I should note right away there’s no sex in the video posted here, which is from a TED talk about colonizing Mars; no sense in getting you all frustrated. The video is just one thing, along with an article about sex on mars, offered by Journal of Cosmology’s special issue, “Colonizing Mars.” The Journal of…
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A promising new website about science writing, The Open Notebook, features an interview with me about the genesis of my Atlantic article of last year on the genetics of temperament, “The Orchid Children” (aka “The Science of Success” in online version). The site, produced by science journalists Siri Carpenter and Jeanne Erdmann, is a craft-focused…
This is Biden, just before the election: I promise you, you are all gonna be sitting here a year from now going, ‘Oh, my God, why are they there in the polls, why is the polling so down, why is this thing so tough?” Biden said at a fund-raiser in Seattle just before the election.…
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A while back I wrote a short piece in the New York Times Magazine about a researcher named John Ioannidis who had found that over half of all new research findings later prove false: Many of us consider science the most reliable, accountable way of explaining how the world works. We trust it. Should we?…
Searching YouTube for a performance of one of my favorite pieces of music — and something to offer my readers while I try to finish a big feature about schizophrenia that’s been keeping me — I came across this mashup of Bach and an airport rain delay, and it took me only a few seconds…
The Green Wave in Copenhagen from Copenhagenize on Vimeo. I brought no car to London but soon bought a bike. I’ve found the riding here to be wonderful, exhilarating, and — notwithstanding a few wooooooops-OTHER-side-of-the-road braincramp scares — safer-feeling than my last extensive urban riding, years ago, in Houston. Why? These London drivers, though generally…
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One of the best history books I’ve ever read is Richard Rhodes’ The Making of the Atomic Bomb. I read it more than two decades ago, and that’s how good it is: It sticks with me now as a stunning narrative and a deeply informative history. If you ever even pause while wandering by a…
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