April 28, 2009
The excellent blog H5N1 (now covering H1N1 as well, and all over it), points us to the New York Times for an op-ed by John M. Barry, author of the definitive history of the Spanish flu in the US: Where Will the Swine Flu Go Next? Excerpt:
As the swine flu threatens to become the next pandemic,…
April 27, 2009
I'm guessing most everyone interested in swine flu already reads Effect Measure (as well you should; it was an invaluable resource in my reporting for my Slate piece on the mystery of the virulence of the outbreak in Mexico). But in case you haven't or are not, today's primer there on case…
April 27, 2009
"Swine Flu and the Mexico Mystery," my story on the swine-flu outbreak, is up at Slate. It looks at a question hotly pursued right now: Why does this flu seem to take a much deadlier course in Mexico than elsewhere so far? The answers will suggest much about what's to come.
Of the two two…
April 25, 2009
Maureen Dowd pretty much asked for parody of her clueless snarkdown of Twitter. From Nancy Friedman at Frittancy
Telephone SAN FRANCISCO -- I was here on a simple quest: curious to know if the inventors of Twitter were as annoying as their invention. -- Maureen Dowd, "To Tweet or Not to Tweet,"…
April 24, 2009
via Nicholson cartoons
Veteran, author, and blogger Kelly Williams, who was there, ponders what torture does to the torturers:
There have been lots of questions raised -- about the history and effectiveness of these techniques, the impact on those tortured, the larger foreign policy implications…
April 23, 2009
Reading the Mindreading Studies - Science Progress seeks a handle on fMRI hype, hope, and horizons
The evolving Swine Flu story [Effect Measure] The skinny on a scary run of deadly swine flu, from people who've been doing this a while.
Green Issues Fade Is green losing its lustre?
Eli Lilly Tops…
April 23, 2009
In Predicting the determined self-castrator Vaughn Bell links and looks at
a surprising study looking at psychological attributes that predict which castration enthusiasts who will actually go on to remove their own testicles, in contrast to those who just fantasise about it.
That's as far as I…
April 22, 2009
As the comments and correspondence about my PTSD story and posts accrue, I've been pondering ways to pull out some of the most interesting, powerful, and affecting. I finally decided to just start posting some, sometimes with commentary, sometimes without. This is a story of many different colors…
April 21, 2009
Oh I could do that.
April 20, 2009
Earlier today I drew attention to a post by Questionable Authority on The Torture Memos, Medical "Professionals", and the Hippocratic Oath. Says Mike,
I cannot remember ever in my life being as ashamed of my country as I am at this moment. The contents of the memos are so insanely wrong that I'd…
April 20, 2009
Ed Yong examines how a simple writing exercise helps break vicious cycle that holds back black students.
The Questionable Authority considers The Torture Memos, Medical "Professionals", and the Hippocratic Oath.
Jessica Palmer, in a healthy display of online media's corrective power, tries to make…
April 20, 2009
Who stands most at risk of PTSD? A new study of PTSD in US veterans of the current Iraq and Afghanistan wars suggests that you can identify the most vulnerable -- soldiers who stand 2 to 3 times the risk of their peers -- with fairly simple measures of mental and physical health.
The study,…
April 18, 2009
Vaughn Bell, looking at the recent reports on torture, finds unsettling information about the participation of psychologists and physicians:
The Washington Post has an article exploring recently released 'war on terror' interrogation memos, showing that "psychologists, physicians and other health…
April 15, 2009
"You couldn't make this up: Cameras are being turned on the people paid to watch CCTV streams, to note which bits of surveillance footage they didn't see." via BoingBoing
The beauty of sand, close up -- a photo gallery at Discover.
Robots as recruitment to science. "If you stick a robot--I don't…
April 13, 2009
One hopes there's a good explanation for this somewhere: According to this AP story, the number of people collecting VA benefits for being POWs exceeds -- by hundreds -- the number of actual POWs ever held (much less still alive). From the AP:
Prisoners of war suffer in ways most veterans don't,…
April 13, 2009
This report on Olympia Snowe's position suggests he might (if he doesn't get too many Democratic defectors). Snowe's importance to Obama's agenda was made clear in her support of the stimulus package -- she was one of 3 GOP senators whose support allowed the bill to go through. It appears she…
April 13, 2009
Kew Gardens (that is, the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew) is trying to collect and bank the seeds and pollen from 10% of the world's plants -- a nice 21st-century continuation of the stunning collecting effort that started in the 1700s and helped supply evidence, via Joseph Dalton Hooker, that proved…
April 10, 2009
TAPPED notes that the Times is getting aboard the education reform bus:
THE TIMES ON EDUCATION REFORM.
More evidence that the establishment is getting behind major reforms in how teachers are evaluated and paid: The New York Times editorial board today calls on Secretary of Education Arne Duncan…
April 10, 2009
Via Tyler Cohen's Marginal Revolution comes this amusing anecdote -- and, perhaps, helpful example -- from the life of Peter Orszag, Obama's very brainy budget director. To motivate himself to train for a marathon, he somehow set up a penalty if he didn't hit his training targets: His credit card…
April 8, 2009
When you propose that we are overdiagnosing PTSD in vets, you run into not only a lot of flak but many offerings of evidence suggesting that we're missing a lot of cases. Since publishing my article on PTSD, I've received those arguments directly in comments, and on Wednesday, April 8, Salon…
April 8, 2009
More or less alongside my piece on depression's wiring diagram, this months' Scientific American Mind has a piece I wrote on how social hierarchies develop among rats.
Darlene Francis, a psychologist at the University of California, Berkeley, placed 80 newly weaned rats in cages of four, with cage…
April 8, 2009
The 10,000-year Explosion: How Civilization Accelerated Evolution, of which I've so far read about 1000 words -- but I just got it. Appears to be The Beak of the Finch (faster than expected evolutionary changes) in humans, but with this delicious addtion: the idea that culture can drive evolution,…
April 7, 2009
via Daily Dish
April 7, 2009
I've got a story about Helen Mayberg's work on depression circuits in the new Scientific American Mind. I first wrote about Mayberg in the Times Magazine three years ago, in an article about her experimental use of deep brain stimulation to treat depression, and I later profiled her for SciAm Mind…
April 5, 2009
Heads-up dept:
I'll be discussing I discussed "The Post-Traumatic Stress Trap," my Scientific American story on PTSD, at noon, Monday, April 6, on NHPR's "Word of Mouth." You can listen to the 7-minute segment here, following a very brief intro to the program. Link to the station's website here…
April 3, 2009
What are the relative strengths and weaknesses of long-form, slow-bake, "mainstream" journalism and the idiom we call the blogosphere? As per Bora, the meaning of these terms are shifting as we speak. Last night, using my recent story and blogging on PTSD as a point of focus, I put in my latest two…
March 27, 2009
The shepherds responsible for the sheep art I featured earlier (i.e., Sheep + LEDs - Mona Lisa, Fireworks, etc.") explain how it was done. Via the BBC:
March 26, 2009
A heads-up: to those in or near NYC:
Tuesday, March 31, at 6 pm, at 20 Cooper Square in NYC, I'll be giving a talk/discussion on blogging and long-form journalism -- particularly on the different demands, pros and cons, possibilities and constraints, and reader and writer experiences those two…
March 26, 2009
From Jay Rosen:
As the crisis in newspaper journalism grinds on, people watching it are trying to explain how we got here, and what we’re losing as part of the newspaper economy crashes. Some are trying to imagine a new news system. I try to follow this action, and have been sending around the…
March 24, 2009
Skip this post if you don't want to read a writer responding point by point to a self-indulgent, insubstantial attack by a major academic.
I should say right off that I've long admired the more measured critiques that J. Douglas Bremner, a PTSD researcher and professor of radiology and psychiatry…
