January 31, 2007
Category: Culture
Over at Slate, Gregg Easterbrook argues that the President's recent proposal to increase the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standard by 4 percent a year is a brilliant and bold policy that will "reverse [oil] consumption trends". He blames the...
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Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 10:04 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Neuroscience
The epic battle between video game consoles seems to have a clear winner: the Nintendo Wii. The Wii, which uses an innovative wireless controller to translate the players' motions onto the screen, has upset the order of the video game...
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Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 9:09 AM • 7 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
January 30, 2007
Category: Culture
In the 2004 documentary Super Size Me, Morgan Spurlock decided to eat nothing but McDonald's for 30 days. He ended up gaining lots of weight, suffering liver damage, and enduring intense mood swings. But now Spurlock's movie has been repeated...
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Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 10:36 AM • 9 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Culture
For some reason, I find the death of Barbaro rather upsetting. The first two horse races I've ever watched on television were his victory at the Kentucky Derby and his injury at the Preakness. I've since followed his medical travails...
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Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 10:28 AM • 9 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
January 29, 2007
Category: Culture
There's a new collection of Einstein's personal letters that are about to be published. They give us a portrait of the young scientist before he revolutionized science. At the time these letters were written, Einstein was insecure, poor and struggling...
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Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 10:59 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Neuroscience
Paul Krugman's analysis of Milton Friedman's intellectual legacy is one of the best articles I've read recently. Krugman not only paints a balanced portrait of Friedman's accomplishments - great economist, bad popularizer - but ably summarizes the rival tensions in...
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Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 9:51 AM • 7 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
January 27, 2007
Category: Culture
It almost seems as if the faddish claims of nutritional science have an inverse relationship with reality. If a nutrient is supposed to be good for us, chances are that later research will contradict the claim. Here's Michael Pollan in...
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Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 9:49 AM • 7 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
January 26, 2007
Category: Neuroscience
It's an astonishingly robust finding: Smokers with damaged insulas were 136 times more likely to have their addictions erased than smokers with damage in other parts of their brains. What makes this paper so interesting is that it actually makes...
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Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 10:25 AM • 8 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
January 24, 2007
Category: Culture
Or just a mix-up with the cable feed? Hat Tip: Kottke...
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Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 2:02 PM • 5 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Neuroscience
Is the Hard Problem of consciousness solvable by science? Will we ever come up with a meaningful explanation as to how squirts of neurotransmitter and minor jolts of electricity create subjective experience? As far as I'm concerned, this is the...
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Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 1:38 PM • 19 Comments • 0 TrackBacks