Jonah Lehrer
Jonah Lehrer is an editor at large for Seed Magazine. His first book, Proust Was A Neuroscientist, will be published by Houghton-Mifflin in 2007.
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Posts by this author
October 13, 2006
Since Mooney is off writing a book about hurricanes, I thought I would point your attention to a nice article in Slate on the continuing controversy over whether or not global warming is making hurricanes worse. It's worth noting that this is a genuine scientific controversy - each side has valid…
October 13, 2006
In the new Seed, there's an excellent profile of E.O. Wilson, and his recent attempt to get evangelicals to embrace environmentalism. Good luck, Professor Wilson.
I have a single (and very minor) quibble with the article, and it's a common enough mistake. Simply put, I think the reporter…
October 13, 2006
The defense is now presenting its case. I've sifted through Landis' online powerpoint, and I'm not that impressed. For starters, he still maintains that his abnormal testosterone ratio was simply a matter of too much whiskey. Sure. And while he makes a decent case that the carbon isotope test wasn'…
October 13, 2006
James Carville thinks he knows what Americans care about. Via Thomas Friedman:
"Energy independence," Carville said. "It's now the No. 1 national security issue. ... It's become kind of a joke with us, because no matter how we ask the question, that's what comes up."
Coming in No. 1, with 42…
October 12, 2006
Pardon my schadenfreude:
Yesterday, a source close to Foley explained to THE NEW REPUBLIC that in early 2006 the congressman had all but decided to retire from the House and set up shop on K Street. "Mark's a friend of mine," says this source. "He told me, 'I'm thinking about getting out of it and…
October 12, 2006
A plea for help. I'm trying to write something about this paper, by John Conway and Simon Kochen of Princeton. Any guidance from physics experts would be greatly appreciated. I'm afraid that when it comes to these sorts of papers I'm like the simple son at the Seder: I don't even know what…
October 12, 2006
Apparently, the easiest way to reduce the percentage of churchgoers is to allow retail activity on Sundays. In this recently published paper on NBER, economists Jonathan Gruber and Daniel Hungerman examined the effect of repealing "blue laws" on church attendance in the sixteen states that have…
October 12, 2006
Alex Ross, music critic for the New Yorker, thinks that he has found a great new composer. There's only one catch: this composer doesn't even know how to read or write music. (Did I mention she's also a kitten?):
It is risky to attempt an analysis of such an intricate musical conception after only…
October 12, 2006
My original post on the (possible) limits of science generated lots of thought-provoking feedback. On the one hand, some people argued that I was conflating the persistence of statistical uncertainty with genuine mystery:
Of course, there are built in uncertianties in science especially with the…
October 12, 2006
At the Judge Rotenberg Center, a private boarding school for special-education students in Canton, Massachusetts, kids with mental disabilities and mental illness (like schizophrenia and autism) get electrically shocked when they misbehave:
The only thing that sets these students apart from kids at…
October 11, 2006
This photograph made me laugh.
Via The Superficial
October 11, 2006
More tales of hilarious heuristics that lead us astray and make us fat:
An appalling example of our mindless approach to eating involved an experiment with tubs of five-day-old popcorn. Moviegoers in a Chicago suburb were given free stale popcorn, some in medium-size buckets, some in large buckets…
October 11, 2006
Jacob Hacker does a great job of making a rather radical health care reform seem like common sense. Speaker Pelosi (knock on wood), please read this article:
The biggest problem with American health financing is not that employers sponsor coverage. It's that employers decide whether workers get…
October 11, 2006
Apparently, it's time to dump on science journalists. Plenty of bloggers, it seems, just accept it as a statement of fact that science journalism sucks, and is in desperate need of fixing. Various solutions have been proposed, from the supply side (educate ignorant journalists) to the demand side (…
October 10, 2006
Here's an interesting, if slightly silly, study. Since I'm a male, and have absolutely no fashion sense, I'll resist making any editorial comments:
Women dress to impress when they are at their most fertile, U.S. researchers said on Tuesday in a study they say shows that signs of human ovulation…
October 10, 2006
It is a truism of public health that America suffers from an abnormally high rate of infant mortality. Western Europe and Japan all have substantially lower rates of infant death, a fact which is normally attributed to our poor pre-natal care. But these comparisons, like so many international…
October 10, 2006
Are there any? In my post last week on consciousness studies, I argued that neuroscience will never tell us anything interesting about how the water of the brain becomes the wine of conscious experience:
Even if neuroscience discovers the neuronal correlates of consciousness one day - assuming they…
October 10, 2006
If the election were held tomorrow, it would be a rout. What depresses me is that after all the genuine scandals of the last few years - Abramoff, Iraq, cooked intelligence, Plamegate, etc. - the Republicans will probably be toppled by a minor sex scandal. Americans are still annoying Puritans.
October 9, 2006
This is a very depressing study. Harvard's Robert Putnam has found that increased societal diversity leads to diminished solidarity.
A bleak picture of the corrosive effects of ethnic diversity has been revealed in research by Harvard University's Robert Putnam, one of the world's most influential…
October 9, 2006
If you enjoyed constructing urban utopias in SimCity, or elaborate familial soap operas with the Sims, then you'll love Spore, since it gives you creative control over the entire universe. Steven Johnson talks to Will Wright:
As you begin playing Spore, you take on the role of a single-celled…
October 9, 2006
Shrinking natural habitats are driving elephants crazy, and it all seems to be due to excess stress. Charles Siebert reports:
Since the early 1990's, for example, young male elephants in Pilanesberg National Park and the Hluhluwe-Umfolozi Game Reserve in South Africa have been raping and killing…
October 8, 2006
As seen in the White Mountains of New Hampshire this weekend:
If you want to read a wonderful book about this expansive Northern Forest, read this one by our very own David Dobbs.
October 6, 2006
Here is Pelosi's plan for the first 100 hours as Speaker of the House. Much to my surprise, her agenda is coherent, well-packaged and urgently needed:
Day One: Put new rules in place to "break the link between lobbyists and legislation."
Day Two: Enact all the recommendations made by the commission…
October 6, 2006
Over at Seed, V.S. Ramachandran shares his thoughts on how science can solve consciousness. Color me unimpressed:
We know that awareness is not a property of the whole brain, so the problem can be reduced to, "What particular neural circuits are involved in consciousness? And what's so special…
October 6, 2006
Atul Gawande is a working surgeon, and yet he also finds time to write some of the best medical journalism around. His latest article on the "industrialization of childbirth" is a real gem.
The degree to which birth has been transformed by medicine is astounding and, for some, alarming. Today,…
October 6, 2006
From the WSJ's always thought-provoking Sharon Begley. This column is so interesting I'm going to post a big chunk of it:
You have 100 doses of a vaccine against a deadly strain of influenza that is sweeping the country, with no prospect of obtaining more. Standing in line are 100 schoolchildren…
October 5, 2006
A final list, by the man in full, the Falstaff of our time.
Update: There is a nice e-shrine to R.W. Apple over at New York Magazine, which features links to a few of his more sublime food articles.
October 5, 2006
No, I didn't do actual research. But I do have a news feature on neuroeconomics in the new issue. Here's a snippet:
Read Montague spent the summer of 2003 thinking about soft drinks. His teenage daughter was working as an intern in his lab at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas, and…
October 5, 2006
The much awaited Harvard University proposal to revise its aged core curriculum has been released. So far, two details have gotten most of the attention:
1) The committee did not follow Larry Summer's suggestion to increase core requirements for science. Students would still have to take one course…
October 4, 2006
Don't ever buy them. Ever.
Each year, millions of people gladly pay an additional 10 to 50 percent of a product's original price to extend a warranty. These snap purchases help fuel a booming, $15 billion-a-year business and feed a lucrative profit stream for retailers that sell the warranties and…