November 29th, 2009 by Mel Konner
My friend and colleague Alice Schaerr Rossi, a co-founder of the National Organization for Women and one of the leading sociologists of her generation, died on November 3 at age 87.
For a few years in the ‘70s and ‘80s, I worked with her and Jane Lancaster, a distinguished anthropologist now at the University of New Mexico and editor of the journal Human Nature, on a committee of the Social Science Research Council, and both of them affected my thinking about gender. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Alice Rossi, difference feminism, gender, menstrual cycle and mood, mothers, parenting, Sex differences
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November 15th, 2009 by Mel Konner
A couple of weeks ago I posted some musings about “the self” in anticipation of being on a panel with Steven Pinker (author of The Blank Slate and The Stuff of Thought) and Noga Arikha (author of Passions and Tempers: A History of the Humours) at Tufts University. The panel, convened by Jonathan Wilson, was titled “The New Biology and the Self,” and what follows was my contribution. The graduate student referred to is Monica Chau of Emory University.
I told a very smart neurobiology graduate student named Monica yesterday that I’d been asked to speak on “The New Biology and the Self.” She said, “What’s the new biology?” I said, “I don’t know, but that’s the least of my problems. What’s the self?” Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: bioethics, brain, brain imaging, enhancement drugs, evolution, evolutionary psychology, genes, genomics, human nature, philosophy, sociobiology, the self
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November 8th, 2009 by Mel Konner
Thank goodness for a brave woman with character to spare
Five feet and four inches of pure skill and courage, Kimberly Denise Munley, at lunchtime Thursday, saved an unknown but large number of people from injury and death. She did it by running straight toward a terrorist armed with two guns blazing at her and she kept walking into that deadly barrage until both of them fell with serious wounds. Around them were the bodies of the twelve people the terrorist had murdered and at least thirty he had injured—one, it turned out, also fatally. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Fort Hood, gender, heroes, heroism, human nature, Kimberly Munley, terrorism, violence, women's roles
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November 2nd, 2009 by Mel Konner
And assuming we can answer that, how is science changing it?
Big philosophical concepts bother me, but I am expected later this week at Tufts University, where I’ll be on a panel discussing “The New Biology and the Self.” So I need to get over my reluctance to talk about the self. And it’s not the only big idea that gives me trouble.
Consciousness and free will are two other notions Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: brain imaging, consciousness, enhancement drugs, free will, genes, human nature, personal genomics, philosophy, the self
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October 26th, 2009 by Mel Konner
In breast cancer, promising approaches of twenty years ago are still…promising.
Today I talked about breast cancer to an audience already energized about Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Among other things, I told them that diseases need lobbies, and that breast cancer has one, having learned from the AIDS awareness movement, which in a momentous few years in the 1980s turned our country toward committed prevention.
But in breast cancer, science has made limited progress Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: breast cancer, cancer, disease, health, medical progress, science
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October 18th, 2009 by Mel Konner
Portrait of the scientist as a college boy
Visiting Cambridge University this week, to speak in one of the countless conferences honoring Darwin’s anniversary year, I had a chance to see the rooms he lived in as a student there. He was at Christ’s College, Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Cambridge University, Christ's College, Darwin, Darwin anniversary, Darwin's Birthday, Down House
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October 12th, 2009 by Mel Konner
Whatever we think of the choice for this years prize, the runners-up deserve some attention.
Since even Obama reacted with disbelief to the news, saying in effect what everyone else said—that it was based on expectations, not accomplishments—I thought I would look into other nominees who were in effect runners-up.
One was Hu Jia, a Chinese dissident and AIDS activist Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Ghazi bin Muhammad, Hu Jia, Irena Sendler, Morgan Tsvangirai, Nobel Peace Prize, Obama, peace, Piedad Cordoba, Politics
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October 4th, 2009 by Mel Konner
A fighter for real health reform loses with grace, grit, and compassion for all who languish outside the health care system.
Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-West Virginia) has long been one of my heroes. In 1994 I testified before a full hearing of the Senate Finance Committee, the same committee now marking up the bill to introduce health reform. Sen. Rockefeller is one of the few members who were on the committee in ’94 and are still on it now.
Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: health, health care, health reform, Jay Rockefeller, national health program, U.S. Senate Finance Committee
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September 27th, 2009 by Mel Konner
Because I was involved in health care reform in the ’90s–two books, four or five New York Times op-ed pieces, a couple of essays in Newsweek , and two testimonies before U.S. Senate committee—a lot of people ask me to help them separate fact from fiction in the current debate.
Tensions are high. When a congressman from South Carolina, long and widely known as a fool and a boor, yelled, “You lie!” Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: health, health reform, lies about health reform, medical ethics, national health program, Obama, Politics, public option, single payer
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July 28th, 2009 by Mel Konner
Prof. Mari Fitzduff, who I’m honored to call a friend, set me thinking the other day when she commented on a proposed speech I wrote for President Obama to substitute for the one he gave in Cairo. But before I share our exchange, you need to know that Mari is the director of the Conflict and Coexistence Program at Brandeis University, where she moved after many years as director of INCORE, the International Conflict Research Institute in (as she always says it to avoid taking sides) “Derry/Londonderry,” Northern Ireland. In that role she played an important part in the years and years of mediation that finally brought a blessed end to that terrible conflict. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: conflict resolution, ethnic conflict, human nature, Mari Fitzduff, one world, Politics, violence, war
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My friend and colleague Alice Schaerr Rossi, a co-founder of the National Organization for Women and one of the leading sociologists of her generation, died on November 3 at age 87.
