Books
aardvarchaeology | March 17, 2007My kids see a fair share of lukewarm religiosity with their grandma and teachers. At home, they're taught that there are basically two types of characters:
Real people who merit empathy and solidarity, such as themselves,
Fictional ones that you can make up stories about, such as Spiderman, the Little Mermaid and Jehovah, Lord of Hosts.Being Swedish, I've never come across a religious parenting manual. But I gather they are really common in the U.S., and that some are exceptionally nasty (as discussed by Jim Benton). Enter Dale McGowan, editor of the anthology Parenting Beyond Belief: On…
clock | March 14, 2007Paul announces that the finalists for the 2007 Lulu Blooker Prize have been announced.
Unfortunately, The Open Laboratory was finished after the deadline for submission. Perhaps we can submit it for the 2008 Prize!
jlynch | March 11, 2007Once again, my sheep-like characteristics manifest themselves and I find myself dutifully following Orac, PZ, Bora, Joseph, John, Rob,
and Afarensis in listing (in bold) those of the "Most Significant SF & Fantasy Books of the Last 50 Years" that I have read.
The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien
The Foundation Trilogy, Isaac Asimov
Dune, Frank Herbert
Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert A. Heinlein
A Wizard of Earthsea, Ursula K. Le Guin
Neuromancer, William Gibson
Childhood's End, Arthur C. Clarke
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Philip K. Dick
The Mists of Avalon…
clock | March 11, 2007Douglas Noel Adams was born at Cambridge, England on this day in 1952. After earning both bachelors and masters degrees there, he did some comedy acting and writing, including work with a couple of the Monty Python gang, and eventually wrote a radio series for BBC called "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy." It first became a TV series, then a book. Actually a trilogy, which means that there are three volumes, except that this one has five. It had some science fiction elements, there's a dash of philosophy, but it was comedy. Here's a sample:
A common mistake that people make when trying to…
clock | March 10, 2007Tikistitch, PZ Myers and John Wilkins are going through a list of "Most Significant SF & Fantasy Books of the Last 50 Years".
Considering I am a big SF reader, I was surprised as to how few of those I have read (only around 15!). Most of the titles on the list are just around 40-50 years old. I guess my preferences tend to be for either much older stuff or the most recent stuff (and no Fantasy, please).
I also tend to latch onto an author and read a lot by the same person. So, growing up I had my Heinlein phase, Bradbury phase, LeGuin phase, etc. More recently, I had a Greg Bear…
pharyngula | March 10, 2007Tikistitch has put up a list of the "Most Significant SF & Fantasy Books of the Last 50 Years" (hey, as old as I am!). Put the ones you've read in bold — I've put my list below the fold.
The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien
The Foundation Trilogy, Isaac Asimov
Dune, Frank Herbert
Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert A. Heinlein
A Wizard of Earthsea, Ursula K. Le Guin
Neuromancer, William Gibson
Childhood's End, Arthur C. Clarke
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Philip K. Dick
The Mists of Avalon, Marion Zimmer Bradley
Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury
The Book of the New Sun, Gene Wolfe
A…
clock | March 8, 2007Jonah points to link by Kottke to series of close-up photos of insects splatered on windshields. The images are truly cool and not gross at all.
This immediately reminded me of a funny, yet excellent book I read a few years ago, That Gunk on Your Car: A Unique Guide to Insects of North America by Mark Hostetler, which helps you identify the insects by the shape, size and color of the splatter they leave on your windshield.
clock | March 2, 2007John Dupuis, the Confessing Science Librarian, wrote a review of three science-writing anthologies, including the Open Laboratory 2006, which ended up in the highly respectable second place, nested between two professional collections.
The beauty of online on-demand publishing is that one can correct errors on the go, as in "right now", not waiting for an official Seocnd Edition and such. So, I'll try to fix a couple of things John noticed before the book gets an ISBN number and starts getting shipped to the real bookstores.
And, with ten months instead of three weeks to work on it, Reed…
pharyngula | February 28, 2007A new movie about Darwin is in the works—
Jeremy Thomas is set to produce Annie's Box about Charles Darwin, and hiring John Collee to write and directed by Jon Amiel.
The film will be based on a biography of Darwin by Randall Keynes, the great-great grandson of the Victorian scientist. Variety notes it focuses on the period when Darwin was writing The Origin of the Species, his ground-breaking treatise on evolution, while living a family life at Down House in Kent, near London.
The 'Annie' of the title is Darwin's first daughter, whose death aged 10 left him grief-stricken. With his…
aardvarchaeology | February 23, 2007
The Great Old Ones are stirring in their sleep beneath Guatemala City.
GUATEMALA CITY, Guatemala (AP) -- A giant sinkhole opened before dawn Friday, swallowing several homes and a truck and leaving a father and two teenagers missing in Guatemala City. [...]
The pit was emitting foul odors, loud noises and tremors, and a rush of water could be heard from its depths. Authorities feared it could widen or others could open up.
Security officials were on guard for possible looters and to clear the area of onlookers.
Can the stars be right already?
Link.
clock | February 22, 2007OK, it is a premise of a new SF novel. The book description does not look too promising, though I guess I should read it for professional reasons (I put it on my amazon wish-list for now):
Last call from Earth -Stage I, Biological Survival (also available for download on Lulu.com).
This is what Newswire says about it:
Successful Soul Transplant Operation Featured in New Sci-Fi Book 'Last call from Earth'
Soul transplant operation is the last recourse for human survival in new trilogy, Last call from Earth - People affected with CRDS loose their DNA controls and become repugnant: The body…
aardvarchaeology | February 22, 2007The Department of Archaeology at the University of Gothenburg recently published a nice little book written in Swedish by the seasoned contract archaeologist Marianne Lönn: Uppdragsarkeologi och forskning, "contract archaeology and research". Lönn's main theses are:
Archaeologists look at old things to find out what it was like to live a long time ago.
Contract archaeology is research.
This research has its own agenda and needn't pay any attention to what university scholars are doing unless their work is clearly relevant to contract archaeology.
Contract archaeologists should be proud of…
clock | February 21, 2007An olde but fun (February 16, 2006):
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When I went to pick up Coturnix Junior from school today (he is in 7th grade), we bumped into his English teacher who informed me that he did not turn in his book review. He started coming up with excuses, that he lost the book, or it was stolen, etc. She said something like "Well, you better read something really fast, so you can turn in the review tomorrow. And it has to be something at middle-school level, not Dr.Seuss".
I doubt Dr.Seuss ever crossed hs mind up till that moment, but he was quick to see an…
clock | February 20, 2007You know that I think that Wimp Factor is one of the most important yet least appreciated books about ideology and politics in recent years. So, I was really glad to see an excellent review of it by Amanda:
Regardless of you feelings about whether or not he's got the right reasons for why anxious masculinity exists, his examination of the effects of it is right on the money.
clock | February 19, 2007One of the perks of being a scienceblogger is a steady stream of offers of preview copies of books, as well as willingness of publishers to send one if asked. I have a huge stack of them - some read, some halfway, some waiting for a better future. I've reviewed some of them already. Sooner or later I will read them and review them all.
Recently, I complained that I had trouble getting a copy of Evolving God: A Provocative View on the Origins of Religion by Barbara J. King. Doubleday does not use e-mail! Their parent-company Random House explicitely refuses to use email for communication…
clock | February 15, 2007I have read "The God Delusion" by Richard Dawkins and "Breaking The Spell" by Daniel Dennett a couple of months ago, could not bear to slog all the way through "The End of Faith" by Sam Harris, and am still waiting to get my copies of "God: the Failed Hypothesis" by Victor Stenger and "Evolving God: A Provocative View on the Origins of Religion" by Barbara J. King. I was going to write a big meta-review of all of them together, perhaps adding in "Darwin's Cathedral" by David Sloan Wilson as an anti-toxin to the Dawkins/Dennet naive understanding of evolution (and just plain old nastiness…
pharyngula | February 13, 2007The NYT has a nice article on Carl Sagan's new posthumous book—it was put together by his widow, Ann Druyan, and she makes a few good points:
In the wake of Sept. 11 and the attacks on the teaching of evolution in this country, she said, a tacit truce between science and religion that has existed since the time of Galileo started breaking down. "A lot of scientists were mad as hell, and they weren't going to take it anymore," Ms. Druyan said over lunch recently.
I'll say. It was a stupid truce, anyway, entirely to the benefit of the old guardians of mythology.
clock | February 10, 2007This book, Darwinian Reductionism by Alex Rosenberg, arrived in the mail today. I do not recall ordering it, and I know it used to be on my amazon.com wishlist, so the only explanation is that this is a gift from one of my readers who chose to remain anonymous.
I happen to know Alex Rosenberg and think that he has vastly evolved in his thinking about biology since he joined the Duke faculty several years ago (at which time he was a very genocentric Dawkinsian). He is also a wonderful person, and I hear a great teacher and advisor. I am really looking forward to reading this book.
Thank you!
pharyngula | February 9, 2007I have mixed feelings about EO Wilson's book, The Creation(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll). It's wonderfully well written, it's on a subject I care about and that Wilson is clearly passionate about, and it's trying to straighten out religious people on an important matter, but it's also written directly to an audience of which I am not a part. I found myself alienated by the style, and despite my appreciation of his effort, simply wasn't able to finish the book. I'm going to have to try and wade through those last few chapters sometime, though, when I'm feeling charitable enough to be able to cope…
clock | February 4, 2007Now that the Seventh Book is available for pre-order (and beating all the records, not to mention being #1 on Amazon), there is gooing to be a lot of blogospheric speculation about it, e.g., who dies, what happens and how it ends. So, between now and July 21st, as well as afterwards, read the Carnival of Harry Potter and submit your entries to it whenever you write something about it. The latest edition, posted last night, is up on Pensieve.