November 6, 2009
Category: best science books 2009 • science books
Amazon has come out with their Editor's Picks for 2009. There are three categories that have books that are relevant to us here.
Science
- The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science by Richard Holmes
- Remarkable Creatures: Epic Adventures in the Search for the Origin of Species by Sean B. Carroll
- Complexity: A Guided Tour by Melanie Mitchell
- Fixing My Gaze: A Scientist's Journey Into Seeing in Three Dimensions by Susan R. Barry
- The Strangest Man: The Hidden Life of Paul Dirac, Mystic of the Atom by Graham Farmelo
- Every Patient Tells a Story by Lisa Sanders
- The Mathematical Mechanic: Using Physical Reasoning to Solve Problems by Mark Levi
- Truth, Lies, and O-Rings: Inside the Space Shuttle Challenger Disaster by Allan J McDonald
- Dissection: Photographs of a Rite of Passage in American Medicine 1880-1930 by John Harley Warner
- The Monty Hall Problem: The Remarkable Story of Math's Most Contentious Brain Teaser by Jason Rosenhouse
Outdoors & Nature
- The Wilderness Warrior: Theodore Roosevelt and the Crusade for America by Douglas Brinkley
- Green Metropolis: Why Living Smaller, Living Closer, and Driving Less are the Keys to Sustainability by David Owen
- Cold: Adventures in the World's Frozen Places by Bill Streever
- Fat of the Land: Adventures of a 21st Century Forager by Langdon Cook
- Whole Earth Discipline: An Ecopragmatist Manifesto by Stewart Brand
Business & Investing
- Trust Agents: Using the Web to Build Influence, Improve Reputation, and Earn Trust by Chris Brogan
- SuperCorp: How Vanguard Companies Create Innovation, Profits, Growth, and Social Good by Rosabeth Moss Kanter
- Ignore Everybody: and 39 Other Keys to Creativity by Hugh MacLeod
Posted by John Dupuis at 2:47 PM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: friday fun
Bookgasm has a very fun guest post by Ben H. Winters, author of the recently published Jane Austen pastiche/adaptation/expansion Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters
.
Since writing SENSE AND SENSIBILITY AND SEA MONSTERS, I've gotten a ton of feedback about how nice it is that I've made Jane Austen appealing to certain readers -- meaning readers who previously suffered a persistent allergy to The Classics. I am complimented for taking the prim and decorous Jane Austen and making her a) really violent, and b) really funny.
The first compliment I will gladly accept. Over the decades since SENSE AND SENSIBILITY first appeared, it has been noted by scholars and casual readers alike that the book is sorely lacking in shipwrecks, shark attacks and vividly described decapitations. I believe it was the poet and critic Thomas Chatterton who admired the novel's careful plotting and social critique, but lamented the total absence of vengeful ghost pirates.
Sounds pretty funny to me!
I do have a copy kicking around the house of the previous one of these Austen reworkings, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies
. It's pretty amusing, but not exactly the kind of thing where you actually need to read the whole book. I expect the Sea Monster one is similar. And if you head to the Amazon page, you'll note that these reworkings of public domain texts are rising from the dead faster than, well, zombies. War of the Worlds, Wizard of Oz and Huckleberry Finn seem to be just the tip of the iceberg. The P&P&Z people seem to have created a monster.
Posted by John Dupuis at 10:42 AM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
November 4, 2009
Category: SO'10 • culture of science • faculty liaison • librarianship • scholarly publishing
Following along in the tradition of Bora's introductions of the various attendees for the upcoming Science Online 2010 conference, I thought I'd list all the library people that are attended. I'm not going to try and introduce each of the library people, I'll leave that to Bora, but I thought it might be nice to have us all listed in one place.
I did a quick list in my post the other day, but I revisited the attendee list after it closed and noticed a couple of people that weren't in the first list.
As I said in the earlier post, there's been a good tradition of librarians and library people attending Science Online and this year looks to be no exception. So, here's the updated list. Of course, it's only the people whose names I recognize or who I was able to figure out had a library connection so I may be missing a couple. If I've missed you, let me know and I'll add you.
I'm lucky enough to have met a good number of the above librarians and I'm really looking forward to meeting Stephanie and Dorothea who I've know online for a while but haven't had a chance to mean in person yet.
There are also a few library-themed sessions at the conference:
Repositories for Fun and Profit - Dorothea Salo (Friday workshop)
Description: Why are my librarians bothering me with all this repository nonsense? What's a repository, and how is it different from a website? What can a repository do for me? Why should I bother with them? Does anybody use them? What's all this about metadata, anyway? Find out from a real live repository librarian!
Online Reference Managers - John Dupuis and Christina Pikas moderating, with Kevin Emamy, Jason Hoyt, Trevor Owens and Michael Habib (Scopus) in the 'hot seats'.
Description: Reference managers, sometimes called citation managers or bibliography managers, help you keep, organize, and re-use citation information. A few years ago, the options were limited to expensive proprietary desktop clients or BibTeX for people writing in LaTeX. Now we've got lots of choices, many that are online, support collaboration and information sharing, and that work with the authoring tools you use to write papers. In this session we'll hear from representatives of some of these tools and we'll talk about the features that make them useful. Together we'll discuss some tips and tricks and maybe even best practices.
Scientists! What can your librarian do for you? - Stephanie Willen Brown and Dorothea Salo
Description: Find free, scholarly, science stuff on the Internet, via your public or state library, or on the "free Web." Learn tips & tricks for getting full-text science research at all levels, through resources like DOAJ and NC Live (for those with a North Carolina library card; other states often offer free resources to library card holders). Find out about some options for storing science material at your academic institution's Institutional Repository. We will also talk about the broader access to material stored in institutional repositories and elsewhere on the Web.
Update 2009.11.04: Gary Pattillo added.
Posted by John Dupuis at 11:03 AM • 5 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: best science books 2009 • science books
Every year for the past 3 or 4 years I've been linking to and posting about all the "year's best books" lists that appear in various media outlets and highlighting the science books that are mentioned. From the beginning it's been a pretty popular service so I'm happy to continue it.
For my purposes, I define science books pretty broadly to include science, engineering, computing, history & philosophy of science & technology, environment, social aspects of science and even business books about technology trends or technology innovation.
This year, the first list is from Publisher's Weekly, which even has three sciencey books in their top 10 for the year!
- A Fiery Peace in a Cold War: Bernard Schriever and the Ultimate Weapon by Neil Sheehan
- The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science by Richard Holmes
- Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon by David Grann
- Logicomix: An Epic Search for Truth by Apostolos Doxiadis and Christos H. Papadimitriou with art by Alecos Papdatos and Annie Di Donna
- The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind: Creating Currents of Electricity and Hope by William Kamkwamba and Bryan Mealer
- Green Metropolis by David Owen
As usual, if you see a "best of the year" list out there that has some good science books on it, let me know and I'll be happy to feature it! Drop a comment or email me at jdupuis at yorku dot ca.
Posted by John Dupuis at 9:30 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
November 2, 2009
Category: admin
Just so you all know, the last couple of comments I've received are stuck in limbo. I can see them on the admin side but they're not showing.
Unfortunately, my work computer just died and I can't seem to access my email, even via the web interface.
Hopefully, all will return to normal soon.
Posted by John Dupuis at 2:41 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
October 30, 2009
Category: friday fun
Actually, it's not really about misconceptions that we learn only in school, it's more about urban legend/zeitgeist stuff that eveyone knows.
Anyways, The 10 Biggest Misconceptions We Learn In School is from Manolith, a site I've never heard of before. It's rude and crude and definitely not for the faint of heart. Some of the points hit their mark and some miss pretty badly. Don't say I didn't warn you.
Nevertheless, some of them are also pretty amusing:
1. Einstein got bad grades in school
Um... have you heard about this guy Einstein? Famous physicist? Relativity and all that? A genius, even? I'm pretty sure little Albert could handle his business in 4th grade arithmetic. Yes, contrary to popular belief, Einstein was a top student in elementary school, getting mostly "4″s (on the German grading scale of 1-4), which idiot Americans later assumed, backwardly, were "D"s. The idea stuck because everybody loves the idea that their poor student can go on to great things. Sorry, parents, Einstein was teaching himself calculus at age 12...
Posted by John Dupuis at 12:41 PM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
October 27, 2009
Category: computer science • culture of science • engineering
The September Communications of the ACM has a provocative article by Peter J. Denning and Paul S. Rosenbloom, Computing: the fourth great domain of science (OA version). It's well written and persuasive, certainly worth reading the whole thing.
Science has a long-standing tradition of grouping fields into three categories: the physical, life, and social sciences. The physical sciences focus on physical phenomena, especially materials, energy, electromagnetism, gravity, motion, and quantum effects. The life sciences focus on living things, especially species, metabolism, reproduction, and evolution. The social sciences focus on human behavior, mind, economic, and social interactions. We use the term "great domains of science" for these categories.
*snip*
The core phenomena of the computing sciences domain--computation, communication, coordination, recollection, automation, evaluation, and design--apply universally, whether in the artificial information processes generated by computers or in the natural information processes found in the other domains. Thus, information processes in quantum physics, materials science, chemistry, biology, genetics, business, organizations, economics, psychology, and mind are all subject to the same space and time limitations predicted by universal Turing machines. That fact underpins many of the interactions between computing and the other fields and underlies the recent claim that computing is a science of both the natural and the artificial.
*snip*
Computing is pervasive because it is a fundamental way of approaching the world that helps understand its own crucial questions while also assisting other domains advance their understandings of the world. Understanding computing as a great domain of science will help to achieve better explanations of computing, increase the attraction of the field to newcomers, and demonstrate parity with other fields of science.
To say that computing is a domain of science does not conflict with computing's status as a field of engineering or even mathematics. Computing has large slices that qualify as science, engineering, and mathematics. No one of those slices tells the whole story of the field.
The exercise of examining computing as a domain of science reveals that the extent of computing's reach and influence cannot be seen without a map that explicitly displays the modes of implementation and interaction. It also reveals that we need to revisit deep questions in computing because our standard answers, developed for computer scientists, do not apply to other fields of science. Finally, it confirms that computing principles are distinct from the principles of the other domains.
So, what do you think? Is computing the fourth great domain of science?
Posted by John Dupuis at 6:23 PM • 5 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
October 25, 2009
Category: SO'10 • acad lib future • blogging • culture of science • escience • open access • scholarly publishing • social media
Registration for Science Online 2010 is open. The conference web site is here and program info is here.
Time is running out. There are currently about 175 registered and the organizers are going to cap it at 250.
I've attended the conference for the past two years and it's a blast. I really enjoyed the sessions as well as the informal times between sessions, at the meals and in the bar.
I've registered already, as has my son, Sam, who's in grade 11. He attended last year and also had a great time. Bora even interviewed him!
There's been a good tradition of librarians attending the conference and this year looks to be no exception. Here's a list of the librarianish people who've registered. Of course, it's only the people whose names I recognize so I may be missing a couple. If I've missed you, let me know and I'll add you.
I'm lucky enough to have met a good number of the above librarians and I'm really looking forward to meeting Stephanie and Dorothea who I've know online for a while but haven't met in person yet.
Posted by John Dupuis at 3:18 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
October 23, 2009
Category: book review • culture of science • faculty liaison • science books • yorku
TVOntario has produced a very fine documentary based on the life of geometer Donald Coxeter, who lived in Toronto and worked at the University of Toronto for many years. It's called The Man Who Saved Geometry and is based on the book by Siobhan Roberts, King of Infinite Space: Donald Coxeter, the Man Who Saved Geometry
.
Two York profs are interviewed in the documentary, Asia Ivic Weiss and Walter Whiteley.
I reviewed Roberts' book a few years ago, here, where you can read about my own minor role in the Coxeter story.
Posted by John Dupuis at 4:42 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
