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18 and Under: Fearing a Flu Vaccine, and Wanting More of It
By PERRI KLASS, M.D., The New York Times, November 10, 2009
When I tell nonmedical friends that our clinic is vaccinating children against the H1N1 flu virus, here is what they say.
With about half, it is something like: “Oh, my God, our doctor doesn’t have it! Can you get me a dose?” And with the other half, it is something like, “Oh, my God, that brand-new vaccine — do you really think it’s safe?”
There is a peculiar duality in the collective cultural mind just now, a kind of pandemic doublethink. Other doctors I know are all eagerly having their own children immunized. Many are answering frantic calls from people desperate for the vaccine. But at the same time, we are all coming up against parents who are determined to refuse that same vaccine.
Wondering what history might have to say about this incongruous state of affairs, I called David M. Oshinsky, a professor of history at the University of Texas who wrote the Pulitzer Prize-winning “Polio: An American Story” (Oxford, 2005). Dr. Oshinsky compared the current vaccination campaign with two previous situations.
( Read More )
Observatory: North American Origins for the Falklands Wolf
By HENRY FOUNTAIN, The New York Times, November 10, 2009
The Falklands wolf has puzzled evolutionary biologists since Charles Darwin first encountered it during the voyage of the Beagle in the 1830s. It was the only native land mammal on the Falkland Islands, which are 300 miles off the coast of Argentina. No one knew how it got there or what mainland animals it was descended from — and it did not help that the wolf was hunted to extinction by 1876.
( Read More )
Mind: A Dream Interpretation: Tuneups for the Brain
By BENEDICT CAREY, The New York Times, November 10, 2009
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 piñata?
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?
( Read More )
Afloat in the Ocean, Expanding Islands of Trash
By LINDSEY HOSHAW, The New York Times, November 10, 2009
ABOARD THE ALGUITA, 1,000 miles northeast of Hawaii — In this remote patch of the Pacific Ocean, hundreds of miles from any national boundary, the detritus of human life is collecting in a swirling current so large that it defies precise measurement.
Light bulbs, bottle caps, toothbrushes, Popsicle sticks and tiny pieces of plastic, each the size of a grain of rice, inhabit the Pacific garbage patch, an area of widely dispersed trash that doubles in size every decade and is now believed to be roughly twice the size of Texas. But one research organization estimates that the garbage now actually pervades the Pacific, though most of it is caught in what oceanographers call a gyre like this one — an area of heavy currents and slack winds that keep the trash swirling in a giant whirlpool.
( Read More )
By PERRI KLASS, M.D., The New York Times, November 10, 2009
When I tell nonmedical friends that our clinic is vaccinating children against the H1N1 flu virus, here is what they say.
With about half, it is something like: “Oh, my God, our doctor doesn’t have it! Can you get me a dose?” And with the other half, it is something like, “Oh, my God, that brand-new vaccine — do you really think it’s safe?”
There is a peculiar duality in the collective cultural mind just now, a kind of pandemic doublethink. Other doctors I know are all eagerly having their own children immunized. Many are answering frantic calls from people desperate for the vaccine. But at the same time, we are all coming up against parents who are determined to refuse that same vaccine.
Wondering what history might have to say about this incongruous state of affairs, I called David M. Oshinsky, a professor of history at the University of Texas who wrote the Pulitzer Prize-winning “Polio: An American Story” (Oxford, 2005). Dr. Oshinsky compared the current vaccination campaign with two previous situations.
( Read More )
Observatory: North American Origins for the Falklands Wolf
By HENRY FOUNTAIN, The New York Times, November 10, 2009
The Falklands wolf has puzzled evolutionary biologists since Charles Darwin first encountered it during the voyage of the Beagle in the 1830s. It was the only native land mammal on the Falkland Islands, which are 300 miles off the coast of Argentina. No one knew how it got there or what mainland animals it was descended from — and it did not help that the wolf was hunted to extinction by 1876.
( Read More )
Mind: A Dream Interpretation: Tuneups for the Brain
By BENEDICT CAREY, The New York Times, November 10, 2009
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 piñata?
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?
( Read More )
Afloat in the Ocean, Expanding Islands of Trash
By LINDSEY HOSHAW, The New York Times, November 10, 2009
ABOARD THE ALGUITA, 1,000 miles northeast of Hawaii — In this remote patch of the Pacific Ocean, hundreds of miles from any national boundary, the detritus of human life is collecting in a swirling current so large that it defies precise measurement.
Light bulbs, bottle caps, toothbrushes, Popsicle sticks and tiny pieces of plastic, each the size of a grain of rice, inhabit the Pacific garbage patch, an area of widely dispersed trash that doubles in size every decade and is now believed to be roughly twice the size of Texas. But one research organization estimates that the garbage now actually pervades the Pacific, though most of it is caught in what oceanographers call a gyre like this one — an area of heavy currents and slack winds that keep the trash swirling in a giant whirlpool.
( Read More )
