John Holbo makes a discovery

And it’s gorgeous. Holbo has found a set of scans from a 1972 biology textbook (and an associated blog) that will blow your mind, baby. Here are some eukaryotic cells.

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I think this is a very trippy metaphor for the synapse.

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I like it. It’s got style. I’m going to have to cruise some used bookstores to see if I can find a copy of Biology Today. If nothing else, I can imagine using some of those illustrations for talks…I’m also going to have to get a polyester suit with very wide lapels and a paisley print shirt, let my hair grow out, and shave the beard, but keep the mustache. Oh, I remember the 60s and 70s!

Sausages being made

The horror…if you’re at all squeamish, you may not want to read this article by an editor at a textbook publisher on how public school textbooks are made. If you’re curious about why Texas has such an absurd weight in the world of textbooks, though, it will explain all.

It’s a system that needs to be fixed. The article has some interesting suggestions, too, although the plan — more modularity and flexibility in curriculum materials, and a move away from reliance the massive all-in-one tome — also has potential for abuse. (I’m picturing the creationists producing little, slim ‘supplemental’ pamphlets for the schoolroom, and getting them approved by school boards. We also need some standards on what is not acceptable in the class.)

(via Nic)

King James is so passé

The Bible I want on my bookshelf is the Robert Crumb Version. He’s got one chapter done: Crumb is about to publish his version of Genesis, which will be a “scandalous satire” which “presents a complex, even subversive, narrative that calls for a significant re-examination of both the Bible’s content and its role in our culture”. Sounds fun!

Of course, we’ll never have a complete RCV Bible. No one could ever drop enough acid to do Revelation right.

An Origin virgin reads the book

This could be cool: an evolutionary biologist is going to read Darwin’s Origin of Species for the first time and post chapter-by-chapter discussions of the book right here on Scienceblogs between now and Darwin Day. Get your own copy and follow along with John Whitfield!


Another reading suggestion: Wilkins writes about Darwin worship. It’s going to be a tricky balancing act this year — Darwin was a great scientist and his contributions were immense, but he is not an object of veneration. The difficult job will be to maintain a balance between hero worship and reactionary criticism, and to show the real man and the real work.

Another book giveaway

Now someone else is giving away a free book to commenters — it’s like Christmas or something. Leave a comment at Domestic Father and maybe you’ll win a copy of Ben Goldacre’s Bad Science(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll), which is a really good deal, since that book isn’t yet available in the US, and I’ve been itching to get my hands on it for a while.

I was tempted not to tell you all, just to improve my chances of winning, but altruism won out.

Win a free book!

It’s easy — just follow the link from The Countess’s blog, read about weird supernatural monsters, leave a comment, and you’re entered in a drawing for an anthology of erotic horror stories.

Yeah, erotic horror. I think it’s supposed to leave you all hot and bothered in a state of tension … not erotic horror like retelling a woman’s sexual history in a church service, which is horrifying in an “eww, ick” and “cover the children’s ears, Martha!” and “ooooh, Harold, I come over all tremulous just thinking about it” sort of way. Sanctimonious dunderheads need not apply.

A Natural History of Seeing: The Art and Science of Vision

Simon Ings has written a wonderful survey of the eye, called A Natural History of Seeing: The Art and Science of Vision(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll), and it’s another of those books you ought to be sticking on your Christmas lists right now. The title give you an idea of its content. It’s a “natural history”, so don’t expect some dry exposition on deep details, but instead look forward to a light and readable exploration of the many facets of vision.

There is a discussion of the evolution of eyes, of course, but the topics are wide-ranging — Ings covers optics, chemistry, physiology, optical illusions, decapitated heads, Edgar Rice Burroughs’ many-legged, compound-eyed apts, pointillisme, cephalopods (how could he not?), scurvy, phacopids, Purkinje shifts…you get the idea. It’s a hodge-podge, a little bit of everything, a fascinating cabinet of curiousities where every door opened reveals some peculiar variant of an eye.

Don’t think it’s lacking in science, though, or is entirely superficial. This is a book that asks the good questions: how do we know what we know? Each topic is addressed by digging deep to see how scientists came to their conclusion, and often that means we get an entertaining story from history or philosophy or the lab. Explaining the evolution of our theories of vision, for example, leads to the story of Abu’Ali al-Hasan ibn al-Hasan ibn al-Haythem, who pretended to be mad to avoid the cruelty of a despotic Caliph, and who spent 12 years in a darkened house doing experiments in optics (perhaps calling him “mad” really wasn’t much of a stretch), and emerged at the death of the tyrant with an understanding of refraction and a good theory of optics that involved light, instead of mysterious vision rays emerging from an eye. Ings is also a novelist, and it shows — these are stories that inform and lead to a deeper understanding.

If the book has any shortcoming, though, it is that some subjects are barely touched upon. Signal transduction and molecular evolution are given short shrift, for example, but then, if every sub-discipline were given the depth given to basic optics, this book would be unmanageably immense. Enjoy it for what it is: a literate exploration of the major questions people have asked about eyes and vision for the last few thousand years.

Cephalopods: Octopuses and Cuttlefishes for the Home Aquarium

It’s December, and Squidmas is coming. Maybe you’re like me, and the kids have all moved out, so you’re thinking having a little intelligent life at home would be nice. Or maybe you’re kids are still home, and you think they’d love a pretty pet. Or maybe you just love cephalopods, as do we all, so you’re thinking, hey, let’s get an aquarium and an octopus! What a fun idea!

One word of advice: NO. Don’t do it. You can’t just rush into these things.

Here’s a positive suggestion, though. Start reading TONMO, the octopus news magazine online, regularly. If you haven’t been reading it already, you aren’t worthy of owning a cephalopod anyway. If you start dreaming about tentacles, then maybe you can consider feeding your obsession by planning to get a cephalopod of your own.

Second positive suggestion: buy a copy of Cephalopods: Octopuses and Cuttlefishes for the Home Aquarium(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll) by Colin Dunlop and Nancy King. This is essential. All in one place and in a very practical way, it describes all the important information you’ll need to successfully keep a cephalopod in your home, and it may discourage all but the most fervent. Here are a few of the reasons you should not try to keep cephalopods, gleaned from this book and my reading of TONMO.

  • They are difficult to raise. You will need a well-maintained salt water aquarium, which with all the apparatus required can be quite expensive, and you will need to invest a fair amount of time every day in maintenance. This is a job for a serious aquarist.

  • They need live foods. What this means for most of us is that you’ll need two tanks — one for the octopus and another to raise the octopus’s food.

  • A cephalopod’s life is one of heart-breaking brevity. They do not live for long, even in the wild, so no matter what, you’re going to have a pet funeral every six months to a year.

  • There are few species that you can keep. Most can’t live in the confines of a tank, a few are very dangerous, and many are rare, and it would be unethical to strip natural environments of these precious specimens.

  • It will eat just about anything else you try to put in the aquarium. The cephalopod and its food will be the only creatures you will have.

  • Forget keeping one as a pet—a cephalopod in the house is your Lord and Master, and you will serve it everyday. Forget those silly ideas that this will be your little pal, it is going to rule you.

If you aren’t yet discouraged, then you know your proper place in the universe and can consider getting a cephalopod. In order to figure out how to do so, you will first have to buy this book: it contains all the information you will need to proceed. Plus, it’s beautifully illustrated with photographs of the beloved class, so you’ll enjoy reading it, and it therefore makes an excellent Squidmas gift. Then what you may do is purchase a salt-water aquarium and supplies, but at first you should only raise something boring, like damselfish. Master the art of maintaining a stable aquarium for at least a year, and then you may consider obtaining a cephalopod for it. Conceivably, then, you could have one for next Squidmas. But don’t even dream of it yet.

What science books ought a bookstore stock?

I have a little metric for rationality that I exercise now and then: when I visit a bookstore, I compare the sizes of the religion/new age sections to the size of the science section…if I can find it. Typically, there’s at least a 10:1 disparity in the amount of shelf space dedicated, and it’s often much worse — there have been a few bookstores where, when I ask to find the science books, the clerk will point me to a small shelf labeled “Pets/Nature”. Bleh.

Anyway, I got a good question on Saturday at Guelph, which also mentioned this cluelessness by too many bookstores. Could we compile a list of excellent science books, that is, books that should appeal to the lay public, have some chance of commercial success, and that we think do a good job of presenting an interesting and accurate view of science? I suspect there are a few people here who read books, and might have some opinions here — how about expressing them in the comments?

What I’d like to accumulate is actually a couple of lists. If you went to the religion section of the local Barnes & Noble, you’d be quite surprised if the Christian bible were absent — similarly, I’d like a list of the essential books a good bookstore ought to carry, the ones that are perennially useful and popular. This would be handy for confronting an owner and asking him why he has so many obvious omissions.

Another list would be of commercially viable popular science books. These would be books that present good science, but ought also to be popular among readers. Bookstore owners want to make money, so doing a little pre-screening for them and helping them to make an informed decision would be productive and helpful, and maybe they’d actually listen if we showed a list like that.

So here’s the deal: nominate some books. For each one, say whether it is essential or popular. It might also be useful to assign a broad category (math, physics, chemistry, biology, geology, psychology, for instance) to each. I’ll compile them later this month and put together some simple pdfs that you can download and use at your local bookstore to try and encourage some upgrading of the stock.