A lovely piece from Robert Sapolsky, one of those scientists who gives us science-writers night terrors that we’ll be out of a job soon. It takes a while for Sapolsky to get to the gist, but it’s a gist worth waiting for: how we think in metaphor. So is poetry’s greatest strength the result of the social evolution of primates? Check it out.
Originally published November 15, 2010. Copyright 2010 Carl Zimmer.
Discover, November 15, 2010
Pop quiz: What is 357 times 289? No pencils allowed. No calculators. Just use your brain.
Got an answer yet? Got it now? How about now? Chances are you still don’t. As you solved the problem one step at a time, you lost track of the numbers. Maybe you tried to start over, lost track again, and eventually gave up in frustration before you could discover that the answer was 103,173. I used a calculator to get that, I confess.
Our mutual failure is absurd. The brain is, in the words of neuroscientist Floyd Bloom, “the most complex structure that exists in the universe.”
Continue reading “The “Router” in Your Head—a Bottleneck of Processing”
This was fun. My editors at the Times asked me to take part in a special edition of Science Times coming out tomorrow, called “What’s Next.” My own charge was to pick ten scientists from across a wide range of disciplines and get their ideas about what we might expect to be reading about in 2011. It’s hardly an exhaustive list–I prefer to think of it as a tasting menu, full of pungent surprises, from stem-cell garage biology to the Indian Ocean’s global reach. The piece is set up as an interactive feature, including some additional audio comments from the scientists. Check it out, and check out the other articles in this special section, too.
Originally published November 9, 2010. Copyright 2010 Carl Zimmer.
On my latest podcast, I talk beer–that marvel of microbiology that people have been swilling for thousands of years. My guide to the brewing cosmos is Charles Bamforth, a professor of brewing science at the University of California, Davis.Check it out.
Originally published November 5, 2010. Copyright 2010 Carl Zimmer.
Just a reminder to residents of the Elm City and science writers converging here for their annual meeting: here are two public events you don’t want to miss…
1. Great Science Writing at Yale. Friday, 4 pm, Beinecke Library. Jonathan Weiner, Annie Murphy Paul, Richard Conniff, Jennifer Ouellette. Details here.
2. A conversation with Misha Angrist, author of Here Is A Human Being. Saturday, 6 pm, Labyrinth Books. Details here.
Originally published November 4, 2010. Copyright 2010 Carl Zimmer.