Avian Flu Diary
ddobbs | July 9, 2009Both Mind Hacks and Jonah Lehrer took interesting note -- Jonah's the longer, and a pretty nice summary itself -- of the fascinating NY Times piece on ultramarathoner Diane Van Deren, who began running long distances after brain surgery removed much of her right temporal lobe. This gave her a great advantage: the lack of memory of the run behind her, and thus of any dread of the punishment still to come. Downside: significant memory problems, and she can't read a map.
Speaking of memory ...
Newsweek has a good piece on unconscious plagiarism -- that is, how genuine lapses in "source memory…
ddobbs | May 6, 2009I've noted several times here how more measured heads keep emphasizing that a) we're working on partial information in responding to the current swine flu outbreak and b) new developments may complicate things at any point along the line.
Here's a great example of what these folks (like Effect Measure, Crof, and Avian Flu Diary) are talking about.
From Reuters :
Second strain of flu may complicate picture-study
06 May 2009 15:02:09 GMT
By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Editor
WASHINGTON, May 6 (Reuters) - A second strain of influenza, one of the seasonal strains, may have mutated and may…