The ScienceBlogs Book Club

Sleeping Naked Is Green: How an Eco-Cynic Unplugged Her Fridge, Sold Her Car, and Found Love in 366 Days by Vanessa Farquharson

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 16:14:05 -0500

This book review was originally posted by GrrlScientist on Living the Scientific Life.

tags: book review, Sleeping Naked is Green, green living, environment, Vanessa Farquharson

Carbon footprints, global warming, green living -- are these phrases an inconvenient truth that keep you awake at night, wondering how you can live in a more environmentally friendly way? For many people, merely contemplating these things is enough to make them give up trying to help the earth before they even start! But before you allow yourself to become discouraged, there is a book out there that will inspire you to make changes in your life that are beneficial to the earth; Sleeping Naked Is Green: How an Eco-Cynic Unplugged Her Fridge, Sold Her Car, and Found Love in 366 Days (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; 2009) by Vanessa Farquharson.

Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post...

Birds: Nature's Magnificent Flying Machines by Caroline Arnold

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 16:07:02 -0500

This book review was originally posted by Greg Laden on Greg Laden's Blog.

previously reviewed

Birds: Nature's Magnificent Flying Machines is a book by Caroline Arnold and illustrated by Patricia Wynne for, I'd say, Pre-Elementary School kids and first/second grade. This is a good book to read to a pre-literate kid. Then put it away for later when the first grade academic report on birds is due ... it will be an excellent reference.

This is a well done and highly recommended book.

Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post...

Unholy Business: A True Tale of Faith, Greed and Forgery in the Holy Land by Nina Burleigh

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 15:50:59 -0500

This book review was originally posted by GrrlScientist on Living the Scientific Life.

tags: book review, Unholy Business, religious antiquities, biblical antiquities, fraud, Christianity, Judaism, Nina Burleigh

There are two different types
of people in the world,
those who want to know,
and those who want to believe.

-- Friedrich Nietzsche

In November 2002, an ancient carved limestone burial box designed to hold the disarticulated skeleton of a dead person was put on public display in Canada's Royal Ontario Museum. Although common throughout Israel, this particular box, known as an ossuary, was unusual because it was inscribed. Even more remarkable, its ancient Aramaic inscription -- "Ya'akov bar Yosef akhui di Yeshua" -- translated to read, "James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus." This sent waves of hysteria through the Christian and Jewish communities, causing tens of thousands of faithful to mob the museum. But even before the ossuary was publicly displayed, experts declared the inscription to be a fraud. Unfazed by facts, the religious preferred to believe it was real. In Unholy Business: A True Tale of Faith, Greed and Forgery in the Holy Land (NYC: Collins; 2008), the author, Nina Burleigh, uncovers the trail followed by forged biblical antiquities, from illegal excavations in Israel to a world-class museum in Canada.

Read the comments on this post...

Darwin's Sacred Cause: How a Hatred of Slavery Shaped Darwin's View of Human Evolution by Adrian Desmond and James Moore

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 15:42:47 -0500

This review was originally posted by Brian Switek on Laelaps

Since the early 20th century, at least, young earth creationists have attempted to blame Charles Darwin for genocide, world wars, and whatever political movements seemed most threatening at one time or another (i.e. communism). What Darwin is faulted with changes with the times, but most recently young earth creationists have focused on hot topics from Darwin's own era: racism and slavery. From the Answers in Genesis tract Darwin's Plantation to the upcoming (and unethically produced) documentary The Voyage That Shook the World, creationists claim that Darwin's evolutionary vision undermined the "consanguinity" of all members of the human species, thus justifying slavery.

While acknowledging the popularity of these views among creationists, Adrian Desmond and James Moore's latest book Darwin's Sacred Cause: How a Hatred of Slavery Shaped Darwin's View of Human Evolution does not attempt to direct refute creationist propaganda. It is not a defense of Darwin, but rather an explanation of how the famous naturalist integrated his concerns over racism and slavery into his work. Born into a high-class Whig household Darwin imbibed the anti-slavery sentiments of his family early and hung onto them throughout his life. Darwin may have had a paternalistic view that blacks, native peoples, &c. were culturally inferior to whites, but this was about as far as his racism extended. Darwin was truly revolted by slavery and the racist science of contemporaries like the creationist naturalist Louis Agassiz.

Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post...

Video Book Review: How We Decide and Proust Was a Neuroscientist by Jonah Lehrer

Thu, 18 Jun 2009 13:24:03 -0500

For more video book reviews by Joanne Manaster, see her page on YouTube.

Read the comments on this post...

Evil Genes: Why Rome Fell, Hitler Rose, Enron Failed and My Sister Stole My Mother's Boyfriend

Thu, 18 Jun 2009 13:10:49 -0500

This review was originally posted by Steinn Sigurðsson on Dynamics of Cats.

As I was strolling through town a few weeks ago, I saw a flyer advertising a talk on campus by Prof. Barbara Oakley, talking about her book "Evil Genes: Why Rome Fell, Hitler Rose, Enron Failed and My Sister Stole My Mother's Boyfriend."

I couldn't go to the talk, due to a conflicting engagement, but the book was in my review pile, so I popped it up to the top and plowed through it.

The book is quite a fun read.
It starts off as a personal story, with the death of the author's sister, and her reflection on the life of her sister, and why she was as she was: was it genetic, environmental, due to neurological changes from severe viral illness, or some mix if all of the above.

The author leans to the genetic explanation as a root cause, with enviroment and contingent events considered as triggers or suppressors of genetic propensities.
There is some interesting discussion of brain structure, and a lot of reliance of functional MRI studies, which the author is clearly familiar with. There is also some good discussion of allele variations and correlations with various clinical syndromes, as well as the game theoretic aspect of why such propensities would persist in a population despite their apparent low fitness in many cases.

Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post...

Stephen Jay Gould and the Politics of Evolution

Mon, 15 Jun 2009 17:50:27 -0500

Originally published on Pharyngula

When I was growing up, I had no introduction to evolutionary theory. Sure, I assumed it was true, and I went through the usual long phase of dinosaur fandom, but I was never taught anything at all about evolution throughout my grade school education, and what little I did know was largely stamp-collecting. That all changed, though, when I went off to college.

I can't credit the schools I went to, unfortunately: most of my undergraduate education (with a few wonderful exceptions) was the usual mega-survey course, where the instructor stuck a funnel in our heads and poured in facts for a term — so more stamp-collecting. What happened to me, though, was that I was struck by two thunderbolts at almost the same time. The hot science book that was published during my freshman year was E.O. Wilson's Sociobiology, and I bought it and devoured it and thoroughly enjoyed it. It was more buckets of facts, but in this case, these facts were deployed to illuminate an overarching idea about how the world works…and I found it wonderful.

The second thunderbolt was Stephen Jay Gould. He was doing the same thing, promoting ideas powerfully with evidence and rhetoric, and he was far easier to read than Wilson, and communicated even more clearly. It was also wonderful.

Of course, if you know anything about the intellectual landscape of the 1970s, you know that I had acquired as two scientific god-parents two warring camps who were hellbent against one another in a period of angry evolutionary ferment. I am the product of a broken home! It was especially tragic, because in my naiveté, I thought most of the conflict was a waste, that each side had an important perspective, and that the right answer was an appreciation of the power of selection and an understanding of the other modes of change operating over history.

I've long been interested in the battle royale that went on in that period — it's like a child's morbid dwelling on the scab of an ugly parental divorce — and in particular with that central figure, Steve Gould. Last week I was sent a copy of a book by David F. Prindle, Stephen Jay Gould and the Politics of Evolution^{(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll)}, so of course I had to read it.

Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post...

Video Book Review: Doubt is Their Product by David Michaels

Thu, 14 May 2009 17:32:26 -0500

For more video book reviews by Joanne Manaster, check out her YouTube page.

Read the comments on this post...

Video Book Review: Mad Science by Theo Gray

Tue, 05 May 2009 15:02:48 -0500

For more video book reviews by Joanne Manaster, check out her YouTube page.

Read the comments on this post...

Book Review: In Which Sci Reads the Dictionary (Cambell's Psychiatric Dictionary, 9th Edition)

Tue, 14 Apr 2009 13:59:02 -0500

Originally posted by Scicurious
On April 8, 2009, at 12:02 AM

As I'm sure everyone knows by now, Sci LOVES getting books in the mail. Even if I paid for them, I still love seeing them show up in a box. Even better is when I pick them out of a store and get to cuddle them on the way home. So you can imagine how happy Sci was to see this show up at the door:

I've always wanted a specialized psychiatric dictionary, almost as bad as I've wanted a specialized pharmacologic dictionary. It's a good thing to have handy, and is an even cooler thing to get in the mail. So Sci pranced around happily with her dictionary for a minute. All I have to do is review it and...

...and then Sci realized she was going to have to READ THE DICTIONARY.

Campbell's Psychiatric Dictionary, 9th Edition, by Robert J. Campbell, MD.

Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post...

Video Book Review! Mean and Lowly Things, by Kate Jackson

Tue, 14 Apr 2009 13:29:27 -0500

Click here for more video book reviews by Joanne Manaster.

Read the comments on this post...

Terminal Freeze, by Lincoln Child

Wed, 08 Apr 2009 12:12:21 -0500

Originally posted by Brian Switek
On April 6, 2009, at 8:10 AM

One of the unwritten rules of creating a good horror yarn is that the location your story takes place in has to be as frightening as your monster. The setting almost has to act an an extension of the bloodthirsty antagonist; a place that can more easily be seen as its lair than a place of human habitation. In Lincoln Child's latest novel Terminal Freeze that place is Fear Base, a rotting military facility shivering the the shadow of Fear Glacier, and it is stalked by something utterly horrifying.

Readers of The Relic, another horror novel penned by Child and his sometimes partner Douglas Preston, will feel right at home as they delve into Terminal Freeze. Fear Base is a dusty, dark, and labyrinthine place just as foreboding as the natural history museum in which Preston and Child's first hit novel was set. (Child's choice of setting also closely recalls that of John Carpenter's The Thing, based on the short story "Who Goes There?") A further similarity to the earlier work is that the story follows a diverse group of characters with a scientist, in this case paleoecologist Evan Marshall, as the hero.

The basic storyline is as follows; a group of scientists discover something frozen in the ice, a creature with two predatory, cat-like eyes. At first they think it is a Smilodon frozen in ice, but as more information comes to light they are less sure of their initial hypothesis. Such a momentous discovery soon grabs the attention of the people who underwrote the expedition, the Terra Prime documentary network, and soon the scientists are sidelined as the film crew turns the base into a media circus.

The plan is to thaw the creature in front of a live worldwide audience, but before that happens the creature disappears. The Terra Prime bosses try to finger who stole the creature, and their anxieties increase of their crew starts to turn up dead. Maybe that thing in the ice wasn't dead after all, and those who stay at the base have an awfully difficult time figuring out how to kill it.

All of this makes for a familiar, but satisfying, story. It is not the best creature-centered horror story ever written but it is far better than most of the similarly-themed pulp put out in any given year. Still, I couldn't help but feel that Terminal Freeze is an amalgamation of other stories. The setting is almost straight out of The Thing, the protagonists try a method of killing the creature that fans of The Thing From Another World will immediately recognize, the creature's demise is very similar to that of the antagonist of Peter Benchley's White Shark, and there are many, many similarities to Child's earlier collaborative work, The Relic.

The correspondence between The Relic and Terminal Freeze is anything but coincidence. The scientists in Child's new book even cite the "Callisto Effect", a sort of saltationism with a vengeance, that was the pet theory of Dr. Frock in The Relic and Reliquary. It states that when a species becomes too numerous or starts to lose evolutionary vigor a monstrous superpredator suddenly appears and kills until it can kill no more. The new beast in Terminal Freeze is such an animal, a mammal/reptile hybrid that appeared at just the right time to cause the extinction of other creatures, even though its existence is never fully explained. In this way Terminal Freeze is sort of a sequel to The Relic as it clearly occurred in the same fictional universe, and I have to wonder (and, admittedly, hope) whether more novels about "Callisto Effect" creatures are being planned.

There are a few drawbacks to Terminal Freeze, however. First is that the characters are a bit stereotyped. There is the obsessed film producer, the stuck up actress, the wise old Native American, our "everyman put into the wrong situation" hero, etc. Those who act immorally ultimately get what is coming to them and it seems that the monster is an agent of higher powers as much as an earthly threat. This is conventional monster movie stuff; monsters act as a final judgment for the immoral. There is also a helluva lot of scientific jargon, particularly involving sound. I cannot explain why without giving too much of the novel away, but the scientists use so much jargon so frequently that they resemble the stereotyped scientists of 1950's b-movies more than any academics I personally know.

In some parts of the novel it seems that Child wants to show off what he knows about a given subject and does so through his characters. In one part the paleoecologist has to perform an on-the-spot autopsy. He protests that he has not studied a cadaver since grad school and wouldn't know what to make of it, yet he delivers a point-by-point study of the obliterated body that would make any forensic professional proud. Child falls into this trap of showboating his own knowledge through his characters multiple times in the book, and it certainly makes it seem more like classic schlock than realistic horror.

If you are a fan of creature features with a free weekend and a few bucks to spend I would certainly recommend picking up Terminal Freeze. It is quick, fun, and wouldn't make a bad movie if done right. If you're are not particularly fond of monsters causing mayhem in an isolated Arctic base, though, you might want to give this one a pass. It's satisfying for fans but those looking for a superior book might want to check out The Relic instead.

Read the comments on this post...

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains

Sun, 05 Apr 2009 11:35:51 -0500

Originally posted by Jessica Palmer
On April 1, 2009, at 7:00 AM

I've been as eager as a brain-starved zombie to get my hands on Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, the Jane Austen mash-up concocted by Seth Grahame-Smith for Quirk Books. It sounded a like Regency Buffy: zombie-slaying Lizzy Bennet indulges in arch quips while skewering zombies and ninjas with her Katana, all in time for the Netherfield ball. The obvious question was, could this conceit actually work for the length of a novel?

Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post...

Losing My Religion: How I Lost My Faith Reporting on Religion in America—and Found Unexpected Peace, by William Lobdell

Fri, 03 Apr 2009 11:15:22 -0500

Originally posted by Grrlscientist
On March 30, 2009, at 2:55 PM

Unlike most people who were raised in a religious household and grew up surrounded by religious people, I never experienced a "crisis of faith" since I never believed there was a god any more than I believed there was a Santa Claus or a Tooth Fairy. However, some of my friends are religious and because I value them as people, I have listened to them from time to time as they pondered aloud the deep questions that all of us face in the wee hours or after experiencing a significant loss or other life-changing event -- the same questions that journalist, William Lobdell, addresses so eloquently in his memoir, Losing My Religion: How I Lost My Faith Reporting on Religion in America -- and Found Unexpected Peace (Collins; 2009).

Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post...

Video Book Reviews! Bad Science, and Lies, Damned Lies and Science

Thu, 02 Apr 2009 11:18:24 -0500

Joanne Manaster reviews two books about distinguishing science fact from science fiction in our everyday lives: Bad Science, by Ben Goldacre, and Lies, Damned Lies and Science, by Sherry Seethaler.

For more of Joanne's video reviews, see her web page, Joanne Loves Science, or her science reviews YouTube channel.

Read the comments on this post...