Should fitness share the stage with beauty? My review of Prum’s “Evolution of Beauty”
The Times Sunday Book Review, six days ahead of the Sunday paper, published today my review of Richard Prum’s “The Evolution of Beauty” (and a...
Tag: history of science
Andre Fenton, comeback memory player of the year
Carl Zimmer on memory researcher Andre Fenton, comeback researcher of the year. In an age when we get a lot of our medical news in click-baity headlines and has...
Two Sharp Takes on Mukherjee’s The Gene
Nathaniel Comfort, “Genes Are Overrated”: Mukherjee gives us a Whig history of the gene, told with verve and color, if not scrupulous accuracy. The ...
How the Tobacco Industry Shaped the Science of Stress
The modern idea of stress began on a rooftop in Canada, with a handful of rats freezing in the winter wind. This was 1936 and by that point the owner of the rat...
Leonardo da Vinci and the Power of Ignorance
In his fine short Leonardo da Vinci: A Life, for Penguin’s Penguin Lives series, Sherwin Nuland wonders if there are times when good scientists or entire ...
Love Poems About Elephant Skin, Rhino Skin, Hippo Skin, and Snake Skin – For Science
I’ve been reading some of Harry Harlow’s papers, and am in wonder at his seminal “The Nature of Love,” his 1958 Presidential Lecture to ...
My TL,DR version of “Die, Selfish Gene, Die”
Many have liked “Die, Selfish Gene, Die,” my Aeon piece challenging Richard Dawkins “Selfish Gene” meme. Quite a few readers have objected to and disagreed wit...
Rosie’s Revenge: Rosalind Franklin Outraps Watson & Crick
“Well I”m back from the dead And I read what you said And I’m here to set the record straight.” I love this. Big hat-tip to @nncomfort
How Eugenics Gets Legit
In the wake of the flap over Geoffrey Miller’s fat-shaming, a friend pointed me to a remarkable collection at the Cold Spring Harbor website, the Eugenics...
They Froze for Science — But Got the Eggs
Below find #8 in my Best of Neuron Culture Moving Party — a run of 10 of my favorite posts from the blog’s stay at WIRED, posted on the eve of the blog’s ...