Kirsten Weir looks at the very real phenomenon of deadly grief: Studies from around the world have confirmed that people have an increased risk of dying in the weeks and months after their spouses pass away. In 2011, researchers from Harvard University and the University of Yamanashi, Tokyo pooled the results of 15 different studies, with data … Continue reading When Your Heart Goes Out
Yesterday, there was a strikingly good reported piece in the NYT magazine on the growing evidence that consciousness does not have some kind of radical break between humans and every other species on the planet. And by consciousness, at varying levels, I mean, for example, the ability to feel fear, or joy, or anxiety, or … Continue reading The Tears Of An Elephant
In Ferris Jabr’s telling, sea creatures evolved to perceive time very differently than we do: Five hundred million years ago, every animal in existence made its permanent home in the ocean. We can safely assume that many such animals experienced time as one moment following the next and, if they were like many modern finned and tentacled denizens … Continue reading Why Fish Never Run Late For School
A reader writes: I knew immediately upon seeing this image that it was not Seattle … that is all I know. Another: Reminds me of Taxco, Mexico – a great town with real Old World atmosphere, in the mountains southwest of Mexico City. Another gets the right continent: Eleusina, Greece. Shot in the dark, based … Continue reading The View From Your Window Contest: Winner #200
Especially for comedians – brutal: After reading Lizza’s detailed look at Bridgegate, Cassidy suspects Christie is cooked: According to some reports, the criminal investigation could take up to eighteen months. With all this hanging over the Governor, it seems almost inconceivable that he would plunge into a Presidential campaign. If he did, he would be inviting attacks not … Continue reading The Christie Scandal Isn’t Over
David Graeber considers the possibility: Is it meaningful to say an electron “chooses” to jump the way it does? Obviously, there’s no way to prove it. The only evidence we could have (that we can’t predict what it’s going to do), we do have. But it’s hardly decisive. Still, if one wants a consistently materialist explanation of … Continue reading Subatomic Free Will
Ready for launch? An Atlas 5 will blast off at just past 11PM, PST carrying an classified NRO payload (also cubesats) pic.twitter.com/ll7s0nCOPg — Office of the DNI (@ODNIgov) December 5, 2013 Katherine Harmon Courage, author of Octopus! The Most Mysterious Creature In the Sea, suggests that the “new impressively oblivious (or riotously self-mocking) [National Reconnaissance … Continue reading Our Octopi In The Sky
James Polchin visits an exhibit on shunga, a form of erotic art that flourished centuries ago in Japan: Throughout these works bodies are minimally rendered with undulating lines and a flat, paleness of flesh. Instead, it is the fabric that attracts the attentions, the flows of color and details of patterns that dominate many of … Continue reading The Art Of Shunga
It was another grueling, dispiriting day in Washington. What truly terrifies me is the almost Egypt-level of mutual incomprehension that is being displayed. I take it for granted, for example, that the deficit is falling fast, that the current continuing resolution that is now in suspension affirmed the sequester levels of spending that are far … Continue reading The Best Of The Dish Today
Two-thirds of an octopus’s “brains” are spread throughout its arms, which makes it an intriguing model for scientists studying the human brain: The octopus’s unusual neuronal layout allows it eight individual, flexible arms to act and carry out instructions on their own — and in coordination with one another. That means the central brain doesn’t … Continue reading Octo-Brains
