Avoiding Cancer: What works and what doesn’t

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No Comments 13 November 2009

A New Interpretation of Dreams

image The NY Times published today a facinating article on how scientists have developed a new interpretatin what dreams are for.

A Dream Interpretation: Tuneups for the Brain (By BENEDICT CAREY)
It’s snowing heavily, and everyone in the backyard is in a swimsuit, at some kind of party: Mom, Dad, the high school principal, there’s even an ex-girlfriend. And is that Elvis, over by the pinata?
Uh-oh. Dreams are so rich and have such an authentic feeling that scientists have long assumed they must have a crucial psychological purpose. To Freud, dreaming provided a playground for the unconscious mind; to Jung, it was a stage where the psyche’s archetypes acted out primal themes. Newer theories hold that dreams help the brain to consolidate emotional memories or to work though current problems, like divorce and work frustrations. Yet what if the primary purpose of dreaming isn’t psychological at all?

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No Comments 10 November 2009

Human evolution: Why we love Music?

image I have been waiting for a piece on the origins of music for a long time. Read this interesting report in the Economist on the scientific debates on why most of us like music so much.

Biologists are addressing one of humanity’s strangest attributes, its all-singing, all-dancing culture.

“IF MUSIC be the food of love, play on, give me excess of it.” And if not? Well, what exactly is it for? The production and consumption of music is a big part of the economy. The first use to which commercial recording, in the form of Edison’s phonographs, was to bring music to the living rooms and picnic tables of those who could not afford to pay live musicians.

 

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Diary, Must Know

No Comments 21 January 2009

Meet the real Sarah Palin

image One of the reason John F. Kennedy was so popular were his great looks. I can understand why evangelical Republicans are ecstatic about the nomination of Palin. But why she is popular in the entire Republican party cannot be explained by her record. I suspect her good looks and her outgoing personality are an important factor. But now the vetting of Sarah Palin has started in earnest. The New York Times sent a number of reporters to Alaska to find out about her history as a mayor and governor. (Click on “More” to read the story “In Office, Palin Hired Friends and Hit Critics.”)The American people have re-elected George Bush after it was very clear what kind of administration he was running. It will be interesting to see whether they will elect someone to be a heartbeat away from the presidency who has so similar instincts as George Bush junior.

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No Comments 13 September 2008

Obama gives an electrifying speech in Denver

image What a finale! A few days ago after Hillary Clinton gave her magnificent speech, I worried that Obama speech would appear anticlimatic. But he outperformed everyone else at the Cconvention and reminded us why he is the person to lead America forward. Even readers of the Wall Street Journal agreed that he gave a fantastic speech. Click on “More” to see details of the reader poll. 

You read watch or read the most highly watched convention speech on NYtimes.com.
You can see the introductory film preceding the speech on Youtube.com
and read Andrew Sullivan’s reaction.

 

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No Comments 29 August 2008

The Neural Buddhists

image This is one of DAVID BROOKS’S best columns. He has done a lot of reading for you to be able to write about a revolution in our understanding of our brain and what this means for our view of the meaning of life. Enjoy.

In 1996, Tom Wolfe wrote a brilliant essay called

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No Comments 13 May 2008

The latest recommenations for achieving an optimal diet

image I have been improving my diet over the past five years. But the new scientific recommendations prompted me to re-evaluate my eating habits. I did not know that processed meet like salami is so bad for you while red meat properly cooked is healthy. Click on “More” to see what foods you should eat or avoid.

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No Comments 11 November 2007

Are men and women different in how they chose their dates?

image Ray Fisman filed this interesting report in Slate:When economists began broadly applying their theories of rational choice-making, love and marriage were among the first areas they colonized. Nobel Prize winner Gary Becker laid the foundations back in 1973 with his two-part article “A Theory of Marriage.” Becker imagined society as an immense cocktail party with rational-minded daters searching for the most desirable partner who would have them. His analysis predicted a pattern of “positive assortative matching,” where men and women of similar desirability would partner with one another.

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No Comments 7 November 2007

News from the battle between Science and Religion

image As readers of this web diary know, I love the New Yorker magazine. It happens rarely that I truly dislike an article in what I consider the best magazine in the world. A few weeks ago, however, I was quite disappointed with Jane Kramer’s portrait of Pope Benedict. I felt that she was uncharacteristically off mark, failing to get at the core of what makes Benedict tick. As I wrote previously, the tragedy of the present Pope is that when having to choose between his deep love for the traditions of the church and his love for humans beings, he sides with the traditions. But he is clearly not a reactionary nor a fool.  A few days ago, I read an summary of what the Pope says about evolution in a recent German language book on Creation and Evolution, which was based on a conference attended by the leader of the catholic church. The Pope, confirming my sense that he is a darn smart fellow, did not claim that the Darwin’s theory of evolution is wrong, but simply holds that it does not explain everything.  Even a hardcore Darwinist can agree this position. Last night I read a fantastic article in the Economist surveying the present backlash against Darwinism, which did a much better job in portraying Benedict’s intellectual positions.  For me the most interesting part of the article was to see how the catholic church itself is divided on how to deal with Darwin’s insights. Father George Coyne takes the most interesting position.

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No Comments 27 April 2007

God and the Human Brain

image The reason why people who are convinced of the existence of God are called believers and not knowers is that there is so little direct evidence that God is in charge of our lives. If God appeared in the sky over Manhattan and announced for all New Yorkers to hear that he or she (God may be a she after all) was going to lift the Empire Sate Buidling and to drop it in Mecca, and made good on his or her deed, nobody could dispute the power of this giant. The spy satellites now encircling the globe would record this amazing deed and those who still think it was a hoax could travel to New York and Mecca to verify God’s action. Psychologists have recently conducted experiments that shed light on why people all over the world subscribe to the idea that there is a God who micro-manages our fates although God does not appear in public outings of the kind I just described.  Sharon Begly reported on these illuminating experiments in an article published in the Wall Street Journal.

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No Comments 10 April 2006

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