And all the while, the trees were balding
This is an intriguing story from Nature about another location in the brain, this one involved in metaphorical and abstract thinking. When the left angular gyru...
Author: Mary
Infinite diversity in infinite combinations
It takes all kinds, my father would say when I was growing up. It took me awhile to realize that this is literally true for living things. Look at the different...
Memory as a bridge between your selves
Recently I came home from work with my head so full of the next day’s chores that I couldn’t relax until I had made a list of all I needed to do. Th...
Augmented Animals
Here’s an unsettling article from Wired about a book called Augmented Animals by James Auger. Auger suggests that we develop devices to help animals overc...
Thinking meat in the cosmos
In astronomy, some words start out as proper nouns: Sun, Moon, Earth, Jupiter. We realized that other stars are also glowing balls of gas like our Sun, and so w...
A relationship of memory
At my mother’s funeral, someone said to me, “You know, she’s not really gone.” I’ve thought about that a lot since then. I was rai...
Genetic basis of human variety
The Edge recently published a thought-provoking essay by Armand Leroi, plus several responses from others, on the subject of the genetic factors underlying norm...
Why Thinking Meat?
I’m not sure I remember exactly when I first started to use the phrase “thinking meat”. It might have been when I was reading an article about...