Neuron Culture
David Dobbs
Gleanings: mayfly radar, tennis memoir, et alia
Posted by David Dobbs on June 11, 2010 Unbelieveble! Department, via SciencePunk: Giant mayfly swarm caught on radar NYRB reviews what sounds like an especially moving memoir from Andre Agassi. Whatever It Takes Department, via Ed Yong: Superstitions can improve performance by boosting confidence. The climate-change doubt industry and its roots – http://bit.ly/an4cAr, via @stevesilberman RitaRubin: Study: Have bad habits? U r…
iPad, therefore iKludge
Posted by David Dobbs on June 10, 2010 Don DeLillo’s Players, as marked up by David Foster Wallace.Courtesy Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin. I just sat down to air a complaint about reading on the iPad when I discovered that Sue Halpern had done much of my work for me: For all its supposed interactivity, the iPad is a surprisingly…
Gleanings: genetic goofs & mutts, and where good ideas come from
Posted by David Dobbs on June 9, 2010 The photo above isone of several posted by NeuroDojo, who has a lovely post on them. Genetic Future ponders the 23andMe Oops-wrong-data event. Turns out it was a flipped tray. “I’m frankly astonished that this was possible at an accredited genotyping facility – plate-flipping is an age-old problem, but trivial to prevent with good plate/machine…
Are we living in a neuroculture?
Posted by David Dobbs on June 9, 2010 Andrew Carnie, Magic Forest, 2002, via Neuroculture.org Do we live in a neuroculture? Of course we do! Coming from a blog named Neuron Culture, this is obviously a set-up question — my excuse to call attention to a post by Daniel Buchman that offers a brief review article on the question. It seems that…
Gleaned – acupuncture, HeLa, linkage debates, psychos, and the FBI
Posted by David Dobbs on June 1, 2010 A biological basis for acupuncture, or more evidence for a placebo effect? Ed Yong ponders acupuncture, placebos, and context. This I like, and there’s a nice meta dimension here as well: placebos being all about context. Abel Pharmboy reports on Marking the magnificient memory of Henrietta Lacks. A nice account of what sounds like a lovely…
Neuron Culture top 5 hits for May
Posted by David Dobbs on June 1, 2010 In reverse order: 5. David Sloan Wilson, pissing off the angry atheists. “I piss off atheists more than any other category, and I am an atheist.” This sparked some lively action in the comments. 4. Lively or not, Wilson and Dawkins lost fourth place to snail jokes. A turtle gets mugged by a gang of snails. …
Scientific excuse for favorite snail jokes
Posted by David Dobbs on May 28, 2010 A press release about Snails on methamphetamines works for me. The story is about memory. The jokes are about snails: Snail Joke #1 A turtle gets mugged by a gang of snails. Cop is interviewing the turtle afterwards, still at the scene. Turtle still flustered. Cop asks, “Just start at the beginning.” “I don’t know,” says…
The Divided House of Psychiatry
Posted by David Dobbs on May 28, 2010 Danny Carlat reports a stimulating time at the recent American Psychiatric Association meeting in New Orleans: She took a look at my name tag, and said, “Oh, I’ve heard about you.”Since her expression was somewhere between stern and outright hostile, I queried, “In a good way or a bad way?”“In a bad way, to tell you…
Biophemera on civility and tensions among blogospheria
Posted by David Dobbs on May 28, 2010 When Jessica Palmer gave a talk at the “Unruly Democracy” conference last month, she gave what appears, from her after-the-fact blog post excerpted here, to have been a semi-contrarian take on blogospheric civiility: What I did endeavor to convey in my brief talk was the difficulty of blogging on interdisciplinary borders, where science meets…
Gleaned: Suspicious women, sneaky cops, fair-minded children. Plus flu.
Posted by David Dobbs on May 28, 2010 Here’s what I distracted myself with this morning. Don’t mix these at home. Wired Sci examines how Testosterone Makes People Suspicious of One Another. And that’s a hell of a photo. New Flu Vaccines Could Protect Against All Strains If all goes well, of course. Not to count on at this point, but an interesting look…