Author, kayak designer, historian of science and technology, unconventional career. Despite (or because of) the absence of formal education, Dyson has always found time for intellectual pursuits, working on the edges of the academic establishment but con

We humans use a combination of our five senses — sight, sound, touch, smell, and taste — to navigate the everyday world. Among those who operate without the benefit of one or more of these senses, the blind and the deaf have our immediate sympathy. But w

John Hull began losing his eyesight at the age of thirteen when he developed cataracts. By the time he was seventeen he was blind in his left eye. Vision in his right remained adequate until his mid-thirties, when it, too, began deteriorating, necessitat

‘The Vow’’ is the rare chick flick that’s about brain trauma in addition to being a cause of it. It’s what you might get if the eminent neurologist-author Oliver Sacks tried his hand at a True Romance comic, and, as such, it’s quite watchable date-night

‘The Vow’’ is the rare chick flick that’s about brain trauma in addition to being a cause of it. It’s what you might get if the eminent neurologist-author Oliver Sacks tried his hand at a True Romance comic, and, as such, it’s quite watchable date-night

In a world filled with madness, it is only natural that there be places where the people with severe issues go and reside. Travel through over 70 U.S. mental institutions in 30 states from the comfort of your own home with a copy of. Its pages are fille

Direct Red: A surgeon’s story by Gabriel Weston is fabulous. Half-memoir, half fictionalised episodes in a surgeon’s life, written from experience. Annabel, Yes, I listened to a radio dramatisation of that and then went to hear her speak. It is scary to

Neurologist and author Oliver Sacks provides an enlightening explanation of hallucinations experienced by his patients, which highlights the disjunction between the visual areas of the brain and the process of going blind. Sacks explains that such halluc

It seems Hollywood doesn't know what on Earth to do with Katherine Heigl. Her career as a rom-com star seems to be dwindling fast, with "One For The Money" opening in third last week (thanks to a Groupon promotion) to bigger numbers than expected, but st

Why do we create these fantasies about autistic people having superpowers? We talked to a few experts to try and find out. In Touch, Sutherland plays Martin Bohm, a man whose wife was killed on 9/11. His “emotionally challenged” son Jake is mute, unable

Grown-ups sit round dinner tables and actually discuss which would be worse to lose: sight or hearing? Can they see themselves? Can they hear themselves? Nick Coleman wasn't given the choice. He plonked down two cups of tea, put his head back on the pill

Gather round, Zuskateers, and you shall hear the tale of Clang!2 - White Privilege. If you will recall, in Report the First, Zuska looked deep inside her own brain and found a squirming pile of sexist maggots gnawing away at her will to transform the wor

She referred to herself as a feather on the breath of God, and ‘wretched, indeed more than wretched I my womanly condition’, but this belied her tremendous strength of will and purpose, her creative stamina, her charisma. Hildegard von Bingen is one of t

The fact that Temple Grandin has designed equipment used in almost half of all cattle processing facilities in North America leading to a significantly improved level of animal welfare would be reason enough to justify the long list of awards and accolad

What would you do if you lost the ability to speak? How would you survive if one of your five senses stopped functioning properly? For instance, if you lost all depth perception or the ability to recognize faces or shapes would you feel crippled? See al

In Mark 22-26, Jesus heals a blind man at Bethsaida. Oliver Sacks suggested the particular significance of this event to me in his book, An Anthropologist on Mars. There, he refers to this passage in his discussion of those blind from birth, or nearly

In honor of the endings and beginnings at this time of the year and the personal and professional resolutions that each of us aspire to for the future, it is fascinating to look to the life of the founder of modern psychology, Sigmund Freud. A recent ent

The novelist Jonathan Lethem has been on my to-read list for a while, and I finally got around to reading his acclaimed 1999 novel “Motherless Brooklyn,” which won the National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction, as well as the Gold Dagger award for c

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