Neuron Culture blogger David Dobbs takes another look at the causes of tragedies like the one in Aurora.
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Batman Returns: How Culture Shapes Muddle Into Madness
by David Dobbs •
Monthly Archives: July 2012
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Are We Slaves to Gadgets, or Work?
by David Dobbs •
Alexis Madrigal, over at AtlanticTech, favors the latter answer: Another day, another New York Times story about technology addiction. It’s almost like they are trying to win a Pulitzer Prize or something by pandering to the preformed opinions of journalists like themselves about the evils of modern communication. The problem, Madrigal notes, is that our work culture, rather…
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Whooping Cough Runs Amok in Washington — A Very Scary Graph
by David Dobbs •
As I’ve been pushing my own legislators here in Vermont to close the big fat public health pothole called the ‘philosophical exemption,’ I often ask them to pay attention to the pertussis outbreak in Washington State. So I hope they’ll take note of Phil Plait’s update over at Bad Astronomy: This is one of the…
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Batman Movies Don’t Kill. But They’re Friendly to the Concept.
by David Dobbs •
Brains and Behavior, Uncategorized
Slug Sex, Bouncing Bosons, Heroic Virgins: My Picks for The Browser’s Best
by David Dobbs •
Brains and Behavior, Uncategorized
How Do You Choke Away the British Open? The Science of the Tight Collar
by David Dobbs •
Spurred by Adam Scott’s collapse today at the British Open, where he bogeyed the last four holes to lose by a stroke, I’m reposting this feature that I originally published here in September, 2010, as “The Tight Collar: The New Science of Choking.” It was selected the following summer for inclusion in The Best American Sports…
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Patients, Prisoners, and Mass Shootings
by David Dobbs •
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Bill McKibben on Why We’re Losing the Climate Change Fight
by David Dobbs •
If the pictures of those towering wildfires in Colorado haven’t convinced you, or the size of your AC bill this summer, here are some hard numbers about climate change: June broke or tied 3,215 high-temperature records across the United States. That followed the warmest May on record for the Northern Hemisphere – the 327th consecutive…
Culture of Science, Uncategorized
Long Genome, Lively Book
by David Dobbs •
Five years ago, guitar player, raconteur, writer, genome geek and Duke professor Misha Angrist surrendered his DNA to the eyes of the public, and to his own restless, rambunctious curiosity. Over at the fine site LabLit, Richard Grant takes a smart, lively look at the smart, lively book that resulted: The history of science and medicine…
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This is Beauty: Reporter Golfs Through Abandoned Detroit
by David Dobbs •
I love this. [Pulitzer Prize winning reporter Charlie] LeDuff’s idea of a love letter to his city was to golf his way across eighteen miles of urban decay, using hulking industrial relics as his sand traps and everyday Detroiters as his gallery. He counted 2,525 strokes. He comes across a mom trying to find her…