Books
khannula | August 4, 2009There was a mountain lion in the courtyard of a local elementary school playground today.
A mountain lion.
At the elementary school.
A neighbor called the police, who called the Department of Wildlife, who shot the mountain lion. A young male, about 75 pounds, probably recently headed out on its own. Apparently that's the age they usually are when the DOW kills them for wandering around in town.
I just finished read The Beast in the Garden, this year's common reading at the college, so the story sounds eerily familiar. The Beast in the Garden is about the mountain lions that began showing up…
laelaps | August 4, 2009Today Greg Laden mentioned a paleontology-based creationist novel that was bundled in with the Expelled marketing campaign called Fossil Hunter. Some of you may recall that I mentioned the book about a year ago but never got around to reading it/posting about it. Since I went to all the trouble of getting a used copy from an independent bookstore (so the money would go to the bookstore, not the people behind the book), though, I figure I might as well make good on my promise to review it. It couldn't be any worse than Monster, right?
laelaps | August 3, 2009After a number of false starts, I have finally started work on a "best of Laelaps" anthology. I am going to call it Tales From Deep Time, and it is going to be a sort of "b-sides" compilation that will complement my other, professional book-in-progress about paleontology and evolution. This blog has thrived on material I wanted to include in the other book but had to leave on the cutting room floor, and I look forward to presenting these miscellaneous tidbits in a more professional manner.
I am doing more than just cutting and pasting blog entries, though. Right now I am in the process of…
grrlscientist | August 3, 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.
Cold: Adventures in the World's Frozen Places by Bill Streever (NYC: Little, Brown and Company; 2009). Review copy.
Beyond Cosmic Dice: Moral Life in a Random World by Jeff Schweitzer and Giuseppe Notarbartolo-Di-Sciara (Jacquie Jordan Inc.; 2009). Review copy.
Animal Investigators: How the World's First Wildlife…
grrlscientist | August 2, 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…
pharyngula | August 1, 2009I think I'm going to have to order this book, The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll), by Jeff Sharlet, on the basis of this interview. I know, it's Bill Maher, who drives us frothing mad with his inconsistencies, but ignore Maher and just pay attention to the story Sharlet is telling.
pharyngula | July 27, 2009As is his habit, Jason Rosenhouse has begun a long review of Mooney and Kirshenbaum's book. It won't be giving too much away to say that he gives it a "Mixed, but generally negative" review. I know M&K will only present the positive side on their site (as I'm only going to emphasize the negative), but overall I think "Mixed, but generally negative" is the growing consensus about their book.
I know Mooney has the ability to put together a solid story, as he showed in The Republican War on Science and Storm World — it's too bad he chose to go the shallow and substanceless route in this book…
aardvarchaeology | July 27, 2009Inspired yet again by the Carlquist & Järv anthology of library history I mentioned recently, I decided to write something about the libraries of my life. I'm fortunate in that I have always been able to take libraries for granted. I feel at home in them.
Learning to read at age four or five, I may have been taken about that time to some forgotten library in Greenwich, Conn. But the first one I remember and one of the two most important ones in my life so far is Saltsjöbaden public library, located at the Dump, Tippen, the local mall which took its name from being built on the site of a…
clock | July 26, 2009A few years ago, I read Mary Roach's first book, Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers and absolutely loved it! One of the best popular science books I have read in a long time - informative, eye-opening, thought-provoking and funny. Somehow I missed finding time to read her second (Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife - I guess just not a topic I care much about), but when her third book came out, with such a provocative title as Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex, I could not resist.
And I was not disappointed. It is informative, eye-opening, thought-provoking and funny.…
grrlscientist | July 26, 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 | July 25, 2009This slim novel by author Bi Feiyu takes the reader inside the world of the Peking Opera, after the Cultural Revolution and at the dawn of capitalism in China. Xiao Yanqui rashly lost her place in the opera company just when her star was rising, but now, 20 years later, she's been given a chance at redemption - a chance to return to the lead role in The Moon Opera. The novel follows Xiao as she attempts to control her body and contort back into the role of a much younger woman, despite the fact that she now has a teenage daughter of her own. Meanwhile, Xiao's understudy and star pupil wants…
clock | July 23, 2009Just came back from Raleigh, where Sheril gave a reading of her book Unscientific America in front of a nice-size crowd at Quail Ridge Books:
Sheril did a great job and ably fielded the questions afterwards:
laelaps | July 21, 2009
Mentioning Richard Dawkins is a quick way to polarize a conversation. One acquaintance once told me that she refused to read anything by Stephen Jay Gould because of Dawkins' criticisms while, on the other hand, many of my friends have voiced their exasperation with the English biologist's attacks on religion. Regardless of whether you consider him a saint or a sinner, though, Dawkins is one of the most controversial scientific figures working today, and Fern Elsdon-Baker has contributed The Selfish Genius: How Richard Dawkins Rewrote Darwin's Legacy to the ongoing arguments about the "…
gregladen | July 20, 2009Because some of you are not my facebook friends ....
Here are the instructions....
Don't take too long to think about it. Fifteen books you've read that will always stick with you.
First 15 you can recall in no more than 15 minutes.
Copy the instructions into your own note, and be sure to tag the person who tagged you.
If you can't read, just list the picture books you looked at.
1. One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (Signet Classics)
2. Welcome to the Monkey House: Stories
3. The Voyage of the Beagle: Charles Darwin's Journal of Researches (Penguin Classics)
4. The Golden Book…
grrlscientist | July 19, 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…
aardvarchaeology | July 19, 2009I'm reading Eric Carlquist's and Harry Järv's massive new anthology of library history, Mänsklighetens minne. For an idea about what the anthology is like, consider that all the contributors are male and that the youngest of them was born in 1947. For an idea about me, consider that I would happily have read all 866 pages of it already in my later teens.
Reading this book, I'm struck yet again by the difference between knowledge "on good authority" and scientific knowledge. Throughout the European and Islamic Middle Ages, throughout the millennia of Chinese civilisation, ancient texts were…
terrasig | July 17, 2009Please accept my apologies in advance for taking another edition of The Friday Fermentable to bring you a sober (pun intended) story about alcoholic beverages. The heat, beginning training for a half-marathon, and other stuff have my personal alcohol consumption at nil so I don't have any recent wine or beer finds to share with you, Dear Reader.
Moreover, there have been some prominent stories as of late relating to alcohol and substance abuse such as the pharmacology and toxicology of Michael Jackson's death (which we've discussed here, here, and here) and the prevalence of alcoholism in…
gregladen | July 17, 2009I have too many books to read in too little time but I'm making a push. And I've just added to the list one entitled The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power.
Yes, yes, I know, everyone else on the planet has already read this and knows about it and since the book was published a very very long time ago (late 2008?) it does not deserve to be discussed in the blogosphere.
But it is relevant as news because of the connection between various nefarious players who have done recent stupid stuff and the organization outlined in the book.
I'm especially looking…
pharyngula | July 17, 2009I feel obligated to reply to Mooney and Kirshenbaum's latest complaint, but I can't really get motivated. Their argument has become so absurd and so petty that it seems a waste of time anymore.
All they've done is confessed that they are on a personal vendetta: they are very upset with me, they admit that my existence is a central reason that they left the scienceblogs network, and you can just feel the roiling resentment that people dare to criticize them, persistently and at length…and it's all my fault.
I did not address their scapegoating of PZ Myers and Pharyngula in my reviews of the…
terrasig | July 17, 2009
Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum have released a new book entitled, Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens Our Future. Mr Mooney and Ms Kirshenbaum also co-author the blog, The Intersection, a Discover Magazine online.
I was fortunate to receive a review copy from the publisher but must admit, sheepishly, that the book has sat unread beside my home office desk because of other responsibilities. The advance paperwork says it is to be released officially on 20 July. So, my plan is to get to it this weekend and get some magnitude of a review written.
During my relative…