Edward Tenner

Thomas L. Friedman's column on Tom Watson, "59 Is the New 30," is a reminder that there continues to be a global pensions storm as well as a US health insurance debate.George Magnus pleads for (further) raising retirement age in the Financial Times:Average life expectancy at birth in advanced economies is expected to rise from 77 to 83 in the next few decades. The population of over-65s is expected to double, while the number of over-80s will grow even faster.… More »

Dan Akst's post on height opens up one of the most intriguing topics in social science -- not the well-established fact that tall people earn more than short people but why this is so. The authors of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) study he cites say it's because tall people have been more likely to have reached their full cognitive development -- in other words, their IQs grew faster, too. But that can't be the whole explanation. The world's… More »

A Northern New Jersey newspaper reports today on the latest in forensics, use of DNA evidence to solve burglaries and other property crimes:"Everyone now has a couple of Q-Tips in their crime scene kits," said North Bergen Police Lt. Frank Cannella, referring to the swabs used to absorb saliva, blood and other bodily fluids that contain DNA.And that makes the arrest of Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr., one of the best known members of the Harvard faculty all the… More »

The Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin proposes in the Washington Post: Let the lunar surface be the ultimate global commons while we focus on more distant and sustainable goals to revitalize our space program. Our next generation must think boldly in terms of a goal for the space program: Mars for America's future. I am not suggesting a few visits to plant flags and do photo ops but a journey to make the first homestead in space: an American colony on a new… More »

Bloggers are agog about the intellectual property outrage du jour, withdrawal of the works of George Orwell himself not only from the Kindle catalog but from the computers of "purchasers" who have just discovered that they were only licensees whose rights could be rescinded by refunding their money. (They already knew, presumably, that they could not resell or donate their copies.) David Pogue notes on his New York Times site:apparently the publisher changed its… More »

Citing an aside in David Brooks's column on the Sotomayor hearings,It is amazing how many people who suffer parental loss between the ages of 9 and 13 go on to become astounding high achievers.a reader in India writes.I would enjoy knowing the other examples that Brooks had in mind when he remarked that often those losing a parent in their childhood grow up to become high achievers. I can think of many such people in my own life, but would like to know the public… More »

Some further thoughts based on readers' comments on my original post, and other recent articles: From Seth:It's true that funding agencies do tend to stress low-risk projects, but this approach makes sense. Scientific achievements most often come from slow and steady progress, punctuated by an occasional major discovery. The major discoveries can't occur in a vacuum; they rely on having that foundation of knowledge that was built up over prior years.You're right… More »

The Pew Research Center report on attitudes toward science in American life is intriguing. The masses appear be more respectful of scientists than vice versa. But the public is also more worried about the state of US research than scientists themselves are. The proportion of the public considering science America's "greatest achievement" has declined from 47 percent in 1999 to 27 percent now. While nearly half of scientists (49 percent) consider US science "the… More »

The turmoil over the Vietnam War didn't involve only Ivy Leaguers like McGeorge Bundy and Walt Rostow. It was also a civil war among Berkeleyans. As McNamara told a campus interviewer:Neither my mother nor father had ever graduated from college. My father hadn't gone beyond the 8th grade, and they were determined that I would go to college. I took the entrance exams for Stanford; at that time (this was 1932 and 1933), very few first-class universities… More »

The New York Times reports on a possible incandescent renaissance that could modify traditional bulbs to capture waste heat as light, improving their efficiency by 30, 50, or even 100 percent to qualify for new energy standards. Score one for technology-forcing legislation -- at least for now. It's doubtful that even with higher energy prices, entrepreneurs and established lighting companies would be investing in a high-priced replacement for such a homely,… More »

Nova's Science Now on Tuesday evening seemed to promise me a miracle cure. When I was in first grade and the class was singing, my teacher told me to mouth the words. And my own mother seemed to accept the verdict. Today's parents would probably march off to the principal's office to protest such a withering blow to self-esteem. But for us, it became a family joke. The announcement's reference to "pitch-correcting software" seemed to promise a vocal training… More »

The world press is marking the 35th anniversary of the bar code. So many people have grown up with it that it no longer appears to be the sinister innovation it once seemed; as my friend Jackson Lears remarked to the New York Times:[W]ith the advent of Google Earth and global tracking devices, "it now seems comparatively innocuous."The bar code "has almost acquired a certain antique appeal as an early expression of the sorting and categorizing impulse in… More »

Whatever the causes of the Washington DC Metro crash that took the lives of nine people and injured scores of others, our first thoughts will be with the victims' families, and our reaction will be Never Again.But there is another way of looking at casualties, statistical and actuarial, a style of thinking prized and highly paid in the Capital and around the Beltway and in academia. To the humanist rhetoric of infinite human worth, the idea that when a person dies… More »

Today's New York Times has a tribute to the steadfastness of the Ford clan in the crisis of the American auto industry, despite the loss of more than 90 percent of the market price of their stake in the company:The Fords have had their tense times, most recently in 2007 when a few family members tried -- unsuccessfully -- to hire a Wall Street firm to advise the family on possible exit strategies. But as they have done for decades after their meeting last January,… More »

What's the secret of the lines for the Apple 3G iPhone when people are cutting back on so much else? Sure, it makes them more productive. But there's more to it than that. Bad Times are good news for design. Manufacturers turn to new looks hoping to stir anxious consumers. My friend the historian of technology Jeffrey Meikle has noted that planned obsolescence in the automobile industry began during the now-overshadowed recession of 1927 -- the height of the 1920s… More »

Champion of common sense or crowned demagogue, the Prince of Wales is making headlines again -- this time for engineering a veto of the architect Richard Rogers' (Lord Rogers of Riverside) plan for urban redevelopment on the prime site of the former Chelsea Barracks. For the prosecution, Hugh Pearman in the Wall Street Journal: The "Shard" tower, by Mr. Rogers's former partner Renzo Piano -- with whom Mr. Rogers designed Paris's Pompidou Center in the 1970s --… More »

Sunday's New York Times Week in Review section taught me a new term I'd like to propose for admission to the English language: gosudarstvennik. In fact, I'll follow the Times editors in giving its naturalization a boost by not italicizing it henceforth. It's a mouthful -- reminds me of Florence King's quip that today's American editors would advise Fyodor Dostoevsky to change his name to Ted Dost -- but nonetheless an intriguing concept. In a piece on Avigdor… More »

Talk about bombs bursting in air! I'm not sure how serious Michael Kinsley really is about replacing the Star-Spangled Banner as our national anthem. It's hardly an original suggestion, and he doesn't seem enthusiastic about most of the usual alternatives (except possibly for "America the Beautiful") he ticks off in his column. He likes "God Bless America," for example, but he praises it as "jolly and un-hymn-like" -- surely a left-handed compliment for a genre… More »

The accused killer of a security guard in the Holocaust Museum in Washington, James W. von Brunn, followed a trajectory sadly common on the racist and terrorist fringe: good family, education at top schools, promising beginnings in the arts, science, or engineering -- and a puzzling slide into infamy. Think American Nazi Party founder George Lincoln Rockwell (Brown), the Unabomber Theodore Kaczynski (Harvard, Michigan), the Sept. 11 ringleader Mohammed Atta (Cairo… More »

Fast food restaurants have pointed to the new, healthier items on their menus. And a few years ago, skeptics found the some of the salads contained more calories and fat than burgers in the same establishments.But suppose that they are offering really healthy salads now. What if, in giving people a choice, these dishes really push diners toward the unhealthiest alternatives? That's called "vicarious goal fulfillment," and it's what Gavan Fitzsimons of Duke… More »