David Dobbs
Science

Slut Genes, Rats, 16th Notes, and Writing: Neuron Culture's November Hits

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KoQb8vb4blA Neuron Culture’s hits in November Enough With the ‘Slut Gene’ Already: Behaviors Ain’t Traits By failing to distinguish traits from behaviors, we court confusion over how evolution works — and how underlying traits can mix with experience or other traits to lead to a huge variety of behavior. Yet countless stories about behavioral genetics make […]

Neuron Culture's hits in November

Enough With the ‘Slut Gene’ Already: Behaviors Ain’t Traits

By failing to distinguish traits from behaviors, we court confusion over how evolution works — and how underlying traits can mix with experience or other traits to lead to a huge variety of behavior. Yet countless stories about behavioral genetics make just this mistake.

“It’s Just a F**king Little 16th Note. But You Have to Play It.” This carried over from October to be #3 in November.

“You’re skipping through that first D. I know it’s just a fucking little sixteenth note, but you have to play the whole thing. I don’t even mean the time. You’re actually giving it enough time. But you’re playing over it instead of through it. You have to play right through the center of it. It’s a leading note, but it’s not just a step into the room. It is the room, and you have to put us there. Play it. Play through every single note in the piece.”

The Only Time Gabriel Garcia Marquez Saw Ernest Hemingway

Somehow this completes a circle: Hemingway, Garcia commenting on Hemingway’s bullfighter Spanish, and the Colombian wine steward, beaming, bringing me the news of Garcia’s own triumph.

Rats Shall Follow Ye, and Ye Shall Eat Them

Rats seem to be a pest that somehow would have gone before us, or invaded from afar; it seems like something inflicted upon us. Yet they appear to have followed us much as jet-trail trails jet.

How Charles Darwin Seduced Asa Gray

As [Gray] put it to Joseph Hooker in 1858, “[I] sympathize more with & estimate higher the slow induction that leads step by step to sound conclusions so far as they go, than the bolder flights of the genius which so often leads the possessor to mount three pairs of steps only to jump out of the garret window.”

The idea that species were God’s “direct handiwork” was starting to feel like a jump out the window.

Vid at the top: Roots of Breakdance (mashup with "It's Like That" by Run DMC). Has nothing to do with what I ran this month. Just one of my favorite things on the intertoobz, ever.