Writing
gregladen | December 27, 2016You have already heard the sad news that Carrie Fisher had died, at a young age, after suffering one or more heart attacks.
To honor her, you are probably going to go watch some old Star Wars movies. But I have a different suggestion. The woman was a prolific and accomplished author (and more) and there is a good chance that she's written at least one book you've not read, if not several.
That's what I'm going to do. I'll make a list of her books, pick one, and read it. But, since I'm a blogger, I figure, why not let you benefit from my efforts and see the list? If I've left anything off or…
gregladen | June 22, 2016Certain things that come across one’s desktop, on the internet, are hard to turn away from. Train wrecks, for example. For me, this list includes commentary about grammatical errors and proper language use.
I find this sort of discussion interesting because I’m an anthropologist, and probably also because I’ve spend a lot of time 100% immersed in a language or two other than my native English. This training and this experience each make me think about how we make meaning linguistically. Also, as a parent, I have observed how a child goes through the process of first, and quickly, learning how…
aardvarchaeology | January 3, 2014I'm doing the final library work for my Bronze Age book. When working on a big research project, I always find it a little difficult to calibrate the most economical way to schedule my reading. Of course, I have to know early on what's in the literature on the subject I'm working with. But I also like to start writing early. And I'd rather not put too much time into re-reading stuff after I've figured out how it's relevant to my theme. I read some of it before I start writing, most of it while I'm writing, often at the computer, and then I inevitably save some of it until I'm almost done…
esiegel | April 28, 2013"For I dipped into the Future,
far as human eye could see;
saw the vision of the world,
and all the wonder that would be." -Alfred, Lord Tennyson
This weekend, the Sun is shining here in Portland, as we've gotten our first annual spell of warm, sunny days recently. It's got me thinking of the approaching summer, and one of my favorite music festivals that's coming up. One of the great groups I'm looking forward to is Keller and the Keels, who have an unparalleled penchant for amazing bluegrass mashups, such as their rendition of two very different songs by Beck/The Grateful Dead artistically…
esiegel | December 16, 2012"The vastness of the heavens stretches my imagination. It does not do harm to the mystery to know a little about it. For far more marvelous is the truth than any artists of the past imagined it." -Richard Feynman
What did you think about, wonder about, and dream about the first time you saw the true magnificence of the night sky? Did you wonder about planets orbiting each of the thousands of points of light you saw? Did you think about the possibilities of rocky worlds with liquid water, of life, and even of intelligent aliens? Or did you perhaps think on even larger scales, about what stars…
esiegel | October 20, 2012"I spent every night until four in the morning on my dissertation, until I came to the point when I could not write another word, not even the next letter. I went to bed. Eight o'clock the next morning I was up writing again." -Abraham Pais, physicist
You've been in graduate school for many years now, and you've come a long way. You've completed all of your coursework, formed your Ph.D. thesis committee, passed your preliminary/oral/qualifying examinations, and have done an awful lot of research along the way. There's a glimmer of hope in your heart that maybe -- just maybe -- this will be…
esiegel | September 30, 2012“If history were taught in the form of stories, it would never be forgotten.” -Rudyard Kipling
You might not believe it, but when I was a kid, I hated writing. Absolutely hated it. And it wasn't because I didn't have anything to write, or because I didn't enjoy communicating my thoughts, or because I didn't like the written word, because I always enjoyed reading. Perhaps because I was a lefty with bad handwriting, I felt that the entire enterprise of writing was against me.
Image credit: samarth over at MemeCenter.
Of course, that was my issue to work through, and not only do I write all…
esiegel | June 9, 2012"Art has never been a popularity contest." -James Levine
Sometimes, you might feel like you've heard it all, seen it all, and that nothing's original anymore. But I beg to differ. Just because great things have come before doesn't mean that there aren't great things happening right now. While it might "only" be a cover of a Kanye West song (which itself heavily samples a Ray Charles song, at one time featured here), I encourage you to listen to the Automatic's brilliant version of
Gold Digger.
And while the stories of the Universe I tell you about here don't tend to be my personal, original…
pronald | December 31, 2011In Memoriam,
by Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
The flying cloud, the frosty light:
The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.
Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.
Ring out the grief that saps the mind
For those that here we see no more;
Ring out the feud of rich and poor,
Ring in redress to all mankind.
Ring out a slowly dying cause,
And ancient forms of party strife;
Ring in the nobler modes of life,
With sweeter manners, purer laws…
pharyngula | September 12, 2011Dr Charles has put out a call for submissions to a poetry contest on the themes of medicine, health, or science (do obscene limericks about penises count?). Send in your entries before the end of the month for a chance at winning money. Real money. This poetry stuff looks like an immensely lucrative field.
(Also on FtB)
pronald | March 11, 2011Roxana Robinson, a fiction writer, recently described her writing process in an interview with the New York Times.
Writing a story, she said, is "incredibly exhilarating. . . . It's like doing a cliff dive, the kind that only works when the wave hits just right. You stand on top, poised and fearful, looking at what lies below: you must start your dive when the wave has withdrawn, and there's nothing beneath you but sand and stone. You take a deep breath and throw yourself over, hoping that, by the time you hit, the wave will be back, wild and churning, and full of boiling energy. It's kind…
ddobbs | June 28, 2010Research Digest has posted an q&a interview with me as part of their The Bloggers Behind the Blog series. Here are a few key tidbits. Do read the rest there, as well as the other interviews already run and to come.
On why I write about psychology, psychiatry, and other behavioral sciences:
Science constitutes our most serious and rigorous attempt to understand the world -- and psychiatry, psychology, and now neuroscience make great material partly because they so often and starkly show science's power and pitfalls. These disciplines are hard. The people who work in them, whether…
ddobbs | June 25, 2010Every time I read David Foster Wallace, I think, that's just classic David Foster Wallace. Which is to say it's completely unexpected, novel, different from the way almost anyone else thinks, including David Foster Wallace the last time I read him.
This is a fun review in the NY Review of Books of a book about Wallace I think I now must get.
I like the title. That's Wallace: Smarter than you think. And even smarter than you think or remember Wallace is from last time you read him.
Smarter than You Think
"What I would love to do is a profile of one of you guys who's doin' a profile of me,"…
ddobbs | June 23, 2010I'm 'posed to be writing, really writing (insert argument over what's really writing in comments), but hit so many juicy bits in my morning read today I wanted to share. Here's my eclectic mix for the day:
A great rompy scary post from @susanorlean on how her book bounced around many publishers and editors.
Keith Kloor at Collide-a-scape has a round-up of stories on the "credibility of climate experts" report
"memory performance boosted while walking"  Beautiful. Perhaps why walking oft solves writing probs.  via @mariapage:
"Theory Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning" From @kerin at…
laelaps | June 18, 2010
I can't help it - every time I pass a bookstore, I wonder whether they are going to carry my book when it comes out this autumn. November is still a long way away - summer does not even officially begin until next week - but I can't help but wonder where my book will pop up and how it will be received. It is both exciting and anxiety-inducing.
I try not to speculate too much about what will happen when Written in Stone comes out. It is not even entirely finished yet. Right now the original text and scribbled margin notes from the last copyedited version are being transformed into page proofs…
ddobbs | June 9, 2010
Andrew Carnie, Magic Forest, 2002, via Neuroculture.org
Â
Do we live in a neuroculture? Of course we do!
Coming from a blog named Neuron Culture, this is obviously a set-up question â my excuse to call attention to a post by Daniel Buchman that offers a brief review article on the question.
It seems that everywhere I look nowadays, Iâm seeing images of, or reading descriptions of, the brain in some shape or form.
Buchman links (at the post's bottom, as is now the practice at NCore) to several good reads and sites, including Neuroculture.org, which has some lovely stuff, and â curse those…
ddobbs | June 1, 2010
In reverse order:
5. Â David Sloan Wilson, pissing off the angry atheists.
"I piss off atheists more than any other category, and I am an atheist." This sparked some lively action in the comments.
4. Lively or not, Wilson and Dawkins lost fourth place to snail jokes.
A turtle gets mugged by a gang of snails. 
3. A walking tour that lets you See exactly where Phineas Gage lost his mind
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2. "Push" science journalism, or how diversity matters more than size
We're constantly told -- we writers are, anyway -- that people won't read long stories. They're hard to sell to editors,…
ddobbs | May 26, 2010Selling a work fiction is difficult; publishing in Nature is a long-shot; yet somehow writer and genomeboy Misha Angrist managed to publish fiction in Nature.
The only way I was ever going to get a first-author publication in Nature [Angrist explains] was if I just made it all up. So thatâs what I did. Hat tip to David Dobbs for providing the scientific inspiration.
The short story/fantasy Angrist publishes actually pulls little, it seems to me, from my story about the orchid/plasticity/differential susceptibility hypothesis, though it does work ground seeded by both genetics and…
Gleanings from empathetic ravens, lying brains, dying converence, fading vocabularies, and new books
ddobbs | May 18, 2010
Ravens via PDPhoto
Ravens show that consoling one another is also for the birds, Yet another finding that other species have qualities previously thought uniquely human. Our greatest distinction is that we're highly social. Yet in that we've got a lot of company.  
Human brains excel at detecting cheaters. FMRI's, not so much, says Vaughan Bell at Mind Hacks-- though in yet another court case, the fMRI lie detection industry pushes another story.
Bell also has a nice write-up of of scintillating RadioLab program on how early dementia shows up in use of language. A stellar program,…