Quick dip: Bonobo teeth, flu vaccines, death-of-midlist 3.0, death of the uninsured, and gory films : Neuron Culture

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I write articles 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, and am working on my fourth book, The Orchid and the Dandelion, which expands on my recent December 2009 Atlantic article. In August 2010, I'll be moving to London for a year to work on the book. I'll also serve as a senior fellow at City University London's MA science journalism program.

You're encouraged to check out my third book Reef Madness: Charles Darwin, Alexander Agassiz, and the Meaning of Coral, which traces the strangest but most forgotten controversy in Darwin's career; subscribe to Neuron Culture by email; see more of my work at my main website ; or track Twitter feed, my Google Reader shared items, or my Tumblr log, which gets it all.

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Quick dip: Bonobo teeth, flu vaccines, death-of-midlist 3.0, death of the uninsured, and gory films

Posted on: September 22, 2009 9:46 AM, by David Dobbs

Eric Michael Johnson contemplates the hearts, minds, teeth, and claws of bonobos and other primates.

Tara Smith explains why she'll be getting her kids their (seasonal) flu vaccines. Revere does likewise

Daniel Menaker, former honcho at Random House, defends the midlist. (Where was he when my book was getting so much push?)

Just in case you missed it, lack of insurance is killing 45,000 people a year (Times) in the U.S. This doesn't include preventable deaths among the underinsured (like yours truly, who is sitting on some surgery that he'd rather put behind him). You can download the actual study here.

And Wired -- can we overstate the value of the Wired Science crew? -- has a great post about old surgical films from the 1930s. Silent. Fascinating. Not for the squeamish. This is also valuable simply for calling attention to the Wellcome Center's YouTube channel, "digitising medical history."