...is not even a remotely true headline, but we can't resist a pop cultural allusion. However, if you rearrange the words a bit, suddenly the truth snaps into focus, like a section of sagittal tissue on a microscope slide: the Wired story is about the brain-mapping going on at Paul Allen's Brain Institute. Science writer Jonah Lehrer takes you on a tour of the facility, explaining the "brain atlas" concept that maps what we know about the brain, from "gene expression to a cellular level." Also, there are robots, working day and night on mouse brains. It's pretty ingenious, but for all our sakes, we hope they never get loose. more ›

Jonah Lehrer is all laconic, low-key business behind the podium, despite his emo-rocker look on his homepage. A little more bedhead and some ink, and he could make a third bandmate for We Are Scientists. (Tambourine?) He was Town Hall last night talking about his second book, How We Decide, which, it turns out, has a lot to do with dopamine-driven emotions, rather than Vulcan-style rationality. more ›

TRUNK SHOW: Downtown's Art/Not Gallery hosts Seattle's first ever non-human art show, A New Breed of Art: Creations by Woodland Park Zoo's Animals. The Puget Sound chapter of the American Association of Zoo Keepers curated the exhibit, which features around twenty pieces of art painted by the zoo's elephants and orangutans. The painting sessions are part of the zoo's enrichment program to keep the animals physically and mentally stimulated, while also encouraging their inner van Goghs. The exhibit runs through March 5th. more ›

The soul-crushingly young Jonah Lehrer was at Town Hall last night, his mere presence deriding our wasted time on the planet. At 25, he's been a line cook, a lab tech, and a Rhodes Scholar, and he's now an author (Proust Was a Neuroscientist), editor-at-large for SEED, and of course a blogger. (We were a pantry chef one night, and we learned how to "make" a crème brûlée with a propane blowtorch, but so far no Rhodes Scholarship, no book deal.) By contrast, Lou Dobbs was upstairs, giving inspiration for late-in-life windbags/rabble-rousers, so perhaps it evened out. more ›

Jonah Lehrer, editor of Seed Magazine and author of the blog The Frontal Cortex has written a terrific book centered around this thesis: Creative people discovered truths about how our mind works well before scientists did. more ›

In a well-paced one-hour lecture, Matthew Brzezinski provided a summary of Red Moon Rising, his new book about the Sputnik launch and its explosive political aftermath. more ›

This will no doubt turn out to be the easiest Science Lecture to get a seat at: next week brings Harvard psychology profesor Steven Pinker (9/26) and double-helixer James Watson (9/27), and then in November there's Jonah Lehrer, author of Proust Was a Neuroscientist (11/13). more ›