Human Nature’s Pathologist

Posted on November 28, 2011May 17, 2020 by admin

The New York Times, November 28, 2011

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Steven Pinker was a 15-year-old anarchist. He didn’t think people needed a police force to keep the peace. Governments caused the very problems they were supposed to solve.

Besides, it was 1969, said Dr. Pinker, who is now a 57-year-old psychologist at Harvard. “If you weren’t an anarchist,” he said, “you couldn’t get a date.”

At the dinner table, he argued with his parents about human nature. “They said, ‘What would happen if there were no police?’ ” he recalled. “I said: ‘What would we do? Would we rob banks? Of course not. Police make no difference.’ ”

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Are we the teachable species?

Posted on November 22, 2011August 25, 2021 by Matt Kristoffersen

We know that our species is unique, but it can be surprisingly hard to pinpoint what exactly makes us so. The fact that we have DNA is not much of a mark of distinction. Several million other species have it too. Hair sets us apart from plants and mushrooms and reptiles, but several thousand other mammals are hairy, too. Walking upright is certainly unusual, but it doesn’t sever us from the animal kingdom. Birds can walk on two legs, after all, and their dinosaur ancestors were walking bipedally 200 million years ago. Our own bipedalism–like much of the rest of our biology–has deep roots. Chimpanzees, whose ancestors diverged from our own some seven million years ago, can walk upright, at least for short distances.

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The Bipedal Atlas #scienceink

Posted on November 21, 2011August 25, 2021 by Matt Kristoffersen

Zsuzsa Megyery writes,

I’m a student at MIT in the Earth, Atmospheric & Planetary Science Department hoping to solve the glacially-coupled climate problem of global warming by developing efficient carbon sequestration technology. In honor of our beautiful mother Earth, and as a constant reminder of the places I can go under my own human power, I had the world map, minus Antarctica, tattooed on the tops of my feet in a Mercator projection.

It is deeply personal to me–I am Hungarian, with the European continent on one foot–but grew up in the US–so the Western half is on the other side. I have a minimal carbon footprint on our mother Earth, cycling as much as possible for transportation and even hoping to circum-paddle Antarctica some day.

You can see the rest of the Science Tattoo Emporium here or in my book, Science Ink: Tattoos of the Science Obsessed.

Scaling the Barrier: My new column on the brain

Posted on November 16, 2011August 25, 2021 by Matt Kristoffersen

Our brains are protected by an invisible fortress wall, keeping it safe from many dangers. Unfortunately, it also keeps out a lot of the drugs that could help cure diseases of the brain. In this month’s column for Discover, I look at some of the newest strategies for scaling the wall. Check it out.

Image: Ken Lund, Flickr, via Creative Commons

A new episode of Radiolab: Patient Zero

Posted on November 15, 2011August 25, 2021 by Matt Kristoffersen

Radiolab has a new episode available for your auditory pleasure. The theme of this episode is “Patient Zero.” Hosts Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich trace diseases and ideas back to their places of origin. I help tell the story of the origin of HIV along with David Quammen (who’s got a book coming out soon on animal diseases) and some of the pioneering scientists who have figured out how viruses spill over from animals to us.)

Check it out!