Sian Beilock, the author of “Choke” whose work I wrote about in a feature-length post published a few days ago, knows a lot of ways to make a person fail under pressure. Below, in a slightly tweaked version of an alternative opening for the feature, one I eventually left on the cutting-room floor for structural…
Monthly Archives: September 2010
Uncategorized
Choose one: Squirrels masturbate (a) because they can or (b) to clean
by David Dobbs •
Hard to imagine anyone missed this, but just in case: Over at Rocket Science, Ed Yong explains that Squirrels masturbate to avoid sexually transmitted infections — at least, that’s the new hypothesis from Jane Waterman, a scientist who has been watching certain squirrels very closely. The goal was to try to answer the mystery: Why,…
read more →
Uncategorized
A Good Idea for a Vid Promo for Good Ideas
by David Dobbs •
I rather like this little promo video for Stephen Johnson’s new book, Where Good Ideas Come From. As he notes in his own little blog post about it, there’s not a lot to it. It’s just Johnson talking, or possibly reading from his intro, and an artist drawing a sketch about how ideas form. But…
read more →
Uncategorized
Is David Simon the Right Pick for a MacArthur?
by David Dobbs •
It’s hard to see how another $500,000 and some recognition will significantly increase David Simon’s capacity to keep doing his work. (
Uncategorized
Malcolm Gladwell: Twitter, You’re No Martin Luther King
by David Dobbs •
Malcolm Gladwell has roiled things up with an article arguing that fans of social media tools like Twitter and Facebook are wildly overstating the powers of these tools to change things. As an example, he uses the civil rights movement as it rose out of the Montgomery bus strike and (more immediately) the Greensboro Four,…
Brains and Behavior, Uncategorized
The Tight Collar: The New Science of Choking Under Pressure
by David Dobbs •
The Collar Late in May 2008, perched in superb seats a few rows behind home plate at Chicago’s Cellular Field, I took in a White Sox-Indians game with Sian Beilock, a professor of psychology at the University of Chicago who studies what is surely, other than serious injury, the most feared catastrophe in sports: the…
Uncategorized
As Tom Friedman Notes, We’re Missing Our Train
by David Dobbs •
Thomas Friedman, whom I sometimes find grating*, is spot-on today in underlining America’s paralysis in responding to tomorrow’s challenges. China is doing moon shots. Yes, that’s plural. When I say “moon shots” I mean big, multibillion-dollar, 25-year-horizon, game-changing investments. China has at least four going now: one is building a network of ultramodern airports; another…
Uncategorized
The Consciousness Meter: Sure You Want That?
by David Dobbs •
Where does consciousness come from? And when it ramps up or down, at what point does it move from consciousness to not-consciousness? Carl Zimmer published both a blog post and a story in the New York Times yesterday looking at the work of Guilioi Tononi, a University of Wisconsin neuroscientist who looks at these questions.…
Brains and Behavior, Culture of Science, Uncategorized
Harvard opens the (exit) door a crack for Hauser
by David Dobbs •
Be easy to miss this. In an interview about several things (mainly the prospect of the ROTC returning to Harvard), Harvard president Drew Gilpin Faust gave the first hint today that Harvard may be considering squeezing Hauser out: Faust also called into question the future of psychology professor Marc Hauser, whom the university has found…
Brains and Behavior, Culture of Science, Uncategorized
The Boston Globe on the Hauser Fallout
by David Dobbs •
I’ve noted a few times that the Hauser misconduct case at Harvard would ripple through science for quite some time. Today the Boston Globe’s Carolyn Johnson, who has done a nice job on this case all along, has a story on how the department at Harvard is trying to deal with the fallout. In the…
Page 1 of 3
1 2 3 »