Books
gregladen | December 27, 2016You have already heard the sad news that Carrie Fisher had died, at a young age, after suffering one or more heart attacks.
To honor her, you are probably going to go watch some old Star Wars movies. But I have a different suggestion. The woman was a prolific and accomplished author (and more) and there is a good chance that she's written at least one book you've not read, if not several.
That's what I'm going to do. I'll make a list of her books, pick one, and read it. But, since I'm a blogger, I figure, why not let you benefit from my efforts and see the list? If I've left anything off or…
gregladen | December 21, 2016California's Amazing Geology by Don Prothero is an amazing book about -- wait for it -- California's geology!
California is one of the most geologically interesting and complex geopolitical units in the world. But so is Minnesota, and Minnesota is boring, geologically, for most people. Why? Because Minnesota is all eroded down and flattened out and covered with glacial till, so most of the interesting geology is buried, while California is actively engaged in its own geology in a spectacular and visually appealing way!
Lots of places have volcanoes. California has volcanoes that blow up, or…
gregladen | December 7, 2016The CS Detective: An Algorithmic Tale of Crime, Conspiracy, and Computation by Jeremy Kubica is the tory of disgraced ex-detective and hardboiled private eye Frank Runtime.
Frank Runtime knows REGEX and is not afraid to use it.
From the publishers:
When a robbery hits police headquarters, it's up to Frank Runtime and his extensive search skills to catch the culprits. In this detective story, you'll learn how to use algorithmic tools to solve the case. Runtime scours smugglers' boats with binary search, tails spies with a search tree, escapes a prison with depth-first search, and picks locks…
gregladen | December 4, 2016Time to make sure you are stocked up and up to date on your climate science books. First, you will need reference materials throughout the holiday season, because Uncle Bob is going to challenge you more stridently than usual. Climate change deniers have taken over the US government. You are on the run. Underground. Up against the wall. So, you need to be ready. Uncle Bob is coming for you.
Second, you may want to give a few climate change related books away for the holidays. Know any science or social studies teachers? Maybe a nice book for Uncle Bob's wife? Ha, that would be funny. Anyway…
gregladen | December 3, 2016Here I have just a few suggestions for science books for the kiddos. See this post for the adult version.
The Outdoor Science Lab for Kids and the other books in the same series are excellent, highly recommended, and reviewed here.
Treecology is also a science activity book that people seem to love. Chance are you already have it. Obviously, it focuses on trees, but that does not stop it from being year round, and there are, of course, many non-tree things that relate to trees, and that stuff is covered as well. My review.
Electronics for Kids and The Arduino Project Handbook are great…
gregladen | December 3, 2016Here is my selection of the top science books from 2016, excluding those mainly for kids. Also, I don't include climate change related books here either. (These will both be covered in separate posts.)
The number of books on this list is not large, and I think this was not the most prolific year ever for top science books. But, the ones on the list are great! For brevity, I'm mostly using the publisher's info below. Where I've reviewed the book, there is a link to that review. Click through to the reviews if you want to read my commentary, but in most cases, you can judge these books by…
gregladen | December 2, 2016The American alligator is found only in the US, and is widespread in Texas. It is found at several inland localities, and along the coast. And, it turns out that the preferred locations for many of the important activities in the day to day live of the American alligator overlap a great deal with humans.
Louise Hayes, biologist, and photographer Philippe Henry have produced, with TAMU Press, Alligators of Texas, a highly accessible, well written, and richly illustrated monograph on these beasts.
If you are into Alligators and their relatives, regardless of where you live, this book may…
gregladen | November 25, 2016The Unofficial LEGO Technic Builder's Guide by Pawet "Sariel" Kmiec (Second Edition) tells you how to build machines, models, robots, etc. that will work.
You need to construct these things in a way that ensures they won't easily fall apart, and that requires a certain amount of engineering. There are some fairly expensive and specialized Lego Technic pieces that you may not have on hand, and this book can help you emulate them. How do you matcha motor or servo to a specific task? You need to know some stuff to make that decision sensibly. How do you make a transmission? Or an…
gregladen | November 23, 2016When I go to Thanksgiving, all the people there will be reasonable. Also, this will be in Minnesota where politics are not discussed. And if they are discussed, my Father-in-Law has well developed techniques to run interference, as is his responsibility as head of the hosting household. There will be chairs to get from the basement (always wait until the last second to ask Greg to help with the chairs, just in case he starts talking politics!). The dogs are trained to make a fuss when given secret hand signals. That sort of thing.
But you may not be as fortunate as I am. Perhaps you will…
gregladen | November 20, 2016These are my suggestions, mostly books, for holiday gifts that have some sort of science relevance. See this guide for gift ideas for kids. (There is a pretty good chance that there is an idea or two in the Kids Guide for the adult in your life, depending on the adult.)
For your Uncle Bob
Get ready for your favorite science-denying uncle, whom we all know of as "Uncle Bob" (though he goes by many different names) with these two important books related to climate change.
If your Uncle Bob is an Evangelical Christian.
Or, really, any kind of Christian.
My friend Paul Douglas has co-authored…
gregladen | November 20, 2016Large hairy elephants got me into paleoanthropology, eventually.
Cohoes Mastodon Exhibit in old New York State Museum, Albany, NY.
I had a strong interest in science, and it was nurtured and expanded by my frequent visits to the New York State Museum, and there was never a doubt in anyone's mind, anywhere, that the coolest exhibit at that museum was the Cohoes Mastodon exhibit. Barbarians eventually came along and tore that exhibit down, along with all the other fantastic and traditional museum displays, when they made the new, slick, produced for consumption and not intense engagement…
gregladen | November 15, 2016The Princeton Field Guide to Prehistoric Mammals ,by Donald R. Prothero, is the first extinct animal book that you, dear reader, are going to give to someone for the holidays.
This book is an interesting idea. Never mind the field guide part for a moment. This isn't really set up like a field guide, though it is produced by the excellent producers of excellent field guides at Princeton. But think about the core idea here. Take every group of mammal, typically at the level of Order (Mammal is class, there are more than two dozen living orders with about 5,000 species) and ask for each one, "…
gregladen | November 11, 2016I just received two books that I will be reviewing in more detail later, but wanted to let you know about now.
Coding Projects in Scratch: A step by step guide by DK Publishers is a new scratch coding book. I got a copy a couple of days ago and have been going through it, and found it to be excellent. I'll be including it in my Science Oriented Holiday Shopping Guide for Kids Stuff, which I'll have out soon, but I wanted to give you a heads up first. From the publishers:
Using fun graphics and easy-to-follow instructions, Coding Projects in Scratch is a straightforward, visual guide that…
gregladen | November 6, 2016Children Just Like Me: A Unique Celebration of Children Around the World is a new edition of DK's famous diversity for children book.
From the publisher:
Children Just Like Me is an amazing children's book showing everyday life through the eyes and words of children around the world.
Offering a remarkable insight into the lives of children today all around the globe, Children Just Like Me is packed with photography of children, their friends and family, home, and school vividly illustrating different cultures, from rural farms to busy cities to river boats.
With distinctive DK design and text…
gregladen | October 23, 2016My friend Paul Douglas calls himself an albino unicorn. He is a Republican (one of my few Republican friends!) and an evangelical Christian (one of my few evangelical Christian friends!) who is extremely well informed about climate change, and who acts on a day to day basis as a climate warrior, informing people of the realities of climate change at several levels.
I tend to think of Paul as a tire, because he is where the rubber meets the road. His job is informing corporations and such about the risks they are facing right now, today, tomorrow, next week with respect to weather. Paul…
gregladen | October 15, 2016The Outdoor Science Lab for Kids: 52 Family-Friendly Experiments for the Yard, Garden, Playground, and Park is a good guide to home science experiments for kids, usually with adult involvement, ranging across a fairly wide range of age but mainly, I'd say, middle school for unsupervised work, or pretty much any age if supervised.
All of the experiments can be done by adults with younger kids watching or being involved to varying degrees.
Most of he experiments cost little or nothing, depending on where you live (like, do you live near a pond?) and what the phrase "common household…
gregladen | September 21, 2016We went to the local library the other day to find books in the range appropriate for Huxley to read. It isn't sufficient to say he's in the first grade. Between preschool and second grade, there are (in English, anyway) probably about four or five levels of reading ability, and kids move through them fast. In addition to that, there are who the heck knows how many different scales, developed by various individuals and organizations, to reflect reading levels. It is so complicated that there is actually a company that you can pay to tell you what reading level a book is.
So we asked the…
gregladen | September 20, 2016Crows are smart. Anyone who watches them for a while can figure this out.
But that is true of a lot of things. Your baby is smart (not really). Your dog is smart (not really). Ants are smart (sort of).
It takes a certain degree of objective research, as well as some serious philosophy of intelligence (to define what smart is) to really address this question. But when the research is done and the dust settles, crows are smart.
We were all amazed (or not, because we already knew that crows are smart) to find that New Caledonian crows made and used tools. Now, we know (see my most recent…
gregladen | September 19, 2016Grunt: The Curious Science of Humans at War by Mary Roach explores, from a scientific perspective, the gear, technologies, and methods used to keep soldiers alive, or at least less injured, overheated, starved or thirsted to death, killed by gasses, and so on.
Roach is a well known and quite funny science writer who also wrote Stiff, Bonk, and Gulp.
This is a fun book, well researched, engagingly written, and informative. Also, off beat. Does human blood really draw sharks? What is the virtue of maggots, medicinally? How does the military test dangerous devices and the protections against…
gregladen | September 18, 2016There was a dead rabbit in the middle of the road today. I suspected such a thing, nearby, just out of sight, and edible, because I noticed some crows taking off whenever a car went by. Then, when I went over, I could see the rabbit that they were feasting on between drive-bys.
I had been looking for rabbits lately, because of this: the cat had switched to hanging out by the upstairs window, the better to observe the just arriving Juncos (snow birds, it is fall). She had previously spent most of her time observing rabbits from the lower, ground level windows, until just the other day when…