Books
laelaps | November 21, 2007
Those who remember the Clinton sex scandal will probably recall the classic line "It depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is," Bill Clinton floundering about in order to obfuscate inquiries into his improper conduct. While this is example is a somewhat comedic attempt at playing with the definitions of words, it is often important to consider what certain words mean in their past & present historical contexts, and in the book Science Talk Daniel Patrick Thurs takes on the evolution of what we mean by "science" and how that influences the gap between what (and who) is included…
laelaps | November 19, 2007
There are plenty of glossy, coffee table books out there, but while many are filled with beautiful photography very few offer anything of value in the text. Evolution by Jean-Baptiste de Panafieu (text) and Patrick Gries (photography) is a striking exception, however, the informative prose wonderfully framing some of the best black and white photography that I've seen.
There is something strangely alluring about skeletons; they are not only the functional architecture of the bodies of vertebrates, but also have a strange aesthetic charm, hundreds of millions of years of evolution creating…
grrlscientist | November 17, 2007One of my readers, who shall remain anonymous, recently purchased the 2006 book, Chosen by a Horse, by Susan Richards, for me. I loved that book so much that I reviewed it on my blog (I usually only review new books, and almost all of the books that I review are sent to me by either the publisher's publicity agent or by the author, free of charge). Well, if you peek at the comments for that review, you will find that the author found my review and wrote a comment on it.
I used that opportunity to write back to her, and she responded. I learned that she has a new book coming out in June 2008…
neurophilosophy | November 16, 2007
Synaesthesia is a condition in which stimuli of one type evoke sensations in another sensory modality. For example, hearing particular sounds might evoke strong sensations of colour or (more rarely) words might evoke strong tastes in the mouth.
In The Hidden Sense, social scientist Cretien van Crampen investigates synaesthesia from an artisitic and scientific perspective. He interviews a number of synaesthetes, and finds that none of them considers their condition to be an impairment. He also describes the profound influence that synaesthesia has had on artists such as Kandinsky and van Gogh…
pharyngula | November 14, 2007Donald Prothero asked me to pass along this request for feedback. He wrote an excellent book on evolution (with illustrations by the inimitable Carl Buell) that beautifully complements the theory with the details of common descent. If you've read it — I'm working on my copy now — let him know what you think!
EVOLUTION AND FOSSILS
Last night's Nova program did an outstanding job, given the nature of
their show and the time limits imposed by their format. But we still have a
long way to go to convey to the general public just how strong the fossil
evidence for evolution has become. Those few…
neurophilosophy | November 12, 2007Today's Independent contains an extract from Taking the Proverbial, a book about the psychology of proverbs by Geoff Rolls.
The extract includes sections from the book which discuss the proverbs "An elephant never forgets" and "Practice makes perfect". The section about the first includes a nice summary of some animal cognition studies, and the second includes mention of the neuropsychology of motor learning and performing in front of an audience.
This part however, from the section on elephants' memory, sounds familiar:
Whether [elephants] deserve their status as the memory experts of the…
grrlscientist | November 9, 2007tags: book review, birds, birding, bird watching, ornithology, conservation
When I was leading bird watching excursions on the west coast and we were looking at a species that was declining in the wild or was endangered, I made a point to mention this fact to my students. It was important, I thought, to impress upon them that the birds around them might not always be there to enjoy, that these birds were in need of protection.
"How do you know they're declining in the wild?" my students would invariably ask.
I learned such things after years of reading about birds, and by discussing…
grrlscientist | November 6, 2007tags: book carnival, blog carnival
The latest installment of the Book Carnival is now available for you to read.
laelaps | November 5, 2007
Even though I didn't get to go to SVP this year, my friends Julia and Neil were in attendance and were kind enough to send me a *signed* copy of Don Prothero's newest book, Evolution: What the Fossils Say and Why it Matters. Although I was already in the middle of a book when Prothero's book arrived at my door, I dropped what I was reading and started tearing through the glossy pages, and I have to say that I was impressed. Aside from the excellent illustrations by the talented Carl Buell (plus tons of photographs and other diagrams), Prothero's book doesn't hold back when it comes to…
mark_antimony | November 2, 2007Over the last few weeks, we the Neuro class have finished our last book and we began Time, Love, Memory by Jonathan Weiner. The theme of this book is experiments on behavior on fruit flies, drosophila.
I'm beginning to see why fruit flies would be such a good choice. They are low maintainance and are offer much more statistic data potential. T. H. Morgan was known for his early work on fruit flies. From my understanding, he's the first one to use them as a model species. Seems much more economical than the classic mice or dogs.
I also find it pretty cool that Seymour Benzer, a pioneer in…
grrlscientist | November 1, 2007I know we all were told that the seventh Harry Potter book was the last one, but it appears that this is not true! JK Rowling has written yet another book, entitled The Tales of Beedle the Bard.
Do you recognize the title? This was the book that Dumbledore gave to Hermione in the seventh and last book of the series. This book of wizarding fairy tales contained clues for the fearless trio to use in their quest to finally defeat Lord Voldemort.
As an added bonus, there are only seven copies of this book in the world. Further, the book is handwritten and illustrated by the author. Six of the…
sporte | October 31, 2007When purified, it glows with an unearthly light. You can't go "chemical free" and try to escape it. It's part of our bones and it forms the backbone of our DNA. A tool for good, a tool of war, essential for gardening, and infamous as a pesticide; phosphorus is truly an amazing element. Amazing too, are the stories about it's discovery and our history with using it. Many of the stories in The 13th Element by John Emsley (2000, John Wiley & Sons), from the alchemist's bench to the murderer's kitchen, are well-suited to reading on a Halloween eve.
From the nightmare inspiring stories…
laelaps | October 29, 2007
It was bound to happen sooner or later; books were starting to overflow onto the floor and living room table, so a great bookcase reorganization needed to be undertaken. This is a snapshot during the carnage, my little cat Charlotte coming to help ("help" meaning crawl all over the books and push them out of the bookcase). I've still got a little bit of space at the top and most of another bookcase for 2008's accumulations, so if nothing else this serves as something of a visual progress report for my personal library (since you can't see half the books on the bed I'll have to take a picture…
ddobbs | October 27, 2007
Music is alive and well
I long ago grew weary of complaints about the demise of classical music -- a demise based on dropping sales and and market share. Similar complaints had been voiced about tennis, another thing I love. In both cases the hand-wringing about falling ticket or record sales or TV viewers ran on the assumption that the truest measure of a sport's or art's vitality is how many people pay to consumer it. It's silly to feel classical music or tennis are failing because they don't constantly grow or attract as many spectators as pop music or baseball. Complaining about the lack…
laelaps | October 25, 2007I have to admit that I've been somewhat lazy when it has come to sharing my thoughts on my current reading material since I moved to ScienceBlogs. On Laelaps Mk. 1 I would usually update every few days on what I was reading and what I thought about it, but since I've started writing here I've completed several books and haven't said very much about any of them. While this post is not going to be a massive offloading of knowledge gained from my extracurricular reading, it might at least offer up some suggestions for those looking for some new reading material;
The Horned Dinosaurs by Peter…
grrlscientist | October 24, 2007tags: book review, biotechnology, biomedicine, stem cells, ethics, Cloning: A Beginner's Guide, Aaron Levine
Would you drink milk from a cloned cow?
Should we clone extinct or endangered species?
Are we justified in using stem cells to develop cures?
When will we clone the first human?
Ever since Dolly the sheep was born, questions like these have been part of the public consciousness, and now, cloning is poised to revolutionize medicine, healthcare, and even the food we eat. Regardless of what certain politicians do to slow the progress of scientific research, cloning is here to stay, and…
grrlscientist | October 22, 2007tags: books carnival, blog carnival
The 21 October issue of the Books Carnival is now available for you to read and enjoy. I am pleased to say that they included two pieces written by me!
neurophilosophy | October 20, 2007And is James Watson in the early stages of Alzheimer's Disease?
In this review of Craig Venter's autobiography A Life Decoded and James Watson's Avoid Boring People, Financial Times science editor Clive Cookson says that Venter's Nobel Prize prize is overdue, perhaps because of "the outdated bad-boy image he retains among some sections of the scientific establishment".
Venter and Watson were the first two people to have their personal genomes sequenced. Venter's genome was published last month in the open access journal PLoS Biology, and Watson's genome is available at the CSHL website.
In…
jlynch | October 19, 2007This is old news, but in 1998 Random House generated one of those "100 Best Novels" lists as voted by a panel and by readers. Interestingly there was quite the disconnect between what both groups favored:
The Board’s Top 5
ULYSSES by James Joyce
THE GREAT GATSBY by F. Scott Fitzgerald
A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN by James Joyce
LOLITA by Vladimir Nabokov
BRAVE NEW WORLD by Aldous Huxley
The People’s Top 5
ATLAS SHRUGGED by Ayn Rand
THE FOUNTAINHEAD by Ayn Rand
BATTLEFIELD EARTH by L. Ron Hubbard
THE LORD OF THE RINGS by J.R.R. Tolkien
TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD by Harper Lee
The…
pharyngula | October 18, 2007So that's what Carl Buell has been up to…Donald Prothero and Carl have been working on a new book, Evolution: What the Fossils Say and Why It Matters(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll), containing descriptions of important transitional fossils, and as you can tell from the title, directly countering some of the silly claims of the creationists. This is going to be one of those books everyone must have.
To whet your appetite, Carl sent along one of the many color plates that will be in the book—this is Sinodelphys, a 125 million year old marsupial.
You're already drooling, aren't you? You want this book…