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December 31, 2006
End of the Line: Closing Tabs
Three links from tabs that have been open in my laptop for most of the last week:
- Carl Zimmer in PLoS Computational Biology on the relationship between computational and molecular techniques and "natural history" approaches in biology.
- The best of Jayson Stark's Useless Information Department. A pitcher gets credited with a strikeout of a batter without the two of them ever being on the field at the same time, and other zaniness.
- A Malcolm Gladwell article that I read in 2000, long before I ever heard of Malcolm Gladwell. In reality, I don't really like Gladwell all that much, but this piece is really interesting. It covers the history of the birth control pill. Read it for the parts that explain this bit:
It remains, in other words, a drug shaped by the dictates of the Catholic Church--by John Rock's desire to make this new method of birth control seem as natural as possible. This was John Rock's error. He was consumed by the idea of the natural. But what he thought was natural wasn't so natural after all, and the Pill he ushered into the world turned out to be something other than what he thought it was.
My impression in general that Gladwell simplifies things a bit much sometimes, so maybe a grain of salt is advisable, but it's very interesting nonetheless.
Posted by todd at December 31, 2006 9:11 AM
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