Cross-Check, A Free Journal - John Horgan (The Science Writer)

How does the neural net in our skull grok something as complicated as “Rocky”? WAUWINET, AUGUST 14, 2026. I’m in a hospital room looking at a 21-year-old man looking at a laptop flashing images of action heroes, including the cinematic boxer “Rocky.” Cables loop from the back of the man’s bandaged head to a stack of blinking electronic equipment. This is one of many strange, loopy memories stirre…

Recent view from my living room. Pretty, huh? Even without rainbows, even at its most humdrum, reality should blow our minds. HOBOKEN, JULY 31, 2026.  Blame this column on Tyler and Joe, retired professors of environmental science (Tyler) and neuroscience (Joe), whom I met recently for dinner and conversation. Our powwow inspired these thoughts: What Consciousness Is For Does consciousness serve …

My idea of action is sitting on the Hoboken waterfront, drawing a picture and hanging it on my refrigerator door. HOBOKEN, JULY 26, 2026. The Odyssey keeps haunting me, just as Zendaya haunts poor Matt Damon in the movie. I fear my denunciation of Nolan’s flick reflects my envy of Odysseus. He’s a great man, I’m a little man. It doesn’t help that I’ve been binging Jack Ryan , the Amazon series. L…

Matt Damon, I mean Odysseus, is haunted by the ghost of a woman his trickery killed. Does that make him a hero? Nah. JERSEY CITY, JULY 22, 2026. Fuck men who do bad things and then whine about how bad they feel. They’re not heroes. That’s my reaction to The Odyssey . Let me back up a bit. Christopher Nolan likes pondering big questions. Memento : What is memory? Interstellar : What is time? The P…

This diagram of a perceptron, an early machine-learning method, might appear cryptic, but Anil Ananthaswamy explains it clearly in Why Machines Learn. HOBOKEN, JULY 18, 2026. In December 1985, I visited the Nevada Test Site the day before scientists detonated a nuclear device in a tunnel bored into the side of a mountain. I went to Nevada because I hated nuclear weapons and thought research on th…

Science journalism has never been more important, or imperiled. “It’s a tough time for both freelancers and staffers,” Dan Vergano, fired by Scientific American’s new owners, told me via zoom. HOBOKEN, JULY 13, 2026. I shouldn’t write a eulogy for something that’s not dead. But I fear for the future of Scientific American --and science journalism as a whole. Attention must be paid. On June 23, Na…

I watched Shakespeare’s brutal play in this lovely new theater of Hudson Valley Shakespeare . HOBOKEN, JULY 3, 2026. Before the play begins, I’m in a nostalgic, pleasantly melancholic mood. Then that opening scene whacks me across the face, as if to say, Wake up, you old fool, pay attention! I saw King Lear last Sunday in Garrison, New York, a hamlet on the Hudson River. I lived in Garrison with …

This comic strip by Crumb, published in 1987, serves as a grim complement to “Death of a Salesman.” HOBOKEN, JUNE 28, 2026. Great art, like “Death of a Salesman,” always speaks to us, but what we hear can change. Vicki somehow got us tickets to the acclaimed revival of the 1949 play, which stars Nathan Lane as Willy Loman, the salesman, and Laurie Metcalf as his wife Linda. The casting of actors …

I’m hoping this book will help me learn how machines learn. HOBOKEN, JUNE 24, 2026.  I think I’ve solved my AI dilemma. On the one hand: The ongoing explosion of AI is the biggest science story of my career. What’s bigger? The Bomb? Climate change? You can avert your gaze from those threats, but AI is inescapable. It has wheedled its way into our offices, classrooms, cars, homes, heads. It’s my d…

This 1931 edition of Resurrection doesn’t really capture the novel’s dark, unsexy vibe. HOBOKEN, JUNE 20, 2026. A novel written in late 19th-century Russia has me mulling over my moral obligations in 21st-century America. The novel is Tolstoy’s Resurrection . I love Tolstoy’s masterpieces Anna Karenina and War & Peace (see my review of the latter here ). Is any narrator more omniscient than Tolst…

This phony photo illustrates an advertorial by schoolai on how “teachers can use AI to boost engagement in STEM classes.” AI, I’m guessing, is more likely to destroy than improve STEM education. HOBOKEN, JUNE 14, 2026. It’s hard, no, impossible, to keep up with the flood of rants, I mean reflections, on how AI is corrupting, I mean affecting, science and education. So I’ll just mention a few thin…

HOBOKEN, JUNE 8, 2026.  Joseph LeDoux is a cool cat. He’s the lead singer and songwriter for the band The Amygdaloids. I’ve seen them, they rock. As you might guess from the name of the band and its first album, Heavy Mental, LeDoux also studies brains. He is a pioneer in the neuroscience of emotion, in particular fear. He has popularized his work in books such as The Emotional Brain (1996) and S…

This famous photo of the Loch Ness monster turned out to be a hoax. But even without monsters, ghosts and aliens in spaceships, this world is still really, really weird. HOBOKEN, JUNE 4, 2026. What counts as a genuine mystery, that’s worth pondering, versus a pseudo-mystery, that isn’t? I’ve been contemplating this puzzle (meta-mystery?) since touring Scotland last week. Richard, a descendant of …

My brother Matt Horgan with his son Jack and daughter Molly in Cork, Ireland, 1999. Photo: Laura Mosedale. SCOTLAND, MAY 28, 2026. I just visited Ireland, where, taking a train from Dublin to Belfast, I fall into conversation with an Irish fellow. I mention my ancestry is Irish, he asks what county my people came from, I say I don’t know. He asks my name and says he’s pretty sure Horgans hail fro…

James Joyce Center, Dublin, Ireland. DUBLIN*, MAY 25, 2026.  As Josh our guide stands on the stoop of yet another building that plays a part in Joyce’s fiction, a gaunt grizzled Irishman elbows his way into our group and yells… Wait, back up: Vicki and I are in Dublin, where I feel so at home I start talking like the Lucky Charms leprechaun, and Vicki knowing my fondness for Joyce buys me a ticke…

I wear this hat when I’m feeling ultracrepidarian. HOBOKEN, MAY 21, 2026. What do you call someone who opines on ultracrepidarians? An ultra-ultracrepidarian. I’m compelled to blather a bit more on ultracrepidarianism, the subject of my last column . An ultracrepidarian is an ignorant know-it-all, a crank, who disdains mainstream expertise. ULTRACREPIDARIAN CONVENTION. I amuse myself imagining a …

You have to know what you’re doing to operate a crane like this. HOBOKEN, MAY 15, 2026. “Where on earth did you come across that ‘Dream of the Fisherman's Wife’?,” Jim emails me after reading my column on the “ fluidity” of sex and love . “Perhaps the most erotic piece I've ever seen! I'm going to make it my screen saver!” Jim adds: “Check out the word ultracrepidarianism . Wonderful for commenti…

Participants at “The AI Con” event at Stevens Institute of Technology on April 28 include, from left, Sandeep Mertia, Katheryn Detwiler, Emily Bender and Tiffany Li. HOBOKEN, MAY 4, 2026. During the Q&A, a librarian says she likes Emily Bender’s point that language brainwashes us to accept “artificial intelligence .” The librarian asks Bender, a fierce critic of AI , to propose a more descriptive…