Photopost: Museum of Science

A few photos from a visit to Boston’s Museum of Science with my son this weekend.

Escalator innards.

 

There’s no app for that.

 

Freshly-hatched chick.

World’s largest collection of barf bags (many of which are politically-themed)

 

The ever so elusive Plastic Pink Lawn Flamingo (Pseudamingoflay plasticus)

Book Review: God After Darwin by John F. Haught

Author: John F. Haught
Title: God After Darwin
Publication Info: Boulder, Colo. : Westview Press, 2000.
ISBN: 0813367239
Summary/Review: This is a complicated book which I didn’t thoroughly comprehend so I may not be able to justice to it in a review.  Nevertheless, it tackles an issue near and dear to me that is how to reconcile the theory of evolution with belief in God.  I like the approach that puts aside the false dichotomy of science versus religion even if I don’t understand the science and biology behind it.  There’s definitely a core idea that faith should be challenged to be deeper by the truth of evolution rather than denying the science or creating something like intelligent design.  Definitely a work worth rereading.

Recommended books: Quarks, Chaos & Christianity: Questions to Science And Religion by John Polkinghorne and Reason for Hope: A Spiritual Journey by Jane Goodall.
Rating: **

Book Review: The lost art of walking by Geoff Nicholson

Author: Geoff  Nicholson
Title: The lost art of walking : the history, science, philosophy, and literature of pedestrianism
Publication Info: New York : Riverhead Books, 2008
ISBN: 9781594489983
Summary/Review:  

Geoff  Nicholson takes on the quotidian topic of walking, something just about everyone can do, although there who some who can who fail to exercise the ability regularly.  At the heart of this work are Nicholson’s own walks.  At the time of writing, Nicholson lived in Los Angeles a place generally seen to be hostile to walking although it is possible as I’ve experienced myself.  Nicholson walks in the various places he lives – London, New York, Los Angeles, and in a bittersweet final chapter he returns to walk through his childhood home of Sheffield.    In between he explores the history of walking (particularly sport walkers who performed feats of endurance such as walking 1 mile an hour for 1000 consecutive hours), walks in music and movies, psychogeography, walks in the desert, and street photography. There are also walking tours, which are near and dear to my heart, including such oddities as walking tours of parking lots. Nicholson seems to be a cranky person and that crankiness kind of sucks the joy out of his writing.  Still this is an interesting book with some intriguing insights into the topic.

Favorite Passages:

“Walking for peace may certainly strike you and me as futile and useless, but if a person believes it works, then it’s the most logical and rational thing in the world.  To walk for a reason, any reason, however personal or obscure, is surely a mark of rationality.  Money, art, self-knowledge, world peace, these are not eccentric motivations for walking; they’re damn good ones, regardless of whether or not they succeed.  I find myself coming to the conclusion that perhaps the only truly eccentric walker is the one who walks for no reason whatsover.  However, I’m no longer sure if that’s even possible.” – p. 85

“We walked on, not very far and not very fast.  It gradually became obvious, and it was not exactly a surprise, that two hours standing around listening to stories, interspersed with rather short walks, of no more than a couple of hundred yards each, was actually very hard work, much harder than walking continuously for two hours.  As the tour ended twenty people were rubbing their backs, complaining about their feet, and saying they needed to sit down.  I checked my GPS: in those two hours we’d walked just under a mile.” – p. 90

Recommended books: Wanderlust: a History of Walking by Rebecca Solnit, Lights Out for the Territory by Iain Sinclair, Outside Lies Magic: Regaining History and Awareness in Everyday Places, and Bicycle Diaries by David Byrne.
Rating: ***

Book Review: Annoying: The Science of What Bugs Us by Joe Palca and Flora Lichtman

Author: Joe Palca and Flora Lichtman
Title: Annoying: The Science of What Bugs Us
Publication Info: HighBridge Company (2011)
ISBN: 1611744881
Summary/Review: This Library Thing Early Reviewers audiobook ask what the following things have in common: listening to someone else’s cell phone conversation, Zinedine Zidane’s World Cup Final, Huntington’s chorea, Joba Chamberlain & midges, chili peppers and skunks.  They all involve annoyances, and what annoys is apparently something scientists are only beginning to study.  There’s a basic 3-step process to annoyance: 1. something is unpleasant or distracting, 2. it’s hard to predict when it will end, and 3. it’s impossible to ignore. The stories illustrating annoying things and the scientific studies are entertaining.  The authors make pleasant if not professional readers and I like that they alternate voices.  The book reads like a long episode of Radiolab and is a good bit of popular science.

Recommended books: Thumbs, Toes, and Tears: And Other Traits That Make Us Human by Chip Walter, Packing for Mars by Mary Roach, and Out of Our Heads: Why You Are Not Your Brain, and Other Lessons from the Biology of Consciousness, by Alva Noë.
Rating: ***

Book Review: Packing for Mars by Mary Roach

Author: Mary Roach
Title: Packing for Mars
Publication Info: New York : W.W. Norton, c2010.
ISBN: 9780393068474

Summary/Review:

With plans for long-term space exploration afoot, Mary Roach explores the many challenges of putting human beings in space.  This is less the physics of rocket propulsion and more the psychological and cultural  problems of human space exploration.  Roach is a good investigator in that she asks the questions we always wanted to ask and many more we never even thought to ask.  She’s also an amusing writer in that she seems to challenge the mindset of a 12-year old boy.  Issues explored in this book include the effects of  isolation and working in close quarters with others for long duration, the physical and psychological effects of weightlessness, illness and vomiting in space, personal hygiene, sex in space, evacuating from space disasters, and everyone’s need to eat and thus need to poop.  Roach draws upon astronaut memoirs, technical documents, and interviews with people around the world who are directly involved in the fascinating and often absurd work that goes into human space exploration.

Recommended books: The Right Stuff by Tom Wolfe, Moon Shot by Alan Shepard, A Man on the Moon by Andrew Chaikin, & Lost Moon by Jeffrey Kluger,
Rating: ****

Book Review: Where Good Ideas Come From by Steven Johnson

Author: Steven Johnson
Title: Where good ideas come from : the natural history of innovation
Publication Info: New York : Riverhead, 2010.
ISBN: 9781594487712

Previously read by the same author: Emergence

Summary/Review:

I’m pleased I won a copy of this book by one of my favorite science writers through the Library Thing Early Reviewers program.  In engaging prose Johnson explores through historical examples and case studies how people come up with great ideas.  It’s not the lone genius with a light bulb popping up over their head.

Johnson discusses that innovation is possible within the adjacent possible when a number of factors come together to allow a new idea to work (on the shoulders of giants to speak).  Strong networks – whether they be cities, the Web, or universities – inevitably contribute to greater innovation the solitary inventor.  Ideas also come over time, the slow hunch, where something in the back of one’s mind only becomes a possibility after years of interactions and research.  Error and serendipity play their part as well.   Johnson also discusses the idea of expatation where something built for one purpose is borrowed for an entirely different function.  Platforms are also important for the development of further innovations.

In an interesting conclusion, Johnson makes the case against the accepted belief of free-market competition being the greatest source of innovation (although state-controlled command economies are not the solution either).  Instead Johnson calls for continued support of research universities where networks are formed and ideas shared.  I enjoyed this book and I think it helped me look at innovation in new ways.

Recommended books: Connections by James Burke, The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference by Malcolm Gladwell, Sync: The Emerging Science of Spontaneous Order by Steven H. Strogatz, How We Decide by Jonah Lehrer, and Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die by Chip Heath.
Rating:

Book Reviews: Out of our heads by Alva Noë

Author: Alva Noë
Title: Out of our heads : why you are not your brain, and other lessons from the biology of consciousness
Publication Info:
ISBN: 9780809074655

Summary/Review:  I thought I’d like this  much more, but I was disappointed.  Noë’s premise is a philosophical examination of the science of the mind and posits that we should no longer accept the belief that consciousness resides in the brain.  Basically he’s arguing the opposite of the Free Will chapter in 13 Things That Don’t Make Sense.  While it’s an argument I’d like to accept, I feel that Noë never really shows evidence for his thesis and that a lot of the complex language he uses serves to obfuscate rather than illuminate.  It’s just as likely that most of this went over my head though, so maybe I’m not the best person to review this book.

Recommended books: Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software by Steven Johnson and Thumbs, Toes, and Tears: And Other Traits That Make Us Human by Chip Walter.
Rating: **

Book Review: 13 Things that Don’t Make Sense by Michael Brooks

Author: Michael Brooks
Title: 13 Things that Don’t Make Sense: The Most Baffling Scientific Mysteries of Our Time
Publication Info: New York : Doubleday, c2008.
ISBN: 9780385520683

Summary/Review: This book is a collection of essays about scientific anomalies which are currently puzzling the scientific community.  I think Brooks is deliberately provocative in choosing these 13 and frequently criticizing scientists for their insularity and claims of unassailability.  On other hand, someone needs to say these things.

Here are the 13 things with a short synopsis of each:

1. The Missing Universe – the question of dark matter which makes up most of our universe but cannot be found.
2. The Pioneer Anomaly – should satellites drifting off course make us reevaluate our understanding of gravity?
3. Varying Constants – the only constant in physics is inconstancy.
4. Cold Fusion – an experiment so thoroughly debunked its not even to be discussed, but is there some truth to it?
5. Life – how did it begin?
6. Viking – did the Mars probe find evidence of extraterrestrial life?
7. The WOW! Signal – have intelligent extraterrestrial beings already tried to contact us?
8. A Giant Virus – the Mimivirus challenges what we think we know about viruses and the definition of life.
9. Death – what is the genetic and evolutionary purpose of aging and death?
10. Sex – is there really any evolutionary advantage to sexual reproduction over asexual reproduction?
11. Free will – does our brain decide things for us before we even have a chance to “think.”
12. The Placebo Effect – studies are inconclusive of whether placebos really work and what role they should play in medicine.
13. Homeopathy – it’s all a bunch of hooey yet no scientific study has thoroughly discredited it either.

An interesting book, highly recommended if you’re interested in contemporary ideas in science.

Recommended books: What’s Next: Dispatches on the Future of Science by Max Brockman, Lost Discoveries: The Ancient Roots of Modern Science–From the Babylonians to the Maya by Dick Teresi, and The Day the Universe Changed by James Burke.
Rating: ***1/2

Book Review: How We Decide by Jonah Lehrer

Author: Jonah Lehrer
Title: How We Decide
Publication Info: Brilliance Audio on CD Unabridged Lib Ed (2009), Edition: Library, Audio CD
ISBN: 1423376471

Summary/Review:

This book is an entertaining summary of the neuroscience behind human decision making.  Lehrer fills the book with lots of vivid stories of airline pilots, athletes and military personnel making split-second decisions as well as other examples of people making very poor decisions and even the effects of damaged minds on decision-making (including a chilling chapter on psychopaths).  Decisions are examined by what part of the brain they work from and how different areas of the brain can work against one another. Some counterintuitive conclusions are explained such as that one cannot make decisions without emotions and that in some cases the more one examines the options the odds of making the right decision are decreased.   A good book for getting to know one’s brain better.

Favorite Passages:

This research can also help explain why we get cranky when we’re hungry and tired: the brain is less able to suppress the negative emotions sparked by small annoyances. A bad mood is really just a run-down prefrontal cortex.

Recommended books: Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell and Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die by Chip Heath
Rating: ***1/2

Book Review: What’s Next: Dispatches on the Future of Science

Author: edited by Max Brockman
Title: What’s Next: Dispatches on the Future of Science
Publication Info: New York : Vintage Books, 2009.
ISBN:  9780307389312

Summary/Review:

This short book is a collection of essays about the future of science and was a nice illuminating read.  Oddly enough, much of the material was already familiar to a dilettante like myself which I guess shows the efficacy of listening to podcasts of Radiolab and Scientific American.  The title is a little misleading as the majority of this book is “what’s now” with the authors not speculating much about the future, which is good science.  Popular topics among the essays are climate change, neurology as it relates to memory, language, and morality, and human evolution.  Favorite essays include Lera Boroditsky: “How Does Our Language Shape The Way We Think?”, Nathan Wolfe: “The Aliens Among Us” (about viruses), and Katerina Harvarti: “Extinction and the Evolution of Humankind.”  This is a good book to pick up if you’re interested in a quick overview of contemporary scientific research.

Recommended books: Lost Discoveries: The Ancient Roots of Modern Science–From the Babylonians to the Maya by Dick Teresi, Thumbs, Toes, and Tears: And Other Traits That Make Us Human by Chip Walter
Rating: ***