Pacific Standard May-June 2013 Cover

July/August 2012

IF A BATTERED ECONOMY AND CEASELESS WAR ARE THE STORIES OF THE DECADE, the stress they have produced in the national psyche is the health story of the decade. We are only just starting to focus on the anxiety and mental anguish both have inflicted. Which is why we’ve included a special section on stress in this issue. Read More

The Hour of London

July 20, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
PS July-August 2012 AbstractLondon

As the best athletes in the world descend on London for this summer's Olympic Games next week, they'll learn what outsiders from Hadrian to Madonna have discovered: Britain's capital is, and always has been, a place that ferments cultural and scientific change. Whether it's filling the role as the financial hub of Europe, or exporting the ideas of the internationally acclaimed academics from its 43 universities—the highest concentration of any city in Europe—London leads the way. In the current issue of Pacific Standard, we offer an off-beat primer on the disparate research coming ... Read More

To Find America, Follow the Yellow Brick Road

July 4, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
Scene from 1939 movie 'The Wizard of Oz'

ALISSA BURGER GREW UP on an Iowa farm, not all that far from Dorothy Gale’s Kansas. So it’s no surprise that, even more than most children of her generation, she was enthralled by the yearly telecast of The Wizard of Oz. “I was absolutely terrified of the sequence where the face of the Wicked Witch pops up in the magic ball,” she recalls. “I would always cover my eyes and scream.” Burger remains Oz-obsessed decades later, but the fear she felt has been replaced by fascination. In her new book, The Wizard of Oz as American Myth (McFarland, $35), she charts the various ... Read More

Silence’s Loud Goodbye

July 3, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
Two speakers taped to trees in woods

DON MCLEAN WAS WRONG; there was never a day the music died. It was silence that departed, after a death by a thousand cuts—musical and otherwise. World population and its handmaidens of industrialization, from lawn mowers to airliners, Jet Skis to fracking, ensured its demise. Efforts to revive silence, such as the U.S. government’s Noise Control Act of 1972, themselves passed away quietly; funding for that law ended in 1981. Local ordinances exist, but most attack errant leaf blowers rather than create comprehensive quiet. Dispatches from around the world report ever-louder ... Read More

Bring on the Noise

July 2, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
Thaddeus Cahill's chair-mounted headphones

BEFORE BEATS BY DR. DRE, before the iPod’s earbuds, before even the Sony Walkman’s headphones, there was Thaddeus Cahill’s chair-mounted device for “individual-ear reproduction” of recorded sound. With radio becoming ever more popular, the New York City-based inventor thought people should be able to listen without disturbing others. He applied for a patent in 1931, catching the attention of Everyday Science and Mechanics magazine. (Published by radio pioneer and futurist Hugo Gernsback.) Personal listening devices have actually been around as long as radio itself. Radio ... Read More

From AT&T to ADHD

June 29, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
Cartoon mouse with cellphone

Dr. Hugh Taylor was curious when he read a report saying mothers of kids with behavioral problems seem to spend a lot of time on cell phones. Did the moms’ chatty habits affect the children’s behavior, he wondered, or could cell phones themselves somehow cause the kid’s attention deficit disorders? Taylor, a Yale School of Medicine professor who studies fetal development, decided to find out. So he got cell phones for 33 expecting mice. The professor suspended the phones a few inches above the rodents' feeding bottles. Then he left them on an active, though silent, call for the ... Read More

Researchers & Discoveries: An Eye for Medicine

June 28, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
Babak Parviz

WHAT’S HIS DEAL? Developing microelectronic-equipped contact lenses that will be able to read vital signs, like a diabetic’s blood-sugar levels, by way of fluids on the eye. “A lot of things in the body can be monitored via chemical parameters, and a lot of them show up on the surface of the eye. This could be a fundamentally new tool for medicine.” HOW WOULD THAT WORK? Tiny sensors in the lens would continuously track glucose levels in the eye’s tear fluid, then transmit the information, via an embedded computer chip, to a doctor. Or even to the wearer, through the lens itself. ... Read More

Mammograms: The Year of Living Dangerously?

June 27, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
Abstract graphic representation of breast cancer screening

MY 65-YEAR-OLD MOTHER’S BREAST CANCER was detected after a routine annual mammogram. In the weeks after diagnosis, we were ushered in to see radiologists, a medical oncologist, a surgical oncologist, the insurance liaison, and more nurses than I could count. They all smiled reassuringly and told my mother something resembling, “The good news is that we caught it early!” Those words were a comfort. “Early detection” has become a rallying cry for women, breast cancer survivors, and supporters alike, across the United States and beyond. As breast cancer has evolved into one of the ... Read More

Freeing Tangled Leviathans: The Whale Wrangler

June 25, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
Detangling whale

THE GOBBLER GUILLOTINE WAS DESIGNED IN TEXAS for shooting turkeys. To the best of anyone’s knowledge, Scott Landry is the only person who has successfully used the four-bladed arrow to shoot at whales on the high seas. Landry’s choice of weapon is a far cry from the traditional heavy iron harpoon, but it has proved effective for his goal: freeing the animals from yards of tangled rope and fishing gear. Landry will tell you that he knows little about hunting turkeys. But the 42-year-old marine biologist has repurposed tools of that trade for a different kind of hunt. He is the director ... Read More

Have You Heard the One About the Guy with Prostate Cancer?

June 25, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
Man talking to therapist

When I was a graduate student in psychology, I worked at a cancer center. One of my responsibilities was to meet with new patients as they received, drip by drip over many hours, chemotherapy infusions. In one corner of the clinic, a woman I’ll call Lisa was battling breast cancer. Lisa’s friends had organized a complex and complete support tree for her, with meal delivery, dog walking, child care, and bill paying. Lisa snuggled into a quilt they had stitched for her. Lisa was never alone. Nearby sat “Rick,” a sinewy, divorced man in his early 60s, fresh from his latest surgery for ... Read More

Aversion to Therapy: Why Won’t Men Get Help?

June 25, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
Image of stressed-out man

Twenty years ago, Bob Smith’s wife questioned his commitment as a father. She demanded he see a psychiatrist. Smith (not his real name) grudgingly obliged. He went. Once. “The idea of paying some guy $300 an hour to massage your issues,” says Smith, a Los Angeles-area attorney in his early 60s, “is ridiculous.” In fact, the psychiatrist Smith talked to found plenty of issues to massage. His 45-minute assessment suggested that Smith was toting a veritable luggage store full of psychological baggage that needed unpacking. He recommended twice-weekly counseling sessions. Smith ... Read More