Category Archives: Science

Notebook

Posted on December 4, 2017 by

The temperature that night was -75.8 degrees, and I will not pretend it did not convince me that Dante was right when he placed the circles of ice below the circles of fire. Still we slept sometimes, and always lay … Continue reading →

Posted in History, Literature, Notebook, Science, Uncategorized | Tagged , , ,

Notebook

Posted on October 23, 2017 by

I wanted to ask him  if he was writing, Was he finding the time? For years, as a busy physician, I’d struggled to find the time to write. I wanted to tell him that a famous writer, commiserating about this … Continue reading →

Posted in Literature, Notebook, Science, Uncategorized | Tagged , ,

The man who stopped remembering

Posted on August 20, 2016 by

In today’s Times, my review of “Patient H.M”,  Luke Dittrich’s book about the strange life of Henry Molaison: He remains a ghost in the end. The only photograph of the adult Henry Molaison to appear in this ambitious, impassioned but frustrating book … Continue reading →

Posted in Reviews, Science | Tagged , , , ,

Notebook

Posted on August 18, 2016 by

That was the whole point, after all. To do with a few swipes of a blade what years on an analyst’s couch, or in an asylum’s cell, failed to accomplish. Freeman expended a great deal of energy trying to gather … Continue reading →

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Notebook

Posted on October 27, 2015 by

You become a doctor for what you imagine to be the satisfaction of the work, and that turns out to be the satisfaction of competence. It is a deep satisfaction very much like the one that a carpenter experiences in … Continue reading →

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Notebook

Posted on September 11, 2015 by

[I]t was a long established rule in Cambridge colleges that wives — especially wives — were banned from High Table. High Table was the preserve of the Fellows who cultivated self-importance with the same exquisite care that lesser mortals might … Continue reading →

Posted in Education, Notebook, Science, Uncategorized | Tagged , , ,

A social media health warning

Posted on January 18, 2015 by

Multi-tasking is the enemy. I should pin this article above my desk, but of course, I’m too busy to print it up. And who prints articles when you can just tweet them and pick up some much-needed retweets along the … Continue reading →

Posted in Science, Social Media | Tagged , , ,

My head is still spinning

Posted on March 16, 2014 by

One of the many extraordinary stats from the Washington Post’s guide to the universe in 31 numbers: 1.3 million: The number of Earths that could fit inside the sun if it were hollow. Which somehow makes the next one seem almost manageable: 177: How many years … Continue reading →

Posted in Science