I recently learned that my colleagues think I am a coward. And even more recently, I learned that I might agree with them. It all began in 2007. That was a magic year for science writers. That was the year the IPCC released its crushing assessment on climate change, just after the surprise hit of […]
Commentary
The end of the world has been preying on my mind lately. Not in a religious, horsemen-of-the-apocalypse way ‒— but in a more surviving-the-failure-of-modern-amenities way. One reason for this preoccupation is my generation’s fascination not only with zombie film and literature1 but with interactive zombie games, like elaborate tag variation humans vs zombies, races with […]
Last week the journalism world was buzzing about — guess who? — Jonah Lehrer. Yes, again. We knew about the science writer’s self-plagiarism and Bob-Dylan-quote fabrication. Last week a New York Magazine exposé by Boris Kachka claimed that Lehrer also deliberately misrepresented other people’s ideas. Kachka’s piece led to some fascinating discussions about whether it’s possible to […]
I go to a lot of natural history museums. Something about all those pretty rocks and dead animals, and the chance that I might see something I’ve never seen before or learn something new—I can’t resist it. In the last three years, I’ve been to at least 15 natural history museums on two continents. Here’s […]
The outline of the story is as familiar as it is tawdry: a group of high school boys turn sexual insecurity into a contest, and a contest into emotional brutality. Adults in their orbit express shock and outrage, and observers pretend that the migration of teen sleaze onto the Internet represents something new. But why […]
Here’s my ideal Sunday morning: Wake up at 10 am, drink coffee, read, hit the farmer’s market, make brunch. Here’s what I did yesterday morning: Woke up at 7am, consumed a carefully calculated quantity of carbs, ran 20 miles, and plunged myself, fully clothed, into a bathtub of ice water. That’s what a lot of […]
Most scientists are reluctant to talk about “curing” mental illness, and rightly so. The mountain is too steep: These disorders have a range of genetic and environmental causes, and symptoms vary widely from person to person. But for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) — in which people are haunted for months or years by memories of […]
Back in February, a scandal broke out at Susan G. Komen for the Cure®, the breast cancer advocacy group with the trademarked pink ribbon. That scandal centered around the group’s decision to stop funding Planned Parenthood’s cancer screening efforts. But the flap over Planned Parenthood obscured an even more scandalous problem at Komen — the group’s […]
