Bill Keller, "Stop Whining," That's Not How Brains Work

“Here are two facts: (1) we now know from the new science of attention and the most recent findings in neuroscience that our brain is not, as was previously thought, an inheritance that come with all of its components fixed and certain; the brain is a learning organism and that means it is constantly changed by its environment, by what it experiences, by its interactions. But (2) except in B-horror movies (‘The Brain that Wouldn’t Die’ or ‘The Brain from Planet Arous’ and so forth), the brain doesn’t power itself and it doesn’t power us. The brain R us. That is, what we experience our brain experiences.”
 — HASTAC co-founder, Duke prof and MacArthur Foundation advisor Cathy Davidson just couldn’t let that last terrible column from Times executive editor Bill Keller pass.