cortex | December 6, 2006After the rapture, when the aliens start to colonize our desolate planet, they will be endlessly fascinated by documents like this. Yes, I'm talking about the world's longest diary, composed by Robert Shields of Dayton, Washington, which clocks in at a Talmudic 35 million words. The entries are so banal, they are almost interesting. Almost.
3:30-3:45 I was at the keyboard of the IBM Wheelwriter making entries for the diary.
6:50-7:30 I ate the Stouffer's macaroni and cheese.
7:30-7:35 We changed the light over the back stoop since the bulb had burnt out.
And if these aliens wanted to know…
cortex | December 6, 2006This is why you suck at it.
New research suggests that the better you know someone, the harder it can be to predict their taste. According to researchers at Tilburg University and Kathiolieke University, we rely too heavily on preconceived notions because we often think we're much more similar to the people we love than we actually are.
When couples who had been together for at least six months thought they were buying gifts for complete strangers (as opposed to their significant others) they ended up paying much more attention to what that person actually wanted. Wait a second. Does this…
cortex | December 6, 2006It's fascinating, and a little scary, how quickly medicine can transform our notions of what "normal" is. The WSJ reports that drug makers are starting to market birth control pills as a way to help women eliminate their periods. Of course, not everyone likes this idea, since it threatens to eliminate a "touchstone of the female experience." (The pro-menstrual cycle side is an awkard coalition of liberal feminists and religious conservatives.) As I've mentioned before, I'm agnostic on the issue (men really shouldn't have an opinion on this sort of stuff), although it's important to remember…
cortex | December 5, 2006Good question. There appears to be no single cause, although there are several factors that put Boston-area Puerto Ricans at higher risk for depression, including high rates of obesity and diabetes. But some causes of the depressive epidemic might prove harder to treat:
Their depression, the surveyed Puerto Ricans said, was often fueled by the sight of relatives departing Boston for warmer climes.
"They constantly referred to their social networks being undermined by people picking up and leaving," said Northeastern researcher Luis Falcón .
cortex | December 5, 2006This is just tragic. We send our young men and women off to fight a war, and then refuse to treat their very real mental health symptoms. When are we going to learn that war ravages the brain, and that you have to treat PTSD just as seriously as you would an injury to the body:
Soldier Tyler Jennings says that when he came home from Iraq last year, he felt so depressed and desperate that he decided to kill himself. Late one night in the middle of May, his wife was out of town, and he felt more scared than he'd felt in gunfights in Iraq. Jennings says he opened the window, tied a noose around…
cortex | December 5, 2006Remember that controversy last year about the Jackson Pollack paintings that were found in a closet, only to have their authenticity dismissed by a physics professor who used "fractal analysis" to prove that they were "substantially different" from real Pollack paintings? Well, it turns out that his fractals weren't that useful after all.
On a related note, I still remember a great exhibit at the Met back in 1996, which showcased paintings that were formerly attributed to Rembrandt, but were now just attributed to "the school of Rembrandt". The exhibit was a humbling lesson in…
cortex | December 5, 2006This is the ultimate placebo effect:
Pseudocyesis, or false pregnancy, is rare, occurring at a rate of 1 to 6 for every 22,000 births. Though scientists are still largely baffled about what causes it in humans, recent case studies and studies of similar conditions in animals are beginning to provide insight, exploring the role of hormones and psychology.
Those who suffer from the disorder present a constellation of symptoms that mystify even seasoned practitioners. Not only do they fervently believe they are pregnant, but they also have bona fide symptoms to back up their claims, like…
cortex | December 4, 2006Studio 360, a radio show on NPR (no affilation with Aaron Sorkin), did a show this week on the "Science of Creativity". The show featured a few nice segments - I especially enjoyed the riff on mental illness and artistic genius (Virginia Woolf wasn't the only one) - but I kept on waiting for the show to admit that science knows virtually nothing about human creativity. We don't know why it exists, or where it comes from, or how it works.
But instead of admitting that the imagination remains totally ineffable, the show discussed silly fMRI studies connecting artistic creativity to increased…
cortex | December 4, 2006In The New Yorker, there's a funny cartoon that features a couple driving in their car. Both are reaching for the climate controls, and the man is huffily speaking to his wife: "Let me do it. You don't understand the science of defrosting."
Which made me realize that I don't have a clue how the defrosting mechanism on my own car works. When the sharply raked windshield on my car is fogged, I generally turn the AC defroster on full blast, get impatient, and then switch the defroster over to the heating mechanism. If I'm really impatient, I'll toggle back to the AC, which is probably hell on my…
cortex | December 1, 2006It's one of those tired cliches: Bush makes decisions with his irrational "gut instincts," instead of relying on "careful analysis". Paul Krugman, in today's Times, end his columns by repeating this cliche:
Luckily, we've got good leadership for the coming storm: the White House is occupied by a man who's ideologically flexible, listens to a wide variety of views, and understands that policy has to be based on careful analysis, not gut instincts. Oh, wait.
That's what an economist would say. Classic economics assumes that everybody - even George Bush - is capable of rationally analyzing a…
cortex | November 30, 2006You'll live longer. From the latest Nature:
Regular, moderate consumption of red wine is linked to a reduced risk of coronary heart disease and to lower overall mortality1, but the relative contribution of wine's alcohol and polyphenol components to these effects is unclear2. Here we identify procyanidins as the principal vasoactive polyphenols in red wine and show that they are present at higher concentrations in wines from areas of southwestern France and Sardinia, where traditional production methods ensure that these compounds are efficiently extracted during vinification. These regions…
cortex | November 30, 2006So David Brooks is now a swing voter. He's grown so disenchanted with the Republican leadership that he has started giving them advice on how to woo him back. For the most part, I agree with his advice and support his policy proposals. He advises the Republican leadership to "support stem cell research," "spread assets," and "raise taxes on carbon emissions". Those are all important ideas. Unfortunately, they have zero chance of ever gaining the support of George Bush, let alone the Republican party. That's why I'm a Democrat.
What I don't understand is why Brooks isn't a Democrat. Does he…
cortex | November 30, 2006Until he became a global warming skeptic and an environmental advisor to the Bush White House, I'd always been a fan of Michael Crichton. His scientific dystopias always made for excellent pool-side reading and, when he was good, he could be very good. Say what you will about his didactic dialogues, or penchant for cinematic scenes, or cardboard characters, but the man can conjure up one hell of a premise. He has figured out a way to translate our anxieties about scientific discovery into plots fit for Hollywood. Just look at Jurassic Park: those rampaging dinosaurs taught more people about…
cortex | November 29, 2006Maybe I'm just ignorant, but this sort of body-language interpretation, as featured in the NY Times today, struck me as about as scientific as palm reading and hand-writing analysis:
Tonya Reiman and Maxine Lucille Fiel do not know much about football, but they are fluent in body language, one of many areas in which the Giants have appeared suspect recently.
Reiman and Fiel noticed Coach Tom Coughlin crossing his arms. In their playbook, that was a defensive posture. They saw quarterback Eli Manning biting his lower lip and said that was a sign of regret. They watched the Giants' players…
cortex | November 29, 2006It's ironic that scientific research on animals has ended up becoming an important source of evidence against animal research. After all, it's only because we sacrifice chimps that we understand the deep connections between the chimp brain and the human brain. If we didn't experiment on rats, or dogs, or monkeys, then we wouldn't know about our shared biological architecture. As I noted a few months ago:
One of the great themes of post-Darwinian science is the inter-relatedness of life. From the perspective of our cells, there is little difference between a human and a rat, or even a sea slug…
cortex | November 29, 2006At last, an auto show that doesn't revolve around thirsty V-12 engines and gigantic SUV's. The L.A. Auto Show, which starts today, is notable for the debut of several environmentally friendly vehicles. And these aren't just futuristic fantasies. For the most part, these are practical technologies that will be introduced in the next few years:
BMW is debuting its Hydrogen 7, a 7-series luxury sedan that is a "dual-fuel" vehicle, capable of burning either gasoline or cryogenically stored hydrogen in its V-12 engine. Honda will unveil its third-generation FCX fuel-cell vehicle, a wind-polished…
cortex | November 29, 2006Obama is coming to town! Since I live in New Hampshire, that also means that Obama is going to run for President. (I suppose Obama might also just have a soft spot for Manchester. . .)
So what am I going to ask Obama about? I've already confessed to a serious man-crush, but I'm dismayed by Obama's position on the sugar ethanol tariff. For those who don't know, the U.S. government currently taxes the importation of ethanol produced from sugar. This tariff is supported by both the domestic sugar industry - our sugar prices are twice the international average - and Midwestern corn farmers, who…
cortex | November 28, 2006Fun for the whole family. If Judith Rich Harris is correct, then kids should have the same accent as their peers, not their parents. According to this quiz, my childhood friends in Southern California were actually from the Midwest. (Or maybe I just watched too much TV, since most television voices speak in the accentless drone of middle America.)
What American accent do you have?
Your Result: The Midland
"You have a Midland accent" is just another way of saying "you don't have an accent." You probably are from the Midland (Pennsylvania, southern Ohio, southern Indiana, southern…
cortex | November 28, 2006There's a thorough article in the Times Magazine on the persistence of the "achievment gap" in public education. The conclusion of the article is rather simple: the "achievment gap" persists due to a series of entrenched inequalities, but very good schools (and I mean very good) can actually compensate for a lot of these disadvantages. The problem, of course, is creating very good schools.
So read the whole article, if you're interested in why only 13 percent of black eighth-grade students are "proficient" in reading. I was most interested in the parts of the article that dealt with the…
cortex | November 28, 2006This is a briliant idea: Youtube for test tubes. Instead of trying to translate the methodology of experiments into technical prose, why not just videotape the experiments? Most of the time, science is just a fancy form of manual labor, and as most researchers can tell you, trying to replicate a lab experiment is often an exercise in hermeneutics. So why not just show people exactly how it's done?
Cemile Guldal pays attention to details. Her tattoo of a DNA double-helix, for example, doesn't wrap quite all the way around her right arm because doing so would have distorted the major and minor…