Books
laelaps | October 8, 2009
In the middle of the summer of 2008 the ScienceBlogs cat herders relayed some exciting news to my blogging colleagues and I. Randy Olson, creator of the documentary Flock of Dodos, had created a new movie called Sizzle: A Global Warming Comedy and wanted to send us all screener copies for a coordinated review "party". It sounded like a fun opportunity at the time, but little did I know what a headache the movie release would become.
Even though I enjoyed Flock of Dodos, there was one aspect of it that didn't sit right with me. Part of Randy's thesis was that scientists fail at helping the…
grrlscientist | October 5, 2009
I receive a fair number of books to review each month, so I thought I should do what several magazines and other publications do; list those books that have arrived in my mailbox so you know that this is the pool of books from which I will be reading and reviewing on my blog.
I should point out that (sadly!), my book reviewing days may be ending soon because I will be relocating to Frankfurt, Germany in the next month or two. According to my experiences, postage to Germany is at least three times what it is to anywhere in the USA, and I get an impressive headache when I read electronic…
grrlscientist | October 4, 2009tags: Birdbooker Report, bird books, animal books, natural history books, ecology books
"How does one distinguish a truly civilized nation from an aggregation of
barbarians? That is easy. A civilized country produces much good bird
literature."
--Edgar Kincaid
The Birdbooker Report is a special weekly report of a wide variety of science, nature and behavior books that currently are, or soon will be available for purchase. This report is written by one of my Seattle birding pals and book collector, Ian "Birdbooker" Paulsen, and is edited by me and published here for your information and…
gregladen | October 2, 2009The Atheist's Guide to Christmas is now available!
This is a British project, and if you buy the book the money they make goes to charity (UK HIV charity Terrence Higgins Trust). It is an anthology with writings by a wide range of authors, including Richard Dawkins, Derren Brown, Charlie Brooker, David Baddiel, Ben Goldacre, Josie Long, Richard Herring, Simon Singh, Brian Cox, Jenny Colgan, AC Grayling, Simon Le Bon, Claire Rayner, Robin Ince, Jon Holmes, Zoe Margolis, Phil Plait, Mitch Benn, Lucy Porter, and Adam Rutherford.
sciencewoman | October 2, 2009In support of our on-going DonorsChoose challenge, this month Minnow and I will be exploring science-related books for SciWo's storytime.
I have to admit, I'm enjoying the challenge of finding sciencey books appropriate for a 2.5 year old's attention span. There seem to be a plethora of books for the 4-8 year old set, but fewer for the younger crowd. Well, that's not true. There are an awful lot of books about animals, especially farm animals, but Minnow has got her animals down pat, and we all know there is more to science than zoology.
I'm also discovering that it is easier to keep Minnow…
laelaps | September 28, 2009
As some of you may recall, last week I posted a list of new and forthcoming books written by science bloggers. I tried to include all the authors and titles I could think of, but there was one book that I intentionally left off the list; my own.
I am now proud to announce that my first book, Written in Stone, will be released by Bellevue Literary Press in the fall of 2010. In it I tell the stories of some of the most magnificent evolutionary transitions in the vertebrate fossil record, such as the evolution of birds from feathered theropod dinosaurs and whales from land-dwelling ancestors,…
pharyngula | September 27, 2009The Hastings bookstore in Lubbock, Texas, has a peculiar way of organizing their books.
But then, these are people so deeply confused that they probably rummage about fruitlessly in the Religion section looking for truth.
grrlscientist | September 27, 2009tags: Birdbooker Report, bird books, animal books, natural history books, ecology books
"How does one distinguish a truly civilized nation from an aggregation of
barbarians? That is easy. A civilized country produces much good bird
literature."
--Edgar Kincaid
The Birdbooker Report is a special weekly report of a wide variety of science, nature and behavior books that currently are, or soon will be available for purchase. This report is written by one of my Seattle birding pals and book collector, Ian "Birdbooker" Paulsen, and is edited by me and published here for your information and…
sciencewoman | September 25, 2009Last Saturday was International Talk Like a Pirate Day and Minnow and I got into the spirit of the day by reading the only toddler-appropriate pirate book I know: My Pop-Pop is a Pirate by Pat Croce.
(Even if you don't watch the whole video, check out 1:15 to 2:00 minutes for adorable Minnow talking like a pirate.)
Our local science museum was hosting special pirate day activities, so Minnow and I spent the afternoon at the museum, learning about pirates and shipwrecks and undersea exploration. Unfortunately, I didn't get any pictures of the pirates, because I made the mistake of going with…
laelaps | September 24, 2009This year has seen an explosion of books written by science bloggers, and it looks like the trend is going to continue well into 2010.
Jason Rosenhouse recently published The Monty Hall Problem and is hard at work on a new title about what goes on at creationist conferences.
Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum released Unscientific America, and Kirshenbaum is nearing completion on a new book, The Science of Kissing.
The ever-popular Carl Zimmer brought us two new gems, Microcosm and the soon-to-be-released The Tangled Bank. I can't wait to see what's next.
Rebecca Skloot's long-…
pharyngula | September 22, 2009The latest online edition of Seed Magazine (you all know it's gone to an all-digital format, right? You should be reading it regularly) has an interview with Richard Dawkins on his new book — it focuses on the potential for the new book to persuade people to accept the idea of evolution.
I think it does a good job of that, too. They asked me to write a little commentary on the book, and I think it has even wider possibilities. It's so readable and clear, I want some of those die-hard creationist fanatics to read it. Really read it, and understand it. I don't expect them to be converted at all…
grrlscientist | September 20, 2009tags: Birdbooker Report, bird books, animal books, natural history books, ecology books
"How does one distinguish a truly civilized nation from an aggregation of
barbarians? That is easy. A civilized country produces much good bird
literature."
--Edgar Kincaid
The Birdbooker Report is a special weekly report of a wide variety of science, nature and behavior books that currently are, or soon will be available for purchase. This report is written by one of my Seattle birding pals and book collector, Ian "Birdbooker" Paulsen, and is edited by me and published here for your information and…
sciencewoman | September 18, 2009Welcome to the second installment of SciWo's Storytime, a low-production cost substitute for the recently canceled children's television classic, Reading Rainbow.
This week, Minnow and I have been enjoying the book "Move Over Rover" by Karen Beaumont and illustrated by Jane Dyer.
I apologize for the poor video quality. I think daytime shoots are going to work better. If you get the book from the library, you'll see that the surprise twist is foreshadowed throughout the book. Jane Dyer is an amazing illustrator.
After reading the book a few dozen times, Minnow and I realized that we had a…
pharyngula | September 16, 2009There are no more excuses. None.
The defining characteristic of all arguments with creationists is how damned ignorant they are. I'm sure many scientists have been stupefied into stunned silence when they first encounter these people; these advocated of creationism are typically loud and certain and have invested much time and effort into apologetics, but when you sit down and try to have a serious discussion with them, you quickly discover that their knowledge of basic biology is nonexistent. It's worse than that. We're used to freshmen entering our classes who don't know much about the…
laelaps | September 15, 2009
In 1916 the paleontologist H.F. Osborn published one of the strangest books on evolution I have ever read. Titled The Origin and Evolution of Life: On the theory of action, reaction and interaction of energy, the volume was an attempt to "take some of the initial steps toward an energy conception of Evolution and an energy conception of Heredity and away from the matter and form conceptions which have prevailed for over a century." Osborn hoped that by distilling the study of life to exchanges of energy the why of evolution would finally become apparent. (As I have mentioned before, Osborn…
pharyngula | September 14, 2009It's another negative review of Unscientific America. I think we're reaching consensus on one thing: the book was awfully light on substance.
ddobbs | September 14, 2009I regret I can't treat at more, um, length, the following weighty matters:
Size Matters; So Do Lies Nate Silver finds that Matt Kibbe, the president of FreedomWorks, speaking of the 9/12 tea party rally in DC, " did the equivalent of telling people that his penis is 53 inches long."
Dr. Nobody Again Questions JAMA Disclosure Policies in which Philip Dawdy and Jonathan Leo, a dangerous combination, butt heads with JAMA
Self-Destruct Button, Activiated! Baucus and Conrad decide maybe Joe Wilson had a point after all. Swine Flu Mystery in Healthy Young Puts Focus on Genetics, Deep Inhaling (…
stoat | September 12, 2009 Everyone else blogs about what they've read (everyone? Well, this is a blog, who cares about accuracy. Bryan does and I'm sure other people do to). And I happen to notice that my queue of books-I've-finished-reading looks quite good just now. Once upon a time (well, since my teens up to only a few years ago) I read almost nothing but trashy sci-fi, but lots of it. But no more; I read few novels and those slowly.
So from right to left:
As you like it - OK, so this is the glorious Bard, but it is still a weird old play. Wiki seems to agree. Broadly speaking, it is utterly implausible and not…
sciencewoman | September 11, 2009Did you know that after a 26 year run, Reading Rainbow is no longer producing episodes? "Butterfly in the sky, I can fly twice as high. Take a look, it's in a book, a reading rainbow" is no longer enchanting thousands of young children. The series, in case you never watched it, featured the reading of a children's book, a related adventure, and reccomendations of other books by child reviewers. The whole thing was wonderful for creating future bibliophiles. Apparently, it's no longer the educational mission of public television to encourage a love of reading, rather the focus of educational…
grrlscientist | September 7, 2009tags: horses, equus, biology, photography, books, Tim Flach, streaming video
This video is a slideshow of stunning photography that is narrated by photographer Tim Flach showing photos from his book Equus which was published on 1 October 2008.