Books
jlynch | January 31, 2008Unlike Razib, my reading of Gould’s The Structure of Evolutionary Theory isn’t progressing. This is for a number of reasons but primary among them is a busy week service-wise coupled with other reading that must take priority if I’m going to be coherent in class. Looking at the beast in question, I’m guessing weekends will be the only time I can get to it and then I’ll probably only finish a chapter at a time. At that rate, I’ll probably take three months to finish the book.
So to keep you occupied, you can read Razib on chapters one, two and three. At this rate, he’ll be finished in no time!
laelaps | January 30, 2008
I started in on The Structure of Evolutionary Theory last night and got about 32 pages in, although I hope to cover more ground today. I've been especially fixated upon a brief paragraph involving the interplay of archetypes and ancestors (on pg. 12, I think it was), something that I intend to write about when the idea has more fully distilled itself from my thoughts. While I was half-joking about a "book club" forming here on Sb, other bloggers have picked up on the trend, and here's the latest batch of links for the discussion surrounding Gould's tome. I'll be adding to this basic list as…
laelaps | January 29, 2008
It seems that we have something of a book club starting up here on Sb. Razib has started to blog his way through Stephen Jay Gould's "magnum opus" The Structure of Evolutionary Theory, and it looks like John is going to join in, too. I purchased the book after seeing at the AMNH about two years ago, but I didn't get very far (my eyes started to go cross around page 90). Given that I've learned a bit more about evolution and the arguments that still surround Gould & his writings since that time, I'm probably in a better place to pick the book up again.
The project will be made all the…
cmooney | January 28, 2008Folks: This is the first in a series of posts in which I am going to be republishing, to this blog, old articles of mine that I think are pretty good but that are no longer available online. I want to have a record of my work here, and this seems a reasonable way to do it. So, enjoy.
The Ring and the Cross
How J.R.R. Tolkien became a Christian Writer
Originally published in The Boston Globe, Ideas Section
December 29, 2002
By Chris Mooney
From their mastery Middle-earth geography to their occasional fluency in Elvish, fans of the "Lord of the Rings'' books tend to be a pretty knowledgeable…
pharyngula | January 27, 2008I don't think so. Virgil Griffith pulled out the top ten books read by students at various universities (it turns out Facebook collects that data for you), and then tried to correlate that with the average SAT/ACT score of each university. The result is a mess. You might be able to say that schools with low admission standards are more likely to have students who read the Bible and Fahrenheight 451, while the universities with the higher academic reputation are more likely to have students reading Lolita and Ayn Rand, but the overall distribution is more suggestive of chance — there is large…
neurophilosophy | January 24, 2008
Today's issue of Nature contains a short review of Open Lab 2007, and the article includes a brief mention of my contribution to the book:
The editor of this second anthology of the best scientific communiqu's from the blogosphere thinks blogs offer new ways to discuss science. The Open Laboratory 2007: the Best Science Writing on Blogs (Lulu.com, 2008) takes the curious approach of using dead tree format to highlight the diversity of scientific ideas, opinions and voices flowing across the Internet. Every year a different guest editor - here Reed Cartwright, a blogger and genetics and…
laelaps | January 24, 2008
While the most popular dinosaurs have names like Tyrannosaurus and Triceratops few people know one of paleontology's great secrets; the most numerous remains of a large vertebrates found in rocks of Mesozoic age carry the title "Chunkosaurus." Scraps of bone that may be difficult to ascribe to a particular species are far more common than articulated skeletons, and nearly any find where the bones of an individual animal are found together in association is significant, indeed. Given the natural history of bone during fossilization it's a wonder we have any remains of extinct creatures at all…
clock | January 24, 2008The day before yesterday, my copy of The Open Laboratory 2007, the second annual science blogging anthology, arrived in the mail.
So yesterday, Reed and I met at a coffee shop and looked it over. It looks great! Reed knows what he's doing and is a perfectionist, so of course the book looks perfect.
So, I went back online to Lulu.com and approved the book to be sold in various online and offline bookstores. The book information will be sent to Bowker's Books In Print and once approved by Bowker, Lulu will upload the title to their distribution network. This process is generally completed…
gregladen | January 20, 2008 Home School
A big chunk of the reading world is going to have a great time devouring a Home School, new semi erotic, not-very-family values novel by the very author that gave us The Graduate (which was made into that movie with Dustin Hoffman ... one of the classics). This is ironic, because the book's plot, which continues the original story of Benjamin and The Robinson's, is advanced partly at the expense of the self-same self-righteous Homeschoolers that will be forced, due to a neurotic sense of shame, to ban the book from their own homes.
The Graduate, Webb's earlier book on which…
omnibrain | January 18, 2008Just a short note via Sports Illustrated:
Georgia football legend Herschel Walker is expected to reveal in an upcoming book that he has multiple personalities -- a revelation that surprises the man who coached the 1982 Heisman Trophy winner.
...
"Breaking Free" will chronicle Walker's life with multiple personality disorder, according to Shida Carr, the book's publicist at Simon & Schuster.
Carr said the book will be published in August, but gave no other details and declined to provide excerpts.
I wonder whether this developed after football? I'm curious to see the book when it comes…
pharyngula | January 17, 2008I love bookstores — I like the ones that have huge stacks of strange used books where you can find surprises, and I also like the big online stores where I can order anything I want. My kids are all the same way; when we make trips into the big city, the whole mess of us usually end up spending hours in places like Cummings or Uncle Hugo's. But I finally found a bookstore with no redeeming values at all, one I will never patronize.
It's called Abunga, and their motto is "Empowering Decency as your Family Friendly Bookstore". What that means is that they allow bookstore members to vote against…
laelaps | January 17, 2008Yesterday I received my review copy of Grave Secrets of Dinosaurs: Soft Tissues and Hard Science by Phillip Manning (supposedly all about the hadrosaur mummy "Dakota"), and while I usually try to keep quiet about my thoughts on a book until I've finished it I just can't keep my trap shut this time. I will write a full review very soon (I'm more than halfway through the book), but I am extremely disappointed with this piece. The book contains no index, no bibliography/references, and there are virtually no pictures of the dinosaur the book is supposed to focus on (save for a scan of a segment…
laelaps | January 16, 2008
Dinner inside the belly of Iguanodon.
My fellow scibling Jonah Lehrer has a new piece in SEED extending the argument from the end of his book Proust Was a Neuroscientist called "The Future of Science... Is Art?" It's pretty interesting, exploring the relation between physics and neuroscience to art, but biology (outside of the biology of the brain) is left out. I can't speak about fields like genetics and microbiology, areas where I lack expertise and a sense of history for the discipline, but as far of my own interests (particularly zoology and paleontology) art has often been essential…
pharyngula | January 15, 2008Watch Neil Shubin discuss evolution on the Colbert Report — he's good. He convinced me to run out and order his new book, Your Inner Fish: A Journey into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body (amzn/b&n/abe/pwll)!
laelaps | January 15, 2008
A crocodile (I would assume Crocodylus niloticus) from William Cheselden's Osteographia.
laelaps | January 15, 2008Some of you might already be aware of this, but whenever you click on one of the books I have in the "currently reading" section of this blog, my ridiculously-massive wishlist, or any other link to amazon.com and then buy something, I receive between 4% to 6% of the price of that sale. It doesn't cost you anything (so don't worry), but as a result I've been able to accumulate a fair amount of credit with amazon.com to further add to my bookshelves. In fact, I was able to acquire Carnivorous Nights, Schaller's classic The Serengeti Lion, and (a true bargain) a 1st edition copy of Francis…
laelaps | January 15, 2008Bora and Reed both put in a Herculean effort in getting the 2nd edition of The Open Laboratory ready in time for the Science Blogging Conference this weekend, but the book is finished and now up for sale at lulu.com! The book will also be showing up in stores and on major online bookstores in the near future, and I'd definitely recommend picking up a copy.
grrlscientist | January 14, 2008Because I am one of the contributors, I will not review this book. However, I know that some of you may wish to review it and I also know that a few more of you might wish to actually purchase a copy just so you can read it! If so, you can go here to purchase your very own copy.
The rumor is that Nature is reviewing this book, and I know that Amazon will be listing this book for sale soon (remember; I get a 1% "reward" on total sales for every Amazon purchase that you make through my blog, at no cost to you). I will update you with the Amazon link to the book after it is available.
clock | January 14, 2008
Well, The Day has arrived! The Open Laboratory 2007, the 2nd anthology of the best science blogging of the year, is now up for sale on Lulu.com!
Yes, you can buy it right here!
In a few weeks (and I will be sure to tell you), the book will also available in online and offline bookstores.
You can read the background story, see all the submitted entries and the winning 53 posts.
All the kudos go to this year's editor, Reed Cartwright for doing a magnificent job on every aspect of the process - from summoning posts for submission, getting volunteers to judge the posts and providing all sorts…
jlynch | January 13, 2008Elliot Sober has a new book coming out this year, Evidence and Evolution; The Logic Behind the Science. The book is divided into four sections: The Concept of Evidence, Intelligent Design, Natural Selection, and Common Ancestry. Below are the contents of the section on ID:
Darwin and intelligent design
Design arguments and the birth of probability theory
William Paley: The stone, the watch, and the eye
From probabilities to likelihoods
Epicureanism and Darwin’s theory
Three reactions to Paley’s design argument
The no-designer-worth-his-salt objection to the hypothesis of…