The last time a president won with 60 percent of the vote, for instance, was when Lyndon Johnson trounced Barry Goldwater in 1964. Health-care reform passed the House with only 50.5 percent of the body voting for it. And the senators making up this morning’s 60 votes actually represent closer to 65 percent of the…
Monthly Archives: December 2009
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Is this where Gladwell wanders astray?
by David Dobbs •
Amid the various recent whacks at considerations of Gladwell lately, I find this one, by Razib Khan, particularly helpful in defining what sometimes goes amiss with Gladwell — and the danger that waits every science writer: [Gladwell's problem is that] out of the possible set of ideas and models, only a subset can be turned…
Medicine
Sell the drugs, they pay you. Criticize the drugs, they sue you.
by David Dobbs •
So a company, angry at being accused of trying to suppress information, responds by … sueing the guy who released the information.
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Rebooting science journalism, redux
by David Dobbs •
If good science writing were easy, we’d be choking on it. Instead, it’s rare enough that when we find it, we celebrate it and pass on the links as something especially worth attending. Why pretend it’s otherwise?
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Jonah Lehrer on the Neuroscience of Screwing Up
by David Dobbs •
This Wired story from Jonah Lehrer examines something that too often goes unexamined: The monumental messiness of science. This merely puts science on a par with many other serious endeavors that people try to pursue with rigor and ambition — like, say, writing.
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Radio hour – More orchidity, this time on New Hampshire Public Radio
by David Dobbs •
I’ll be on New Hampshire Public Radio’s Word Of Mouth” noon-hour show tomorrow, Tuesday, Dec 22, talking with host Virginia Prescott about “Orchid Children,” my recent Atlantic article about the genetic underpinnings of steady and mercurial ltemperaments. My segment will run about 10 minutes beginning at or just after noon.
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Vaughan Bell on kicking the addiction habit. Get your fix!
by David Dobbs •
Like a compulsive crack user desperately sucking on a broken pipe, we can’t get enough of addiction. via slate.com Great to see Bell in Slate, and as usual he brings some good hard facts — along with finely wrought opinion and wit. — to an area that can get mushy quick. Posted via web from…
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Is publishing really doomed by oversupply of writing?
by David Dobbs •
Agreed: There’s robust supply of writing. But is there an oversupply of GOOD writing? If not, how to tap the people still willing to pay for it?
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Blogosauruses and bad bad bad bad science TV
by David Dobbs •
The times I’ve seen subjects I’d written about covered on TV — DBS for depression, and Williams syndrome, which I’d written about for the Times Mag and both of which were subsequently covered by 60 MInutes — the TV results were truly appalling.
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Stress is an old, old companion
by David Dobbs •
That people in earlier times experienced a lot of stress shouldn’t be a surprise. Yet, like Ford, I am surprised at how many people assume that stress is mainly a modern phenomenon, and an exception rather than the rule.
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