As I was saying, we vertebrates tend to have a high opinion of the big clump of neurons that sits at one end of our spinal cord. And so we should: in creatures like us, that’s where the magic happens. The bigger the clump, the more cognitively versatile the organism; remove it, and the whole…
When René Descartes searched through the human brain to find the Seat of the Soul, he settled on the pineal gland, a small endocrine organ found in nearly all vertebrates. It seemed like a good candidate, because it is a singular organ, not duplicated on each half of the brain but perched right on the midline,…
Stewart Brand usually gets credit for the quote, but apparently it was Craig Venter who said it: “If you don’t like bacteria, you’re on the wrong planet. This is the planet of the bacteria.” Actually, the second part of that, the play on Planet of the Apes, was probably lifted from the title of an…
I used to study English Literature. I did that for a decade and a half, at two universities, and eventually wrote a doctoral thesis on “Postwar American Poetry.” In all the years I spent researching poetry, nobody ever asked me why I would want to study something like that. It’s not that everybody loves poetry….
When I was eight years old, I knew what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wanted to be this guy: http://i282.photobucket.com/albums/kk273/BruceDSTaylor/madscientist_zps52710f31.jpg Forty-five years later, I finally look a bit like that. It’s not the wild hair and bulging eyes (which I’ve always had): it’s the glassware. At 53, I finally have an…
