, right there, is the genius of the democracy....
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 10:05 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
November 7, 2006
Category: Neuroscience
I'd never heard of this disorder before. It's like the awful flipside of fatal familial insomnia: Every four months or so, Spencer Spearin climbs into bed and sleeps for days or longer. "I might not be with you for a...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 3:33 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Culture
This is great news. As an animal lover, I can certainly see how the Humane Society has tremendous political potential. From the WSJ: For the first time in its 50-year history, the Humane Society is trying to elect candidates to...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 12:39 PM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Culture
Barry Schwartz, a professor of psychology at Swarthmore, has an op-ed in today's Times on the psychology of voters. I'm a big fan of Schwartz - The Paradox of Choice is a fantastic book, and will explain why those expensive...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 11:25 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
November 6, 2006
Category: Culture
Over at the National Review, David Klinghoffer tries to argue that the Haggard affair "confirms some truths of the worldview he defended." (If so, it's hard to imagine what an evangelical preacher would have to do to not confirm the...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 4:59 PM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Culture
...Has officially been released. It weighs in at a hefty 8.6 billion pixels. [Hat Tip: Katherine]...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 11:14 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Culture
Democracy depends upon the wisdom of crowds. However, it's no secret that most people aren't particularly well informed about the issues. Furthermore, the less facts people know, the more vulnerable they are to being misled by negative political ads and...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 10:48 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks