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Say What?!
Although I grew up outside of Chicago, I’ve spent the last decade split between the East and West Coasts. Now, after 5 years in Los Angeles, my husband and I are settling into life as Michiganders....
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It’s a Zoo Out There!
Our house is filled with animals. We’ve got animal rattles, animal teethers, stuffed animals and all manner of animal-patterned clothing, towels, and bedding. Then of course there are the board books;...
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Tooling Around
Photo by zzpza on Flickr There was a time when my daughter used her hands exclusively to shovel things into her mouth. Not so anymore. For the last few months, she has been hard at work banging...
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Sandy, Science, and a New Campaign
As Tuesday’s election approaches and news coverage of super storm Sandy recedes, I’m struck by the absurdity of our current situation. While cities on the East Coast are still pumping water out of...
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At the Gates of Sleep
Now that my daughter is about to reach her first birthday, I’m in the mood to reflect on the year that just passed. Unfortunately, my recollections of it are a little fuzzy, probably because I can...
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Be the Trout
Most of the time I forget that my mother lacks a sense of smell. It’s only when I complain about something stinky or comment on a delicious smell that I remember she isn’t sharing the experience with...
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Feeling Invisible Light
Photo by Novartis AG on Flickr In my last post, I wrote about whether we can imagine experiencing a sense that we don’t possess (such as a trout’s sense of magnetic fields). Since then a study has come...
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The End of History
I just read a wonderful little article about how we think about ourselves. The paper, which came out in January, opens with a tantalizing paragraph that I simply have to share:“At every stage of life,...
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Cuddling Up with a Scimoir
You might call it a Frankenstein genre – two quite different literary genres stitched together and brought to life. For the moment, I am calling it the scimoir. The rare science memoir can be found...
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Pb on the Brain
I’ve got lead on my mind. Lead the element, not the verb; the toxic metal that used to grace every gas tank and paint can in this grand country of ours. For the most part we’ve stopped spewing lead...
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My Body or Yours?
From liztan at stock.xchng Today we’re talking bodies. Not how they look in skinny jeans or whether they can win a Tour de France without steroids. We’re talking about how it feels to have a body of...
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Remains of the Plague
The history of science is littered with bones. Since antiquity, humans have studied the remains of the dead to understand the living. The practice is as common now as ever; only the methods have...
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Flipping the Baby Switch
Rewind to last night. It was bedtime. My infant daughter was screaming and struggling in my lap while I tried to rock her to sleep. She pulled and twisted the skin on my face. She sunk her tiny teeth...
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Memory: Up in Smoke?
I recently joined a memory lab at Wayne State University. The timing seems fitting, as I’ve been doing a little memory experiment of my own of late. My father died ten years ago today and I’ve found...
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Genetics Post on DoubleXscience
I recently contributed a post to DoubleXScience, a site dedicated to all things women and science. The piece is called Armchair Genetics from Jamestown to Scott Brown and can be found here. It touches...
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Plastic and the Developing Brain
When I was pregnant with my daughter, I had enough on my mind. I didn’t have much time to think much about plastic. I knew vaguely that plastics can release estrogen-mimicking substances like...
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A New America of Mutts?
I recently wrote about my biracial daughter and public assumptions about inheritance for the blog DoubleXScience. Nearly the same day, columnist David Brooks’ op-ed piece, “A Nation of Mutts,” appeared...
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Sight Unseen
Eyelids. They come in handy for sandstorms, eye shadow, and poolside naps. You don’t see much when they’re closed, but when they’re open you have an all-access pass to the visible world around you....
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Eyes Wide Shut
In the middle of the 20th century, experimental psychologists began to notice a strange interaction between human vision and time. If they showed people flashes of light close together in time,...
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Mother’s Ruin, Moralists, and the Circuitous Path of Science
If you ask someone to draw you a roadmap of science, you’re likely to get something linear and orderly: a one-way highway, perhaps, with new ideas and discoveries converging upon it like so many...
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