Chopper Journalism

By: | June 7, 2013

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On May 31, a flight instructor named Craig MacCallum and his 19-year-old student lost control of a single-engine plane shortly after taking off from a small airport in Linden, New Jersey. MacCallum put out a mayday call just before the plane plummeted from the sky. The student survived, but MacCallum didn’t make it. And I may have watched him die.

No, I wasn’t on the abandoned industrial lot in New Jersey where the plane crashed. I wasn’t even in the vicinity. But the News 4 New York chopper was, and the network interrupted my soap opera to deliver the breaking news. One minute I was watching Brady and Kristen’s relationship disintegrate on Days of Our Lives (guilty pleasure), the next I was hovering above the wrecked carcass of an aircraft. Continue reading →

A Chilling (Not Actually Possible) Future

By: | June 6, 2013

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Humans might someday become cyborgs and live forever. Really, that might happen.

This was my take on a recent New York Times profile about Dmitry Itskov and his quirky quest to upload human brains into machines by 2045. It seems that this Russian former media magnate and propagandist has started a project to upload a human consciousness into a robot in 30 years or so.

Now, to be fair, David Segal, the author of the story, did a good job of framing the whole endeavor as fringe and a total longshot. And let’s face it, it’s a great story with a bizarre central character. But let me spoil the ending for you right now: This will never happen. Scientists can barely agree on the definition of consciousness, let alone where it exists or how it works. Let alone, well, move it. Continue reading →

Below the Snow

By: | June 5, 2013

IMG_1600It’s after Memorial Day, so I should be wearing white instead of thinking about the white stuff.  (Although if I were in the Arctic Circle or even in Vermont and New York, where a late-May storm dropped a foot or more in some spots, I might be thinking about snow quite a bit).

Even when I do think about winter, I mostly think about all the fun things that take place on the snow’s surface. Or all the fun things that take place inside: hot chocolate, eating, reading by the fire. Once spring comes, when the world outside is buzzing (and boing-ing), there’s no excuse to stay inside with a good book.

I’m not the only one who needs a winter retreat. In snow-covered spots food can be scarce; the wind-chilled open air, brutal. But for creatures that aren’t able to curl up with cocoa, the snow itself forms the insulation for a shelter under the snow. Continue reading →

Guest Post: Interspecies Dating Tips for Neanderthal Men

By: | June 4, 2013

800px-Homo_neanderthalensis_lifting_Rock_close_Reconstruction_-_Museum_NeandertalWe are obsessed with the idea that Homo sapiens and Neanderthals interbred. But really, would the two species be compatible? Homo sapiens are flaky artists; Neanderthals are all business. Nevertheless maybe a Neanderthal guy found himself falling for a Homo sapiens gal. Here’s some belated advice:

1. A well-tailored set of animal skins is certainly a turn-on, despite the fact that your Homo sapiens gal lacks a pronounced brow ridge and has a poor excuse for a nose. Still never call a date “Flat Face.” It’s rude.  Continue reading →

If He Only Had a (Clue About the) Brain

By: | June 3, 2013
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David Brooks from the neck up

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 south from there. (Does he really not know that empiricism as the basis of science dates at least to the seventeenth century? Or is his definition of “age” so broad as to be meaningless? “We’re living in an empirical age,” declared William Bradford, as he stepped off the Mayflower, citing the observations of the moon, sun, planets, and stars over the previous decade by the Italian astronomer and mathematician Galileo Galilei.)

Physicists and biologists, Brooks continues, “have established a distinctive model of credibility,” whereas “the people in the human sciences have tried to piggyback on this authority model.” If by “piggyback on this authority model” he means “emulate the scientific method,” then yes, I would agree. In my experience, scientists do tend to try to be scientific.

Continue reading →

The Last Word

By: | June 1, 2013

May 27 – 31, 2013

7572983836_47e1ce21f8_zHeather’s last post is a case-in-point for why we’re going to miss her so much.  It’s something you’ve never heard of before, told expertly and with great empathy: India’s great population explosion is being calmed by — who knew? — soap operas.  Come back soon, Heather, and tell us another story.

Some scientists have said that we can’t wipe out species in the 3-D undersea world the way we can in the 2-D flatlands.  Erik says we can but try.

Recidivist Guest Anne Casselman opens with a quote:  “In the 1960s we noticed there was a problem with time.”  Turns out the underlying problem is with the earth’s spin.  So what’s a 30-hour day going to feel like?  Anne says you don’t want to know.

I talk to a scientist who digresses into a story about how the government knows what happens to forests when a nuke explodes above them.  They know because did the experiment.  I should stop talking to digressing scientists.

A younger Michelle read a sci-fi story about “feeds” — you know, like Twitter, Facebook, etc. — that connect you with all sentient creatures and take over your brain.  An older Michelle decides to get the hell out of Dodge.

 

Your Guide to the Future

By: | May 31, 2013

feed-new-coverI used to think M.T. Anderson was prescient. Now I’m convinced he’s psychic.

Anderson is the author of the young-adult novel Feed, a very funny — and deeply disturbing — book about the seductive power of social media. In the world of the novel, the fortunate have a “feed” implanted in their brains at birth, connecting them to a network that allows them to communicate with one another, influences their consumer decisions, and, over time, takes over parts of their brain function. Complications ensue.

Sound familiar? Right, it’s not quite reality, but it’s a pretty good approximation of modern life.

Feed was published in 2002, and it’s been a mental metaphor of mine for years. When I’ve spent an entire day chasing stories online, or when I catch myself discussing Facebook posts during a real-life conversation, I think: I need to take a break from the Feed. It’s a useful private joke, a way of drawing a boundary around the online world.

Continue reading →

Blown-Down Trees on the Dark Side

By: | May 30, 2013

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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 back in the mid-1960’s, more or less on their own hook; no one had asked either them or Jason to do it.  They did it anyway because they’d overheard a Pentagon power honcho remark off-hand that it might be a good idea to throw in a nuke once in a while just to keep the North Vietnamese guessing.  The remark reflected loose talk at the time that the few nukes dropped on mountain passes might block the passes and stop the enemy army from coming south.  “You can do that wonderfully well with a few bombs,” Dyson said. “You blow down all the trees.”  And I thought, “How does he know that?”

It turns out that while tactical (i.e., little) nuclear bombs do blow down trees wonderfully well, the large enemy army only has to clear a path through the blown-down trees and keep moving south.  “It’s only bought you a couple of months,” Dyson said.  “And you can’t blow down the same trees twice.  After you’ve blown them down, that’s it.”  He was snickering.  I didn’t bother asking him how he knew this and didn’t think about it again until a couple of weeks ago.

I was interviewing another scientist who started digressing into the old nuclear bomb tests out in Nevada. “Tree blowdown was experimental,” he said, meaning they knew how nuclear bombs blew down trees because they’d done it.  Continue reading →