This morning I checked my email and learned about a lawsuit in Texas that accuses Johnson & Johnson of misleading health officials about the risks of the anti-psychotic drug Risperdal. Yesterday I received a Wall Street Journal article detailing how the New England Journal of Medicine spiked an editorial that criticized the National Kidney Foundation […]
Sharon Begley is a science writer who makes me proud to be a science writer. I’ve known her for going on 20 years, and I’ve always admired her work. She writes a science column that appears every Friday in the Wall Street. Before joining the Journal five years ago, Sharon was the go-to science writer […]
I’ve delivered lots of whacks since starting this blog in September, in the form of my “Worst Books” lists and other posts. In this year’s few remaining days, I’d like to give out some pats. The first goes to Gene Sharp, a political scientist and the most influential living proponent of nonviolence.
In the summer […]
My wife Suzie is a witch, that is, a pagan, and since 1999 we and our kids Mac and Skye have celebrated Winter Solstice, the shortest day of the year. Four years ago I wrote an essay, “A Holiday Made for Believing,” about our ritual for the New York Times. Today is Winter Solstice, so […]
According to a poll, Discover readers think that Pluto’s demotion from planethood was the top science story of 2006. Last summer, when this “story” was dominating headlines, I attended a party in my hometown, and some perfectly nice man asked the science geek—i.e., me—what I thought about the possibility that Pluto isn’t really a planet. […]
I recently published a list of the “Ten Worst Science Books” to complement Discover’s “25 Greatest Science Books of All Time” as well as the “Stevens Greatest Science Books” list that I started compiling last summer. I’m surprised more readers didn’t whack me for innumeracy, since my “Worst” list actually contained 11 books. I said […]
By Christmas each winter for a dozen or so years, I’ve been playing hockey on frozen ponds here in my hometown of Garrison, New York. Doesn’t look like it’s going to happen this year. Two days ago, I went for a run down in Hoboken, New Jersey, where I teach, and it was so warm—in […]
To the "realists" who responded to my last post:
Oh Ye of little faith! Actually, you don’t even need faith. You merely need to know the facts, as my supposedly naive students do. Civil wars–like those in Iraq, Sri Lanka, Darfur, Colombia–have declined in number over the past decade. And war between established nations is becoming […]
Edward Rothstein, who writes a terrific culture column for the Times called "Connections," yesterday grappled with the same question that’s been absorbing me and my “War and Human Nature” students at Stevens.
In “Out of Epic Wars, Another Epic Is Born, the One Called Civilization,” Rothstein dwells on a new translation of Virgil’s epic tale […]
The official Richard Dawkins website has posted my article “The God Experiments,” along with some interesting comments. Here’s one:
I meditate weekly for about five years now… a very strong technique. And yup the experiences show all the plethora of god-experiences, zen, nirvana, brahman dreamer, the "moment" out of time where you’re everywhere and nowhere and […]