book review
jstemwedel | February 9, 2009
Wired for War: The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the 21st Century
by P.W. Singer
New York: Penguin
2009
For some reason, collectively humans seem to have a hard time seeing around corners to anticipate the shape our future will take. Of those of us who remember email as a newish thing, I suspect most of us had no idea how much of our waking lives would come to be consumed by it. And surely I am not the only one who attended a lab meeting in which a visiting scholar mentioned a speculative project to build something called the World Wide Web and wondered aloud whether anything would…
ksharpe | February 9, 2009Originally published by Greg Laden
On February 6, 2009 11:14 PM
It's out! Evolution vs. Creationism: An Introduction (Second Edition) is now available on line and in bookstores (or at least it is being shipped out as we speak).
This is the newly revamped edition of Genie Scott's essential reference supporting the Evolutionist Perspective in the so called "debate" over creationism vs. evolution. The original version of this book was excellent, but this updated version is essential. There is quite a bit of new information in this volume reflecting the fact that quite a few things have…
ksharpe | February 7, 2009Review by Scicurious, from Neurotopia
Originally published on: February 5, 2009 1:45 AM
I am an unabashed lover of Scientific American. Well, ok, I'm also a grad student. So I can't AFFORD Scientific American. But luckily, Scientific American has podcasts! There's a regular weekly one that is around 40 minutes long, and then there are daily ones, called '60-second science'. 60-second science represents the latest science tidbits as they come out, and, most endearing to Sci, they cover the good, the bad, and the weird. So I was very excited when I found out that Scientific American,…
ksharpe | February 3, 2009Review by John Wilkins, from Evolving Thoughts
Originally published on February 3, 2009, at 11:38 AM
"Freaks of Nature: What Anomalies Tell Us About Development and Evolution" (Mark S. Blumberg)
This book came to me well recommended, and as far as the content goes, I am very impressed. The writing style, however, and the intended audience, are at odds with each other.
Blumberg is a developmental biologist who has a real grasp of the topic, is enthusiastic about it, and has a clear target in his sights. That target is sometimes misleadingly called "The Modern Synthesis", although a better…
ksharpe | January 27, 2009Review by Maria Brumm, from Green Gabbro
Originally posted on January 23, 2009, 5:29 AM
Since today is National Pie Day, I thought I would list a few of my favorite cookbooks. In particular, the ones that have taught me to bake pie. The ones with science.
My staple meringue pie recipe comes from The New Best Recipe. The Meyer lemon meringue pie I made from this recipe for Thanksgiving several years ago is what kicked off my love affair with meringue pies, and with meringue in general. But before I can tell you about this cookbook, I need to tell you about seismology.
Seismologists set up…
ksharpe | January 26, 2009Review by David Dobbs, from Neuron Culture
Originally posted on: January 25, 2009 10:45 PM
The book opens so thrillingly -- a plane crash, a last-second Super Bowl victory, and a first chapter that comfortably reconciles Plato and Ovid with Tom Brady and John Madden -- that it spawns a worry: Can the book possibly sustain this pace?
"How We Decide" delivers. Jonah Lehrer, -- author of "Proust Was a Neuroscientist," blogger at Frontal Cortex, and (full disclosure) an online acquaintance and sometime colleague of mine for a couple years now (I asked him to take over editorship of Scientific…
ksharpe | January 25, 2009Review by Chad Orzel, from Uncertain Principles
Originally posted on: January 25, 2009, 4:18 PM
Michael Brooks's 13 Things That Don't Make Sense turned up on a lot of "Best science books of 2008" lists, and the concept of a book about scientific anomalies seemed interesting, so I ordered it from Amazon. It's a quick read (a mere 210 pages, and breezily written), but ultimately a frustrating book.
It took me several chapters to pin down what bugged me about the book, but it all became clear when I looked at the back cover flap, and saw that the author is a former editor of New Scientist. The…
ksharpe | January 22, 2009Review by Scicurious, from Neurotopia
Originally posted on: January 19, 2009 1:27 AM
It is rare that a non-fiction book, let alone a non-fiction book about science, makes me laugh so hard I have to put the book down until I can get off the floor. In fact, I would say it's only happened once. That once was during this last week, when I finally got to read "Bonk: the Curious Coupling of Science and Sex" by Mary Roach.
I don't know why I never read the book before. You'd think as the lover of all things Weird Science, Sci would be all over this thing. Me, I blame grad student poverty.
So…
ksharpe | January 22, 2009Review by John Lynch, from Stranger Fruit
Originally posted on: January 16, 2009 12:56 PM
It is always cute when the anti-evolutionists (in all their guises) try to do history; witness here, for example. Veteran observers are not surprised to find them trying to warp history (see here, here, here & here for that). Nowhere is this warping more evident than in how DI-hacks such as John West & Richard Weikart have promulgated a meme linking Darwin to Haeckel to Nazism. This has been clearly dealt with by a number of historians (see references herein and read Robert Richards' latest book…
ksharpe | January 16, 2009Review by Janet D. Stemwedel, from Adventures in Ethics and Science
Originally posted on: January 16, 2009 8:35 AM
One less fish
by Kim Michelle Toft and Allan Sheather
Watertown, MA: Charlesbridge Publishing
1998
Within the past week, each of the two Free-Ride offspring picked up this book, read it all the way through, and said to me, "You should write about this for the Friday Sprog Blog."
Instead of replying, "No, you should write about it," I said, "OK, I'll try." Not just because I'm the mature one here, but because this is a really good book.
On the surface, this is one of those…
ksharpe | January 13, 2009Review by Chad Orzel from Uncertain Principles
Originally posted on: Tue, Jan 13, 2009 9:26 AM
Or, Brian Greene Writes a Kid's Book...
This is a very odd book. It's printed on boards, like a book for very small children, but the story is a bit beyond what I would imagine reading to a normal kid of the age to want books of that format. It's too short and simple, though, to have much appeal to significantly older children, aside from the fact that the story is written over the top of 15 absolutely gorgeous reproductions of pictures of astronomical objects.
This is probably one of those objects…
ksharpe | January 12, 2009Review by Jessica Palmer, on Bioephemera
Originally posted on: January 12, 2009 8:20 PM
I went to a party the other day wearing the shirt above. I'd seen it online, expressed covetousness, and the staffer actually tracked it down and bought it for me (thus scoring major points for A) an early Christmas present, B) listening to my incessant stream-of-consciousness babble, and C) appreciating his girlfriend's geeky streak.)
Anyway, at the party, most of my friends couldn't decipher anything past "OMG, WTF." I was surrounded by "digital immigrants." In fact, I'm a digital immigrant myself: I…
ksharpe | January 11, 2009Review by John M. Lynch at Stranger Fruit
Originally posted on: January 11, 2009 4:18 PM
I've had the pleasure of working behind the scenes in a number of natural history museums. While a grad student, I had an office in the Natural History Museum in Dublin, spent a good deal of time every year in the collections of the Royal Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh, and a month at the Natural History Museum in London. As anyone who has spent time behind the scenes will tell you, not only are all the really cool specimens kept away from public view, but museums are populated with some very strange…
grrlscientist | December 14, 2008tags: book review, Peterson Field Guide, field guide to the birds, birding, North American birds, Roger Tory Peterson
No one has done more to advance and popularize birdwatching than artist and naturalist, Roger Tory Peterson (RTP), who published his first field guide to the birds in 1934 at the ripe old age of 26. No doubt, many of you probably grew up using RTP's seminal field guides to identify wild birds, but did you know that the Peterson Field Guide to Western Birds and the Peterson Field Guide to Eastern Birds were combined into one large Sibley-esque type volume for the first time?…
grrlscientist | December 7, 2008tags: The Hungry Scientist Handbook, DIY projects, kitchen science, Patrick Buckley, Lily Binns, book review
When I was a kid, I enjoyed cooking and baking and I excelled at these activities since I regularly won all the blue ribbons in the pre-adult age divisions at the annual state fair. A little later, I expanded my kitchen-based activities to mixing drinks, a hobby that I pursue whenever possible to this very day. Later, when I began taking chemistry classes in school, my kitchen-based skills served me very well because I was a superb chemist. But I am not the only one to notice this…
grrlscientist | December 4, 2008tags: natural history museum, British Museum, Dry Storeroom No. 1, Richard Fortey, book review
Everyone I have ever met has, at some point in our conversations, told me that they wished they could work in a natural history museum. I am one of the rare lucky people in the world because I have worked as a research scientist in a natural history museum, so I can tell you that there is a book out there that brilliantly captures what this experience is like: Richard Fortey's Dry Storeroom No. 1: The Secret Life of the Natural History Museum (NYC: Alfred A. Knopf; 2008).
This is a charming and…
grrlscientist | December 1, 2008tags: animal cognition, animal communication, animal behavior, birds, parrots, Alex and me, Irene Pepperberg, book review
He was not ours, he was not mine.
Thank you for sharing him with us.
He brought us much joy. We loved him well.
-- Irene Pepperberg (p. 226), modified from Karen Blixen's
eulogy for Denys Finch-Hatton in Out of Africa.
As a scientist who studies, lives with, and even breeds and hand-feeds parrots, it is easy for me to empathize with Irene Pepperberg, the author of the long-awaited book with the awkward title, Alex and Me: How a Scientist and a Parrot Uncovered a Hidden…
grrlscientist | November 12, 2008tags: seafood, fisheries, aquaculture, fish farming, tuna, swordfish, salmon, shrimp, sushi, book review
There's plenty of fish in the sea, as the old addage goes -- but are there, really? I experienced a rude awakening at the peak popularity of Orange Roughy, which I loved. I learned that Orange Roughy, Hoplostethus atlanticus, an extremely long-lived benthic species in the Western Pacific Ocean that doesn't even reach sexual maturity until 40 years of age, was being eaten out of existence by people like me. After I learned that, I never touched Orange Roughy again. But after I discovered…
grrlscientist | October 26, 2008tags: po'ouli, Melamprosops phaeosoma, endangered species, endangered species act, conservation, extinction, birds, island species, Hawai'i, book review
For scientists, naturalists and birders, islands are the most amazing places on earth because their evolutionary legacy has provided them with their own fascinating flora and fauna that are found nowhere else in the world. But because humans also like to live on islands, along with their pets and crop plants, islands are a conservation nightmare, and certainly, the Hawai'ian islands are no exception. In Alvin Powell's book, The Race to Save…
grrlscientist | October 21, 2008tags: book review, owls, woodpeckers, birds, photography, Paul Bannick, The Owl and the Woodpecker
Most Americans have not seen all of the 41 species of owls and woodpeckers that share the North American continent with us, but not only has Paul Bannick seen them all, but he has photographed them all, too. And when I say "photographed", I am not talking about those blurry snapshots that most of us snap, but instead, his images are big, sharp, clear and .. for want of a better phrase, absolutely stunning. Fortunately for us, Bannick's images and writings have been collected into a newly…