Books
clock | July 22, 2007Then, after all this walking, I finally went to Borders and got myself the seventh book of Harry Potter. But, lo and behold, when I got home, Steve Steve decided he was going to read it first, so all I could do is post pictures on the blog instead:
clock | July 21, 2007 Ha! Check out this brand-new blog! Ste is going to bookstores, checking out the Science section and moving pseudo-science, anti-science and nonsense books from it to the New Age section. Just a couple of Behe books in the La Jolla Bookstar, but I bet there will be more egregious miscategorizations in other stores. I wonder if this practice will spread virally to other cities and towns of the world...
(Hat-tip: Reed)
purepedantry | July 20, 2007I am as excited for the new Harry Potter book as everyone else. I mean, come on, you want to see the end of even a bad movie, right?
But Jane Galt echoes something that I have been thinking for a long time about the series: Harry can be such a tool and his buddies aren't the sharpest tools in the shed either. I sympathize with Snape half the time. I understand. Being surrounded by well-meaning incompetence is enough make anyone turn to the dark side. At least Voldemort knows how to run an adequate organization, though being constantly confounded by school children draws even his…
pharyngula | July 19, 2007Back when I was a youngling, I read a very exciting series of science-fiction novels called The Deathworld Trilogy, by Harry Harrison. The premise was that there was this horrifically fierce planet in the galaxy, with gravity twice Earth-normal, constantly erupting volcanoes, and savage, ravenous beasts that were out to destroy anything that moves. The humans who settled there became heavily muscled with lightning-fast reflexes and a militaristic society that provided some of the best soldiers in the universe. Now that is the setting for old-school science-fiction.
The genre isn't dead! I…
scientificactivist | July 19, 2007Yesterday, I mentioned the Atlas of Creation a book by Islamic creationist Adnan Oktar (a.k.a. Harun Yahya) sent unsolicited to scientists around the world. My boss also received a copy a few months ago, and yesterday he dug up the enormous volume for me. My first impression was that it was even larger and more glorious than I remembered. With hundreds of pages of full-color photos, this book must have been incredibly expensive to produce and distribute.
My second impression, though, was that it was also even crazier than I remembered. In the "to the reader" note at the beginning, Oktar…
clock | July 18, 2007Get yourself some Harry Potter recipes so you have something to eat while reading The Book over the weekend.
clock | July 18, 2007I can't stay away (a charming spell?) from the series that Anne-Marie is churning out at a supernatural rate (what kind of magic?). Here are the latest three installments, totally enchanting:
Conservation BiologyThe Botany of WandsKin selection
pharyngula | July 18, 2007One other thing about Stuart Pivar's book: he has collected a few endorsements. They are a little strange. One is by Robert Hazen, a chemist, and if you read it, it's more like a review of a paper in which the reviewer is trying to state some things he finds plausible about the work. In this case, he likes the idea of the fluid-filled plastic models for making "a more rigorous mathematical exploration of the relationships among such variables as length, width, viscosity, forces, and resultant segmented morphology", which is fair enough. I don't think Pivar has demonstrated the competence to…
scientificactivist | July 18, 2007A few months ago, my boss (a professor of structural biology at the University of Oxford) received a strange package in the mail, unsolicited. It contained a rather large and colorful book that was quite stunning in appearance. Inside, though, spread across hundreds of color-illustrated pages, was one man's case for creationism: an absurd, unconvincing, misguided, and fundamentally unscientific argument. We passed the book around in the lab, admired its aesthetic values (and the unimaginable expense surely incurred in producing it), and then forgot about it. My boss is out of the lab for…
pharyngula | July 17, 2007As I mentioned before in my review of Stuart Pivar's LifeCode: The Theory of Biological Self Organization, I'm actually sympathetic to the ideas of developmental structuralism. This is the concept that physical, mechanical, and chemical properties make a significant and underappreciated contribution to the acquisition of organismal form; genes are not enough, do not carry a complete specification, and what we have to consider is interactions between genes, environment, and cytoplasm. Good stuff, all of it — and I'd like to see more work done on the subject. In my review, though, I had to…
pharyngula | July 17, 2007Why me, O Lord, why me?
One of the more recent books sent to me is Thank God for Evolution!: How the Marriage of Science and Religion Will Transform Your Life and Our World(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll) by Michael Dowd. I have read it, and I'm feeling biblical.
My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? why art thou so far from helping me, and from the words of my roaring?
Psalm 22:1
I am so not the right person to review this book—it's like asking Satan to review The Secret. The two aren't even on the same wavelength, and the discombobulated reviewer is going to sit there wondering whether this…
aardvarchaeology | July 17, 2007Yesterday at the beach, Charles Stross's 2005 novel Accelerando in hand, I introduced my dear friend, the Aard lurker and professional logician Tor, to the concept of Singularity. Explains Wikipedia:The Technological Singularity is the hypothesized creation, usually via AI or brain-computer interfaces, of smarter-than-human entities who rapidly accelerate technological progress beyond the capability of human beings to participate meaningfully in said progress. Futurists have varying opinions regarding the time, consequences, and plausibility of such an event.
I.J. Good first explored the idea…
pharyngula | July 16, 2007One of the traditional ways to explain a scientific subject is the historical approach: start at the beginning of the endeavor and explain why people asked the questions they did, how they answered them, and how each answer blossomed into new potential. It's a popular way of teaching science, too, because it emphasizes the process that leads to new discovery. Middle World: The Restless Heart of Matter and Life(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll), by Mark Haw, exemplifies the technique. Not only is it effective, but this one slim book manages to begin with a simple, curious observation in 1827 and ends up…
pharyngula | July 16, 2007As a major fan of Natalie Angier, I was well-disposed to favor The Canon: A Whirligig Tour of the Beautiful Basics of Science(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll) — and overall, my opinion of the book is favorable. I'm afraid, though, that it's filling a very narrow niche and most of my readers here won't be interested in it…but some of you may find it just right.
As you might guess from the title, the premise of the book is a reaction to a peculiar snobbery of many of the educated elite. Science is mechanics; it's engineering; it's greasy hands and strange smells; it's a place of childish enthusiasms. It…
pharyngula | July 15, 2007Some of you have noticed I've irked Stuart Pivar with my review of his old book, Lifecode, and as he's been quick to tell me, he has made substantial revisions in his new version, which has the same name. Anyway, he has left comments
here,
here,
here,
here, and
here, and I've got a mailbox full of his frantic hallooing, some of which claims I "have transcended the barrier separating protected commentary from libel." (Now, now, Stuart — threatening reviewers with lawsuits is not a good way to get a positive review, and also tends to compromise what good reviews you do get. I'll pretend…
scientificactivist | July 15, 2007This one is for my readers in Texas, particularly those in the greater Houston area. Chris Mooney, author of The Republican War on Science and blogger at The Intersection, will be in Houston this week to promote his new book Storm World. Here are the details:
July 18, 20077:00 P.M.Barnes & Noble12850 Memorial DriveHouston, Texas
Check out the book's website for more info. If you're in the area, it should be interesting to hear what Mooney has to say about a topic that I know is near and dear to his heart: hurricanes and global warming.
clock | July 14, 2007Both Eva and Anne-Marie have started a series of posts about the Science of Harry Potter, focusing on the genetics (i.e., patterns of inheritance) of wizardry vs. muggleness. Anne-Marie has already moved on to the second part of her series, on dragons. It will be interesting to watch what these two come up with over the next few posts in their series.
I have to say that I have been too busy and have yet to see the new movie (The Order of the Phoenix), but will try to see it soon. Also, my two copies of the book #7 will arrive in Chapel Hill on the 21st and I am wondering if I should buy a…
neurophilosophy | July 14, 2007Books for the summer, as recommended by the editorial staff at Seed Magazine.
Reviews of Passions and Tempers: A History of the Humours, by Noga Arikha, and The Case Against Perfection: Ethics in the Age of Genetic Engineering, by Michael J. Sandel, from last weekend's New York Times.
A gargantuan textbook of neuropsychopharmacology, made freely available online by the ACNP (via Mind Hacks).
My own reviews of Jonathan Moreno's Mind Wars and Eric Kandel's In Search of Memory, both of which are now displayed in the sidebar on the left.
clock | July 12, 2007Richard Dawkins is doing a reading/signing at Kepler's bookstore this Saturday. Any Bay Area bloggers wanna go?
pharyngula | July 12, 2007
I've been reading a strange book by Stuart Pivar, LifeCode: The Theory of Biological Self Organization (amzn/b&n/abe/pwll), which purports to advance a new idea in structuralism and self-organization, in competition with Darwinian principles. I am thoroughly unconvinced, and am unimpressed with the unscientific and fabulously concocted imagery of the book.
There exists a real difference of opinion between two approaches to biology, the functionalist and structuralist views, and it influences how we look at evolution. The functionalist position is the one most people are familiar with:…