Books
pharyngula | July 14, 2009Mooney is at it again, scrabbling madly to refute my criticisms. It's another ho-hum effort.
He claims he did spend some effort criticizing the overt anti-science forces in our country — only it was in his previous book, not this one. No, that doesn't rebut me at all: in a book that purports to be discussing problems and solutions to the science and society divide, there ought to be some effort made to prioritizing the issues, even if it means revisiting points made in other books. Unfortunately, the message here is that we have three problems: the bumbling scientists who don't know how to…
pharyngula | July 14, 2009An important tip to book authors who want to decry the ability of others to engage a consensus: don't alienate the literate, thinking part of your readership yourself. Mooney and Kirshenbaum make much of the fact that those wicked "New Atheists" are going to drive away support for science, a fact not in evidence, but they seem oblivious to the fact that their recommendation to hush up a significant element of the public voice of science is going to alienate us, and it's working to bite them in the ass right now. In other words, Jerry Coyne's review of their book is online.
I'll start with my…
pharyngula | July 13, 2009Mooney and Kirshenbaum have been so stung by my criticisms of their book that they have launched a multi-part rebuttal to my review. Here's my reply to their reply.
We didn't get personal, and we didn't attack atheism in general! Hmmm. Here's a sampling of what they do say: "Myers' actions were incredibly destructive and unnecessary". I "set the cause backward". New Atheists believe that "religious faith should not be benignly tolerated". The "New Atheists" are "nasty bullying". They're "shrill". In last year's voting for best science blog, I was the "devil's choice". Blogging brings out…
aardvarchaeology | July 12, 2009
I'm now in that state of summer leisure mixed with the responsibility of providing entertainment for the kids that causes a man to forget what day it is of the week. And so a week's fun is no longer restricted to its last two days. But I have done nothing grandiose lately: mainly pottered about and enjoyed being reunited with my lady wife after her recent visit to the in-laws.
Anyway, Friday and Saturday were largely taken up by housework of the interior decoration kind. My dad likes to suggest grandiose changes to our house and incite my wife into supporting his ideas, but as he also…
grrlscientist | July 12, 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…
clock | July 10, 2009From Quail Ridge Books
Quail Ridge Books & Music
hosts author
Sheril Kirshenbaum
for a discussion of her book
UNSCIENTIFIC AMERICA: HOW SCIENTIFIC ILLITERACY THREATENS OUR FUTURE
Thursday, July 23 at 7:30 pm
Climate change, the energy crisis, nuclear proliferation -- many of the most urgent problems of the twenty-first century require science-based solution. And yet Americans are paying less and less attention to scientists. Journalist and author Chris Mooney (The Republican War on Science) and Duke scientist Sheril Kirshenbaum explain how religious ideologues, a weak education system,…
pharyngula | July 9, 2009To return to Unscientific America again, I hardly touched on chapter 8, where they express their dismay at those uppity "New Atheists". I am not going to address his personal criticisms of me — there's no point, you obviously know I think he's completely wrong, and the uncharitable will simply claim my disagreement is the result of a personal animus — so instead I'm only going to address a couple of other general points that Mooney and Kirshenbaum get completely wrong. They plainly do not understand the atheist position, and make claims that demonstrate that either they didn't read any of the…
pharyngula | July 8, 2009Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum were right about one thing.
They sent me a copy of their new book, Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens Our Future(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll), with a strange request: "We hope that like Dr. Coyne, you will suspend judgment until reading the book, at which point we'll be interested to hear what you think." I was a bit offended; of course I was going to read it with an open mind. Why would they think it necessary to ask me to do so?
That was before I got to chapters 8 and 9, however, which open with very direct and personal attacks on me and…
laelaps | July 8, 2009In my review of Joshua Blu Buhs' new book Bigfoot: The Life and Times of a Legend I wrote;
As with many legendary creatures, advocates Bigfoot's existence often claim that the creature has been known for hundreds or even thousands of years. How could so many cultures in so many parts of the world have stories about "wild men of the woods" if none actually existed? An entire volume could be devoted to this question alone (for starters, see the chapters on "yeren" in The People's Peking Man) ...
Given that both books (Bigfoot and The People's Peking Man) were published by the University of…
gregladen | July 6, 2009Illustrated Guide to Home Chemistry Experiments: All Lab, No Lecture (DIY Science) is a new book by Robert Thompson. The premise is simple. The coolest thing in the world is a home chemistry set like this one from Gilbert, which combined both chemistry and microscopy:
Chemistry Set Combine the sciences of Chemistry and Microscopy in one big laboratory set! Microscope has a magnification of 60 power, plus unique Polaroid device that shows the brilliant colors of specimens under the lens. Set includes "Fun With Gilbert Chemistry", "Gilbert Microscope", "Glass Blowing" manuals and dissecting…
khannula | July 5, 2009Ed Yong went to the World Conference of Science Journalists, and came back with both an award (yay!) and some thoughts on embargoes and science journalism. What's got me thinking is not so much the issue of embargoes - I'm not trying to compete with science journalists, and wouldn't have time to read all the interesting papers that are out there, even if I had access to them (before or after they're officially published). Instead, I'm thinking about a side issue (which Mike the Mad Biologist also picked up): "investigative science journalism."
I'm not sure what Ed and the other journalists…
grrlscientist | July 5, 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…
laelaps | July 3, 2009
On the 31st of May, 1984, the late evolutionary theorist John Maynard Smith appraised the field of paleontology in the journal Nature. The report was a critical summary of a series of lectures Stephen Jay Gould had given at Cambridge, and Gould considered it "the kindest and most supportive critical commentary I have ever received." Smith wrote;
The attitude of population geneticists to any palaeontologist rash enough to offer a contribution to evolutionary theory has been to tell him to go away and find another fossil, and not to bother the grownups.
In the last ten years, however, this…
gregladen | July 2, 2009previously reviewed
Giant Dinosaurs of the Jurassic is a children's book for kids in third to fifth grade or, in my opinion, a little younger. Certainly this is an excellent choice, because of the cool illustrations, of a book to read aloud to the pre-literate little ones.
Author Gregory Wenzel does a good job in few words explaining life in the Jurassic, how bones get to become fossils, and something about how they are found. Most of the riveting several hundred words in this 32 page book are about the real stars of the show, the dinosaurs themselves.
Not every single dinosaur in this…
ddobbs | July 2, 2009What's been distracting me lately from the big story I really really need to finish writing ...
A splendid, rich fracas over Chris Anderson's Free, set off particularly by a pan from Malcolm Gladwell in the New Yorker. The net fairly exploded -- search, and ye shall find -- with many noting that a pot was calling a kettle black. E.g., Itâs like War of the Speakerâs Bureaus and a more gently titled but equally damning (to Gladwell) post by Anil Dash. ,And one young writer accused Anderson of being a feudal lord. Anderson himself has been remarkably unfiltered in his tweet-pointers to reviews,…
gregladen | June 29, 2009I very recently reviewed Carl Hiaasen's novels. Among his fiction are two books that are written explicitly for kids. Looking just at Hiaasen's titles it may be hard to pick them out from the pack, so I'm making a special reference to them here. They are called "Hoot" and "Flush." Details follow:
Hoot
Roy Eberhardt is the new kid--again. This time around it's Trace Middle School in humid Coconut Grove, Florida. But it's still the same old routine: table by himself at lunch, no real friends, and thick-headed bullies like Dana Matherson pushing him around. But if it wasn't for Dana…
gregladen | June 28, 2009previously reviewed
Birds: Nature's Magnificent Flying Machines is a book by Caroline Arnold and illustrated by Patricia Wynne for, I'd say, Pre-Elementary School kids and first/second grade. This is a good book to read to a pre-literate kid. Then put it away for later when the first grade academic report on birds is due ... it will be an excellent reference.
This is a well done and highly recommended book.
Birds... is highly specialized. It deals with only one topic: Bird flight. I like that. Who needs just another book on birds. Demonstrating to the little ones that there are…
grrlscientist | June 28, 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 | June 27, 2009previously reviewed
It utterly shocks me every time I make a reference to plastic alligators, Macy's bags with poisonous snakes in them, a guy named Skink or my favorite Bass Lure .... the Double Whammy .... and people look back at me with blank stares. Like, don't you get it? "To be or not to be" jokes or allusions to Sherlock Holmes are always understood. Or at least, people pretend to get them. But does no one read contemporary literature?
It is impossible, actually, to explain Carl Hiaasen's novels to anyone without sounding like a fool. All such attempts, made by anybody, start out…
laelaps | June 26, 2009I have been thoroughly enjoying my copy of The Paleobiological Revolution (edited by David Sepkoski and Michael Ruse), so much so that it has inspired me to get to work on some new academic papers. I will post a review of the book sometime this weekend, but here is a quote that is going to be very important to my discussion from G.G. Simpson's 1944 masterpiece Tempo and Mode in Evolution:
The attempted synthesis of paleontology and genetics, an essential part of the present study, may be particularly surprising and possibly hazardous. Not long ago paleontologists felt that a geneticist was a…