Culture
cortex | October 31, 2006Last week, I mentioned that the Royal Institution in London had come up with short list of the best science books of all time. After some excellent feedback from readers, and because I love making lists of my favorite things (just in case I'm ever stranded on a desert island), I'd thought I'd offer up an amended list. Here are the top ten science books, in no particular order:
Microbe Hunters: Paul De Kruif
The Double Helix: James Watson
The Periodic Table: Primo Levi
The Selfish Gene: Richard Dawkins
Chaos: James Gleick
The Beak of the Finch: Jonathan Weiner
The Making of the Atomic: Bomb…
cortex | October 31, 2006There's an odd article in the NY Times today on Marc Hauser's hypothesis that the human mind contains a "moral grammar," somewhat akin to a Chomskyan linguistic grammar. The article is odd because, while it acknowledges that Hauser's idea is supported by almost no direct evidence, it never mentions any alternatives to Hauser's theory. (If you're going to write about a tentative hypothesis, you should at least mention that other hypotheses exist.) If you only read this article, you'd assume Hauser was the first person to argue that human morality is an evolved, biological trait, and that his…
cortex | October 31, 2006Sometimes, it seems as if science reporters just decide to make something a big story, even if there's no new news to report. In the last week, the link between calorie reduction and increased lifespan has been everywhere. New York Magazine was first, with an account of a dinner party eaten with people who don't actually eat. (The menu: salad followed by asparagus tips, followed by Quorn, washed down with water.) Now the WSJ and NY Times have joined the bandwagon:
In a laboratory at the Wisconsin National Primate Research Center, Matthias is learning about time's caprice the hard way. At 28,…
cortex | October 30, 2006Men are getting less manly: our testosterone levels continue to decline. Given the Hobbesian state of the world, that might not be a bad thing. (Unfortunately, falling testosterone levels have negative medical consequences. So world peace might require a reduction in the male life span.) Over at the LA Times, the always hilarious Dan Neil - I think he's even funnier than Anthony Lane - explores the implications of falling testosterone levels from a slightly more personal angle:
My wife and I--and two dozen highly trained and generously compensated reproductive doctors, nurses and technicians…
cortex | October 30, 2006I'm like a broken record, but if I could implement one policy change right away it would be to raise the gas tax:
See the full image over at Foreign Policy.
The latest people to support a phased increase in the gas tax are George Schultz (Reagan's Secretary of State) and Tony Lake (Clinton's National Security Advisor). See Mankiw for the details.
cortex | October 30, 2006If the polls are accurate, Senator Rick Santorum is about to lose his re-election bid. That's a good thing. Santorum is a bad cliche of the culture wars, a powerful politician who actually believes that the earth is 6,000 years old, that abortion is tantamount to murder and the Catholic church scandal began in Massachusetts because Boston is a "liberal bastion". In recent months, he's also gotten rather deranged on the topic of foreign policy, arguing that what we need is more pre-ememptive action against Iran, because our aggressive war in Iraq worked out so well.
And yet, when Rick Santorum…
cortex | October 27, 2006What would happen if you combined Bob Dylan's greatest hits with the choreography of Twyla Tharp? It turns out that you get something truly awful, an alchemical concotion that is both surreal and boring. Here's Ben Brantley:
And now for the latest heart-rending episode in Broadway's own reality soap opera, "When Bad Shows Happen to Great Songwriters."
If you happen to be among the masochists who make a habit of attending the entertainments called jukebox musicals, in which pop hits are beaten up by singing robots, you may think you've seen it all: the neutering of Brian Wilson and the Beach…
cortex | October 27, 2006Richard Dawkins has been everywhere lately. Dawkins is even keeping an online journal while on his book tour. It's full of amusing, if slightly mean-spirited, vignettes like this:
The large hall at Randolph Macon Woman's College was packed. I gave a fairly short program of readings from The God Delusion, and then the bulk of the evening was given over to much more than an hour of Q & A. The first questioner announced himself as coming from Liberty (Falwell's 'University'), and he began by saying he had never been so insulted, yet simultaneously so amused, by any lecture. Many of the…
cortex | October 26, 2006Primo Levi's The Periodic Table, at least according to the Royal Institution in London.
The shortlist
Primo Levi The Periodic Table
Konrad Lorenz King Solomon's Ring
Tom Stoppard Arcadia
Richard Dawkins The Selfish Gene
Other nominations
James Watson The Double Helix
Bertolt Brecht The Life of Galileo
Peter Medawar Pluto's Republic
Charles Darwin Voyage of the Beagle
Stephen Pinker The Blank Slate
Oliver Sacks A Leg to Stand On
All in all, not a bad list. I'd add some William James and Lewis Thomas, and replace A Leg to Stand On with An Anthropologist from Mars, and replace Brecht with…
cortex | October 26, 2006I've always been impressed by America's lack of interest in class issues. Having spent a bit of time in England - a country where class is transposed onto every little social interaction - it was a shock to return to America, a place where disparities in income are both more tangible and more ignored. While there are many reasons for this lack of interest in class issues - Americans have historically been fixated on racial and ethnic divisions, we imagine ourselves as country of "unbridled opportunity", etc. - I wonder if we are reaching a tipping point.
For one thing, Americans are clearly…
cortex | October 26, 2006Another fiscal quarter, another record profit: Exxon-Mobil reported earnings of $10.49 billion today. These earnings are eclipsed only by the $10.71 billion profit posted by Exxon in last year's fourth quarter, which saw oil prices spike because of hurricanes Katrina and Rita.
Now I like corporate profits just as much as the next capitalist, but these oil companies infuriate me. Michael Kinsley said it best:
About a third of the oil consumed in the United States comes from wells in the United States. That's about 150 million barrels a month. The oil industry refers to this as "production,"…
razib | October 25, 2006John Wilkins has a good post on religion, I tend to agree with its general thrust though I might quibble with details. Not being gifted with much marginal time right now, a few quick thoughts:
1) I believe that institutional organized religion, e.g., Christianity, Islam, etc., can increase the magnitude of a social vector, but has little influence on its direction. For example in relation to slavery religion was a force for inflaming both abolitionist enthusiasm and justifying the holding of other humans in bondage. Religion doesn't do good or evil, humans do, religion is simply a 'virus of…
cortex | October 25, 2006Nylon hosiery and surgical masks? While I always assumed that the flu virus spread mainly through dirty door knobs and friendly handshakes, I was wrong. According to Lawrence Wein, "the dominant mode of virus transmission for influenza is aerosol -- implying that hand washing will make little difference. This is consistent with the views of leading researchers several decades ago, views that have somehow been forgotten by the public health community."
So what should we do?
The single most effective intervention is face protection. And because roughly one-third of influenza transmissions…
cortex | October 25, 2006It is a shame more American cities with mass transportation aren't emulating London, and charging drivers who use their cars in the central city during the day. (The London "congestion charge" is about $10). After all, the London scheme has been astonishingly successful. Six months after the system took effect in February 2003, traffic was reduced by 18 percent, with a 30 percent reduction in auto traffic and a 20 percent increase in bus and taxi ridership. Imagine your local metropolis with a third less cars on the street. Wouldn't that be lovely?
Now a London suburb has come up with an ever…
cortex | October 25, 2006Here's an uplifting story of neural plasticity, a sweet reminder that our brain is always capable of changing itself. Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert, lost his voice more than a year ago due to spasmodic dysphonia, a mysterious neurological condition that involves involuntary spasms of the vocal chords. Although nobody suffering from spasmodic dysphonia had ever recovered, Adams was determined. He was going to "remap" his brain:
So every day for months and months I tried new tricks to regain my voice. I visualized speaking correctly and repeatedly told myself I could (affirmations). I…
cortex | October 25, 2006I never would have guessed that a few extra pounds of flesh can have such a strong effect on fuel economy:
A new study from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign says that 938 million more gallons of gasoline go into vehicles annually because drivers and passengers are considerably heavier today than in 1960.
"Our nation's hunger for food and our nation's hunger for oil are not independent," said computer science professor Sheldon Jacobson, who co-wrote the study scheduled to appear in an upcoming issue of the Engineering Economist.
The project, which looked only at noncommercial…
cortex | October 25, 2006A few days ago, I linked to an article documenting a connection between reduced crime and increased exposure to violent movies. Now it appears that porn has a similar effect, and that the increased availability of porn has led to a significant decrease in rape and attempted rapes by young men:
The arrival of the internet caused a large decline in both the pecuniary and non-pecuniary costs of accessing pornography. Using state-level panel data from 1998-2003, I find that the arrival of the internet was associated with a reduction in rape incidence. However, growth in internet usage had no…
cortex | October 24, 2006Why, you ask, did the dog suck on toads? Because the amphibians secrete a hallucinogenic toxin. Lady, a seemingly staid cocker spaniel, was actually a closet stoner. I'd love to see The Dog Whisperer fix this one:
"We noticed Lady spending an awful lot of time down by the pond in our backyard," Laura Mirsch recalls.
Lady would wander the area, disoriented and withdrawn, soporific and glassy-eyed.
"Then, late one night after I'd put the dogs out, Lady wouldn't come in," Laura Mirsch says. "She finally staggered over to me from the cattails. She looked up at me, leaned her head over and opened…
cortex | October 24, 2006When cars are stocked with airbags in every possible direction - are there ceiling airbags yet? - drivers become more aggressive:
A Purdue University research team that studied five years of motor vehicle accidents in Washington State concludes antilock brakes and airbags don't minimize accidents or injuries because those systems may encourage riskier driving.
Fred Mannering, a Purdue professor of civil engineering, led the study. The results, which are bound to be controversial with auto makers and safety experts, say the innovations designed to improve safety also make drivers less vigilant…
cortex | October 24, 2006George Eliot famously declared that "If Art does not enlarge men's sympathies, then it does nothing." Eliot would be glad to know that she was right: reading novels really does make us nicer. As the British Psychological Society Digest notes:
The more fiction a person reads, the more empathy they have and the better they perform on tests of social understanding and awareness. By contrast, reading more non-fiction, fact-based books shows the opposite association. That's according to Raymond Mar and colleagues who say their finding could have implications for educating children and adults about…