And this one will probably confirm some folks in their belief that I’m a bit on the weird side. Why? Look at the title of my latest bit of bedtime reading – it’s Mary Roach’s book Stiff: the curious lives of human cadavers…
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another title for the reading list
Thank a friend for this – she commented that she liked my reading list 🙂 Anyway, I’ve just started reading David Mindell’s book The Evolving World: evolution in everyday life. Still in the intro, actually, but it’s shaping up to be another worthwhile addition to my shelves.
Continue readingmore from your inner fish
I’ve just finished reading Your inner fish (Shubin, 2008) – honestly, I can’t recommend it highly enough. But for anyone who hasn’t bought the book yet, let’s look at what another part of our anatomy – our ears – has to tell us about our evolutionary past.
Continue readinga smelly story
At the moment I’m reading Neil Shubin’s book Your inner fish. It’s a wonderful walk through the evolution of life, taking various aspects of our own biology & tracing their evolutionary history. Over lunch I was reading the chapter on the sense of smell, & some of the ideas there really excited me & I […]
Continue readingleonardo’s life
Another in the occasional series of 'what I'm reading'. This time it's a modern biography of Leonardo da Vinci: The Science of Leonardo, by Fritjof Capra (2007). It's a beautiful book, from the cover, to the sepia-toned type, to the writing itself. And the author does a beautiful job of making 'the great genius of […]
Continue readingfrom my reading list
I mentioned my reading list in the last post – so this time round I'll let you in on what excites me about one of the books I'm reading at the moment. (I tend to have several on the go at once, so I can dip into whatever matches with what I'm thinking about at […]
Continue readinghow to lie with statistics
I've just finished reading a wonderful book on statistics – How to lie with statistics (Huff, 1954). An absolutely brilliant book – and not an equation in sight!
Continue readingevolution: shaping both life and the environment
One of the books I’m reading at the moment is about teaching evolution (NAS, 1998). I’ve come across an excellent and thought-provoking quote that I thought I’d share with you – for you to think about..
Continue readingsome historical reading: darwin on human ‘races’
The other day one of my students came by my office to ask about his essay. He’d found a book that suggested that the human species was split into 3 races (black, white, & oriental, in case you’re wondering), & that these races differed in things like fecundity and birth rate. Should he include this […]
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