Paul Ford

  • culture June 19, 2013

    Time Warped by Claudia Hammond

    The psychology of plain old everyday psychological time, the real, non-science-fictional stuff passing us by is the subject of British science journalist Claudia Hammond’s lively book Time Warped: Unlocking the Mysteries of Time Perception. It’s a book about mental apparatus. How do we know a moment has passed? Hammond’s best bet is that we use the brain’s dopamine system along with a few other brain components. “We are creating our own perception of time,” she writes, “based on the neuronal activity in our brains with input from the physiological symptoms of our bodies.” The answer is not in

  • culture May 07, 2012

    The Defense Never, Ever Rests

    Sergio De La Pava, author of the big, motley debut novel A Naked Singularity, has a great ear. You can almost see it, this giant ear about five times too big sticking out of his head, plucking voices out of the air. The book’s 44-page first chapter is a terrific yarn about the court system in Manhattan. Our hero, Casi, a 24-year-old public defender in New York City, describes one defendant after another, each a specific and sorrowful creature.