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Jonah Lehrer is a contributing editor at Wired. He's also written for The New Yorker, Seed, Nature, the Boston Globe and is a contributor to Radio Lab. He's the author of Proust Was A Neuroscientist. His new book is How We Decide.
June 30, 2009
It's been a hotly debated scientific question for decades: was Joe DiMaggio's 56-game hitting streak a genuine statistical outlier, or is it an expected statistical aberration, given the long history of major league baseball? I'd optimistically assumed, based on the...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 8:19 AM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Just a quick reminder to watch the season premiere of NOVA tonight on PBS. It features Oliver Sacks and a few of the patients described in Musicophilia, including Tony Cicoria, an orthopedic surgeon who became obsessed with classical piano after...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 6:55 AM • 6 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
June 29, 2009
In the latest Atlantic, Sandra Tsing Loh argues (with her usual panache) that the institution of marriage is passé, and that it's time to cast off the antiquated concept of eternal monogomy: Sure, it [marriage] made sense to agrarian families...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 4:57 PM • 17 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
June 26, 2009
If anybody happens to be in New Haven this evening, I'll be speaking about Proust, art, science, wine and Descartes with the psychologist Paul Bloom. It will be fun and it's free. The event starts at 5:30 and is at...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 7:21 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
June 25, 2009
It's a shame that we stop encouraging naps once the preschool years are over. After all, there's a growing body of scientific evidence that the afternoon siesta is an important mental tool, which enhances productivity, learning and memory. (It's really...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 7:17 AM • 16 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
June 22, 2009
I went jean shopping this weekend. Actually, I went to the mall to return a t-shirt but ended buying a pair of expensive denim pants. What happened? I made the mistake of entering the fitting room. And then the endowment...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 7:29 AM • 17 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
June 19, 2009
I've gotten numerous emails about my recent post on animal rights - I called animal experimentation a "necessary evil" - but I think this note from a reader eloquently captures the ambivalence that many scientists feel: I have a child...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 9:17 AM • 11 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Here is the NY Times, describing the latest weight-loss fad: Like almost every dieter in America, Wendy Bassett has used all sorts of weight-loss products. Nothing worked, she said, until she tried Sensa: granules she scatters on almost everything she...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 7:25 AM • 18 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
June 18, 2009
I think one of the most important tests of behavioral economics will arrive in the next few years, as we attempt to persuade consumers to improve energy efficiency in the home. Just imagine if, instead of installing granite on every...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 8:17 AM • 15 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
June 17, 2009
Yesterday was Bloomsday - the day Leopold Bloom wandered around Dublin - and so I drank a pint of Guiness and read some Joyce. Now that Ulysses is part of the modernist canon it's easy to forget what a radical...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 12:39 PM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
PZ Myers 11.07.2009
PZ Myers 11.07.2009
Orac 11.06.2009
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Greg Laden 11.07.2009
