Pop-sci book meme

Jennifer Oullette has put together a pop-sci book meme (and John Lynch has joined in). It’s the usual thing, a long list of books and you’re supposed to highlight the ones you’ve read, this time with the theme being that they’re all about science somehow. I detect a physics bias in Ms. Oullette’s choices, however, despite the excellent beginning — and it’s to that I ascribe my poor performance. That and some weird choices: since when is Neuromancer pop-sci? Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle or Cryptonomicon or Snowcrash would be better choices if we’re going to throw fiction in the mix, or Sterling’s Schismatrix. If we open the door to SF, though, the howling hordes will pour in and we’ll never get anything done.

Anyway, here’s my copy of the list:

  1. Micrographia, Robert Hooke
  2. The Origin of the Species, Charles Darwin
  3. Never at Rest, Richard Westfall
  4. Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman, Richard Feynman
  5. Tesla: Man Out of Time, Margaret Cheney
  6. The Devil’s Doctor, Philip Ball
  7. The Making of the Atomic Bomb, Richard Rhodes
  8. Lonely Hearts of the Cosmos, Dennis Overbye
  9. Physics for Entertainment, Yakov Perelman
  10. 1-2-3 Infinity, George Gamow
  11. The Elegant Universe, Brian Greene
  12. Warmth Disperses, Time Passes, Hans Christian von Bayer
  13. Alice in Quantumland, Robert Gilmore
  14. Where Does the Weirdness Go? David Lindley
  15. A Short History of Nearly Everything, Bill Bryson
  16. A Force of Nature, Richard Rhodes
  17. Black Holes and Time Warps, Kip Thorne
  18. A Brief History of Time, Stephen Hawking
  19. Universal Foam, Sidney Perkowitz
  20. Vermeer’s Camera, Philip Steadman
  21. The Code Book, Simon Singh
  22. The Elements of Murder, John Emsley
  23. Soul Made Flesh, Carl Zimmer
  24. Time’s Arrow, Martin Amis
  25. The Ten Most Beautiful Experiments, George Johnson
  26. Einstein’s Dreams, Alan Lightman
  27. Godel, Escher, Bach, Douglas Hofstadter
  28. The Curious Life of Robert Hooke, Lisa Jardine
  29. A Matter of Degrees, Gino Segre
  30. The Physics of Star Trek, Lawrence Krauss
  31. E=mc2, David Bodanis
  32. Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea, Charles Seife
  33. Absolute Zero: The Conquest of Cold, Tom Shachtman
  34. A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines, Janna Levin
  35. Warped Passages, Lisa Randall
  36. Apollo’s Fire, Michael Sims
  37. Flatland, Edward Abbott
  38. Fermat’s Last Theorem, Amir Aczel
  39. Stiff, Mary Roach
  40. Astroturf, M.G. Lord
  41. The Periodic Table, Primo Levi
  42. Longitude, Dava Sobel
  43. The First Three Minutes, Steven Weinberg
  44. The Mummy Congress, Heather Pringle
  45. The Accelerating Universe, Mario Livio
  46. Math and the Mona Lisa, Bulent Atalay
  47. This is Your Brain on Music, Daniel Levitin
  48. The Executioner’s Current, Richard Moran
  49. Krakatoa, Simon Winchester
  50. Pythagorus’ Trousers, Margaret Wertheim
  51. Neuromancer, William Gibson
  52. The Physics of Superheroes, James Kakalios
  53. The Strange Case of the Broad Street Pump, Sandra Hempel
  54. Another Day in the Frontal Lobe, Katrina Firlik
  55. Einstein’s Clocks and Poincare’s Maps, Peter Galison
  56. The Demon-Haunted World, Carl Sagan
  57. The Blind Watchmaker, Richard Dawkins
  58. The Language Instinct, Steven Pinker
  59. An Instance of the Fingerpost, Iain Pears
  60. Consilience, E.O. Wilson
  61. Wonderful Life, Stephen J. Gould
  62. Teaching a Stone to Talk, Annie Dillard
  63. Fire in the Brain, Ronald K. Siegel
  64. The Life of a Cell, Lewis Thomas
  65. Coming of Age in the Milky Way, Timothy Ferris
  66. Storm World, Chris Mooney
  67. The Carbon Age, Eric Roston
  68. The Black Hole Wars, Leonard Susskind
  69. Copenhagen, Michael Frayn
  70. From the Earth to the Moon, Jules Verne
  71. Gut Symmetries, Jeanette Winterson
  72. Chaos, James Gleick
  73. Innumeracy, John Allen Paulos
  74. The Physics of NASCAR, Diandra Leslie-Pelecky
  75. Subtle is the Lord, Abraham Pais

Jennifer did suggest that we make additions, so let’s beef up the biology a bit with a few more off the top of my head (OK, McPhee and Rudwick are geology…but that needs bolstering, too!).

  1. Ascent of Man, Jacob Bronowski
  2. Basin and Range, John McPhee
  3. Beak of the Finch, Jonathan Weiner
  4. Chance and Necessity, Jacques Monod
  5. Dr. Tatiana’s Sex Advice to All Creation, Olivia Judson
  6. Endless Forms Most Beautiful, Sean Carroll
  7. Evolution: The Triumph of an Idea, Carl Zimmer
  8. Genome, Matt Ridley
  9. Guns, Germs, and Steel, Jared Diamond
  10. It Ain’t Necessarily So, Richard Lewontin
  11. On Growth and Form, D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson
  12. Phantoms in the Brain, VS Ramachandran
  13. The Ancestor’s Tale, Richard Dawkins
  14. The Case of the Female Orgasm: Bias in the Science of Evolution, Elisabeth Lloyd
  15. The Eighth Day of Creation, Horace Freeland Judson
  16. The Great Devonian Controversy, Martin Rudwick
  17. The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat, Oliver Sacks
  18. The Mismeasure of Man, Stephen Jay Gould
  19. The Triple Helix: Gene, Organism, and Environment, Richard Lewontin
  20. Time, Love, Memory, Jonathan Weiner
  21. Voyaging and The Power of Place, Janet Browne
  22. Woman: An Intimate Geography, Natalie Angier

In which my disgust with the Democratic Party grows

I just received this email from some communications group trying to publicize the virtues of the Democratic Party. It had the opposite effect on me — I am appalled. It’s the usual Democratic strategic inanity of pushing to ape the Republicans instead of even trying to be a party of progressive ideas, so they’re going to promote futile religious bullshit at their convention. This just makes me furious.

DEMOCRATIC CONVENTION TO HIGHLIGHT DIVERSE COMMUNITY OF FAITH LEADERS WORKING TOWARD COMMON GOOD

First-Ever Faith Caucus Meetings to be Held at Democratic Convention

Invocators and Benedictors to Include Pastor Joel Hunter, Rabbi David Saperstein, Sister Catherine Pinkerton, Reverend Cynthia Hale, Archbishop Demetrios, Cameron Strang

Plus Coloradans Polly Baca of Greeley, CO, Reverends Kang of Aurora, CO

Interfaith Gathering to Open Convention Week on Sunday, Aug. 24th, featuring Local Clergy Imam Abdur-Rahim Ali, Rabbi Steve Foster, Reverend Lucia Guzman, University of Colorado Student Kathryn Ida

DENVER – In keeping with Barack Obama’s personal commitment and the commitment of the Democratic Party to put faith in action, the Democratic National Convention Committee (DNCC) and the Obama for America campaign today announced that the 2008 Democratic National Convention will recognize the tireless efforts of those in the faith community working
toward the common good.

“Senator Obama is a committed Christian, and he believes that people of all faiths have an important place in American life,” said Joshua Dubois, Obama For America Director of Religious Affairs. “He’s proud to work with the Democratic National Convention Committee on a Convention that fully engages people of faith in dialogue, celebration and prayer. We are honored that so many religious leaders are reaching across partisan and ideological lines in this Convention to address the values that matter to Americans.”

“Democrats have been, are and will continue to be people of faith – and this Convention will demonstrate that in an unprecedented way,” said Leah D. Daughtry, CEO of the DNCC. “As Convention CEO and a pastor myself, I am incredibly proud that so many esteemed leaders from the faith community will be with us to celebrate this historic occasion and honor the diverse faith traditions inside the Democratic Party.”

Each night of the Convention, the official program will begin with an invocation and end with a benediction delivered by a national faith leader or an individual who is active in their local faith community. Among the group selected to deliver these opening and closing prayers are a Republican pastor of a leading Evangelical church in central Florida, a major young Evangelical leader, a nun from a diocese in Cleveland and a Methodist couple, both ordained ministers from Arvada, CO.

National leaders from a range of denominations will host the Convention’s first-ever Faith Caucus meetings during the week where they will discuss bringing people of faith together to address some of the most pressing issues of our time.

On Tuesday, August 26, the Faith Caucus will hold two panel discussions – “Common Ground on Common Good,” an opportunity to discuss finding common ground on the moral issues of the day, and “Faith in 2009: How an Obama Administration will Engage People of Faith.” On Thursday, August 28, the Caucus will convene for “Moral Values Issues Abroad,” a panel on how the faith community can work together to address pressing moral issues around the world, and “Getting Out the Faith Vote,” a session on how to appropriately engage communities of faith in the 2008 election.

In addition, a first-ever Democratic National Convention interfaith gathering will kick off the week, bringing delegates, elected officials, local residents, musical guests and spiritual leaders from many communities of faith together for a unique gathering. In addition to keynote remarks, the program will include readings from diverse religious texts, prayers and musical selections.

There are more details that follow, with day-by-day announcements of invocations and benedictions and meetings led by people like the vapid Jim Wallis, that I’ve cut off. You don’t want to go, anyway.

I am particularly annoyed by the claim that “Democrats have been, are and will continue to be people of faith” — which I take as a declaration that I can’t be a Democrat. I notice, too, that the roster of speakers is nothing but a list of religious con artists, people of dumb, blind, pointless faith, with no representation from the people of reason. I can understand why, though.

If they actually invited an atheist to join in the “dialogue, celebration and prayer”, he would be obligated to rebuke the assembled crowd. The dialogue would consist of informing them all that the United States has a secular government, the Democrats are obligated to fill the role of a secular party, and there should be no place for superstitious nonsense in the hard work of governing. There is also nothing to celebrate. Our country has been wracked by an assemblage of idiots ruling in the name of greed and god, and the time has come to restore rational Enlightenment values to the United States of America, not return to benighted medievalisms, and that people of faith ought to confine their silly hobbies to the halls of their churches and keep them out of the state. As for prayer … what a waste of time and effort and imagination. Take your useless pleading to a nonexistent and unresponsive deity and go hide away in shame and do it in private — it’s the equivalent of masturbation, only it provides an even lesser sense of accomplishment.

People of faith are welcome to contribute to politics. In order to do so, however, they will have to get off their knees, unclasp their hands, and do something productive. Enshrining the prating rubbish of the religion racket as an important element of secular administration, as Obama seems to want to do, is a catastrophic betrayal of good government.

And that’s why they haven’t invited any godless rationalists to their party of pandering to fools.

How the West was ‘Won’: with spin and rewriting history

The Discovery Institute is spinning wildly to make excuses for West’s performance on Friday, and to declare him the “winner”.

I got two calls last night about Dr. John West’s presentation at the University of Minnesota on Darwinism’s fathership of eugenics. It appears that the scholarly and well-delivered lecture, derived from the new West book, Darwin Day in America, was successful in influencing the thinking of a largely skeptical audience. (The dyspeptic and ad hominem blogger/biologist Dr. P.Z. Myers was there and brought a Darwinist claque. West generously introduced him and acknowledged him as Minnesota’s Richard Dawkins, which is about right.)

[Read more…]

Got formula?

This is a little late for any Londoners out there, but Edge had a collaboration with the Serpentine Gallery that debuted last weekend. It’s a collection of scientists’ and technologists’ and artists’ answers to the question, “What is your formula? Your equation? Your algorithm?” All of the answers are on display at the site now, so have a browse. There’s a little bit of everything, from obvious truisms (like mine) to detailed, specific formulae, to weird guesses, to stuff that is outright crazy, but nobody said exactly the same thing (which is probably a reasonable outcome from Pinker’s equation, if nothing else).

So…what’s your formula, equation, algorithm?

Bible lessons

Everyone reads Genesis, the racy bits in the Song of Solomon, the various Jesus tales in the Gospels, and when you’re really stoned, Revelation. But what about those more obscure chapters, where some old time prophet with a funny polysyllabic name raves against extinct city-states and tribes who haven’t followed his preferred bizarre ritual?

Don’t waste your time slogging through archaic language to read them in the Bible. Let Jay Pinkerton do your summarizing and interpreting for you.

There is some crazy stuff in those books, I tell you.

Thursday is going to be a busy day

Hey, University of Missouri-Columbia readers: Elliot Sober is coming your way. At 4:00 on the 20th (this week!), Elliot Sober will be speaking on Evolution versus Intelligent Design. It should be fun; somebody report back to me, OK?

Closer to my home, Steve Pinker will be speaking at the Minneapolis Public Library at 7:00 on the same day on ‘The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window Into Human Nature.’ I might be able to make it to that one.

What a terrible title

Some local godless heathens got mentioned in the Mankato Free Press, in an article titled “Becoming atheist akin to finding religion”. It highlights August Berkshire of Minnesota Atheists and an attorney, Jim Manahan, who say pretty much the exact opposite of what the title suggests. The article itself is good and explains a little bit about how one comes to abandon religion, but I suspect the title is an example of an editor doing some editorializing.

Here’s some useful local information from the Minnesota Atheists, too: A brief history of disbelief is being broadcast next week in the Twin Cities. Check the website for specific times.

We also have a couple of distinguished speakers coming to the big city: Steve Pinker on the 20th of September (Skatje will probably go “oooh” and tell me I have to take her), and Ian McKellen will be speaking in October (Skatje might just go “squeee!” and tell me to take her to that one, too.)

Oh, and big news: the Twin Cities will be hosting the American Atheists National Convention on March 21-23, 2008. I shall have to be there.

All the mistakes of the godly are merely metaphor

Imagine you found a population in the US where the majority of the people believed that 2+2=5, and that attempts to correct them with the actual, correct result of adding two numbers were regarded as insults to their revered traditions. I think we’d all agree that they a) they were wrong; b) they were misled, misinformed, and miseducated; c) that they were ignorant of arithmetic; or d) might very well have been maliciously deceived by someone in their midst. Somehow, though, if the ridiculous error involves God, some people take a big step backwards and are appalled that anyone might criticize them. Those “revered traditions” become more than mere excuses, they are inviolate.

You guessed it, once again someone was aggravated that I have dared to call adherence to religious belief a case of being “ignorant, deluded, wicked, foolish, or oppressed.” This time our indignant contestant is Mark A. R. Kleiman, who considers it atheistic bigotry to enumerate the reasons why people might come to absurd and erroneous conclusions. That 80-90% of this population, which is not hypothetical at all but is the entire US, believes that chanting their wishes into the sky might get them granted by a magic being, or that over half use the excuse of their religious dogma to reject the basic facts of modern biology, is something we must not question and especially must not criticize. Because it is religion, it must be respected.

[Read more…]

Time bobbles the God and science debate

i-049da128d1f77fd280d042934ddb5366-god_v_science.jpg

The cover of Time magazine highlights the current struggle: it’s God vs. Science, or as I’d prefer to put it, fantasy vs. reality. I have mixed feelings about the story; on the one hand, it presents the theological sound in such a godawful stupid way that it gives me some hope, but on the other, stupid seems to win the day far too often. It sure seems to have won over the editors of Time.

The lead article covers a debate between the forces of reason and dogma. They picked two debaters and pitted them against each other, and on our side, we have Richard Dawkins. Dawkins talked to us a bit about this on our visit, since he’d just recently gotten back from a quick flight to NY to do this. Time says they’d had to consider a number of possibilities for this argument: Marc Hauser, Lewis Wolpert, Victor Stenger, and Ann Druyan (speaking for Carl Sagan, who has a posthumous book on religion coming out), so they had a competent collection on one side, and they just needed to find a good representative for the other. Unfortunately, here’s how Time characterized the search.

[Read more…]