jdupuis | December 31, 2010Ok, this is just plain hysterical. And insightful. And both insightfully hysterical and hysterically insightful.
Enjoy.
Here's a taste, read the whole thing for yourself.
50. "Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the universe trying to build bigger and better idiots. So far, the universe is winning."
- Rick Cook
38. "The use of COBOL cripples the mind; its teaching should therefore be regarded as a criminal offense."
- E.W. Dijkstra
17. "If McDonalds were run like a software company, one out of every hundred…
jdupuis | December 31, 2010Another bunch of lists for your reading, gift giving and collection development pleasure.
Toronto Star
The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival by John Vaillant
Time
The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer by Siddhartha Mukherjee
Brilliant: The Evolution of Artificial Light by Jane Brox
You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto by Jaron Lanier
GalleyCat
Extra Lives: Why Video Games Matter by Tom Bissell
Insectopedia by Hugh Raffles
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
I'm always looking for recommendations and notifications of book lists as they appear in…
jdupuis | December 30, 2010Another list for your reading, gift giving and collection development pleasure.
On the Origin of Species: The Illustrated Edition by Charles Darwin with David Quammen
The Six-Cornered Snowflake by Johannes Kepler
The Disappearing Spoon: And Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World from the Periodic Table of the Elements by Sam Kean
Star Vistas: A Collection of Fine Art Astrophotography by Greg Parker and Noel Carboni
America In Space: NASA's First Fifty Years by Steven Dick, Robert Jacobs, Constance Moore, and Bertram Ulrich
Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of…
jdupuis | December 29, 2010Another bunch of lists for your reading, gift giving and collection development pleasure.
Wichita Eagle
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
The Daily Beast
The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer by Siddhartha Mukherjee
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
Milwaukee Wisconsin Journal-Sentinel (and here)
The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer by Siddhartha Mukherjee
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
The Poisoner's Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York by Deborah Blum
The…
jdupuis | December 28, 2010Another list for your reading, gift giving and collection development pleasure.
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
The Plundered Planet: Why We Must--and How We Can--Manage Nature for Global Prosperity by Paul Collier
The Weather of the Future: Heat Waves, Extreme Storms, and Other Scenes from a Climate-Changed Planet by Heidi Cullen
Climate Wars: The Fight for Survival as the World Overheats by Gwynne Dyer
Diet for a Hot Planet: The Climate Crisis at the End of Your Fork and What You Can Do about It by Anna Lappe and Bill McKibben
Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New…
jdupuis | December 27, 2010
Commensurable Nonsense (Transliteracy) and Why Transliteracy? Bobbi's Two Cents (or less)
http://arielneff.com/personal/weighing-in-on-the-ipad/
Academic Search Engine Spam and Google Scholar's Resilience Against it
Kno Tablets Shipping To Select Faculty and Students
Publishers take note: the iPad is altering the very concept of a 'book'
Research intelligence - Rip it up and start again
A Curricular Innovation, Examined
Scientific accuracy in art
The line between science and journalism is getting blurry....again
Some Lessons From Our Reactions to Wikileaks
Mark Waid on Delivery, Content, and…
jdupuis | December 26, 2010I have a whole pile of science-y book reviews on two of my older blogs, here and here. Both of those blogs have now been largely superseded by or merged into this one. So I'm going to be slowly moving the relevant reviews over here. I'll mostly be doing the posts one or two per weekend and I'll occasionally be merging two or more shorter reviews into one post here.
This one covers two books and is from March 7, 2006:
The Best American Science Writing 2005 by Alan Lightman, editor & Jesse Cohen, series editor
The Best American Science & Nature Writing 2005 by Jonathan Weiner,…
jdupuis | December 24, 2010The Librarian's Guide to Etiquette is one of my favourite blogs -- always whimsical and cruel at the same time. Gentle and yet going for the jugular.
Basically, taking the piss out of the library profession since 2005.
Here's some favourite posts, recent and non-so-recent:
Sweaters, Holiday
A good librarian should have enough appliqued holiday sweaters so that he or she can wear a different one each day from Thanksgiving to Christmas. If you wear the same Rudolph sweater over and over, you may inadvertently subject your library coworkers to the condition known as festive fleece fatigue.…
jdupuis | December 23, 2010Although it is perilously close to way too late, but you do have time to rush down to an actual, honest-to-goodness bookstore (or perhaps get an ebook from an estore) and maybe pick up one of these titanic suggestions from Ethan Gilsdorf on Tor.com. All great stuff for the geek in your life.
Hint, hint.
Anyways, here's what Gilsdorg suggests with his descriptions at the original post:
My Best Friend is a Wookiee: One Boy's Journey to Find His Place in the Galaxy by Tony Pacitti
Android Karenina by Leo Tolstoy and Ben H. Winters
We, Robot: Skywalker's Hand, Blade Runners, Iron Man, Slutbots…
jdupuis | December 22, 2010Another couple of lists for your reading, gift giving and collection development pleasure.
I've tended not to highlight individual people's blog lists or whatever that much here, just for the sake of my sanity and so as not to go too crazy with the number of posts, but I thought that these two list were very interesting from the point of view of understanding the impact of technology on education and publishing.
Between them, these are a couple of very good places to start reading about where the media/education industrial complex is headed, for good or ill.
I'll include every item on their…
jdupuis | December 21, 2010Another bunch of lists for your reading, gift giving and collection development pleasure.
Vancouver Sun
Drowning in Oil: BP & the Reckless Pursuit of Profit by Loren Steffy
How the Scots Invented the Modern World The True Story of How Western Europe's Poorest Nation Created Our World & Everything in It by Arthur Herman
The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer by Siddhartha Mukherjee
Largehearted Boy
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
Slate
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
Boston Globe
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by…
jdupuis | December 21, 2010Another list for your reading, gift giving and collection development pleasure. The list is a compilation of selections from all the different BB editors. I'm also only selecting 2010 books from their lists.
How to Teach Physics to Your Dog by Chad Orzel
Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age by Clay Shirky
The Upside of Irrationality: The Unexpected Benefits of Defying Logic at Work and at Home by Dan Ariely
Invent Your Own Computer Games with Python by Al Sweigart
Bad Science: Quacks, Hacks, and Big Pharma Flacks by Ben Goldacre
Where Good Ideas Come From: The…
jdupuis | December 20, 2010Another list for your reading, gift giving and collection development pleasure.
The Tunguska Mystery by Vladimir Rubtsov
Coming Climate Crisis? Consider the Past, Beware the Big Fix by Claire L Parkinson
How It Ends: From You to the Universe by Chris Impey
Lake Views: This World and the Universe by Steven Weinberg
The Quants: How a New Breed of Math Whizzes Conquered Wall Street and Nearly Destroyed It by Scott Patterson
Newton and the Counterfeiter: The Unknown Detective Career of the World's Greatest Scientist by Thomas Levenson
Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void by…
jdupuis | December 20, 2010Another list for your reading, gift giving and collection development pleasure.
FWIW, this tends to be the most important list for me every year in terms of collection development.
The Vertical Farm: The New Urban Agriculture by Despommier, Dickson
Not a Chimp: The Hunt for the Genes That Make Us Human by Taylor, Jeremy
Pandora's Seed: The Unforeseen Costs of Civilization by Wells, Spencer
The Grand and Bold Thing: An Extraordinary New Map of the Universe Ushering in a New Era of Discovery by Finkbeiner, Ann
The Price of Altruism: George Price and the Search for the Origins of Kindness by…
jdupuis | December 19, 2010I have a whole pile of science-y book reviews on two of my older blogs, here and here. Both of those blogs have now been largely superseded by or merged into this one. So I'm going to be slowly moving the relevant reviews over here. I'll mostly be doing the posts one or two per weekend and I'll occasionally be merging two or more shorter reviews into one post here.
This one, of Voodoo Science: The Road from Foolishness to Fraud, is from November 14, 2006.
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This year, during my sabbatical, I'm really trying to read a lot of science non-fiction, as opposed to my usual diet of science…
jdupuis | December 18, 2010I have a whole pile of science-y book reviews on two of my older blogs, here and here. Both of those blogs have now been largely superseded by or merged into this one. So I'm going to be slowly moving the relevant reviews over here. I'll mostly be doing the posts one or two per weekend and I'll occasionally be merging two or more shorter reviews into one post here.
This one, of Countdown: A History of Space Flight, is from November 14, 2006.
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The decision to read this book was certainly not rocket science, even if it is a book about rocket science. An engaging and fascinating read,…
jdupuis | December 18, 2010
(Some) Principles of Computational Science
The State of Open Source
US Trade Wholesale Electronic Book Sales
Strata Gems: Five data blogs you should read
Science Bloggers: Diversifying the news
The Four Sons of digital curation
Lots of Markets, Lots of Business Models
Copyright and Open Access for Academic Works
Do You Want Fries with That Degree?
The Future Is Not a Zero-Sum Game
Does a PhD Student Need a Publication Strategy?
A Curricular Innovation, Examined and A Curricular Innovation, Examined (Part 2) and A Curricular Innovation, Examined (Part 3) (commercial online course)
"It's Not…
jdupuis | December 17, 2010Nice article by Rob Mifsud in the Globe and Mail the other day combining two of my favourite things: food and books!
First, some pointers. Ditch the superstore and head to a shop that specializes in cookbooks. As Jonathan Cheung, co-owner of Appetite for Books in Montreal, points out: "I have personally cooked out of at least 700 of the cookbooks in the store. So we have a personal knowledge of how certain books could work for certain people."
Understand your cooking limitations, expectations and audience. Mika Bareket, owner of Toronto's Good Egg, tailors her recommendations based on a…
jdupuis | December 17, 2010Another list for your reading, gift giving and collection development pleasure. This is a compilation of picks from various writers on their Culture Lab blog.
The Poisoner's Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York by Deborah Blum
Alex's Adventures in Numberland: Dispatches from the Wonderful World of Mathematics by Alex Bellos
Angel of Death: The Story of Smallpox by Gareth Williams
The Species Seekers: Heroes, Fools, and the Mad Pursuit of Life on Earth by Richard Conniff
The Mind's Eye by Oliver Wolf Sacks
The Music Instinct: How Music Works and Why We Can…
jdupuis | December 17, 2010For those that haven't heard about the NASA/arsenic bacteria story that's been exploding all over the science blogosphere over the last couple of weeks, I like the summary over at Jonathan Eisen's Tree of Life blog:
NASA announced a major press conference
at the conference they discussed a new Science paper claiming to show the discovery of a microbe that could replace much/some of its phosphate with arsenic
initial press coverage of the paper was very positive and discussed the work as having profound implications for understanding of life in the universe - though some scientists in some of…