Deep Intellect, a Sy Montgomery piece at Orion, is one of the best things I’ve read in a while: The moment the lid was off, we reached for each other. She had already oozed from the far corner of her lair, where she had been hiding, to the top of the tank to investigate her…
Monthly Archives: November 2011
Uncategorized
Rats Shall Follow Ye, and Ye Shall Eat Them
by David Dobbs •
The web’s delights abound and a-blend — rats among them. Last night I bumped into an 11-year-old Peter Hessler story about eating rats in Asia. (“‘Do you want a big rat or a small rat?’ the waitress asked.”) Fresh on the tasty tail of Hessler’s memorable meal comes Razib Khan, cribbing from a new paper on…
Uncategorized
The Only Time Gabriel Garcia Marquez Saw Ernest Hemingway
by David Dobbs •
Gabriel Garcia Marquez, 30 years ago, on seeing Hemingway 32 years earlier in Paris: For a fraction of a second, as always seemed to be the case, I found myself divided between my two competing roles. I didn’t know whether to ask him for an interview or cross the avenue to express my unqualified admiration…
Uncategorized
Rebecca Skloot on Writing HeLa, Structure, & Her Own Younger Self
by David Dobbs •
When I first read Rebecca Skloot’s’ The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks last February, I, like millions of others who have read it, found myself enthralled with and amazed at the remarkable story that Skloot had collected and told. As a writer, I found myself intensely curious about two things: how Skloot decided on the book’s…
Uncategorized
Enough With the ‘Slut Gene’ Already: Behaviors Ain’t Traits
by David Dobbs •
Earlier this week, WBUR’s Here and Now ran a taped interview with me about “Beautiful Brains,” my recent National Geographic article on teen brain and behavior. (You can listen to the interview here.) It’s only six minutes long, but nicely edited to highlight, from a high-altitude evolutionary point of view, what distinguishes adolescence, when we peak…
Uncategorized
Links & Lit: My Favorite Reads of Late, 11/8/11
by David Dobbs •
Some of my favorite short ‘net reads over the last few weeks: Auroras! via Jerry Coyne, as above. To get a heads-up on coming auroras via Twitter, btw, follow Aurora_Alerts. Stunning wren duets are conceived as a whole but sung in two parts, by Ed Yong. (He wrote the piece; did NOT sing one of the two…
Uncategorized
Hemingway, Bach, Led Zeppelin: Neuron Culture’s Musical October
by David Dobbs •
‘Twas an aural month at the blog. Here are October 2011′s biggest hits at Neuron Culture: Listen: Hemingway’s Short, Moving Nobel Prize Speech I have read the speech a few times before. Yet when I listened to it today for the first time, at a time when I am re- reading his stories now and…