Culture
cortex | November 16, 2006Larry Summers was wrong. It's not about innate cognitive differences, it's about fertility:
Many studies have shown that women are under-represented in tenured ranks in the sciences. We evaluate whether gender differences in the likelihood of obtaining a tenure track job, promotion to tenure, and promotion to full professor explain these facts using the 1973-2001 Survey of Doctorate Recipients. We find that women are less likely to take tenure track positions in science, but the gender gap is entirely explained by fertility decisions. We find that in science overall, there is no gender…
cortex | November 16, 2006Now that we've got a sizable number of Democrats in Congress who aren't pro-choice, people have begun to wonder what sort of rhetorical and philosophical position the Democratic party should take on abortion. Some argue that Democrats should resort to the Clintonian mantra that abortion should be "safe, legal and rare". But others, like Julian Sanchez, argue that this makes too big a concession to the pro-life side, since it implicitly suggests that fetuses are "moral entities":
Abortion is a difficult and complex question if we suppose that the fetus is a person with interests and rights…
cortex | November 15, 2006In the 1920s, Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin sent an animal-breeding expert to Africa in hopes of creating an army of half-man, half-monkey soldiers. Attempts both to inseminate women with monkey sperm and impregnate female chimpanzees with human sperm failed.
That's from Slate. Read more about Stalin's horrifying attempts at cross-breeding here. I don't even think Kim Jong Il would do something that evil: Stalin really was one-of-a-kind.
cortex | November 15, 2006I think the Democrats should insist on revampling the Medicare drug bill. It's just plain silly that the government can't negotiate directly with the drug companies for lower prices. After all, the government negotiates big discounts for drugs for Medicaid and the VA administration, and Medicare is a much bigger entitlement. As every Costco shopper knows, when you buy in bulk you get cheaper prices. Unless, of course, you have a highly efficient lobbying machine.
That said, it's important to know that bargaining has real consequences. Tyler Cowen found this economic paper:
EU countries…
cortex | November 15, 2006Phantom limbs are one of the strangest phenomenon you'll ever hear about. As far as I can tell, phantom limbs were first described by Herman Melville, who gave Ahab, the gnarly sea captain of Moby Dick, a "sensory ghost". Ahab is missing a leg (Moby Dick ate it), and in Chapter 108, he summons a carpenter to fashion him a new ivory peg-leg. Ahab tells the carpenter that he still feels his amputated leg "invisibly and uninterpenetratingly." His phantom limb is like a "poser". "Look," Ahab says, "put thy live leg here in the place where mine was; so, now, here is only one distinct leg to…
cortex | November 15, 20063 lbs, the new neurosurgery show on CBS, premiered last night. My initial reaction: good, but no Grey's Anatomy. The show is derivative to the point of banality - if you're a fan of medical dramas, you can literally predict what the next scene will be - but sometimes repetition can still be entertaining. There are the requisite randy doctors, the gorgeous attendings, the palpable sexual tension, the loud pop music. Needless to say, I don't want these people touching my brain.
But one aspect of the show leapt out at me. Even as 3 lbs firmly demolishes the myth of brain-mind duality - there is…
cortex | November 14, 2006John Tierney, the libertarian replacement for William Safire, is quitting his op-ed post in order to become a science columnist and blogger. For those of you without Times $elect:
This is my last column on the Op-Ed page. I've enjoyed the past couple of years in Washington, but one election cycle is enough. I'm returning full time to the subject and the city closest to my heart: science and New York. I'll be writing a column and a blog for the Science Times section.
When a writer is willing to give up a powerful political soapbox in order to write about biology and black holes, you know the…
cortex | November 14, 2006According to Oxford University Press, the official overseer of the English language, the word of the year is "carbon neutral".
The rise of carbon neutral reflects the growing importance of the green movement in the United States.
Erin McKean, editor in chief of the New Oxford American Dictionary 2e, said "The increasing use of the word carbon neutral reflects not just the greening of our culture, but the greening of our language. When you see first graders trying to make their classrooms carbon neutral, you know the word has become mainstream."
cortex | November 14, 2006It's the latest Starbucks advertising campaign: they are handing out free subway passes and movie tickets in the hope that all the niceness and holiday cheer will be contagious:
Starting today Starbucks is surprising its customers with free gifts. The catch is Starbucks wants consumers to pass on their benevolence by performing a good deed for another person, say, to hold open a door or buy someone a cup of coffee. With each deed, the recipient is handed a "cheer pass," a numbered card that serves as a tracking device for the effort's viral component.
It's actually a brilliant idea. Why?…
cortex | November 13, 2006There are so many depressing studies on energy policy that I thought it was worth highlighting an optimistic one. The Rand Corp. just produced an analysis which predicts that alternative energy sources (like wind, solar and ethanol) could furnish as much as 25% of the U.S.'s conventional energy by 2025 at little or no additional expense. From the WSJ:
The Rand study concludes that because prices for gasoline, natural gas and coal are likely to remain high, their cost advantage over renewables will erode, furthered by the hope that ethanol from farm wastes will be available by 2020.
Renewable…
cortex | November 13, 2006When Republicans talk about their plans for health-care, they are talking about people like me. My insurance plan has an extremely high deductible ($5000) which discourages me from excess "consumption" of health care resources. (This is known as the "moral hazard" effect, which economists use to describe the fact that insurance can change the behavior of the person being insured. If I know my doctor visits are free, I'll visit my doctor more.) Even preventative measures (like regular checkups) cost me lots of money. I don't have health insurance so much as I have catastrophe insurance.
So…
cortex | November 10, 2006This is why you don't cheat. From the WSJ:
Gerrymandering was supposed to cement Republican control of the House of Representatives, offering incumbents a wall of re-election protection even as public opinion turned sharply against them. Instead, the party's strategy of recrafting district boundaries may have backfired, contributing to the defeats of several lawmakers and the party's fall from power.
The reason: Republican leaders may have overreached and created so many Republican-leaning districts that they spread their core supporters too thinly. That left their incumbents vulnerable to…
cortex | November 10, 2006Scientists have constructed the world's first artificial gut:
Constructed from sophisticated plastics and metals able to withstand the corrosive acids and enzymes found in the human gut, the device may ultimately help in the development of super-nutrients, such as obesity-fighting foods that could fool the stomach into thinking it is full.
''There have been lots of jam-jar models of digestion before,'' said Dr. Martin Wickham of Norwich's Institute of Food Research, the artificial gut's chief designer, referring to the beakers of enzymes typically used to approximate the chemical reactions in…
cortex | November 10, 2006As loyal readers of this blog know by now (I'm talking about you, Mom), I've got a soft spot for gas taxes. In fact, I'm pretty convinced that America needs a higher gas tax, phased in over several years (so the working poor can adjust their driving habits). Over the past few weeks, I've noted that various conservative Republicans have also endorsed this plan (although none of them are actual politicians, just pundits). Now others are noticing the trend as well:
N. Gregory Mankiw, former chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers in the Bush White House, suggested raising energy taxes in an…
cortex | November 9, 2006GM has already killed off one electric car - the EV1 was a product tragically ahead of its time - but the company is now committed to building an improved version:
The new car, to be unveiled as a prototype early next year, would use an onboard internal-combustion engine as a generator to produce electricity to extend the range of the vehicle's rechargeable batteries.
The idea was greeted enthusiastically by Chris Paine, director of "Who Killed the Electric Car?" The recent documentary took GM to task for creating and then abandoning the first production electric vehicle since the early 1900s…
cortex | November 9, 2006I know too much schadenfreude isn't good for you, but I just couldn't resist posting this little excerpt of Rovian braggadocio from NPR last week:
SIEGEL: We're in the home stretch, though, and many would consider you on the optimistic end of realism about -
ROVE: Not that you would be exhibiting a bias ...
SIEGEL: I'm looking at all the same polls that you're looking at every day.
ROVE: No, you're not. No, you're not.
SIEGEL: No, I'm not.
ROVE: No, you're not. You're not. I'm looking at 68 polls a week. You may be looking at four or five public polls a week that talk about attitudes…
cortex | November 8, 2006Here's an odd factoid:
If Virginia and Montana go Democratic, the prediction markets called every race correctly.
It's also worth noting that Tradesports currently gives George Allen a 4 percent chance of retaining his Senate seat.
cortex | November 8, 2006I'm skeptical of these sorts of psychological models - an important part of the terrorist strategy is to not have a coherent strategy - but it's certainly a noble effort:
Imagine that we had a mathematical formula that could be applied to Israel's enemies to predict their course of action?
Prof. Alex Mintz of Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya claims to have created just that. Mintz has developed a formula to map how terrorist organizations make their decisions. His theory can be applied to any leader in the world, whether heads of state or terror masterminds.
Is the next round of fighting…
cortex | November 8, 2006Abraham Lincoln summarizes the election:
"You may deceive all the people part of the time, and part of the people all the time, but not all the people all the time."
That, right there, is the genius of the democracy.
cortex | November 7, 2006This is great news. As an animal lover, I can certainly see how the Humane Society has tremendous political potential. From the WSJ:
For the first time in its 50-year history, the Humane Society is trying to elect candidates to Congress who support its animal-welfare agenda. After a series of mergers with other animal-welfare groups, the Humane Society counts 10 million Americans as members, an average of 23,000 in each of the 435 House districts. That's more than twice the membership of the National Rifle Association, which is considered one of the most effective single-issue campaign…