Today the New York Times Book Review published its advance online version of my review of Nicholas Wade’s A Troublesome Inheritance. (It will appear in print this Sunday.) Others have already reviewed this book elsewhere, with particularly sharp takes coming from Jennifer Raff, Eric Johnson, Michael Eisen, H. Allen Orr, Jerry Coyne, and, also at the Times, Arthur Allen. You’ll find a fuller […]
Continue reading →That’s what this story from the LA Times appears to say. If that’s true, seems something is amiss. Surely a POW being debriefed has some a right to confidential psychotherapy? If anyone knows (really knows, not guesses), kindly comment below or write me at [email protected]. Would be grateful for clarification to know this. Under investigation for possible desertion, Sgt. […]
Continue reading →Rose Eveleth on a long string of virtual visits to the real town that shares her name In what was once a lively town, the mining industry collapsed, the population thinned, and businesses went away. Between 1900 and 1910, Eveleth’s population grew 155 percent, according to U.S. Census Bureau figures. At its peak, the town […]
Continue reading →Best of the Week: Developmental Plasticity and the “Hard-Wired” Problem. by Patrick Clarkin. We’ve built a wall between genes and environment. Clarkin tears it down. And in Does Nature Need to be Nurtured?, Eric Johnson shows why such questions are important. The Racism Beat, by Jefferson Cord. Important and heartbreaking. Lean Out: The Dangers for Women […]
Continue reading →Humans are hard-wired not to be hard-wired. That phrase, drawn from Ken Weiss, is perhaps the simplest of the many ways that Patrick Clarkin tries to convey, in his wonderful post “Developmental Plasticity and the ‘Hard-Wired’ Problem,” how thoroughly entwined are genetics and experience in shaping and constantly reshaping any organism. It’s silly, in a way, to […]
Continue reading →Depressing news you can use. Or possibly delight in, depending. From Neuroskeptic: An interesting study just published examines the rates of clinical depression experienced by workers in different jobs.It turns out that people involved in ‘Local and Interurban Passenger Transport’ are most likely to be treated for depression. By contrast, those employed in ‘Amusement and […]
Continue reading →Ever since Marc Hauser’s 2011 resignation from Harvard amid findings of scientific misconduct, observers, critics, colleagues, and defenders have argued about Just How Bad His Behavior Was or Wasn’t. Harvard’s refusal to release its full report encouraged this, since people could speculate freely about the actual evidence behind the findings. Did he commit minor or common transgressions […]
Continue reading →Fabulous story from Ian Leslie: Martin Bromiley is a modest man with an immodest ambition: to change the way medicine is practised in the UK. I first met him in a Birmingham hotel, at a meeting of the Clinical Human Factors Group, or CHFG. Hospital chief executives, senior surgeons, experienced nurses and influential medical researchers met, […]
Continue reading →Virginia Woolf on people that you might think that she would think plain, and does, but then again, not. This while on holiday visiting some in-laws: a banker and his wife. Why do I pity and deride the human race, when its lot is profoundly peaceful and happy? They have nothing to wish for. They […]
Continue reading →A not-comprehensive sampling of the good stuff I found this week. (I spent most of my reading time reading Virginia Woolf.) Oh do, do watch this: A poultry farmer, one I could listen to all day, tells Maryn McKenna why he’s preserving the genes, carried in the squawking, beautiful birds all around him, of heritage poultry breeds that Big […]
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