book review
laelaps | November 5, 2007
Even though I didn't get to go to SVP this year, my friends Julia and Neil were in attendance and were kind enough to send me a *signed* copy of Don Prothero's newest book, Evolution: What the Fossils Say and Why it Matters. Although I was already in the middle of a book when Prothero's book arrived at my door, I dropped what I was reading and started tearing through the glossy pages, and I have to say that I was impressed. Aside from the excellent illustrations by the talented Carl Buell (plus tons of photographs and other diagrams), Prothero's book doesn't hold back when it comes to…
grrlscientist | November 2, 2007tags: book review, white-collar unemployment, job hunting, Bait and Switch, Barbara Ehrenreich
While I was flying back to NYC last weekend, I read (yet another) book about job hunting. This book detailed the obvious; that searching for a white-collar job is not as easy as you might think, as you'll learn in Bait and Switch: The (Futile) Pursuit of the American Dream by Barbara Ehrenreich (NYC: Metropolitan Books; 2005). In this book, Ehrenreich posed as an unemployed white-collar worker, in search of a job in public relations and event planning. To avoid being identified as a journalist via a…
grrlscientist | October 24, 2007tags: book review, biotechnology, biomedicine, stem cells, ethics, Cloning: A Beginner's Guide, Aaron Levine
Would you drink milk from a cloned cow?
Should we clone extinct or endangered species?
Are we justified in using stem cells to develop cures?
When will we clone the first human?
Ever since Dolly the sheep was born, questions like these have been part of the public consciousness, and now, cloning is poised to revolutionize medicine, healthcare, and even the food we eat. Regardless of what certain politicians do to slow the progress of scientific research, cloning is here to stay, and…
grrlscientist | October 17, 2007tags: book review, children's questions, Father Knows Less, Wendell Jamieson
Why do ships have round windows?
Can a crow peck your eyes out?
Why do policemen like donuts?
When Wendell Jamieson's four-year-old son, Dean, began asking questions, odd questions, Jamieson was amused by them. So amused that he decided to write down those questions and share them with his son after he'd gotten older. But after thinking about it, Jamieson then decided that he would give his son the gift of .. knowledge, by giving him a truthful answer. So Jamieson set out find the answers to every one of his son's…
grrlscientist | October 12, 2007tags: book review, science essays, technology, Present at the Future, Ira Flatow
Many months ago, I was signed up for the HarperCollins email list that briefly describes their books that are hot off the presses, prior to their public release. The publisher then holds a contest where they ask you to email them a little essay describing why you would be the best person to review a particular title in their list, then they choose the winners and mail the books. Even though HarperCollins published several scientific books this past year, including one that dealt with evolution, my essay was…
grrlscientist | September 27, 2007tags: book review, neuroscience, neurobiology, body maps, Sandra Blakeslee, Matthew Blakeslee
As a biologist who reads both widely and deeply about a number of scientific topics, it is very rare when I read a popular book that adds depth and nuance to my understanding of a biological phenomenon, but The Body Has a Mind of Its Own By Sandra Blakeslee and Matthew Blakeslee (NYC: Random House; 2007) is that book. This quiet but well-written book explores the interconnection between the environment, the body and the brain; discusses that the body is more just than a container for the brain and a…
grrlscientist | September 25, 2007tags: book review, entomology, insects, household pests, Joshua Abarbanel, Jeff Swimmer
I am dismayed to reveal that my apartment is home to uncounted numbers of freeloaders. In fact, every evening, when I turn the lights on, I witness these tiny marauders' mad dash for the cracks in the walls and the space under the refrigerator. I am talking about the East Coast plague: cockroaches. You know; vile, disgusting, nearly ubiquitous bugs. However, I feel much better knowing that everyone's home, regardless of how sterile it is, is occupied by a vast collection of invertebrate roommates. In fact…
grrlscientist | September 18, 2007tags: book review, history, biography, James Smithson, Jacques Louis Macie, Smithsonian Institution, Heather Ewing
As a nearly life-long resident of the West Coast, I have visited the Smithsonian Institution exactly once in my entire life, and to be honest, I didn't notice the bust of its founder, James Smithson. I suppose I should feel guilty about that but, according to what I have read, his bust is located across the street from the Smithsonian Castle on the National Mall. At that time, this area was not included in my Smithsonian-seeking trajectory. However, after visiting the Smithsonian…
grrlscientist | September 11, 2007
Because you read this blog, you are no doubt aware that more than half of all Americans do not believe that evolution is a valid scientific explanation for how the world works, but did you know that one-third of all advanced science degrees awarded in America are earned by foreign students? These are just a few of the facts that you'll learn in the new book, The Canon: A Whirligig Tour of the Beautiful Basics of Science (Houghton Mifflin: NYC; 2007), by science writer, Natalie Angier. The Canon explains the basics of science, starting with the scientific method, probability and measurements…
grrlscientist | August 30, 2007tags: Lab 257, Plum Island,animal disease research, USDA, West Nile virus, Lyme disease, Dutch duck plague
After the recent outbreak of foot and mouth disease in the UK was shown to be the result this virus's escape from one of two nearby research labs, I thought it was timely to review a book that investigates this same occurrence in the United States. Lab 257: the Disturbing Story of the Government's Secret Plum Island Germ Laboratory (NYC: William Morrow; 2004) by Michael Christopher Carroll, is the riveting story of an animal disease research lab located on an 840-acre island that is only…
F5: Devastation, Survival, and the Most Violent Tornado Outbreak of the 20th Century, by Mark Levine
mementomori | August 7, 2007More thrilling late summer reading awaits those who pick up a copy of this story of twin twisters, separated by only thirty minutes and following nearly the same path, that ripped through Limestone County, Alabama on the date of tornadic infamy in America - April 3, 1974. On that day 148 tornadoes streaked across the middle and southern United States, killing 315 people and injuring 5000. Mark Levine, a journalist from Iowa City, Iowa (which ironically received a direct hit from a violent tornado on April 13, 2006) has written a vivid and detailed history of the lives and deaths of several…
grrlscientist | July 30, 2007tags: Harry Potter spoilers, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, books
I waited to publish my review (and rant) of the last Harry Potter book until today because several friends and SciBlings wanted to also participate in the discussion, and further, I wanted to read the book one more time and think about it for a while.
Overall, the book was interesting and action-packed, especially at the beginning and at the end, although the plot did drag a bit in the middle. Basically, this was the most adult of all the Harry Potter books, and as such, it was filled with bloodshed and death of…
mementomori | July 29, 2007Looking for something to read that's a little more thought-provoking than the usual beach book detritus pushed on the unwary consumer this summer?
Fly, don't waddle, to the nearest bookstore and take a gander at The World Without Us, a fascinating "thought experiment," as one reviewer called it, that ponders what would happen to our planet if all humans suddenly disappeared.
Before speculating on what changes, both nurturing and poisoning, would be loosed upon Earth by our absence, the author, Alan Weisman, first chronicles with precise and first-hand knowledge what humans have done to our…
jstemwedel | July 23, 2007
The average American's lack of scientific literacy has become a common complaint, not only among scientists but also among those who see our economic prospects as a nation linked to our level of scientific know-how. Yet somehow, science has become an area of learning where it's socially acceptable to plead ignorance. Adults leave the house without even a cocktail-party grasp of the basics they presumably learned in middle school and high school science classes, and the prospects of herding them back into a science classroom to give it another go seem pretty remote.
Natalie Angier's new…
jstemwedel | July 19, 2007When I was growing up in New Jersey, hurricanes were "on the radar" for us, one of many possible (if infrequent) weather patterns during summer and fall. Later, in my first semester of college in Massachusetts, the morning of my first broadcast on the college radio station was made memorable by the landfall of Hurricane Gloria; I remember the name of the storm because I closed my show by playing the U2 song "Gloria" before signing off the air at 7 am. (The governor of the Massachusetts had just declared a state of emergency, although it wasn't until some 30 minutes later that the trustees…
neurontic | July 18, 2007This week I think we could all use a brief reprieve from me and my opinions, so I'm running a review of Phillip Zimbardo's book The Lucifer Effect, written by the wickedly smart (and just plain wicked) writer Carey Bertolet.
Bio
Kid-friendly version: Carey Bertolet is an avid reader because she enjoys challenging concepts and sitting on her caboose. When not at work, Carey is the host of her own imaginary cooking show as well as the co-producer of "the Boo Radley Show," her miniature pinscher's imaginary late night talk show. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband who is recapturing his…
jstemwedel | July 11, 2007
People sometimes worry that throwing ethics coursework at scientists-in-training is not such a great strategy for training them to be ethical scientists. (I've explored worries of this sort myself.)
For one thing, at many schools the existing coursework may be a fairly broad "moral issues" course aimed at understanding what it means to be a good person rather than a good scientist.* Or the ethics course on the books may have more to do with meta-ethics (the examination of various theoretical frameworks grounding claims about what is good and what is bad) rather than practical ethics. And…
jstemwedel | July 5, 2007 I recently finished reading Greg Critser's Generation Rx: How Prescription Drugs Are Altering American Lives, Minds, and Bodies.
Frankly, I don't feel so well.
Critser starts off by dropping us into the regulatory environment in the U.S. in the early 1970s, walking us through the multifarious forces that started to change that environment. Some of the changes seem welcome and important -- for example, removing the requirement that companies wishing to market generic versions of FDA approved drugs (once the patents had expired on those drugs) produce additional studies demonstrating the…
grrlscientist | June 29, 2007tags: book review, birds, birding, ornithology
Gulls are found nearly everywhere, from their usual haunts on the shorelines of oceans, lakes and rivers, to newly tilled fields, garbage dumps and sewage treatment plants. Due to their ubiquity, they are popular among birdwatchers, but gulls are often challenging to identify because they can take up to four years to mature, and they have different plumages each year. They also have seasonal differences and individual variations in plumage as well. Further, considering that, for most people, one "seagull" looks just like all the others,…
jstemwedel | June 26, 2007 I recently read a book by regular Adventures in Ethics and Science commenter Solomon Rivlin. Scientific Misconduct and Its Cover-Up: Diary of a Whistleblower is an account of a university response to allegations of misconduct gone horribly wrong. I'm hesitant to describe it as the worst possible response -- there are surely folks who could concoct a scenario where administrative butt-covering maneuvers bring about the very collapse of civilization, or at least a bunch of explosions -- but the horror of the response described here is that it was real:
The events and personalities…