Observations
Masks and Emasculation: Why Some Men Refuse to Take Safety Precautions
They think it makes them look weak, and avoiding that is evidently more important to them than demonstrating responsible behavior
Blogs
Observations
How a Landmark Physics Paper from the 1970s Uncannily Describes the COVID-19 Pandemic
Phil Anderson’s article “More Is Different” describes how different levels of complexity require new ways of thinking. And as the virus multiplies and spreads, that’s just what the human race desperately needs...
Observations
The Fight against COVID-19 Threatens to Cause Collateral Health Damage
The pandemic is no excuse to abandon chronic disease management and prevention
Recent Posts
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Through the Grid, a Window on Cognition
by A. David Redish, Ph.D. University of Minnesota Commentary on Microstructure of a spatial map in the entorhinal cortex," by Torkel Hafting, Marianne Fyhn, Sturla Molden, May-Britt Moser and Edvard I...
Grid Cells: Putting Rats in Their Places and (Maybe) Meaning in Life
Welcome to Mind Matters.
Below, in an enthralling pair of posts about how neural mechanisms of navigation may also underlie memory and cognition, neuroscientists James J...
The Organic Automaton
When will computers become living, sentient beings? In movies, it is commonly depicted as an abrupt, unforeseen epiphany. Ray Kurzweil has predicted (in our pages and elsewhere) that personal computers will be able to run real-time, full-up simulations of the human brain by the 2020s...
Doomsday: Not As Much Fun As You'd Think
Why is doomsday so fun to think about? Maybe it fulfills the same role as the frontier once did: to allow us to envision a new world that we can shape from scratch.
Are You a Global Warming Skeptic? Part IV
After a two-month hiatus, I've finally found the time to pick up the thread on doubts about global warming and humans' role in it. In previous installments, people wrote in with the reasons why they were skeptical and I tried to synthesize the responses...
Red Spot, Jr.
Because astronomy is one of the ancient sciences we have learned much over centuries of observation. This continuity has also given us a perspective that has allowed us to understand that we live on diminutive planet that is part of a dynamic, even violent solar system...
Pawning NASA's Crown Jewels
So much in our vast universe seems hopelessly faraway, but with NASA's FY2007 budget even relatively close planetary neighbors like Mars and Europa now seem more distant.
Don't Forget About the Little Ethical Lapses
Since the whole South Korea stem-cell fiasco broke, there has been a lot of discussion about ethics in science. The discussion is certainly necessary, but it has a certain deja vu quality to it...
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A Blog About the Weird Wonderfulness of Life on Earth
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Exploring and celebrating diversity in science.
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