Books
neurophilosophy | September 15, 2007
This week, I've received three books which I'll be writing about in the near future:
My Lobotomy, by Howard Dully and Charles Fleming. Dully was lobotomized at the age of 12 at the behest of his stepmother - that's him on the right, holding an instrument identical to the one he was lobotomized with; this book is his memoir.
The Lobotomist, by Jack El-Hai, a biography of Walter Freeman, the psychiatrist who, in 1960, performed Dully's lobotomy.
The Body Has a Mind of Its Own, by Sandra and Matthew Blakeslee. This is about the somatosensory cortex, that part of the brain on which the…
neurophilosophy | September 15, 2007
but I prefer holding a book in my hands to reading from a computer screen.
We already have the technology that will enable us to carry whole libraries in our pockets. Next month, for example, Amazon will launch Kindle, an electronic book reader, and Google will begin charging users for full access to the digital books in its database. Soon, we'll have electronic tablet devices with enough memory to store hundreds of books.
To get an idea of what it might be like to read an electronic book, take a look at the latest issue of Blogger & Podcaster magazine. Click on the image of the cover…
aardvarchaeology | September 13, 2007
Being an archaeologist, I like tombs, and being a science fiction fan, I like Jules Verne. So you can imagine that I'd like Jules Verne's tomb regardless of what it looked like. As it turns out, David Nessle has pictures from Amiens showing the tomb in question, and it's an incredible piece of work. Look at the lettering! Look at that sculpture! "It's a bird! It's a plane! No, it's Jules Verne who's been resurrected and learned to fly!"
[More blog entries about books, graves, julesverne, sf, sciencefiction; gravar, julesverne, sf, sciencefiction, böcker, läsning.]
pharyngula | September 12, 2007We all know what online petitions are worth, but this is at least a worthy cause: some graduate students have a Petition by Informed Citizens to reclassify non-science books from science categories. The goal is to persuade the Library of Congress to reclassify books about intelligent design creationism into something other than science.
neurophilosophy | September 10, 2007
From Visions of the Daughters of Albion, a short illuminated text published in 1793:
With what sense does the tame pigeon measure the vast expanse?
With what sense does the bee form cells?
Tell me what is a thought? & of what substance is it made?
Tell me what is a joy? & in what gardens do joys grow?
And in what rivers swim the sorrows, and upon what mountains wave shadows of discontent?
Tell me where dwell the thoughts forgotten till thou call them forth
Tell me where dwell the joys of old? & where the ancient loves?
And when will they renew again & the…
neurophilosophy | September 9, 2007One of my favourite novels, Fyodor Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment, has been faithfully as a comic strip.
neurophilosophy | September 7, 2007The Manipulation of Human Behavior, a manual for psychological torture techniques written by leading psychologists and psychiatrists, is now available online.
Published by John Wiley & Sons in 1961, the 323-page book was edited by Albert D. Biderman of the Bureau of Social Science Research and Herbert Zimmer, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Georgia, and funded by the U.S. government.
The editors' introduction reads:
This book represents a critical examination of some of the conjectures about the application of scientific knowledge to the manipulation of…
aardvarchaeology | September 6, 2007My blog has so far landed me one paid writing assignment, and today I got a copy of the mag where it was published. Sort of.
Vice Magazine is a wannabe-controversial fashion mag. Its June issue has a glue-huffing teen boy on the cover and there are web-cam boob pics inside. You get the picture. They commissioned me to write two 700-word pieces on a three-day deadline back in March. The topic was polluted places in Stockholm. I spent about one day's work on the job and they paid me peanuts after I nagged them. But it was fun to do a bit of real journalism.
Only they threw one of the pieces out…
neurophilosophy | September 6, 2007
Bill Choisser (left) has written an online book called Face Blind!, where he describes his experiences of prosopagnosia, a neurological condition in which the ability to recognize faces is impaired.
In extreme cases, prosopagnostics are unable to recognize family members, and even their own face.
Prosopagnosia (commonly known as face blindness), often occurs as a result of damage to a region of the brain called the fusiform gyrus, located near the inferior (lower) surface of the temporal lobe at the midline. The damage may be due to head injury, stroke, or various neurodegenerative…
pharyngula | September 4, 2007Dr. Mario Beauregard and Denyse O'Leary have come out with a new book, The Spiritual Brain, that Ms O'Leary has announced on her blog. I asked if she'd send me a review copy, and oh, boy, she's going to. This could be interesting.
It's received accolades from such stellar reviewers as Andrew Newberg, Michael Egnor, Michael Behe, and Jeffrey Schwartz, and it apparently concludes that "spiritual experiences are not a figment of the mind or a delusion produced by a dysfunctional brain". See? It's getting fun already.
Even better, I'm currently re-reading Soul Made Flesh: The Discovery of the…
neurophilosophy | September 4, 2007 At 3 Quarks Daily, Abbas Reza reviews Steven Pinker's new book, Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature, which is published by Allen Lane later this month.
Pinker discusses the book in this recent interview.
neurophilosophy | September 3, 2007
In The rise and fall of the prefrontal lobotomy, I discussed the heart-breaking case of Howard Dully, whose stepmother had him lobotomized when he was12 years old.
Dully relates his story in My Lobotomy, an autobiographical book which is co-authored by novelist and journalist Charles Fleming. My Lobotomy is published today in the U.S., and in a few month's time in the U.K.
Both Dully and Fleming have contacted me recently, and Fleming has kindly agreed to send me a copy of the book, so I'll write more about it when I've read it. Meanwhile, you can read more about it on Dully's blog…
grrlscientist | September 3, 2007tags: books, writing, blog carnivals
For those of you who love to read, the 3 September edition of the Carnival for Literary Junkies is now available. This carnival includes book reviews, literary criticism and some writing as well. It's a nice way to wrap up your farewell to summer.
pharyngula | September 3, 2007Here you go, a few links with promises of interesting reading. Much more so than you'll find here, where I'm buried beneath efforts to finish up my Seed column, prepare for a lecture tomorrow, get a lab organized for Wednesday, write an entry for an encyclopedia, and shovel through piles of administrative paperwork of various sorts…
Some good news for the upcoming Darwin Year of 2009 — Steve Jones will be publishing a new book, Darwin's Garden, on time for the celebration. I have to say, though, that PR from publishers is a little disturbing: "Jones, who moved to Little, Brown from…
neurophilosophy | September 2, 2007 On Saturday I mentioned that submissions are being accepted for Open Lab 2007.
Bora has now posted links to the 100+ posts that have been submitted so far. The book, which is to be edited by Reed Cartwright, will contain 50 of the best science blog posts from 2007, so Bora's list contains plenty of good reading.
If there's a post that you think should be added to the list, written either by you or someone else, don't hesitate to submit it.
grrlscientist | August 31, 2007tags: books, linguistics,Steven Pinker
"Cathartic swearing," is analogous to the earsplitting shrieks of rats, cats, and monkeys, and is part of a primal, embedded rage circuit, and likely evolved to startle and unnerve an attacker, according to Steven Pinker. Pinker is a professor of psychology at Harvard University and the author of a book entitled The Stuff of Thought (2007) that will appear in your bookstores within a week or so.
"If you want to intimidate someone," Pinker says, "then talking about sexual acts he does with his mother and advising him to engage in various other…
aardvarchaeology | August 31, 2007My friend and colleague Jonathan Lindström is a talented man. He started out as a teen amateur astronomer and local historian of his dad's coastal Estonian heritage, became a field archaeologist, then an ad copy-writer, then a museum staff writer and artist, and now he's a freelance science writer and artist contracted by Sweden's largest publishing house.
Jonathan called me the other day and told me a new kids' book he's been telling me about had come from the printers. It's named Dödshuset. Mysteriet från stenåldern, "The House of Death: a Stone Age mystery", and it's all about a contract…
neurophilosophy | August 26, 2007
I start my M.Sc. in neuroscience in about a month's time. The recommended text is Principles of Neural Science, by Kandel, Schwartz and Jessel. It's a great book that I'll get round to buying one day, but, because I'm on a limited budget, I'll have to make do with the abridged version, Essentials of Neural Science and Behavior, and Fundamental Neuroscience, by Zigmond, et al., both of which have been sitting on a shelf at my mother's house for a few years.
aardvarchaeology | August 25, 2007One of the brightest stars of Swedish literature is Carl Michael Bellman (1740-1795). Much of his work is a kind of humorous beat poetry set to music, chronicling the lives of Stockholm drunkards and whores. Central themes are boozing, sex and death.
"You think the grave's too deep?
Well then, have a drink
Then have another two and another three
That way you'll die happier"
"A girl in the green grass and wine in green glasses
I feast on both, both gather me to their bosom
Let's have some more resin on the violin bow!"
But Bellman wasn't strictly speaking part of the underworld he wrote about…
jlynch | August 24, 2007Many readers will by now have encountered the (frankly) frivolous law suit filed - for $15 million for Jeez sake- by Stuart Pivar against PZ Myers for negatively reviewing Pivar’s book Lifecode. Peter Irons - retired law professor at UCSD - has shared the following letter he has sent to Pivar:
Dear Mr. Pivar:
I don’t know if this is a current email address for you; I obtained it from the Internet by accessing some of your 2004 correspondence regarding the NYAA affair.
First, let me introduce myself. I am a lawyer (a graduate of Harvard Law School) and am admitted to practice before several…