Articles Tweeted

Newest Picks

By the Next Olympics, Athletes May Be Getting Routine Gene Doping Tests

Overabundant skepticism about genetic manipulation in sports may be as dangerous as the hype that heralded its arrival. Alexis MadrigalAfter Ye Shiwen shocked the Olympics with her performance in the…
PUBLISHED: Aug. 3, 2012
LENGTH: 8 minutes (2000 words)

The Way It Was

In 1959, when I was a precocious smarty-pants still in grade school, I wrote a fake letter to Doris Blake, the New York Daily News advice columnist. I pretended to be a teenage girl "in trouble." I…
LENGTH: 7 minutes (1887 words)

Top 10 Longreads of 2011

6. What Really Happened Aboard Air France Flight 447Jeff Wise | Popular Mechanics | Dec. 6, 2011 | 17 minutes (4,253 words) A fatal human error, repeated over and over again, as the reader observes…
LENGTH: 1 minutes (371 words)

The Brain on Trial

On the steamy first day of August 1966, Charles Whitman took an elevator to the top floor of the University of Texas Tower in Austin. The 25-year-old climbed the stairs to the observation…
LENGTH: 4 minutes (1152 words)

What’s this public ‘engagement’ with science thing then? « through the looking glass

This is a linked-up blog-version of a talk I gave for Imperials grad school. Its all basic stuff, but I hope its useful. A few months ago, a colleague asked for my…
PUBLISHED: April 8, 2011
LENGTH: 7 minutes (1785 words)
}