This goes hand in hand with this:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=78739 (Bipolar Lisp Programmers, or "Brilliant Failures")

I found this article two weeks ago:

http://nymag.com/news/features/27840/

It references the SciAm article, and was written to be more accessible.

Thanks for posting the Scientific American one. I had been keeping my eyes open for that one.