Books
gregladen | March 9, 2008There are two books called "Icons of Evolution." One is by Jonathan Wells. The best way to learn about Well's Icons of Evolution is to watch Randy Olson's Flock of Dodos. It is an anti science piece of dreck.
The other is a more recently published is Icons of Evolution [Two Volumes]: An Encyclopedia of People, Evidence, and Controversies (Greenwood Icons), and it is an entirely different book. I have heard about this book, but not read it. Since it came up in a comment I thought I'd give you a direct link and a little bit of information. Info from the publisher:
Students and the…
pharyngula | March 9, 2008Long time readers here, and fans of Creek Running North, the best-written blog on the internets, will remember Zeke…and if you don't, you've been missing out. And now you can get a whole book of nothing but concentrated Zeke, which sounds like Dog Heaven to me.
gregladen | March 8, 2008Creationism's Trojan Horse: The Wedge of Intelligent Design is a must read for those interested in the Evolution - Creationism controversy. In particular, this volume is an essential part of the personal library of every science educator, for reasons that I will describe below. If you know a Life Science Teacher, this is a perfect birthday present. If you have a child in the public K-12 education system in the US, or the analog somewhere else, donate a copy of this book to the appropriate life science teacher!
In this important book published by Oxford University Press in 2004, Forrest…
grrlscientist | March 7, 2008tags: Finding Your Wings, bird watching, birding, outdoors, Burton Guttman, book review
As a long-time professor of biology, Burton Guttman has learned two major concepts from his students about learning: first, people learn best by actively participating in the learning process and second; people often try to learn at the wrong time. To address these two challenges, Guttman used his teaching experiences to design a workbook that teaches beginners how to watch birds in the field -- the first such book that I've ever seen published on this topic (I've since learned that there are two other…
aardvarchaeology | March 7, 2008
I've been a devotee of Escape Pod, the weekly science-fiction short-story podcast, for 2.5 years now. Its audience has grown and grown and grown until Escape Pod is now the world's second-largest paying market for sf short fiction regardless of medium. It's second only to Analog! Steve Eley, who runs the thing, is a fixture in my life, the way Oprah wouldn't be even if I watched TV. Now, in a blog entry, Steve's giving the world a look behind the scenes at Escape Artists, Inc. Though you'd never guess it from Escape Pod's solid record of weekly publication, things have been rough for the guy…
cmooney | March 5, 2008In its latest issue, Library Journal singled out 39 noteworthy sci-tech books published in 2007. Storm World was one of two chosen in the "meteorology/earth science" category.
Not sure why 39 overall were chosen, but...an honor to share a list with people like Steven Pinker, Natalie Angier, and Walter Isaacson.
Once again, the Storm World paperback--with a new afterword, just written by moi--can be pre-ordered here at 5 % off....
...and now, back to our election coverage.
ddobbs | March 3, 2008
Now here's a match-up: the fine-grained, highly particularized, unpredictable, and insatiably curious mind of Nicholson Baker and the many-grained field of knowledge expressed in Wikipedia. In a great reading pleasure, Baker reviews John Broughton's Wikipedia: The Missing Manual in the current issue of the New York Review of Books:
Wikipedia is just an incredible thing. It's fact-encirclingly huge, and it's idiosyncratic, careful, messy, funny, shocking, and full of simmering controversies—and it's free, and it's fast. In a few seconds you can look up, for instance, "Diogenes of Sinope," or…
laelaps | March 3, 2008
Gerhard Heilmann's often-reproduced illustration of running Iguanodon. This is the version I am most familiar with, but there was actually an earlier version in which the dinosaurs lacked the crest of scutes they possess in the above drawing.
Last night I picked up Gerhard Heilmann's The Origin of Birds and rediscovered a passage that is one of my favorites in the whole of paleontological literature. Addressing an absurd hypothesis for the origins of birds (and flight), Heilmann sarcastically tears down the fanciful speculation and provides a wise warning about books written by authors…
aardvarchaeology | March 3, 2008I read Donald Prothero's Evolution for the palaeontology and general evolutionary zoology, and I was not disappointed. The book is up-to-date, well-argued, well-illustrated and aimed at the educated lay reader. Stylistically, it's not bad, though poorly copy-edited, and I did find the author's use of exclamation marks and italics a little overdone. Nevertheless: this is good solid pop-sci, very enjoyable.
But it's not just a book about evolutionary zoology. It's also a salvo in a war that's being fought on that far-off continent, Northern America. In this respect it reminded me of another…
clock | March 2, 2008Wow! This is nuts! And this is nuts in a different way! Fortunately, Scott McLemee, Chad Orzel, Josh Rosenau and Brian Switek bring in some reality to the topic: what goes on the living-room bookshelf? Commenters chime in. Good stuff. Read it.
So, what are "rules" in the Coturnix house?
First, the house is too small to allow too much fine planning as to what the guests will see.
Second, we do not have guests very often (again, lack of space), so the bookshelves are not aimed at them.
Third, we have about 5000 books and they have to be stored somewhere, in some fashion.
Fourth, we have…
laelaps | March 2, 2008I've decided to keep something of a running summary of the progress I've made on my book, my thought being that if I am able to keep a tab of what I've done I'll be more likely to work on it and better organize my ideas. Today marks the first day I'll be doing this, and I hope to update it every Sunday around this time when I have finished writing for the evening. Listed below is what I've got so far in terms of chapters/sections where I have a strong direction and organizing focus (I'm not counting the pages of more abstract rambles and notes that have accumulated to date). I've decided to…
clock | March 2, 2008Anne-Marie reviews two books that appear to be useful in thinking about one's career in science: The Beginner's Guide to Winning a Nobel Prize, by Peter Doherty, and The Chicago Guide to Landing a Job in Academic Biology, by Chandler, Wolfe, and Promislow. Read the review and, if you think this is something you need, buy the books.
And, if you have additional recommendations, let Anne-Marie know in her comments.
grrlscientist | March 2, 2008tags: Birdbooker Report, bird books, natural history books
"One cannot have too many good bird books"
--Ralph Hoffmann, Birds of the Pacific States (1927).
Here's this week's issue of the Birdbooker Report by Ian Paulsen, which lists bird and natural history books that are (or will soon be) available for purchase.
New and Recent Titles:
Crump, Marty & Alan. Headless Males Make Great Lovers: And other unusual Natural Histories. 2007. University of Chicago Press. Paperback: 216 pages. Price: $14.00. [Amazon: $11.90]. SUMMARY: Essays on unique animal behaviors.
Guttman, Burton S. Finding…
laelaps | February 27, 2008
A bear skeleton illustrated in William Cheselden's Osteographia.
Yeah, I've been on a bit of a "science meets art" bent lately (I don't want to encroach on Bioephemera's territory too much now...), but what's one more link into the mix? Neil has told me that the latest issue of the magazine Cabinet features one of my favorite illustrations of Cheselden's Osteographia as well as articles about Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins, the whale of a trial that is the focus of Trying Leviathan, and much more about bones.
laelaps | February 27, 2008
It is often accepted that science and the humanities have long been in conflict with each other, science providing a cold, objective look at the world while having read the entire works of Shakespeare (or similar equivalent) represents the true hallmark of a cultivated mind in the humanities. This disjunction was identified in 1959 by C.P. Snow in his book The Two Cultures, and in a 1963 follow-up he described the idea of a "third culture" in which science and the humanities could support each other and no longer be seen as entirely opposing forces. The development of a Snow's idea of a…
laelaps | February 27, 2008Chad's got an excellent post called "You Are What You Appear to Have Read," although I have to say that I violate most of the prime directives of book-shelving no matter what system you think best. I don't have any photographs of the present arrangement, but being that I'm living in an apartment space is at a premium. There are three main bookshelves that just barely hold all the books my wife and I had acquired up until about last week (we've even doubled up with the paperbacks to fit more in), but a recent trip to the Cranbury Bookworm means that there are now about 30 new (old?) books…
clock | February 25, 2008Oh-oh, it seems it's a meme season again! I'll dutifully do them, one at a time. Today - the good old 123 book meme, which memeticized over time into being called "Goosed meme". I was tagged by Lance Mannion who was hoping that the book closest to me is the OpenLab07. Sorry. It's not. It was until earlier today. Tough luck, Lance, you'll just have to buy it.
Anyway, the rules first:
⢠look up page 123 in the nearest book
⢠look for the fifth sentence
⢠then post the three sentences that follow that fifth sentence on page 123.
The nearest book is the one which arrived in the mail…
laelaps | February 25, 2008On June 30, 1860, T.H. ("Darwin's Bulldog") Huxley and Samuel ("Soapy Sam") Wilberforce met at Oxford to debate the concepts put forward in Charles Darwin's recently published On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, an encounter that is often celebrated even though the details of the event are lost to history. The famous debate was not the first time that Wilberforce publicly aired his criticisms of Darwin, though, as Wilberforce penned a detailed review of Darwin's famous book that raised a number of objections to evolution still heard from the creationist camp today.…
laelaps | February 24, 2008It can be a dangerous thing to let me loose in a used book store. The Cranbury Bookworm is having a "spring cleaning" sale in which everything in the store is half-off, and even though I was limited to $50 I returned with a dizzying amount of books. Here's a list of today's haul;
Our Face From Fish to Man (1929) - William K. Gregory
In the Shadow of Man (1971) - Jane Goodall
A Fossil-Hunter's Notebook (1980) - Edwin Colbert
Braindance (1992) - Dean Falk
Lucy (1981) - Donald Johansen & Maitland Edey
Adam or Ape (1971) - Louis Leaky and Jack & Stephanie Prost
The World of Natural…
grrlscientist | February 24, 2008tags: Birdbooker Report, bird books, natural history books
"One cannot have too many good bird books"
--Ralph Hoffmann, Birds of the Pacific States (1927).
Here's this week's issue of the Birdbooker Report by Ian Paulsen, which lists bird and natural history books that are (or will soon be) available for purchase.
New and Recent Titles:
Barcott, Bruce. The Last Flight of the Scarlet Macaw: One Woman's fight to save the World's most beautiful bird. 2008. Random House. Hardbound: 336 pages. Price: $26.00 [Amazon: $17.16; I have requested a review copy of this title]. SUMMARY: This book…