Education & Careers:
Steve Shapin, a historian of science at Harvard, argues that the romantic notion of scientists lusting after truth and not worldly riches is a wee bit oversimplified: IDEAS: Are we wrong to think of scientists as academics engaged in the...
Posted on July 7, 2008 2:47 PM • 5 Comments •
The ideological swings of scientists between age-groups is striking: What do you think explains this shift? And what other differences do you notice between young and old scientists? (I realize all such statements will be absurd over-generalizations, but that's the...
Posted on July 3, 2008 11:57 AM • 16 Comments •
There's an interesting review on prediction errors and temporal difference learning theory in the latest Trends in Cognitive Sciences. (Really, it's fascinating stuff.) But I don't want to talk today about the content of the article. Instead, I want to...
Posted on June 26, 2008 10:40 AM • 9 Comments •
An eloquent elegy to age, written by Steven Johnson on his fortieth birthday: One of the things that's always stuck with me from my Mind Wide Open research is that human beings vary predictably in their perception of time as...
Posted on June 9, 2008 11:43 AM • 1 Comments •
Last year, some drunken teens decided to trash the house of Robert Frost. The teens are now being required by a judge to take poetry classes focusing on the verse of Frost: Using "The Road Not Taken" and another poem...
Posted on June 4, 2008 3:55 PM • 3 Comments •
Before I became a writer, I assumed that some people (Nabakov, Updike, Bellow, etc.) were natural writers. They were born speaking in pithy prose, with taut sentences and interesting verb choice. But then, after reading all the usual Bellow masterpieces,...
Posted on May 30, 2008 11:58 AM • 9 Comments •
A calm and cool summary of the value of arts education in public schools: What are "the habits of mind" cultivated in arts classrooms, they ask in their book "Studio Thinking: The Real Benefits of Visual Arts Education." As unsatisfied...
Posted on April 30, 2008 11:39 AM • 4 Comments •
Rebecca Solnit, author of some wonderful books, astutely describes one of the worst side-effects of testosterone: We were preparing to leave [a party in Aspen] when our host said, "No, stay a little longer so I can talk to you."...
Posted on April 24, 2008 10:41 AM • 18 Comments •
Is this chart surprising? I was an Arts (English) and Psychology (Neuroscience) major, so I clearly didn't choose the most lucrative fields. (And I contemplated a philosophy minor...) For me, the most surprising aspect of the chart (and it's still...
Posted on April 22, 2008 9:46 AM • 7 Comments •
Sorry for the light posting - I've been flitting about, spending way too much time in airports. (My carbon footprint is a constant source of guilt.) I've recently spent a lot of time hanging around various universities, which always reminds...
Posted on April 4, 2008 4:59 PM • 10 Comments •
It's long been recognized that American kids suck at math, at least when compared to kids in Singapore, Finland, etc. What's less well known is that the steep decline in proficiency only starts when kids are taught algebra. That, at...
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Posted on March 14, 2008 11:46 AM • 25 Comments •
Jonah Lehrer is an editor at large for Seed Magazine. His first book is Proust Was A Neuroscientist. Buy it here.
