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Jonah Lehrer is a contributing editor at Wired. He's also written for The New Yorker, Seed, Nature, and the New York Times and is a contributor to Radiolab. He's the author of Proust Was A Neuroscientist. His new book is How We Decide.
December 28, 2009
Apologies for the light blogging: I'm enjoying a little vacation from my computer. But here is a recent little article about willpower in the WSJ: Willpower, like a bicep, can only exert itself so long before it gives out; it's...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 11:42 AM • 13 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
December 22, 2009
My latest Wired article is now online and on the newsstands. It's about the messiness of experimental science, the blind-spots created by knowledge, Thorstein Veblen, European Jews and the background static created by the Big Bang....
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 10:53 AM • 9 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
December 17, 2009
Earlier this week, I wondered if all of our new knowledge about the brain, which is too often presented in a lazy causal fashion - if x lights up, then we do y - might undermine our sense of self...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 12:13 PM • 92 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
December 15, 2009
James Surowiecki has the smartest take I've read on the Woods sex scandal: Woods's appeal was based, ultimately, not on his physical abilities but on his mental toughness, his extraordinary capacity for focus and discipline. He was the man who...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 11:37 AM • 219 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
The always fascinating Ed Yong, over at Not Exactly Rocket Science, highlights a recent study on testosterone, aggression and the placebo effect. If ever a hormone was the subject of clichés and stereotypes, it is testosterone. In pop culture, it...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 10:40 AM • 12 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
December 14, 2009
I recently learned that many professional graduate schools - law schools, business schools, even medical schools - continue to provide "test accommodations" to students with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD. These accommodations usually take the form of extra time...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 10:57 AM • 31 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
December 10, 2009
The latest McSweeney's production is a marvel. It's in the form of a daily newspaper - The San Francisco Panorama - and is yet another reminder that the newspaper remains an essential literary form, a potent mixture of breaking news...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 11:00 AM • 79 Comments • 1 TrackBacks
December 8, 2009
In the latest Mind Matters, Adam Waytz (an old college friend, co-author of my favorite book on basketball, The Macrophenomenal Pro Basketball Almanac, and now a post-doc at Harvard) writes about a fascinating new paper by PJ Henry on social...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 3:02 PM • 12 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
December 7, 2009
I found this minor anecdote, from Peter Baker's authoritative NY Times article on Obama's decision-making process for Afghanistan, to be quite fascinating: On Oct. 9, Mr. Obama and his team reviewed General McChrystal's troop proposals for the first time. Some...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 11:54 AM • 8 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
December 3, 2009
Jon Stewart on the stolen Climategate emails: I have two responses to the release of these admittedly unflattering emails. Firstly, they shed virtually no light on the actual climate science. Tyler Cowen says it best: I see science, including climate...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 9:11 AM • 17 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
