Science – Page 4 – Wis[s]e Words

If you had $500, what science books would you buy for a high school library?

Published on January 19, 20121 Comment

That’s the question Robert left on my review of Kraken:

Here’s a challenge for you, if you want it. Suppose you had $500 to spend on science books for a high school library, what would you buy? I’ve got a small budget, so I want to get the most bang of the buck

Which books I would recommend? Ben Goldacre’s Bad Science to get some inoculation against quackery. Any of Richard Fortey’s books on evolution and geology, particularly Life and The Earth, but also Trilobite, Chad Orzel’s How to Teach Physics to Your Dog which is a popular science book on quantum physics, any of Ian Stewart’s or Martin Gardner’s books of mathematical puzzles, Gabrielle Walker’s Snowball Earth just to show how cool Earth’s long prehistory has been, any of Richard Dawkin’s recent books in which he doesn’t bang on about religion.

Which books would you recommend?

Kraken — Wendy Williams

Published on January 17, 2012Leave a comment

Cover of Kraken

Kraken
Wendy Williams
223 pages including index
published in 2011

This was a bittersweet pleasure to read. As an homage to Sandra I wanted to read some of her favourite books and writers this year and Weny Williams’ Kraken was one of the last books she was really enthusiastic about. I had gotten it for her as part of an Amazon order in June of last year, when it still looked she was going to beat her illness and to cheer her up in hospital. Once she had read, she was keen on me to read it too to see what I thought, but I never made the time to do so, having so much else to read. It’s something I regret now, as I would’ve liked to discuss this with her, but at the same time it is nice as well to be able to read a book that reminds me so much of her. Sandra loved squids, octopuses and every kind of cephalopods; they were her favourite animals and any book on them that was any good had her favour.

And Kraken is quite good. At some twohundred pages without the index it’s not an indepth treatment of Cephalopoda, but it is a good look at what makes these creatures so fascinating. The cephalopods are invertebrates, part of the molluscs, with octopussies and squid traditionally seen as evil devil beasts that as soon drown a sailor as look at them. Yet the more we learn about them, the more fascinating they’ve become. It’s quite clear that many of them are incredibly smart, well adapted to their surroundings and with some amazing abilities — most possess chromatophores, coloured pigment cells under conscious muscular control which they can use to camouflage themselves or even “speak” with. They’re curious, they’re playful and in short, they remind us a little bit of ourselves.

Satoshi Kanazawa is still a massive douche

Published on May 17, 2011

Having a relatively old blog means you can see certain subjects coming back again and again over the years. One of such is the sheer stupidity and nastiness of Satoshi Kanazawa. In 2006 I posted about his bizarre theory that Asians cannot do science properly, two years later about his masturbatory fantasies of having Ann Coulter in charge of the War on Terror. Today he’s back in the news again for saying that evolution made Black women unattractive, especially to middle aged evolutionary psychologists paid to spout scientificesques excuses for prejudiced bullshit.

Not to long ago the London School of Economics was pilloried for taking money to let one of Khadaffi’s sons study there. Yet I think the LSE should be more ashamed for having Kanazawa on its staff…

Happy Gagarin Day

Published on April 11, 2011

It was fifty years ago today that the manned space age started, as Yuri gagarin became the first human in orbit. Shouldn’t we have been on Alpha Centauri by now?

Wonders of the Universe — meh

Published on March 22, 20111 Comment

Professor Brian Cox (who looks too young to shave, let alone be a professor) is the BBC’s latest science superstar, having had a succesful series on The Wonders of the Solar System last year and following it up with The Wonders of the Universe this year. Engaging, charming and enthusiastic about science, astronomy and physics, he’s the ideal presenter for a programme that wants to introduce a broad range of viewers to what our universe looks like.

The only problem is that this is the umpteenth series attempting to do exactly that –other than some pretty pictures, there’s nothing new in this series that hasn’t been covered by other BBC astronomy series or that isn’t shown on any of the Discovery channels almost every day. The fact that it has to cram everything into four hour long episodes and is presented at that nice slow pace the BBC always insists on for “difficult” documentaries doesn’t help. Meanwhile a very similar documentary, Everything and Nothing, is being broadcast on BBC4, again on an introductionary level.

What I’m missing is the next step, a series of documentaries that delves deeper into these subjects, preferably a regular series ala Horizon that could built on these introductionary series and actually trust its audience to have a certain background level of knowledge, not needing to endlessly repeat the same basic facts over and over again. A series that can actually teach you something, rather than just entertain you with some pop science.