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The neuroscience of music: My latest piece for the New York Times
Global warming has long been a bigger public issue in Europe than in the US, and pundits have always assumed this is because Europe is more left-wing than America. But what if it’s simply because the geography of Europe makes it more likely that people notice global warming?
That’s the contention of an interesting — if too-short — piece in the Week in Review section of today’s New York Times. Andrew Revkin points out that the countries of Western Europe often experiences extreme weather events together, such as the 2003 heat wave that killed thousands. Since the same thing is happening to diverse populations, it makes it more likely that they’ll suspect something is awry in the global climate. In the US, however, precisely the opposite happens: The structure of the continent makes it such that a homogenous population regularly experiences totally different vicissitudes of weather in different regions. For example, in the last few weeks, Denver has been ploughed under with freaky levels of snow, while New York basks in a September-like balm. This has to do with geography:
In the lower 48 states, he said, conditions are shaped by variable patterns of warming and cooling in the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, the atmospheric blockade created by the Rockies and other factors.
This essentially guarantees that the country is almost always experiencing more than one so-called climate anomaly at a time, Dr. MacCracken said.
“People live the weather,” he said. “Climate is a mental construct.”
Interesting point. I’d love to see it a bit more fleshed out, though.
I'm Clive Thompson, a writer on science, technology, and culture. This blog collects bits of offbeat research I'm running into, and musings thereon.
Currently, I'm a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine and a columnist for Wired magazine. I also write for Fast Company and Wired magazine's web site, among other places. Email or AOL IM me (pomeranian99) to say hi or send in something strange!
A long German word for “noticing when ads are being customized based on your surfing history”
“El Ajedrecista” — an analog chess-playing computer from 1912
“How did you find my site?” and Vannevar Bush’s memex
» visit the Collision Detection archives
May 20, 2011 » 02:28 PM
From Christopher Kennedy’s very droll book “Neitzsche’s Horse”.
July 28, 2010 » 07:35 AM
“Wr” - S
July 06, 2010 » 10:05 AM
My Xbox broke, and I was trying to Google some possible technical solutions, when I noticed that Google appears to be encouraging me to make a typo. I suppose it’s possible that Google’s algorithms know that typing “wont” instead of “won’t” would produce better results.
June 29, 2010 » 05:00 PM
On the other hand, when I tried the test for multitasking, I was pretty abysmal. I performed worse than people who identify themselves as heavy multitaskers, and those who identify as low multitaskers.
June 29, 2010 » 04:58 PM
I finally got around to trying out the interactive “test your distractability and multitasking” page at the New York Times, which they put up alongside their story earlier this month about how computer distractions are eroding our lives.
According to the test, I guess I have good focus — I’m not very distractable!
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