Books
drorzel | December 8, 2008I made a run to the library last week on one of the days I was home with SteelyKid, as an excuse to get out of the house for a little while. I picked up three books: Counterknowledge, The Devil's Eye by Jack McDevitt (an Antiquities Dealers Innnnn Spaaaaaace novel, and a good example of Competence Fiction), and a pop-science book titled The Age of Entanglement: When Quantum Physics Came of Age by Louisa Gilder, because it looked fairly relevant to my own book-in-progress.
Amusingly, my RSS feeds yesterday brought me the latest in a series of posts in which ZapperZ waxes peevish about the book…
grrlscientist | December 7, 2008tags: Birdbooker Report, bird books, animal books, natural history books, ecology books
"One cannot have too many good bird books"
--Ralph Hoffmann, Birds of the Pacific States (1927).
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 enjoyment. Below the fold is this week's issue of The Birdbooker Report which…
sheril | December 5, 2008Yesterday, many among us were aghast to learn that yet another major news outlet is eliminating its science coverage. In this case it was CNN, which decided to nix its seven-person unit on science, the environment, and technology--including six producers and veteran space correspondent Miles O'Brien. It's a growing trend around the country as science journalism is dropping out of style; newspapers are hemmhoraging science sections and reporters, and cable news was already pretty science anemic and is just getting worse. The irony, as Curtis Brainard of the Columbia Journalism Review online…
drorzel | December 5, 2008A few days ago, I complained again about the relative lack of science books in the New York Times "Notable Books of 2008" list. Yesterday, one of the big stories was CNN axing its entire science unit, such as it was, which drew comments from lots of blogs (and more whose links I can't be bothered to track down).
I'm probably the only one who thinks this, but in my opinion, these two are related. I'm not saying one caused the other, but that they're both symptoms of the same thing: the broad lack of respect for science among educated people. (Which I've ranted about before.)
One of the…
laelaps | December 5, 2008Around this time last year the New York Times listed 100 "Notable Books of 2007." Chad was upset that there were no science books on the list, and so was I. I penned a rant about this sad state of affairs, but Carl Zimmer (an occasional contributor to the NYT) made a point that made me eat my words.
This subject has come up once again now that the 2008 list from the NYT is out, which Chad still feels is sorely lacking in science titles despite there being several science books on this year's list;
I firmly believe that this is a big part of why we're messed up as a society-- the most…
pharyngula | December 4, 2008Simon Ings has written a wonderful survey of the eye, called A Natural History of Seeing: The Art and Science of Vision(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll), and it's another of those books you ought to be sticking on your Christmas lists right now. The title give you an idea of its content. It's a "natural history", so don't expect some dry exposition on deep details, but instead look forward to a light and readable exploration of the many facets of vision.
There is a discussion of the evolution of eyes, of course, but the topics are wide-ranging — Ings covers optics, chemistry, physiology, optical…
clock | December 3, 2008I promised solutions in 24 hours, and it's been a little more than that now, so here are the sources:
1. I suppose that the mere fact that I was in the company of two friends itself proves that I wasn't actually some kind of hermit when it came to my rat studies.
Rats by Robert Sullivan (not a blogger, as far as I know)
2. They're screwing the security guards in the bathroom.
The Wisdom of Whores by Elizabeth Pisani
3. By the end of the nineteenth century, organic synthesis was widely accepted and the vital force theory was abandoned.
Tomorrow's Table by Pamela Ronald
4. Cyanobacteria…
pharyngula | December 3, 2008It's December, and Squidmas is coming. Maybe you're like me, and the kids have all moved out, so you're thinking having a little intelligent life at home would be nice. Or maybe you're kids are still home, and you think they'd love a pretty pet. Or maybe you just love cephalopods, as do we all, so you're thinking, hey, let's get an aquarium and an octopus! What a fun idea!
One word of advice: NO. Don't do it. You can't just rush into these things.
Here's a positive suggestion, though. Start reading TONMO, the octopus news magazine online, regularly. If you haven't been reading it already, you…
laelaps | December 2, 2008I was hoping someone would tag me for the "5-56" meme that has just started going around. (Thanks, Bora!)
The rules are that you have to pick 10 books (of whatever genre, chosen any way you see fit) and transcribe the 5th sentence on page 56 of each book. If you're slick you can use Google Books to figure out where the quotes I have selected came from, but it's a lot more fun to guess. Here are my picks;
1: "Above, i.e. towards the elbow, a tubercle of the radius plays into a socket of the ulna; whilst below, i.e. towards the wrist, the radius finds the socket, and the ulna the tubercle."
2…
clock | December 2, 2008It started with Henry who was bored with the simplicity of the "pick the nearest book" meme and decided to make it really hard!
Mike picked it up and tagged a few people, including me and Wilkins.
So, what are the rules? Hey, Henry came up with this, so feel free to make the rules as you go. After all, what's he gonna do - release calcium from intracellular stores?
OK, pick not one but TEN books. They don't need to be the closest to you - take your time and make good picks. It's not easy - you want people to work hard, but still figure out the sources eventually. Goldilocks Principle…
grrlscientist | December 1, 2008
I receive a fair number of books to review each week, 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.
Red State, Blue State, Rich State, Poor State: Why Americans Vote the Way They Do by Andrew Gelman (Princeton, NJ: Princeton; 2008) Brief Comment: Gelman and a group of fellow political scientists crunch numbers and draw graphs, arriving at a picture that refutes the influential one drawn by Thomas Frank, in What's…
aardvarchaeology | December 1, 2008Four of my favourite authors were born in the 1890s and wrote mainly from the inter-war years onward.
H.P. Lovecraft 1890-1937
J.R.R. Tolkien 1892-1973
F.G. Bengtsson 1894-1954
F. Nilsson Piraten 1895-1972
There seems to be something about that generation's idiom, taste and experience that resonates with me. But maybe it's just an artefact of chronology. I got into them all as a boy: I was born right about the time when the kids of the 1890s were dying off, which turned the spotlight on their generation once again and led to re-issues. Anyway, check them out!
grrlscientist | November 30, 2008tags: Birdbooker Report, bird books, animal books, natural history books, ecology books
"One cannot have too many good bird books"
--Ralph Hoffmann, Birds of the Pacific States (1927).
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 enjoyment. Below the fold is this week's issue of The Birdbooker Report which…
clock | November 26, 2008
A few days ago, Peggy and Stephanie asked the blogosphere a few questions about the relationship between science and Science Fiction. They want to use the insights from the responses to run their session - Science Fiction on Science Blogs - at the ScienceOnline09 meeting in January.
They got lots of responses - interesting reads for the long holiday weekend:
Responses from the SF Writer Point of View
Sean Craven @ Renaissance Oaf
Simon Haynes @ Spacejock News
Arvind Mishra @ Science Fiction in India
JesterJoker @ Sa Souvraya Niende Misain Ye
Kelly McCullough @ Wyrdsmiths
Mike Brotherton…
clock | November 26, 2008Inspired by The Open Laboratory, the Gamers in the blogosphere are planning to do something similar - the Open Game Table.
If you are a gaming blogger, take a look and participate....
clock | November 26, 2008Peggy Kolm wrote a book review in Nature of Academeology by Female Science Professor.
My copy arrived some weeks ago, but it will have to wait until I read at least three other books I promised to review....eh. Anyway, Peggy says:
FSP's stories of being a woman in a male-dominated field are engrossing. She describes the casual sexism, such as being ignored or treated as a secretary by visiting scientists, or having male colleagues comment that she received an award "because she is a woman". These tales might be disheartening to some. But FSP also relates her successes as a scientist and in…
aardvarchaeology | November 24, 2008
I've been a science fiction fan since I was four. It started with TV shows like the original Star Trek, The Six Million Dollar Man, Batman (the shapeless tights 60s version) and Saturday morning superhero cartoons. One of my first visits to the movies was when my mom took me to see Star Wars in 1977. Then I started to read novels and ploughed through Heinlein and Clarke. I remember finding Stranger in a Strange Land a little weird at about age eleven, but I enjoyed it. Later I became a devotee of LeGuin and Lovecraft.
Sf was such an obvious thing to me from an early age, and so the fantasy…
grrlscientist | November 23, 2008tags: Birdbooker Report, bird books, animal books, natural history books, ecology books
"One cannot have too many good bird books"
--Ralph Hoffmann, Birds of the Pacific States (1927).
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 enjoyment. Below the fold is this week's issue of The Birdbooker Report which…
awild | November 21, 2008 My copy arrived from Amazon the day before yesterday. I've not given it anything more than a couple cursory thumb-throughs, but I'm immediately left with the impression of schizophrenia.
The bits on social organization, behavior, communication, and levels of selection- mostly Bert Hoelldobler's sections- seem an engaging and modern review, while the chapters dealing with ant history and evolution- Wilson's area- are... How do I say this diplomatically? Rubbish.
The past ten years have brought immeasurable advances in our knowledge of ant evolution, both in breadth and detail. …
clock | November 18, 2008Malcolm Gladwell has a new book out and critics all home in on different aspects of it....
MICHIKO KAKUTANI:
Much of what Mr. Gladwell has to say about superstars is little more than common sense: that talent alone is not enough to ensure success, that opportunity, hard work, timing and luck play important roles as well. The problem is that he then tries to extrapolate these observations into broader hypotheses about success. These hypotheses not only rely heavily on suggestion and innuendo, but they also pivot deceptively around various anecdotes and studies that are selective in the extreme…