Now on ScienceBlogs: Saturn: Look and Learn
David Dobbs on science, nature, and culture.
I write on science, medicine, nature, culture and other matters for the New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, Slate, National Geographic, Scientific American Mind, and other publications. (Find clips here.) Right now I'm writing my fourth book, The Orchid and the Dandelion, which explores the hypothesis that the genetic roots some of our worst problems and traits — depresison, hyperaggression, violence, antisocial behavior — can also give rise to resilience, cooperation, empathy, and contentment. The book expands on my December 2009 Atlantic article exploring these ideas.
I've also written three books, including Reef Madness: Charles Darwin, Alexander Agassiz, and the Meaning of Coral, which traces the strangest but most forgotten controversy in Darwin's career — an elemental dispute running some 75 years.
If you'd like, you can subscribe to Neuron Culture by email. You might also want to see more of my work at my main website or check out my Tumblr log.
Category: Journalism - rebooting (aka future of)
It was a riveting, invigorating, almost intoxicating experience. It seemed a glimpse of the sort of honesty, rigor, transparency, and quality of thought and discussion that a more open system of science communication and discussion might generate.
Posted by David Dobbs at 11:36 PM • 7 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Brains and minds
Gary Kasparov ponders the limitations of technology as a means of playing chess truly well. His critique could be applied equally well to pharma.
Posted by David Dobbs at 10:45 PM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Journalism - rebooting (aka future of)
Ask not whom to kill, but how sci journalism and/or sci journalists might adapt to a new environment.
Posted by David Dobbs at 11:48 AM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Art
I respectfully differ from Mr. Lehrer: In Avatar, Cameron has not deftly realized the potential of his medium; he has deftly exploited its crudest powers of visual seduction while leaving its full potential untapped.
Posted by David Dobbs at 10:48 AM • 7 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Digital culture
Agreed: There's robust supply of writing. But is there an oversupply of GOOD writing? If not, how to tap the people still willing to pay for it?
Posted by David Dobbs at 10:21 AM • 10 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Digital culture
Facebook profiles capture true personality, according to new psychology research Online social networks such as Facebook are being used...
Posted by David Dobbs at 9:15 PM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Brains and minds
A robot writes a sports story -- but misses the lede. Still working on the forest/trees thing
Posted by David Dobbs at 6:20 AM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Books
This kills me -- but maybe just because I've written books. (Oh yeah -- the links to the books. First two here. Reef Madness here. Buy 'em. Read 'em. They're better than the stuff you're reading now.)
Posted by David Dobbs at 8:40 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Culture of science
This shouldn't be something that flu experts feel compelled to discuss sotto voce. If the journal has good reasons to sit on the paper for now, it should declare them. If not, it should get the paper out in the open so the data and findings can be examined and vetted openly.
Posted by David Dobbs at 3:58 PM • 19 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Digital culture
In the intro to his self-published (on Lulu.com) collection of blog posts, The Wreck of the Henry Clay, New Yorker contributor Caleb Crain sums up nicely the anxieties shared by at least one other writer-with-blogging-addon about blogging, and, by extension about self-publishing books.
Posted by David Dobbs at 2:23 PM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
