Habitual texters may not only cheat their existing relationships, they can also limit their ability to form future ones since they don’t get to practice the art of interpreting nonverbal visual cues. Jeffrey Kluger Read Quote
What makes spinal-cord injuries as devastating as they are is that everything about them plays out in absolutes: they are instantaneous, utterly disabling and horribly permanent. Jeffrey Kluger Read Quote
Psychopaths know the technical difference between right and wrong – which is one of the reasons their insanity pleas in criminal cases so rarely succeed; they just fail to act on that knowledge. Jeffrey Kluger Read Quote
Odds are you know some narcissists. Odds are they’re smart, confident and articulate. They make you laugh, they make you think; the first time you met, they probably charmed the pants off of you – perhaps even literally. The odds are also that that spell didn’t last. Jeffrey Kluger Read Quote
Operating-room errors hold a special terror for patients, if only because they seem like the most avoidable kind of complications. The occasional horror stories of patients who have the wrong leg removed or the wrong knee replaced generate the most headlines, as do tales of patients whose identities are mixed up entirely. Jeffrey Kluger Read Quote
Some of the most rewarding times my brothers and I have are when all of us get together, and we can see what we’ve been building genetically and culturally. Jeffrey Kluger Read Quote
Older siblings get more total-immersion mentoring with their parents before younger siblings come along. As a result, they get an IQ and linguistic advantage because they are the exclusive focus of their parents’ attention. Jeffrey Kluger Read Quote
The brain sits snugly inside the skull, but it’s not a completely flush fit – there is still a layer of fluid between bone and soft tissue that serves as a natural shock absorber. Some shocks, however, can’t be absorbed, and when the head gets clobbered too hard, the brain can twist or torque or rattle around inside its skeletal casing. Jeffrey Kluger Read Quote
When you’re your parents’ one shot at a genetic legacy, you may get to attend all the best schools, wear all the best clothes and eat all the best foods – at least relative to children in multiple-sibling households. But you also wind up with an overweening sense of your own importance. Jeffrey Kluger Read Quote
A jellyfish is little more than a pulsating bell, a tassel of trailing tentacles and a single digestive opening through which it both eats and excretes – as regrettable an example of economy of design as ever was. Jeffrey Kluger Read Quote