Category Archives: Books

Biologists Helping Bookstores

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)

Culinary Harry Potter

Get yourself some Harry Potter recipes so you have something to eat while reading The Book over the weekend.

More science of Harry Potter

I 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 Biology
The Botany of Wands
Kin selection

Science of Harry Potter

Both 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 third one here so I could read it while in San Francisco (who can wait?!) and then give it to someone before leaving.

Dawkins in San Francisco

Richard Dawkins is doing a reading/signing at Kepler’s bookstore this Saturday. Any Bay Area bloggers wanna go?

Storm World

stormworld%20cover.jpgUnfortunately, I will still be out of town for this, but if you are in the area on July 12th, you should go to Quail Ridge Books in Raleigh (it is in Ridgewood Shopping Center, 3522 Wade Ave.) at 7pm and meet my SciBling Chris Mooney. He is touring the country reading from his new book Storm World: Hurricanes, Politics, and the Battle Over Global Warming (website).
Last year, when he was touring with the “Republican War On Science” we had a grand time at his reading/signing and afterwards we, of course, had Miller Lite (at least he had, I chose something a little more beer-like). So, mark your calendars now and go and say Hi to Chris on the twelfth.

Why People Write?

I don’t know, but Grrrl and Archy tried to answer that question…

World 2.0 at Rainbows End

Books: “Rainbows End” by Vernor Vinge.
It’s 2025 – What happened to science, politics and journalism? Well, you know I’d be intrigued. After all, a person whose taste in science fiction I trust (my brother) told me to read this and particularly to read it just before my interview with PLoS. So, of course I did (I know, it’s been two months, I am slow, but I get there in the end).
‘Rainbows End’ is a novel-length expansion of the short story “Fast Times at Fairmont High” which he finished in August 2001 and first published in “The Collected Stories of Vernor Vinge“. The novel was written in 2005 (published in 2006) and the book happens in 2025, so it is a “near-future SF”, always more difficult to write than another episode of Star Trek.
Checking (after I have read the book) the reviews on Amazon.com, I was really taken aback and it made me think about science fiction, what it is and what people expect from it. So, what follows is simultaneously a book review and my own thoughts about the genre.

Continue reading

Always wanted to go to Barcelona!

shadow%20of%20the%20wind.jpgThe Shadow of the Wind
Thank you

Storm World

stormworld%20cover.jpgMy copy of the book just arrived in the mail. This answers my question of what to read in SF (at least until Harry Potter VII comes out…).

Invisibility Cloak

When I was a kid I swallowed science-fiction by the crates. And I was too young to be very discerning of quality – I liked everything. Good taste developed later, with age. But even at that tender age, there was one book that was so bad that not only did I realized it was bad, it really, really irked me. It was The Ayes of Texas (check the Amazon readers’ reviews!), a stupid 1982 Texas-secessionist fairy-tale in which a rich (and of course brilliant and smooth with ladies) conservative Texan, by throwing millions of dollars at scientists, gets all sorts of new gizmos and gadgets which he uses to win the Cold War by defeating both the Soviet and the US military, ending with Texas as the remaining standing military superpower. Hey, at that age I barely new where Texas was but the whole schtick was so sick, not to mention the stupid idea that scientific discovery can be bought just like that, with bags of money and few weeks of effort!
Anyway, since I doubt you’d care if I spoiled the plot of a book that you will not and should not read, the key weapon in the battle was an old WWII battleship armed with new types of weapons and, most importantly, made invisible by being plastered with panels made of a new material (which, if I remember correctly, break several laws of physics).
And while the invisibility panels as described in the book were impossible, that does not mean that nobody’s ever looked at the possibility of making materials that can make stuff more-or-less invisible. There was a report last year that saw a lot of press, and recently a new one came out, looking at chemicals called reflectins, coded by six genes unique to squid. Cephalopods rule, of course, and the distribution of reflectins in the skin is under the neural control of melanophores in cuttlefish and octopods.
Now, as MC explains very well, a new paper came out describing the properties of reflexins inserted into and expressed in E.coli. Then, reflexin synthetized by bacteria were coaxed into forming films on the surface of water and the light-reflecting properties were studies under varying conditions. You’ll have to read MC’s post for details.
Anyway, as MC notes, this is clearly of interest to the military, though I doubt they’ll ever use the synthetic reflexins to coat a WWII-era warship in order to defeat both the Soviet and the US armies in order to secede and form a Greater Texas.

Thank you!

Zivkovic%20cover.jpgAnother wonderful reader dipped into my amazon wish list and picked Hidden Camera by Zoran Zivkovic (no relation).
Zoran was the first person in former Yugoslavia to get a PhD with science-fiction as a topic of his Dissertation. Soon after he was the first one to teach SF at the University of Belgrade. He was also instrumental (together with his colleagues in Croatia and Slovenia) in bringing SF to the region, translating the classics, starting fanzines, etc.
I am looking forward to reading his book now! Thank you!

The first masked villain

Remember just the other day when I posted about Arsene Lupen, one of my childhood heroes? OK, Sherlock Holmes (called Herlock Sholmes for copyright reasons in the Lupen books) was a greater hero – there is probably not a single book or story I have not read at least once in my life.
I could also remember there was another French one, but I forgot his name so I omitted him from my post. I could recall the smell and sight of the beautiful new hardcover translations, and how my mother and her friends looked down on them and would not believe me that the books were well-written, smart and exciting. But I could not recall the name of the villain that was the main character of the series. And now, after about 30 years that I never thought about or heard about him, I found it on a blog by sheer coincidence – his name is Fantomas! (via). The books were publised starting in 1911 and it may have been the first masked villain in literature.

Arsene Lupen

This brief story on NPR today reminded me of some books I read as a child (in Serbo-Croatian translation) – though I have to admit that my brother loved them even more – in which the main character is Arsene Lupen, the art connoisseur and gentleman burglar. Listen to the NPR podcast and get the books – they are great! How well known is this character in the USA? Perhaps through his anime grandson?

Thank you!

Oullette%201.jpgOullette%202.jpg
This and this arrived in the mail today. A birthday present from one of my readers! Thank you!

Lulu 2007 Blooker Prizes

Just announced!

The Inter-Ghost Connection

The other day I was chatting with my brother (the smarter brother of Sherlock Holmes) on the phone, and he said something that may have some truth to it – I was predisposed, from early childhood, to understand and like the Web and the blogs. How? By reading and re-reading a million times the books about the adventures of The Three Investigators. Actually, only four of the early books in the series were tranlated into Serbo-Croatian, but I read them over and over. Later, here in the USA, I managed to find and read a few more in English.
What does that have to do with blogging? Well, back in the 1960s when the adventures were going on, there were no computers and the Internet. Yet, the three intrepid boys had to use their smarts and every contraption they could build from readily available materials, to solve mysteries and catch criminals. Usually, there would be something apparently supernatural happening and Jupiter Jones, Pete Cranshaw and Bob Andrews would figure out the completely natural explanation for it – usually some smokscreen built by the villain in order to cover his tracks (Mary V. Carey, one of the author of later volumes, broke this essential rule and left some supernatural stuff as such at the great consternation of readers who were all budding skeptics).
One of the inventions they came up with was the Ghost-to-Ghost Hookup:

Developed by Jupe in “Stuttering Parrot,” the Ghost to Ghost hookup was designed to get a lot of kids looking for something or someone at once without each person having to be personally contacted by the Three Investigators. Jupe, Pete, and Bob would each phone five friends and ask for the requested information. If none of those fifteen boys could help, then they would pass the message along to five each of their friends. The sheer numbers involved made it possible to mobilize the kids of Rocky Beach in a short time to be on the lookout for whatever person or object the boys were hunting. Jupe named it “Ghost to Ghost” because they would most likely not know who would be calling with information, and the voices on the phone would appear like “ghosts” to the boys, plus the name has flavor and color. The down side to the hookup was that all the phones in Rocky Beach would have busy signals while the messages were being passed along. The Ghost to Ghost Hookup helps out in several cases, including “Stuttering Parrot,” “Whispering Mummy,” “Crooked Cat,” “Shrinking House,” and others.

Or, from here:

Perhaps you remember the moment in The Mystery of the Stuttering Parrot when Bob and Jupiter, together, invent the Ghost-To-Ghost hookup? As Jupiter points out, the scheme could be used for contacting people “all the way from here to the Atlantic Ocean, if necessary. That would make it a Coast-To-Coast Hookup. But such a phrase has been used in the past by the television and radio networks. I prefer to be distinctive. So we will call ours a Ghost-To-Ghost Hookup.” In the Ghost-To-Ghost Hook-up, each of the Three Investigators calls five friends and asks each of the friends to call five more friends, and asks those in turn to call five more, and so on, until as Jupiter puts it, “we get results.”

You can find more about the books (and the movie coming out in a few months – I am excited!) here, here and here.
First, let me say that the ‘Ghost-to-Ghost Hookup’ was translated into Serbo-Croatian as “medjuduhovski spoj” whcih then translates back into English as “Interghost Connection”, a term I prefer to the original.
And, that is what we want whenever we post something online. If I want to get some informaiton out, or ask a question, I do not call five friends, but write a blog post. The post will be seen by about 1500 people on the first day, then cumulatively by as many or more over the subseuqne days and weeks. If the information is deemed important or interesting by the readers, they can take any kind of action. Know the answer? Post it in a comment or send me an e-mail. If not, you can print out the post and show the hardcopy version to your computer-shy friends. You can click on the “e-mail this article” button and send it to your friends. Or, you can click on one of the buttons on the bottom and send the information to places like Digg, Reddit, Slashdot or Stumbelupon. You can place a link to it in the Notes on your facebook profile or MySpace. You can post the information and the link on your own blog. Unlike telephones – the lines are never busy. Unlike telephones, there is no game of broken telephones: copy+paste coupled with the link to the original post makes the spread of information in high fidelity. So, instead of covering the small town of Rocky Beach in a few hours, I can, theoretically, cover half of the world in a few minutes, especially if he informaiton is really important.
So, once I saw my first blog, I subconsciously realized that this is the superior and modern version of the Interghost Connection. Remembering its effectiveness from the old books, of course I was immeditaelly drawn to use this way of communication for my own nefarious purposes. And I am still doing it, apparently….

Intuition

Zuska wrote a very good review of Allegra Goodman’s book “Intuition” from a very different angle than any other review I have seen so far, including those by Grrrlscientist and myself. Thought-provoking and worth your time.

Query: popular physics books?

My son (13) is in his physics phase. As a biologist, I don’t know much about physics beyond college classes, but our home library is huge, so he managed to dig out a bunch of physics-related books. Some he read, others he skimmed, and now he wants more. He is interested in everything – gravity, cosmology, etc. He is not afraid of simple math so a book with some easy formulas are fine. Help me pick a couple of good choices to get him later this week. What he checked/read so far is a smorgasbord of books of different ages, qualities, levels and topics:
Atom by Isaac Asimov
Mr.Tompkins Explores the Atom by Gamow
Relativity by Einstein
The Unfinished Universe by Louise Young
The Quark and the Jaguar by Murray Gell-Mann
The Unexpected Universe by Eiseley
Relativity Visualised by Epstein
From Copernicus to Einstein by Reichenbach
Stephen Hawking’s Universe by John Boslough
Encounters with Einstein by Heisenberg
A Briefer History of Time by Stephen Hawking
QED by Feynman
Dreams of a Final Theory by Steven Weinberg
Rainbows, Curve Balls & other wonders of the natural world explained, by Ira Flatow
Broca’s Brain by Sagan
Cosmology Now, edited by Laurie John
Entropy and the Magic Flute by Harold Morowitz
Frontiers of Complexity by Coveney and Highfield
The Trouble with Physics by Lee Smolin
So, give me your suggestions in the comments….

Kurt Vonnegut, RIP

Died at the age of 84. One of the best of the best. One of the 2-3 people in the world whose ALL works I own and have read at least once. He’ll be missed.

How not to write a science book…

…or blog post, or any non-fiction for that matter. Dave Munger explains. As one of his commenters notes: ”

Actually, this fantastic post is like a DSM entry for diagnosing crappy science writing. “Must exhibit 7 of 9 symptoms for 200 pages.”

Print it out and put it next to your computer. Check it out next time you start writing something…

Feldman Skewered

It appears that scientists are not the only ones who do not grok framing. Jeffrey Feldman’s book got blasted by some ninkompoop in NY Times yesterday. Jeff responds:

Indeed, when I read that passage I wondered if the reviewer had given up on reading my book just after glancing through the table of contents. It seems that, instead of writing about my book, Fairbanks popped in a DVD of “The Matrix,” or maybe “A Clockwork Orange,” and then churned out a piece of creative non-fiction reacting to those other works of sci-fi.

Update: More about the “fairbanksing” of Feldman here, here and here.

Have you nominated a post for the 2007 Science Blogging Anthology yet?

First three months of the year are almost over and… we have only 14 entries so far for the next Science Blogging Anthology!
Everything written and posted since December 20th 2006 is fair game. Have you written something really good since then? Send it in. Have you submitted something to a carnival this year yet? Send it in. Have you hosted a carnival and received some really cool posts? Send them in. Have you discovered a great new science blog that you think everyone should know about? Pick their best post and send it in.
It’s easy, just use the submission form or click here:
Openlab 2007
Help spread the word by placing the button (code can be found here) on your own sidebar.
Also, I am wondering if there are some enterpranurial people who will assemble anthologies of the best MedBlogging, EduBlogging, EnviroBlogging, Skeptical blogging, Godless blogging, Liberal blogging, etc…. Start a whole new industry and bridge the gap between blogs and blog-shy folks by presenting our best to them in the format they are used to and they trust – the printed-on-paper books.

Everyone’s favourite nurse is back!

cherry%20ames.jpgThe first four books in the Cherry Ames series are back in print, published by Springer Publishing Company.
Apparently, many people, upon reading them, decided to join the nursing profession. Mind you, that was between 1943 and 1968. when these books first came out.
I bet Kim was the first one to order the new reprints (although I bet she still keeps her old originals somewhere around the house). My wife is ordering her set today.

Blooker Prize shortlist announced

Paul 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!

Happy Birthday Douglas Adams

Douglas 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 design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.
Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so.
If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, we have at least to consider the possibility that we have a small aquatic bird of the family anatidae on our hands.
My doctor says that I have a malformed public-duty gland and a natural deficiency in moral fibre, and that I am therefore excused from saving Universes.
This planet has – or rather had – a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of small green pieces of paper, which is odd because on the whole it wasn’t the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy.
Totally mad. Utter nonsense. But we’ll do it because it’s brilliant nonsense.

– All from Douglas Noel Adams, 1952 – 2001

From Quotes of the Day

Most Significant SF Books

Tikistitch, 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 phase, a John Kessel phase, a Vernon Vinge phase, a Connie Willis phase, etc.
Anyway, instead of going through the excercise of bolding or not the titles on the list, I’ll point you to my own old list here for a taste of the stuff I like.
Update: Orac, Joseph, Moomin’ Light, Afarensis and Rob join in the fun. So do John Lynch, Jim Lippard and Mark CC. And Sandra and Chad chime in. Karmen and Steinn as well.

That Gunk on Your Car

Jonah 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.

Science Anthologies Reviewed

John 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 Cartwright and I will try to do an even better job on the 2007 Edition. So, start sending in your entries now.

Circadian Rhythm Degeneration Syndrome?

OK, 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:

Continue reading

The Best Sneetches on the Beaches

The Best Sneetches on the BeachesAn olde but fun (February 16, 2006):

Continue reading

Wimp Factor

You 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.

Thank you!

Evolving%20God.jpgOne 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. Cut the trees! Full speed to the 19th century!
But then, one of my readers came to the rescue, checked out my amazon wish list and got me the book! Nothing makes me happier! The book should be in my mailbox any day now.
Thank you!!!!!!!!!!!!

Atheist Books and the Overton Window

I 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 towards the idea of demic selection in particular and towards the idea of hierarchy of levels and units of selection in general).
But more I wait, harder it will be to get something original out. Yesterday, Sean Carroll scooped me in my idea to use the concept of Overton Window to explain the usefulness of most (if not all) of these books, particularly the Dawkins book. You should really go and read how Sean put it together and I will, once I get through all the books, try to find a different angle.

Thank You!

alex%20rosenberg%20book%20cover.jpgThis 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!

Harry Potter Mania on Blogs

Now 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.

Harry Potter, Vol.VII

Potter%20cover.jpgHarry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is now available for pre-order at Amazon. I ordered two copies (one for me, one to send to friends in Belgrade). Regular issue, not Deluxe. It ships July 21, 2007. Can’t wait!

Copycats!

Ha! We broke the ice and now others are following our example. The Best of Technology Writing 2007 is being planned (hat-tip: Pimm).
I think this is great! Biotech articles are welcome as well, so send in your faves for consideration. Of course, they are a little timid – non-blog articles can also be included, and they intend to work on it for something like nine months! I guess they are not nuts like me….
What is next? Medical Blogging Anthology? Who is going to spearhead that project?

Anthology update

Now that the Anthology is arriving at people’s homes, getting read and even reviewed on blogs, I hope that more people will take a minute to post reviews or ratings on the actual book webpage. In one week, it has moved from non-existent to 33rd to 27th on the Lulu.com top sellers of the week list. I am also working on having the book more widely available, e.g., on sites like amazon.com and in independent bookstores.

Of course…

What Kind of Reader Are You?

Your Result: Obsessive-Compulsive Bookworm

You’re probably in the final stages of a Ph.D. or otherwise finding a way to make your living out of reading. You are one of the literati. Other people’s grammatical mistakes make you insane.

Dedicated Reader
Literate Good Citizen
Book Snob
Non-Reader
Fad Reader
What Kind of Reader Are You?
Create Your Own Quiz

(Hat-tip: Grrrrl)

Do-it-yourself Biology

When I was a kid, there was no such thing as “do it yourself” biology for home. Sure, you could do observational stuff, like go out in the woods with a butterfly net and a magnifi\ying glass, or plant some seeds, or look at stuff under the microscope, but it was hard to do real experiments in biology.
My favourite trio of childhood science books (recently reissued) were “Between Play and Physics”, “Between Play and Chemistry” and “Between Play and Mathematics” – see, no biology there!
But the world of science has changed since then and there is much more stuff that one can do at home that is real experimental biology – especially molecular biology.
These days, you can run a gel in an electrophoresis setup built out of Legos or extract your own stem cells from a placenta (if you can get hold of one), or a whole bunch of other stuff. Even more sophisticated ready-made stuff, e.g., science kits, are not that expensive any more.
Perhaps someone should write “Between Play and Biology” one of these days.

Confessing Canadian Science Librarian reviews RWOS

John Dupuis wrote a review of the Republican War On Science by Chris Mooney.

The Science Blogging Anthology – the Great Unveiling!

The Open Laboratory - order hereYes! It is finally here! What you have all been waiting for, impatiently, for three weeks! The Science Blogging Anthology is now for sale. Go to Lulu.com by clicking here (or click on the picture of the book to your right) and place your order! You can choose to buy a PDF to download (but do you really want to print out 336 pages!?) or order the book with its pretty cover – it takes only a couple of days to arrive at your doorstep.
You can see here how it all got started, just three weeks ago, smack in the middle of the holidays when nobody was online and traffic was down to a third of the normal – and the whole thing just exploded! It was meant to coincide with the inaugural Science Blogging Conference. You can check out all 218 finalists here and the Final 50 here. Don’t forget to check the comments! And if you are interested in the process, there have been numerous updates along the way here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here.
First, I’d like to thank everyone who submitted nominations, either their own or for other people’s work.
Second, I’d like to thank the distinguished panel of twelve reviewers who helped me narrow down the field from 218 to 50 posts: Janet, Karmen, Jennifer, Jenna, John, Bill, MC, Carl, Leo, Heinrich, John and one anonymous reviewer, as well as Anton who tremendously helped on the technical side of this endeavor.
Next, I’d like to thank all those who have helped spread the word about this so far, by posting links on their blogs: Arunn, MC, MC again, MC again, Ema, Ed, Ed again, Ed again, Archy, Archy again, Afarensis, Afarensis again, Larry, Bee, John, Dan, Martin, Sya, Sir Oolius, Florine, John, Rob, Curious Cat, Nuthatch, Aydin, Clare, Radagast, Pedro, Pedro again, Jenna, Anton, Luca, Liz, et alli and bbgm (did I miss anyone?).
And I thank in advance everyone who buys the book, e-mails their friends about it, links to this post from their blogs, or places this post on one of the social networking sites (see the buttons at the bottom of the post).
What about next year?
This anthology was designed to coincide with the first Science Blogging Conference – and we made it in the nick of time – the conference is this Saturday. We are hoping to make the conference an annual event, so why not the anthology again, to be published in late January of next year, and the year after that…? I have already heard (and read on blogs) the sentiment that there should be one every year.
I have asked for volunteers to be the editor of the next edition, but nobody raised their hand, and a few people suggested (mostly in the comments on the ‘Final 50’ post) I should do it again. Frankly, I enjoyed the experience as frantic as it was and I’d like to do it again. And next year it will not be so frantic: instead of three weeks between the first idea and the book actually seeing print, I’ll have twelve months to slowly collect quality posts and get a ‘feel’ for the annual output of the science-blogging world.
So, please, at any time between January 1st and December 31st 2007, if you write a kick-ass post, let me know. I’ll bookmark it and jot a few notes to myself and take it into consideration for the next edition. If you see a great science-related post, especially written by a blogger who may be new and not yet the part of the inner circle of us science bloggers, please let me know. If your best post is in another language, have it translated into English and send me the permalink – let’s increase the diversity!
Also, send your best stuff to appropriate blog carnivals. I will dutifully monitor posts that appear on the following carnivals: Tangled Bank, Grand Rounds, Carnival of the Green, Skeptic’s Circle, Mendel’s Garden, Bio::Blogs, Encephalon, Animalcules, Circus of the Spineless, I And The Bird, Festival of the Trees, Oekologie, Four Stone Hearth, Panta Rei, Philosophia Naturalis, Change Of Shift, Pediatric Grand Rounds, Radiology Grand Rounds and any new ones that may appear this year.
I hope you enjoy the book and that you will continue to visit the many science bloggers who have been linked in the semi-finals and finals and many more found on their blogrolls.
Buy the book here!
Update: I’d also like to thank everyone who is helping to spread the word by linking to this post from their blogs, including (let me know if I missed you):
Stranger Fruit, Archy, Evolving Thoughts, Nonoscience, Accidental Blogger, The Loom, Intueri, Neurophilosophy, Aardvarchaeology, Bioephemera, Open…, Archaeoastronomy, Panda’s Thumb, Rhosgobel: Radagast’s Home, The Physics of Sex, Bark Bark Woof Woof, The Third Bit, The Real Paul Jones, Bootstrap Analysis, Open Reading Frame, Science And Politics, Stoat, Cognitive Daily, De Rerum Natura , Bee Policy, Liberal Coalition, Words and Pictures, Uncertain Principles, Pharyngula, Aetiology, The Blog Herald, Scientific Assessment, Shakespeare’s Sister, Scientia Est Potentia, Pegase, BlogSheroes, Idea Consultants, Pure Pedantry, Confessions of a Science Librarian, Thoughts from Kansas, Arbitrary Marks, Carolina Blog Consultants, Omni Brain, The Education Wonks, Lean Left, Ed Cone’s Word Up, Skeptico, The Scientific Indian, Retrospectacle: A Neuroscience Blog, Emergiblog, bbgm, Sandwalk, Page 3.14, Neurontic, today’s The Buzz Of The Blogosphere on the front page of Scienceblogs.com, Easternblot, Siris, The Voltage Gate, A Somewhat Old, But Capacious Handbag, The Scientific Activist, 10,000 Birds, digg, stumbleupon, The Daily Transcript, Newton’s Binomium, Pimm, Snail’s Tales, Dispatches from the Culture Wars, Respectful Insolence, Mistersugar, Creek Running North, Alone on a Boreal Stage, Seed’s Daily Zeitgeist, Migrations, SharpBrains, Element List, Et alli…, Syaffolee, Neurocritic, Epigenetics News, Bad Astronomy blog, Science Made Cool, Chaotic Utopia, Afarensis, Abnormal Interests, MSNBC Clicked, The Isle, Hot Cup Of Joe, She Flies With Her Own Wings, A DC Birding Blog, And Doctor Biobrain’s Response Is…, The Blog That Ate Manhattan, East Ethnia, Desipundit, Decorabilia, Yesh, Sereniteit, Lab Cat, Johnkemeny, The Greenbelt, Thomasburg Walks, Milkriverblog, Science!, my DailyKos Diary, Genetics and Health, Cosmic Variance, Darwin.net, Examining Room of Dr.Charles, Cognitive Daily, DocBug, Burning Silo, Brainshrub, Resonance Partnership Blog, Claw of the Conciliator, Bibliothecaris in Blog, De conceptuele ingenieur, Ciencia em dia, Mike the Mad Biologist, Discovering Biology in a Digital World, Tales from the Microbial Laboratory, John Hawks Anthropology Blog, Science Notes, Curious Cat, Galactic Interactions, SciBos – Corie Lok’s blog, Cocktail Party Physics, The Countess, Element List, Petrona, A Blog Around The Clock, Red State Rabble, Pen-Elayne on the Web, Total Information Awareness, Postscripts, Terra Sigillata, Guide To Reality, Pennsylvania Citizens for Science, Ivory-bills LIVE!!, Novelr.com, Daily Kos, The Executioners Thong, Uma Malla pelo mundo, JORGE GAJARDO ROJAS, Ouroboros, Savage Minds, Neural Gourmet,

Anthology update….

We had a minor glitch with the cover. It is in the process of getting fixed right now. Stay tuned – the unveiling will be shortly….

Anthology update….

The entire file is now finished – the last quick round of proofreading is all that’s left before the Grand Unveiling right at this place (likely tomorrow morning).
Since people nominated the best science posts and those tend to be the most substantial posts which tend to be very long posts (sometimes in two or more parts), the book will be much thicker than I expected – around 330 pages! This, unfortunately, will also make it a tad little bit more expensive (still not hugely expensive – this is online, print-on-demand model of publishing after all).
I got 13 out of 50 letters of agreement/copyright so far. Instead of e-mailing everyone to confirm, I will wait another couple of weeks and only contact those whose letter I did not receive by then, if any.
Oh, and once the book is announced and up for sale, I’d appreciate you spreading the word – e-mail your friends, post a link on your blog, nominate it on places like digg/reddit/delicious/stumbleupon/endgadget/metafilter/slashdot, and buy the book!

Anthology update

Just a quick note on the current state of the anthology:
40 41 formatted files have arrived so far, six are on their way today, and four three more people have yet to respond (I may have to tap into the “reserve” posts if I do not hear from these four three today). The cover is done. The title is chosen. The PDF file is in the process of beeing built and looking pretty already.
I am writing the Preface right now. It has been suggested to me to utilize/cannibalize material from these two old posts for the Preface. Both are too long, but have some interesting stuff in them, so I will see what I can do about it.
A couple of more days and the blook will be up for sale. When that happens you will hear about it here first!
Update Jan 10th, 11:45pm: Herding cats is almost done. All 50 contacted. 47 files obtained (the three of you – you know who you are – hurry up!). Preface still in the works. Putting the whole thing together tomorrow. Announcement soon.

SciBlog Anthology suggestions so far

Update: Deadline for submissions is January 2nd at noon EST.
Wow! I posted the call for suggestions on Friday night, it is a weekend and a holiday, the traffic is down to a half, yet I got so many suggestions already, both in the comments and via e-mail! I am also very happy to see how many people are suggesting not just their own but other people’s posts. This is going to be heckuva job for me! All science bloggers are my friends and I will have to dissappoint so many of them in the end. I wish I could collect 500 posts instead of just 50.
As I stated in the original post, I am looking to showcase the diversity of science blogging. I got a lot of it already, but some things are dominating, while others are still missing. Can I get a poem? Something funny or satirical? Something about teaching science? A how-to recipe for a science experiment to do at home? Science for kids? Some history and philosophy of science? Check the original post for more ideas.
I understand that posts debunking Creationism and other types of pseudoscience are very popular. So are the posts dealing with political/religious assaults on science. A few of those will certainly make it, but there is a wealth of such stuff out there, the competition is really tough. On the other hand, if you can think of something unusual or unique, something that nobody else does, it may have a greater chance of making it into the blook than your best smack-down of Dembski.
I will try to find a way to let you help me make the choices, perhaps with some kind of a poll later on that will cut down the numbers to a little bit over 50. But in the end, the final fine-tuning of the final 50 will be up to me. While some bloggers are more popular than others, except in a case where a 2-parter can be fused into a single post, I don’t want to include more than one post by the same person. I still want more suggestions – keep them coming. Dont’ forget very old posts from 2, 3 or 4 years ago! Not everything needs to be from the last few months.
Below the fold are all the suggestions that have arrived so far (and I’ll keep adding more over the next few days as they keep coming in). Hover the cursor over the title to reveal the name of the blog. Checking these out may give you an idea of what is missing – what areas of science, what types of posts. Some of these posts may refresh your memory and remind you of another post that is really good. Alternatively, you may want to browse the archives of Tangled Bank, Grand Rounds, Carnival of the Green, Skeptic’s Circle, Mendel’s Garden, Bio::Blogs, The Synapse, Encephalon, Animalcules, Circus of the Spineless, I And The Bird, Panta Rei, Philosophia Naturalis, Change Of Shift, Pediatric Grand Rounds, Radiology Grand Rounds, Four Stone Hearth and Festival of the Trees for inspiration.
[Originally posted on Dec 23 at 2:52pm]
[Updated and placed on top on Dec 25 at 2:52pm]
[Updated and placed on top on Dec 28 at 2:52pm]
[Updated and placed on top on Jan 01 at 9:52am]

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What should be the title of the Science Blogging Anthology?

Here is the background information and here is the growing list of nominations.
I am still looking for a poem, a post about women and/or minorities in science, something from chemistry, geology and/or ecology (not environment/conservation), and a post about stereotypes of scientists in the society (e.g., movies, TV).
I have realized that having an online poll and asking people to evaluate 100+ posts will be too unwieldy, so instead I asked several of my friends, including a couple of SciBlings, several science bloggers not affiliated with Seed, a non-science blogger and a non-blogging scientist to help me evaluate all the entries.
Now, what should be title of the book? How about “The Open Laboratory” or “The Online Laboratory” suggesting both that it is about science and that the Web is a place for experimentation with a new medium and new ways of communication. What do you think? Any other suggestions?

Science Books

Douglas Erwin reviews “The Making of the Fittest: DNA and the Ultimate Forensic Record of Evolution” by Sean B. Carroll.
Wallace Arthur talks about his favourite books.

Books: Michael Pollan – The Omnivore’s Dilemma

Amanda just reviewed Michael Pollan’s book The Omnivore’s Dilemma and also recently wrote a post on the same topic while under the influence of the book. I agree with her 100%, so go and read both posts.
I have read the book a couple of months ago and never found time to write a review of my own. I also remember that I finished the book on a Thursday afternoon – an important piece of information as it is on Thursday afternoons that there is a Farmers’ Market here in Southern Village, barely a block from me. The first thing I did when I closed the book was to walk up to the Farmers’ Market, buy some locally grown food and talk to the farmers about all the issues raised in the book and, lo and behold, they all agree with Pollan on everything I asked them about.
They were also a little taken aback that I tried to talk to them. But, I grew up in the Balkans. A big part of going to the Farmer’s Market is to chat with the farmers, banter, joke, complain about the government, haggle over prices, and make sure a kilo of cheese is reserved for you for next week – it is a very friendly and talkative affair. Great fun! Here, there is much more of a class divide. The farmers set the prices. The elegantly dressed city-slickers pick and pay. And all of that is done pretty silently, with a minimal exchange of words. No eye-contact. Nobody is haggling! At the Farmers’ Market nobody is haggling!?*@#%$^&! Travesty and Heresy!
In his book, Michael Pollan initially set out to make three – industrial, organic and personal – types of meals, but once he learned more, he realized he had to do four: industrial, industrial-organic, local-sustainable, and personal.
So, although the book officially has three parts, it really has four. Each of the four parts also reads differently and has a different style and tone:
The first part (industrial) is full of facts, stats, governmental documents, etc. – it reads like Molly Ivins’ Bushwacked or Chris Mooney’s Republican War On Science, although I heard he played loose with some stuff, i.e., cited as true some studies that are very contentious within the scientific community.
While I am a biologist, focusing on animals made me “plant blind” and I learned more about biology of corn from this book than I ever knew before.
The key event, according to Pollan, is the change, during Nixon administration, in the way farmers are paid for corn – everything else flows from that single event: the monoculture, the oil, the feedlots, the fertilizers and pesticides, environmental destruction, obesity and McDonalds.
The second part (industrial organic) is a little bit less of an onslaught of information and he gets a little looser and slower, a bit more personal. He looks at the way organic food production changed since the 1960s hippy farms to today’s giant organic producers who are, more and more, playing by the rules of Big Agra.
While the food they produce is still better than the Industrial and the practices are still more energy and environmentally friendly than Industrial, it only looks good because it is compared to the Big Industrial which is totally atrocious. This part of the book resulted in a big back-and-forth debate between Pollan and John Mackey, the CEO of Whole Foods, resulting in some changes in the way Whole Foods operates. You can find the relevant links on Pollan’s website.
The third part (local-sustainable) is totally fascinating – it is a mix of a travellogue and analysis – he keeps jumping back and forth between his dialogues with his host – Joel Salatin of the Polyface Farms – and the data. This is really the most riveting part of the book and the key element of it. This is also a part of the book that covers most new ground, not stuff found in Fast Food Nation or other well-known books. It also exposes, even better than the first part, the perniciousness of the way our agricultural system is set up, the way Big Agribusiness controls legislation and regulation, and eliminates small farmers from the competition.
Joel Salatin is a Virginia farmer who has perfected amazing agricultural practices on his farm – practically nothing has to be bought by the farm and nothing gets thrown away. Everything has its use and re-use. Everything makes sense when patiently explained to the reader. I actually bought Salatin’s book Holy Cows and Hog Heaven and read it immediately after Pollan’s.
Interestingly, although the guy is a conservative, libertarian, Christian Creationist, I agree with him on almost everything. His distrust of the Government is perhaps a little bit over the top for my taste, but his Creationism is fascinating because his whole philosophy and his whole methodology of the way he runs the farm reveals a deep understanding of evolution and ecology. His farming practice is BASED on evolutionary thinking. He is, for all practical purposes, an evolutionary biologist. Yet, he says he does not believe in evolution. How is that possible? Because he has no idea what he word “evolution” means. He probably has some “chimp is your uncle” cartoon notion of evolution, while at the same time not giving his own evolutionary ideas any name at all. Someone should tell him.
The fourth part (personal) of the Pollan’s book is in a completely different mood, very introspective, sometimes even mystical. One important thing that sets this part apart is that the type of food production described in it is the only one of the four that cannot in any way be affected by legislation, politics or activism – unless one completely bans hunting, gathering, catching, picking, stealing from neighbors, planting stuff in your garden, or collecting yeast from the air!
The best part of this portion of the book is his look at animal rights and his dialogue with Peter Singer. He, being such a typical city-slicker and “Birckenstock liberal” (Come on – slaughtering a chicken, and later a pig, made him sick? Has he never watched or participated in any kind of animal slaughter in his long life yet? Never spent some time on a farm? Dissected an animal in a biology class? What a woefully unnatural and alienated existence!), started out very sympathetic to the idea, but, over a dozen pages or so, dissects the underlying logic and discovers its fatal flows and exposes it in a brilliant paragraph – the best one in the book. You’ll find it and recognize it immediately once you read it – and you will read it because Omnivore’s Dilemma is one of the most important books written in the last few years, and should be a battle cry for many political activists and a source of ideas for many candidates for political office.
In the meantime, go read Amanda’s review.