Now on ScienceBlogs: The Lights Stay On Inside a Black Hole!
David Dobbs on science, nature, and culture.
I write on science, medicine, nature, culture and other matters for the New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, Slate, National Geographic, Scientific American Mind, and other publications. (Find clips here.)
I've also written three books, including Reef Madness: Charles Darwin, Alexander Agassiz, and the Meaning of Coral, which traces the strangest but most forgotten controversy in Darwin's career — an elemental dispute running some 75 years. Oliver Sacks found Reef Madness "brilliantly written, almost unbearably poignant." Check it out.
If you'd like, you can subscribe to Neuron Culture by email. You might also want to see more of my work at my main website or check out my Tumblr log.
September 30, 2009
Category: Healthcare policy
"The greatest fear Democrats should have at this point is what will happen when millions of hard-working, lower-middle-class American families without health insurance are told they're about to be slapped with a $500 to $1000-a-month bill to buy a plan ... [and] be told that their employers and the government aren't going to help out."
Posted by David Dobbs at 9:36 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Politics
"Every other industrialized country has a national health care system that makes keeping track of these elementary facts possible. The US doesn't."
Posted by David Dobbs at 8:11 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
September 29, 2009
Category: Brains and minds
As Obama explains, world leaders are puzzled that healthcare gets painted with a Hitler moustache. and other news.
Posted by David Dobbs at 6:27 AM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Healthcare policy
Confusion grows over the still-unreleased study that apparently finds, contrary to other studies, that getting this year's seasonal flu shot may raise your risk of getting swine flu. Peter Sandman, meanwhile, argues that since the swine flu seems to have largely displaced the seasonal flu, getting vaccinated for the latter doesn't make much sense. (I'm doing so this afternoon anyway.)
Posted by David Dobbs at 6:12 AM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
September 27, 2009
Category: Nota Bene
Maybe best argument yet for expanding the US rail system.
Posted by David Dobbs at 10:06 PM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
September 24, 2009
Category: Culture of science
This shouldn't be something that flu experts feel compelled to discuss sotto voce. If the journal has good reasons to sit on the paper for now, it should declare them. If not, it should get the paper out in the open so the data and findings can be examined and vetted openly.
Posted by David Dobbs at 3:58 PM • 19 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
September 22, 2009
Even with that experimentation, he added, the ongoing shrinkage of newspapers is likely to create a “giant hole” that...
Posted by David Dobbs at 7:12 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
via wired.com Another fine story from Wired Science. Posted via web from David Dobbs's Somatic Marker...
Posted by David Dobbs at 2:55 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Brains and minds
Eric Michael Johnson contemplates the hearts, minds, teeth, and claws of bonobos and other primates, while -- no fault of Eric's -- the flu, the end of publishing, and the death of the uninsured march on. Plus some great old surgery footage.
Posted by David Dobbs at 9:46 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Swine flu
As the World Health Organisation meets in Hong-Kong to discuss, among other things, swine flu, here are a couple that make good follow-ups to my Slate piece on how adjuvants gobble up vaccine antigen supply.
Posted by David Dobbs at 9:05 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
The Island of Doubt 11.23.2009
The Frontal Cortex 11.22.2009
Gene Expression 11.23.2009
A Blog Around the Clock 11.21.2009
Guilty Planet 11.22.2009
