David Brooks has done it again. In his New York Times op-ed column last Monday, Brooks portrayed psychiatry as a “semi-science” suffering from “Physics Envy.” He pointed to the publication of the latest edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual—or DSM-5—as evidence that psychiatry misrepresents itself as hard science. The column opens, “We’re living in an empirical age,” and it goes […]
History/Philosophy
About ten years ago, doing research for a book, I asked Freeman Dyson about a study he’d helped do about whether we would have lost the war in Vietnam a little less if we’d used tactical nuclear weapons. Dyson and two colleagues, all members of a scientific advisory group called Jason, were doing this study […]
“Did they ever meet?” I got the question all the time. People would ask what I was working on, and I would say a book about Einstein and Freud, and then would come the question. Same thing with my next book. People would ask what I was working on, and I would say a book […]
Clenching your muscles increases self-control. So does having a loud super-ego, or at least some form of inner monologue. Isolation disrupts our will power, as does having too much dopamine in our systems, like ADHD sufferers chronically do. Sugar boosts self-control. So does a short burst of exercise. For smokers, the same restorative effect happens […]
I spent several hours on Sunday afternoon in what has to be the most charming cemetery in New York City. If I didn’t know what I was looking for, I would have missed its arched iron gate, tucked into 2nd Avenue just north of East 2nd Street, where the East Village meets the Lower East Side. Once through, […]
Richard and Temple Grandin have co-authored a book, The Autistic Brain: Thinking Across the Spectrum, which is just out and which you should definitely and immediately buy. Before you do, Jessa and Ann have some questions. Ann: Richard, this subject is a departure for you. What is the subject, anyway? Richard: The immediate subject is the […]
Correction: An article yesterday about a tiny force in quantum mechanics that could be used in future microscopic devices referred incorrectly in some copies to the size of the force measured when two metal plates were placed within one 40-thousandth of an inch of each other. It was one 300-millionth of an ounce, not one 300-thousandth. […]
Data mining. Maybe the term makes you think of tapping out facts out with a pickax, or of scary algorithms and programming. But it doesn’t have to be that way. With this handy guide, I’ll show you how to do (rudimentary) data mining from the comfort of your desk, no computer science degree necessary. All […]
