Ramachandran even cooler than expected

[jinian]

There's a wonderful article on V.S. Ramachandran in The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2010: "Brain Games" by John Colapinto. (The link will let you read it online if you have access to a digital New Yorker subscription, else the book has some other good stuff in it too.) I know I'm not the only Ramachandran fan around here, and his own books give hardly any idea of what a mad Renaissance type he is -- multiple Nature publications in fields tangential to his own! new species of ankylosaur recognized at a gem show, later named for him! what!

The article also conveys an amusing bit of fail by Richard Dawkins. Check this out: "Ramachandran is a latter-day Marco Polo, journeying the silk road of science to strange and exotic Cathays of the mind." Seriously, R.D.? Your subject, an ethnic Indian who lived in Bangkok as a teen, might think your metaphor is kind of ridiculous.

Colapinto, of course, also wrote As Nature Made Him, which there's been a good deal of questioning about around the trans community, but I think his journalism here seems pretty solid.

Comments

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

Ah, that makes sense. I know the case but I haven't read the book.