Jonah Lehrer is an editor at large for Seed Magazine. His first book is Proust Was A Neuroscientist. Buy it here.
December 29, 2006
Category: Culture
The annual list from the BBC. Here's a semi-random sampling: More than 90% of plane crashes have survivors. The Mona Lisa used to hang on the wall of Napoleon's bedroom. Eating a packet of crisps a day is equivalent to...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 4:20 PM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Culture
It sounds as if Bush has decided to "escalate" the war in Iraq by sending a "surge" of 20,000 more troops. I'm no military expert, but this certainly seems like a terrible idea, especially considering that the previous attempts to...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 11:21 AM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
December 28, 2006
Category: Culture
Wait, I thought the war on drugs was supposed to make heroin more expensive: Grams of highly pure Afghan heroin are now trading at $90 in LA. That's about a dime per pure milligram, compared with $2.50 a pure milligram...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 2:44 PM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Culture
Ever since 1994, when universities were no longer allowed to require professors to retire at a certain age, the average age of academics has been steadily rising. Here's the Boston Globe: This year, 9.2 percent of tenured professors in Harvard's...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 10:31 AM • 7 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
December 27, 2006
Category: Culture
I've been reading Dave Eggers new book, What is the What. It's a beautifully told story of a boy's flight from Southern Sudan to a refugee camp in Ethiopia to the slums of Atlanta. Based on a true story -...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 12:23 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Culture
The Times has a story today on the recent boom in "brain health" programs: From "brain gyms" on the Internet to "brain-healthy" foods and activities at assisted living centers, the programs are aimed at baby boomers anxious about entering their...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 10:41 AM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
December 26, 2006
Category: Culture
Talking about death is hard, and many doctors aren't very good at it: Researchers who in the mid-1990s observed more than 9,000 seriously ill patients in five American teaching hospitals found substantial shortcomings in the care of the dying. More...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 11:54 AM • 6 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Culture
Here is Scott Adams (the creator of Dilbert) weighing in on neuroscience and free will (a topic that has been heatedly discussed on this blog recently): It seems to me that free will can be easily tested. The next time...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 10:25 AM • 12 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
December 24, 2006
Category: Culture
The latest poll from my state of New Hampshire: If the Democratic primary were held today, Obama would be in a statistical dead heat with New York Sen. Hillary Clinton, according to a new Monitor poll. Last month, a Monitor...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 12:39 PM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
December 22, 2006
Category: Culture
Tis the season of Santa Claus, and my neighborhood is full of these awful blow up Santa dioramas. The grinch in me hopes that some other grinch comes along with a sharp scissors and pokes a hole in all this...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 3:57 PM • 7 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Culture
Here's how Michel Gondry - director of the Science of Sleep,* and cinematic master of low-tech effects - created the illusion of solving a Rubiks Cube with his feet. Hint: it involves time. And here's the Seed video of Gondry...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 7:59 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
December 21, 2006
Category: Culture
These are just a few questions that Slate's Explainer couldn't, or wouldn't, answer: What comes after 999 trillion? Lasers are now powerful and small (at least I think they are), so why don't our troops carry laser guns? Is it...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 11:35 AM • 9 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Neuroscience
My last post on neuroscience and free will generated lots of interesting comments. Please check them out. But I think a few readers misunderstood my ambition. It's easiest to begin by saying what I wasn't trying to do: I wasn't...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 11:13 AM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Neuroscience
We all know about Proust and his madeleine. One whiff of that buttery cookie, shaped like a seashell, and Proust suddenly remembered his long forgotten childhood in Combray. Proust makes it clear that his sense of smell was the trigger...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 10:09 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
December 20, 2006
Category: Neuroscience
The Economist believes that "modern neuroscience is eroding the idea of free will": In the late 1990s a previously blameless American began collecting child pornography and propositioning children. On the day before he was due to be sentenced to prison...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 11:17 AM • 17 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
December 19, 2006
Category: Culture
So I don't think we should send more troops to secure Baghdad. This song explains why: Note to Bruce: While I enjoyed your Seeger Sessions - even if I really don't listen to it that much - may I suggest...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 2:56 PM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Culture
Nabokov always said that the only thing he enjoyed more than writing novels and solving chess puzzles was studying butterflies. As he notes in Strong Opinions: Frankly, I never thought of letters as a career. Writing has always been for...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 11:51 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Neuroscience
The purpose of dreaming is learning. While you are sleeping, your brain is digesting the day, deciding which new experiences to consolidate into long-term memory. That's the implication of Matthew Wilson's latest paper, which documented the neural activity in the...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 10:47 AM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
December 18, 2006
Category: Culture
There was an excellent review this past Sunday of the new William James biography, by Robert Richardson. The review was written by Rebecca Newberger Goldstein. I heartily agree with this passage: James's own philosophical positions were fused with his reactions...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 11:35 AM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Culture
DARPA, the often secretive research unit of the Pentagon devoted to sponsoring "revolutionary, high-payoff research," has recently turned its attention to neuroscience. DARPA is best known for creating the precursor of the internet, and for decades lavished its considerable resources...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 10:40 AM • 9 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
December 16, 2006
Is inflation really so bad? The great scourge of the American economy - and the economic phenomenon that gives Greenspan and Bernanke nightmares - turns out to have some pretty progressive side-effects. This paper is from the December 2006 issue...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 1:57 PM • 6 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
December 15, 2006
Category: Culture
There are so many confounding variables here I don't know where to begin, so I'll just post the study, in the hope that it convinces somebody to eat some tofu or cheese instead of some ethically dubious meat: Children with...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 12:58 PM • 7 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Culture
Just when I thought we are all doomed to inhabit a planet of acidic oceans and infernal heat, I learn that the Pentagon's top weaponeer - nicknamed Dr. Evil - will save us all from global warming. PS. Did you...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 10:41 AM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Culture
In December 1992, the FDA approved a new cancer drug called Taxol. The active ingredient was paclitaxel, a toxic chemical taken from the bark of the Oregon yew tree. Hailed as a treatment for metastasized tumors - the cancer had...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 10:29 AM • 12 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
December 14, 2006
Category: Culture
A few days ago, I lamented the rise of conspicuous consumption, and wondered whether all our luxuries were actually making us depressed. My logic was simple: we adapt to what we have - it stops making us happy - but...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 5:29 PM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Culture
As everybody knows by now, having a circumcised penis cuts a man's risk of contacting AIDS from heterosexual sex by half. Those ancient Israelites were some astute scientists: Uncircumcised men are thought to be more susceptible because the underside of...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 3:57 PM • 7 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Culture
Apparently, the Japanese believe that blood type is destiny. It's their version of the zodiac: In Japan, using blood type to predict a person's character is as common as going to McDonald's and ordering a teriyaki burger. The association is...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 10:57 AM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Culture
Well, no meritocracy is perfect. The economists Liran Einav and Leeat Yariv analyzed the faculty in the top 35 U.S. economics departments. Their conclusions were startling, especially if your last name begins with the letter Z: Faculty with earlier surname...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 10:07 AM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
December 13, 2006
Category: Culture
If I was a smart man, I'd go out and invest in the stock of some robot companies. Bill Gates (yes, that one) is convinced that the 21st century will be the age of the robot: Imagine being present at...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 10:57 AM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Neuroscience
What are the psychological effects of "doing time"? Do harsher prison conditions create harder criminals? These are the questions that the economists M. Keith Chen and Jesse Schapiro were determined to answer. Their conclusions are sobering: Some two million Americans...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 10:22 AM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
December 12, 2006
Category: Culture
Evangelicals are getting worried: all their pastors are turning gay. Who's to blame? Well, some might argue that genes play a role, and that homosexuality is really a biological behavior. But that would be utterly foolish. It turns out that...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 5:59 PM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Culture
The fight is getting pretty entertaining. While I've got my problems with Gladwell, I think his main argument in this skuffle is exactly right: As I thought should have been obvious, I don't think that the observation, or analysis, or...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 10:28 AM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Culture
This article on turtles contains more bewildering facts than just about anything else I've read recently. Consider this: The liver, lungs and kidneys of a centenarian turtle are virtually indistinguishable from those of its teenage counterpart, a Ponce de Leonic...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 10:12 AM • 5 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Culture
John Strassburger, the president of Ursinus College, a small liberal arts institution here in the eastern Pennsylvania countryside, vividly remembers the day that the chairman of the board of trustees told him the college was losing applicants because of its...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 10:08 AM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
December 11, 2006
Category: Culture
My favorite foods all seem to involve lactose. Whether it's an aged goat cheese from the Loire Valley, or a stinky washed rind cheese, or a scoop of dark chocolate ice cream, I would probably starve if I was lactose...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 12:31 PM • 5 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Culture
The Christmas season is conspicuous consumption time. I recently made my annual trip to the mall, and couldn't help but think that, somehow, the consumption gets more conspicuous every year. The antiqued jeans get more expensive, the televisions get higher...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 8:52 AM • 11 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
December 9, 2006
Category: Culture
The scientific process is famously conservative. On the one hand, this is a necessary flaw: empiricism requires reproduction, and it's never fun when our view of reality is jolted by some revolutionary new fact. The reputation of science in large...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 9:21 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
December 8, 2006
Category: Culture
So I'm reading the newspaper this morning, with NPR on in the background. Next thing I know, a tear is trickling down my cheek....
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 11:38 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Culture
The helter-skelter of urban life even affects birds. I swear my cockatiel is better behaved since I left London; now I know why: Rapid urbanisation around the world and the subsequent increase in ambient noise has proven problematic for animals...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 9:54 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Culture
When will they learn? The Environmental Protection Agency has changed the way it sets standards to control dangerous air pollutants like lead, ozone and tiny particles of soot, enhancing the role of the agency's political appointees in scientific assessments and...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 9:22 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
December 7, 2006
Category: Culture
If there was a circle of hell designed especially for me, I'm pretty sure it would closely resemble this: The strobe lights pulse and the air vibrates to a killer rock beat. Giant screens show mayhem and gross-out pranks: a...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 3:55 PM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Culture
Over at Pure Pedantry, Kara has a nice post on Goethe and game theory. While we're on the topic of Goethe's prescience, I'd thought I'd mention one of Goethe's most important scientific contributions: his analysis of color. Simply put, Goethe...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 11:56 AM • 6 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Culture
This won't be news to Rupert Murdoch. Here's Austan Goolsbee in the Times: New research by two University of Chicago economists, Matthew Gentzkow and Jesse M. Shapiro, entitled "What Drives Media Slant? Evidence From U.S. Daily Newspapers" (www.nber.org/papers/w12707.pdf) compiles some...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 10:21 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
December 6, 2006
Category: Culture
Obama makes bridging our cultural divides look easy. He takes a potential faux-pas - talking about condoms in an evangelical megachurch - and manages to make birth control seem like a faith-based solution. We've been led by a buffoon for...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 2:34 PM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Culture
After the rapture, when the aliens start to colonize our desolate planet, they will be endlessly fascinated by documents like this. Yes, I'm talking about the world's longest diary, composed by Robert Shields of Dayton, Washington, which clocks in at...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 2:13 PM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Culture
This is why you suck at it. New research suggests that the better you know someone, the harder it can be to predict their taste. According to researchers at Tilburg University and Kathiolieke University, we rely too heavily on preconceived...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 10:29 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Culture
It's fascinating, and a little scary, how quickly medicine can transform our notions of what "normal" is. The WSJ reports that drug makers are starting to market birth control pills as a way to help women eliminate their periods. Of...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 10:26 AM • 6 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
December 5, 2006
Category: Neuroscience
Good question. There appears to be no single cause, although there are several factors that put Boston-area Puerto Ricans at higher risk for depression, including high rates of obesity and diabetes. But some causes of the depressive epidemic might prove...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 11:51 AM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Culture
This is just tragic. We send our young men and women off to fight a war, and then refuse to treat their very real mental health symptoms. When are we going to learn that war ravages the brain, and that...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 10:52 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Culture
Remember that controversy last year about the Jackson Pollack paintings that were found in a closet, only to have their authenticity dismissed by a physics professor who used "fractal analysis" to prove that they were "substantially different" from real Pollack...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 10:35 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Neuroscience
This is the ultimate placebo effect: Pseudocyesis, or false pregnancy, is rare, occurring at a rate of 1 to 6 for every 22,000 births. Though scientists are still largely baffled about what causes it in humans, recent case studies and...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 10:17 AM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
December 4, 2006
Category: Neuroscience
Studio 360, a radio show on NPR (no affilation with Aaron Sorkin), did a show this week on the "Science of Creativity". The show featured a few nice segments - I especially enjoyed the riff on mental illness and artistic...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 10:54 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Culture
In The New Yorker, there's a funny cartoon that features a couple driving in their car. Both are reaching for the climate controls, and the man is huffily speaking to his wife: "Let me do it. You don't understand the...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 9:58 AM • 12 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
December 1, 2006
It's one of those tired cliches: Bush makes decisions with his irrational "gut instincts," instead of relying on "careful analysis". Paul Krugman, in today's Times, end his columns by repeating this cliche: Luckily, we've got good leadership for the coming...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 12:59 PM • 11 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
