book review
jdupuis | February 27, 2011I have a whole pile of science-y book reviews on two of my older blogs, here and here. Both of those blogs have now been largely superseded by or merged into this one. So I'm going to be slowly moving the relevant reviews over here. I'll mostly be doing the posts one or two per weekend and I'll occasionally be merging two or more shorter reviews into one post here.
This one is from August 22, 2008 and reviews the following books:
Wrinkles in Time: Witness to the Birth of the UniversePursuit of Genius: Flexner, Einstein, and the Early Faculty at the Institute for Advanced StudyArchimedes to…
jdupuis | February 21, 2011While I don't have a huge amount of experience reading science-themed graphic novels, I do sort of have a sense that they come in two different broad categories.
The first is basically transforming a boring, stilted, text-heavy textbook into a boring, stilted, illustration- and text-heavy graphic novel. In other words, the producers think that anything in graphic novel format will by definition be more interesting and engaging than something that's purely text-based.
The second involves taking advantage of the strengths of the graphic novel format to re-imagine how scientific knowledge can…
jdupuis | February 20, 2011I have a whole pile of science-y book reviews on two of my older blogs, here and here. Both of those blogs have now been largely superseded by or merged into this one. So I'm going to be slowly moving the relevant reviews over here. I'll mostly be doing the posts one or two per weekend and I'll occasionally be merging two or more shorter reviews into one post here.
This one, of Once You're Lucky, Twice You're Good: The Rebirth of Silicon Valley and the Rise of Web 2.0, is from September 7, 2008.
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As with many of the business books I review in this space, I am profoundly torn by this…
jdupuis | February 13, 2011I have a whole pile of science-y book reviews on two of my older blogs, here and here. Both of those blogs have now been largely superseded by or merged into this one. So I'm going to be slowly moving the relevant reviews over here. I'll mostly be doing the posts one or two per weekend and I'll occasionally be merging two or more shorter reviews into one post here.
This group review is from October 12, 2008.
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A few books that I've read in 2008 that haven't quite made it into their own reviews:
Gawande, Atul. Complications: A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science. New York: Picador…
jdupuis | February 6, 2011I have a whole pile of science-y book reviews on two of my older blogs, here and here. Both of those blogs have now been largely superseded by or merged into this one. So I'm going to be slowly moving the relevant reviews over here. I'll mostly be doing the posts one or two per weekend and I'll occasionally be merging two or more shorter reviews into one post here.
This one, of The Quantum Ten: A Story of Passion, Tragedy, Ambition, and Science, is from November 19, 2008.
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Enough with the physics books, already! After a summer of more or less nothing but physics books, I should…
jdupuis | January 30, 2011I have a whole pile of science-y book reviews on two of my older blogs, here and here. Both of those blogs have now been largely superseded by or merged into this one. So I'm going to be slowly moving the relevant reviews over here. I'll mostly be doing the posts one or two per weekend and I'll occasionally be merging two or more shorter reviews into one post here.
This one, of Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies, is from January 23, 2009.
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The first wave of social media books, like Wikinomics or even Here Comes Everybody, were of the "what the heck is…
jtoney | January 26, 2011
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"L" and alliterations thereof, turns out to have immense importance in literature and science. Science and art can co-exist. Surprised? Let me explain.
The creator of the infamous character "Lolita," Vladimir Nabokov, turns out to have been not only one of the most influential writers of the past century, but to have been an amateur scientist with keen insight into evolution, recently validated by modern DNA technologies.
"Lolita" is a novel that has been revered, reviled as pornography, banned and studied by scholars since its publication in 1958. I am in no way qualified to…
jdupuis | January 23, 2011I have a whole pile of science-y book reviews on two of my older blogs, here and here. Both of those blogs have now been largely superseded by or merged into this one. So I'm going to be slowly moving the relevant reviews over here. I'll mostly be doing the posts one or two per weekend and I'll occasionally be merging two or more shorter reviews into one post here.
This one, of Balanced Libraries: Thoughts On Continuity And Change, is from June 6, 2007.
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The library literature. I don't know about you, but those three words strike fear in my heart. When I think library literature,…
jtoney | January 21, 2011
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Kisses are a better fate than wisdom.
{e. e. cummings}
Just in time for Valentine's Day! The Science of Kissing is Everywhere. {NPR, NBC's The Today Show, Time, Newsday...}
Kissing is one of the most intimate things we do. What does it mean?
This post is worth bringing back for Valentine's Day!
A private act, it embodies romanticism, friendship, parental safe harbor as a child drifts into sleep, a casual greeting or whimsical play. Kissing can have wildly different meanings, depending upon context, timing and the partners, ranging from innocent to illicit. Kissing is…
jtoney | January 20, 2011
Is kissing unique to humans? Why do we do it? What is its biological role, with our spouse, our children, our friends and family? {I can't imagine saying goodnight to my children without a peck on their foreheads or cheek - why am I compelled to do so?}
These are questions that researcher and science journalist Sheril Kirshenbaum addresses in her newly released book "The Science of Kissing - What Our Lips Are Telling Us" (Grand Central Publishing, January 2011.)
While this book has already been reviewed by the press, the publisher has invited me to write a review for ScienceBlogs, from…
gregladen | January 17, 2011It is very reasonable for a parent to worry about vaccines. For one thing, most of them involve sticking the baby or child with a sharp object, thus making the little one cry, and it would be abnormal to not have an automatic reaction to that. For another thing, they are drugs, in a sense. When the little one is ill, and you call in to the health care facility in the hopes that there will be some useful advice, most of the time you hear "No, we no longer recommend giving [fill in the blank with a medicine you thought might work] to children under [one or two months older than your child].…
jdupuis | January 16, 2011I have a whole pile of science-y book reviews on two of my older blogs, here and here. Both of those blogs have now been largely superseded by or merged into this one. So I'm going to be slowly moving the relevant reviews over here. I'll mostly be doing the posts one or two per weekend and I'll occasionally be merging two or more shorter reviews into one post here.
This one, of Dreaming in Code: Two Dozen Programmers, Three Years, 4,732 Bugs, and One Quest for Transcendent Software, is from August 9, 2007.
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Every organization relies on software these days. Big custom systems,…
kbonham | January 13, 2011Have you ever been wrong? Well then, this book is for you.
It's a trick question, because everyone is wrong all the time. A more detailed review after the jump, but the bottom line: read it.
I'm barely exaggerating when I say that reading Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margins of Error by Kathryn Shultz should be compulsory for anyone and everyone that ever that has ever thought they know the truth, which is to say everyone. Drawing from history, philosophy, science, current events and a smattering of personal reflection, Shultz takes us through what it means to be wrong, why we get things…
jdupuis | January 12, 2011First of all, let me make this perfectly clear: Scott Rosenberg's Say Everything: How Blogging Began, What It's Becoming, and Why It Matters is a seriously terrific book. If you're a blogger, if you're interested in the phenomenon of blogging or even if you're just interested in where the media are headed, then you owe it to yourself to read this book.
I wanted to get that out of the way because, while I really enjoyed the book, there were some things that I would have liked to have seen done a bit differently and I be focusing on those quibbles more than on the things I liked about the book…
jdupuis | January 9, 2011I have a whole pile of science-y book reviews on two of my older blogs, here and here. Both of those blogs have now been largely superseded by or merged into this one. So I'm going to be slowly moving the relevant reviews over here. I'll mostly be doing the posts one or two per weekend and I'll occasionally be merging two or more shorter reviews into one post here.
This post, from April 4, 2009, covered two books:
Content: Selected Essays on Technology, Creativity, Copyright, and the Future of the Future by Cory Doctorow
Mafiaboy: How I Cracked the Internet and Why It's Still Broken by…
jtoney | January 4, 2011
Photo source.
I think that's what I'm trying to do," he says. "I think Darwin's life is a great story. So why not tell it as a great story?
NPR Interview with Jay Hosler, Feb. 14, 2005
Amidst the media storms about teaching evolution in the classroom, I wonder whether anyone considered using comics? It is such a simple, elegant idea. Comics can draw students into the subject, using humor and whimsy, in a way that is simply not possible using a textbook. Plus there's nothing like humor to throw water on a fierce debate between a self-righteous religious zealot and a town's school board.…
jdupuis | January 2, 2011I have a whole pile of science-y book reviews on two of my older blogs, here and here. Both of those blogs have now been largely superseded by or merged into this one. So I'm going to be slowly moving the relevant reviews over here. I'll mostly be doing the posts one or two per weekend and I'll occasionally be merging two or more shorter reviews into one post here.
This one, of David Suzuki: An Autobiography, is from October 3, 2006.
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We live in a time when the military, industry, and medicine are all applying scientific insights, with profound social, economic, and political…
jdupuis | December 26, 2010I have a whole pile of science-y book reviews on two of my older blogs, here and here. Both of those blogs have now been largely superseded by or merged into this one. So I'm going to be slowly moving the relevant reviews over here. I'll mostly be doing the posts one or two per weekend and I'll occasionally be merging two or more shorter reviews into one post here.
This one covers two books and is from March 7, 2006:
The Best American Science Writing 2005 by Alan Lightman, editor & Jesse Cohen, series editor
The Best American Science & Nature Writing 2005 by Jonathan Weiner, editor…
jdupuis | December 19, 2010I have a whole pile of science-y book reviews on two of my older blogs, here and here. Both of those blogs have now been largely superseded by or merged into this one. So I'm going to be slowly moving the relevant reviews over here. I'll mostly be doing the posts one or two per weekend and I'll occasionally be merging two or more shorter reviews into one post here.
This one, of Voodoo Science: The Road from Foolishness to Fraud, is from November 14, 2006.
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This year, during my sabbatical, I'm really trying to read a lot of science non-fiction, as opposed to my usual diet of science…
jdupuis | December 18, 2010I have a whole pile of science-y book reviews on two of my older blogs, here and here. Both of those blogs have now been largely superseded by or merged into this one. So I'm going to be slowly moving the relevant reviews over here. I'll mostly be doing the posts one or two per weekend and I'll occasionally be merging two or more shorter reviews into one post here.
This one, of Countdown: A History of Space Flight, is from November 14, 2006.
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The decision to read this book was certainly not rocket science, even if it is a book about rocket science. An engaging and fascinating read,…