Frank Runtime knows REGEX and is not afraid to use it.
From the publishers:
When a robbery hits police headquarters, it’s up to Frank Runtime and his extensive search skills to catch the culprits. In this detective story, you’ll learn how to use algorithmic tools to solve the case. Runtime scours smugglers’ boats with binary search, tails spies with a search tree, escapes a prison with depth-first search, and picks locks with priority queues. Joined by know-it-all rookie Officer Notation and inept tag-along Socks, he follows a series of leads in a best-first search that unravels a deep conspiracy. Each chapter introduces a thrilling twist matched with a new algorithmic concept, ending with a technical recap.
Learn about the key algorithms, basic data objectgs such as strings, arrays, and stacks.
This well illustrated, well written book is, as far as I know, unique. Read a novel, learn computer science.
This is for anyone starting out in computer science, including CS students. And, just for fun.
The Kindle version of People of the Book: A Novel by Geraldine Brooks is currently, and I suspect briefly, available for $1.99
If you’ve not read it, you should read it.
Publisher’s summary:
Inspired by a true story, People of the Book is a novel of sweeping historical grandeur and intimate emotional intensity by an acclaimed and beloved author. Called “a tour de force”by the San Francisco Chronicle, this ambitious, electrifying work traces the harrowing journey of the famed Sarajevo Haggadah, a beautifully illuminated Hebrew manuscript created in fifteenth-century Spain. When it falls to Hanna Heath, an Australian rare-book expert, to conserve this priceless work, the series of tiny artifacts she discovers in its ancient binding-an insect wing fragment, wine stains, salt crystals, a white hair-only begin to unlock its deep mysteries and unexpectedly plunges Hanna into the intrigues of fine art forgers and ultra-nationalist fanatics.
Right now the number one problem we face in the US is the fact that a) the president of the United States can not be stopped or deterred from launching nuclear missiles if he choses to do so, by design; and b) Donald Trump will be inaugurated, if the electoral college so decides, in January.
If you are in a state that has electors slated to vote for Trump. send your city and state name to this email address:
votehrc@gmail.com
You will then receive instructions as to what to do next.
Standing Rock Chairman: Pipeline Plan Denial ‘A Win For All Of America’ 1:57
The secretary of the Army Corps of Engineers told Standing Rock Sioux Chairman Dave Archambault II Sunday that the current route for the controversial Dakota Access pipeline will be denied.
“Although we have had continuing discussion and exchanges of new information with the Standing Rock Sioux and Dakota Access, it’s clear that there’s more work to do,” the Army’s Assistant Secretary for Civil Works, Jo-Ellen Darcy said in a statement Sunday. “The best way to complete that work responsibly and expeditiously is to explore alternate routes for the pipeline crossing.”
So, this is a win for Standing Rock and the native community there.
It is not yet a win for the climate. The pipeline should not be built at all. But this is still good news.
Time to make sure you are stocked up and up to date on your climate science books. First, you will need reference materials throughout the holiday season, because Uncle Bob is going to challenge you more stridently than usual. Climate change deniers have taken over the US government. You are on the run. Underground. Up against the wall. So, you need to be ready. Uncle Bob is coming for you.
Second, you may want to give a few climate change related books away for the holidays. Know any science or social studies teachers? Maybe a nice book for Uncle Bob’s wife? Ha, that would be funny. Anyway, you’ll want to do that.
There are four books I recommend as gifts for anybody, but also, for your own enjoyment.
The Madhouse Effect: How Climate Change Denial Is Threatening Our Planet, Destroying Our Politics, and Driving Us Crazy by climate scientist Michael Mann and Washington Post political cartoonist Tom Toles is one of the most current, and in many ways, the most fun, of the climate books. The authors go right after the science deniers, but not at the expense of a lot of excellent explanation of the science itself, and the overall political situation. The cartoons are great, the text is engaging.
Also richly illustrated, but in a totally different way, and by one of the same authors, is Dire Predictions, 2nd Edition: Understanding Climate Change. Michael Mann shared a Nobel Prize with the IPCC and the other scientists for their work on climate change. That process involved the production of the Scientific Basis for Climate Change IPCC report, which is redone every several years, and includes all the science behind the broad consensus. Dire Predictions represents that science in a fully understandable way, and adds additional material on the other aspects of the problem: Policy. This is a basic on the shelf text you need in your home, and that your kid’s science teachers need in their classrooms.
Not a climate change book but essential, and that I’ll put right here for you to consider: The War on Science: Who’s Waging It, Why It Matters, What We Can Do About It, Shawn Otto’s latest popular yet scholarly work on the effort to destroy science, is a must read. Climate science isn’t the only science under attack. This book covers it all.
Caring for Creation: The Evangelical’s Guide to Climate Change and a Healthy Environment by Paul Douglas and Mitch Hescox is specifically written for your Uncle Bob, is Uncle Bob is a conservative Evangelical Christian. Paul is the country’s top meteorologist-communicator who happens to be a conservative (he claims) Evangelical Christian. Paul wrote the science in this book and it is real science, no holding back. Mitch is an Evangelical Christian guy who supplies the scriptural-religious part of the story. The book, obviously, is about how if you are an Evangelical Christian you should not be a dick about climate change.
Climate Change: What Everyone Needs to Know® by Joe Romm is unique among climate change books. Romm looks at the actual personal impacts of climate change, in the near and longer term future, on typical Americans. Think about it for a second. Many Americans who live in the north plan to eventually retire to warmer, southerly climes. Is that a good idea, with global warming and sea level rise happening? Are you sure that shorefront (or near shorefront) property on the Gulf Coast is a good idea right about now? What about your investment portfolio, what with changes happening in the energy industry and uncertainty in other areas? This is the book that covers that.
Climatology versus Pseudoscience: Exposing the Failed Predictions of Global Warming Skeptics by Dana Nuccitelli attacks climate science denialism by rushing right through the battle lines into enemy territory and deconstructing their bogus tripe. This is like the Guns of Navarone, where the guys sneak pas the Nazis and boow up their stuff, but with models. Just how have those alternative ideas and predictions, made over the last several years by climate change deniers, done, compare to the mainstream science? Well, read the book and find out. But I’ll bet you can guess.
The press helped elect Donald Trump. The mainstream press loved itself that false balance, giving absurdly pseudo-even coverage to whatever tripe might be spewed by willfully ignorant conservatives. So, screw them, and we await their apology. Meanwhile, the tabloid press has made its own contribution to the problem. Part of that is impressing on so many minds such crazy crap that a large percentage of Americans (apparently about one half of the actual voters) will believe anything. Or, perhaps, simply don’t care about what is real and what is not.
People are looking for things to do to push back against the President of the Deplorables (POTD) and perhaps the Deplorables themselves. Well, I was just at the grocery store and I got an idea that I think maybe you may like too.
See the cover above? That was one of the tabloids on display at the checkout line. It is anti-Muslim, engenders hate and intolerance, it is racist, and, by the way, tells us that we should torture people.
So, I took a copy of the National Enquirer to the manager to complain. I should mention that this particular grocery store is in one of the more conservative districts of Minnesota. The area is represented at the state and federal level by members of the Tea Party. I fully expected the manager to be a Trump supporter, but I didn’t care.
Eventually the Manager came over to the service desk, and I said this:
“Hi. I’m all for the First Amendment and all, but I don’t think this magazine cover should be visible in this store. It is racist, hateful, promotes anti-immigrant feelings and,” pointing to the text about torture, “actually says that we should torture people. I don’t want my young children to see something in the grocery store saying that we should torture people. So, that is my complaint, could you please pass that complaint on to whomever you send complaints to? Thanks.”
The manager, who may or may not have been a Trump supporter, but who was definitely a recent immigrant, I’m pretty sure from Liberia, seemed to appreciate the complaint.
Now, I know some of you may comment that the National Enquirer is not important, that everybody knows it is a fake, that these messages in the checkout line don’t matter. Go ahead and post your comment about that below. I’ll tell you what I think of it when I see it!
The more relevant question is this: Is this a form of activism that can have an impact, and if so, how do we refine the method? If you have thoughts about that, let’s hear them. One thought from me for now: Do bring the magazine to the service desk, and leave it there when you leave. That adds a bit more exposure to the act, as copies of horrid tabloids end up piling up around that location.
I think it can have an impact. If stores actually do take tabloids off the display racks, that’s a win. It sends a message to the tabloid press as well as the mainstream press that they need to clean up their acts. I don’t actually expect that to happen.
It will send a message to the managers of stores, and to the extent that they have any control over anything, could reduce the total amount of bad, hate-supporting messaging out there. I don’t actually expect that to happen either, because, I suspect, the managers don’t have any control over whether or not there are copies of the National Enquirer or other deplorable literature in their stores, or where it is placed.
The target, it seems to me, is at the higher level than the manager. If the higher level execs at major outlets start getting a lot of complaints about this sort of tabloid drek, and those complaints get enough attention, it could then send an indirect but firm message to the tabloids. As it is, the tabloids tend to go beyond what is reasonable. With someone like Donald Trump in office, what is beyond reasonable just went over the moon. It would be nice if the tabloids could do something other than considering Trump to be a ticket to go farther than any tabloid has ever gone before. It would be nice if the tabloids that did so suffered and backed off. It would be nice if we actually had a conversation about what constitutes utter bullshit and what constituted a reasonable attempt at being a member of a semi-civilized species on a planet with possible signs of incipient intelligent life.
Treecology is also a science activity book that people seem to love. Chance are you already have it. Obviously, it focuses on trees, but that does not stop it from being year round, and there are, of course, many non-tree things that relate to trees, and that stuff is covered as well. My review.
Electronics for Kids and The Arduino Project Handbook are great DIY books, the first explicitly for kids, and the second for older kids or adults, or younger kids working with older kids. Click the links to see my reviews.
Here is my selection of the top science books from 2016, excluding those mainly for kids. Also, I don’t include climate change related books here either. (These will both be covered in separate posts.)
The number of books on this list is not large, and I think this was not the most prolific year ever for top science books. But, the ones on the list are great! For brevity, I’m mostly using the publisher’s info below. Where I’ve reviewed the book, there is a link to that review. Click through to the reviews if you want to read my commentary, but in most cases, you can judge these books by their covers.
In the mid-nineteenth century, the Harvard College Observatory began employing women as calculators, or “human computers,” to interpret the observations their male counterparts made via telescope each night. At the outset this group included the wives, sisters, and daughters of the resident astronomers, but soon the female corps included graduates of the new women’s colleges—Vassar, Wellesley, and Smith. As photography transformed the practice of astronomy, the ladies turned from computation to studying the stars captured nightly on glass photographic plates.
The “glass universe” of half a million plates that Harvard amassed over the ensuing decades—through the generous support of Mrs. Anna Palmer Draper, the widow of a pioneer in stellar photography—enabled the women to make extraordinary discoveries that attracted worldwide acclaim. They helped discern what stars were made of, divided the stars into meaningful categories for further research, and found a way to measure distances across space by starlight. Their ranks included Williamina Fleming, a Scottish woman originally hired as a maid who went on to identify ten novae and more than three hundred variable stars; Annie Jump Cannon, who designed a stellar classification system that was adopted by astronomers the world over and is still in use; and Dr. Cecilia Helena Payne, who in 1956 became the first ever woman professor of astronomy at Harvard—and Harvard’s first female department chair.
In short chapters filled with intriguing historical anecdotes, personal asides, and rigorous exposition, readers learn the difference between how the world works at the quantum level, the cosmic level, and the human level—and then how each connects to the other. Carroll’s presentation of the principles that have guided the scientific revolution from Darwin and Einstein to the origins of life, consciousness, and the universe is dazzlingly unique.
Carroll shows how an avalanche of discoveries in the past few hundred years has changed our world and what really matters to us. Our lives are dwarfed like never before by the immensity of space and time, but they are redeemed by our capacity to comprehend it and give it meaning.
A charmingly illustrated and educational book, New York Times best seller Women in Science highlights the contributions of fifty notable women to the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) from the ancient to the modern world.
Full of striking, singular art, this fascinating collection also contains infographics about relevant topics such as lab equipment, rates of women currently working in STEM fields, and an illustrated scientific glossary.
The trailblazing women profiled include well-known figures like primatologist Jane Goodall, as well as lesser-known pioneers such as Katherine Johnson, the African-American physicist and mathematician who calculated the trajectory of the 1969 Apollo 11 mission to the moon.
Women in Science celebrates the achievements of the intrepid women who have paved the way for the next generation of female engineers, biologists, mathematicians, doctors, astronauts, physicists, and more!
Every animal, whether human, squid, or wasp, is home to millions of bacteria and other microbes. Ed Yong, whose humor is as evident as his erudition, prompts us to look at ourselves and our animal companions in a new light—less as individuals and more as the interconnected, interdependent multitudes we assuredly are.
The microbes in our bodies are part of our immune systems and protect us from disease. In the deep oceans, mysterious creatures without mouths or guts depend on microbes for all their energy. Bacteria provide squid with invisibility cloaks, help beetles to bring down forests, and allow worms to cause diseases that afflict millions of people.
Many people think of microbes as germs to be eradicated, but those that live with us—the microbiome—build our bodies, protect our health, shape our identities, and grant us incredible abilities. In this astonishing book, Ed Yong takes us on a grand tour through our microbial partners, and introduces us to the scientists on the front lines of discovery. It will change both our view of nature and our sense of where we belong in it.
Are trees social beings? In this international bestseller, forester and author Peter Wohlleben convincingly makes the case that, yes, the forest is a social network. He draws on groundbreaking scientific discoveries to describe how trees are like human families: tree parents live together with their children, communicate with them, support them as they grow, share nutrients with those who are sick or struggling, and even warn each other of impending dangers. Wohlleben also shares his deep love of woods and forests, explaining the amazing processes of life, death, and regeneration he has observed in his woodland.
After learning about the complex life of trees, a walk in the woods will never be the same again.
An illuminating debut memoir of a woman in science; a moving portrait of a longtime friendship; and a stunningly fresh look at plants that will forever change how you see the natural world
Acclaimed scientist Hope Jahren has built three laboratories in which she’s studied trees, flowers, seeds, and soil. Her first book is a revelatory treatise on plant life—but it is also so much more.
Lab Girl is a book about work, love, and the mountains that can be moved when those two things come together. It is told through Jahren’s remarkable stories: about her childhood in rural Minnesota with an uncompromising mother and a father who encouraged hours of play in his classroom’s labs; about how she found a sanctuary in science, and learned to perform lab work done “with both the heart and the hands”; and about the inevitable disappointments, but also the triumphs and exhilarating discoveries, of scientific work.
Yet at the core of this book is the story of a relationship Jahren forged with a brilliant, wounded man named Bill, who becomes her lab partner and best friend. Their sometimes rogue adventures in science take them from the Midwest across the United States and back again, over the Atlantic to the ever-light skies of the North Pole and to tropical Hawaii, where she and her lab currently make their home.
This book is an interesting idea. Never mind the field guide part for a moment. This isn’t really set up like a field guide, though it is produced by the excellent producers of excellent field guides at Princeton. But think about the core idea here. Take every group of mammal, typically at the level of Order (Mammal is class, there are more than two dozen living orders with about 5,000 species) and ask for each one, “what does the fossil record look like.” In some cases, a very few living species are related to a huge diversity of extinct ones. In some cases, a highly diverse living fauna is related to a much smaller number of extinct ones. And each of these different relationships between the present and the past is a different and interesting evolutionary story.
If you looked only at the living mammals, you would miss a lot because there has been so much change in the past.
The giant sloths may be extinct, but Don Prothero himself is a giant of our age among fossil experts. His primary area of expertise includes the fossil mammals (especially but not at all limited to rhinos). I believe it is true that he has personally handled more fossil mammalian material, in terms of taxonomic breath and time depth, across more institutional collections, than anyone.
Christie Wilcox’s book is one of the better science books I’ve read in some time. This is an area I should know something about, as a biological scientist, and as a person who has lived for years in the venom-rich rain forest. But I still found myself learning something new with every page turn. Wilcox has studied venom for years — this is her area of specialty — and her text is enriched with well placed and well told stories of her own sometimes harrowing experiences.
The book is very well written and very well documented with copious notes.
A fascinating subtext has to do with human evolution and experience. There is a theory that primates generally are tuned to venomous creatures, especially snakes, and some of the key primate evolutionary adaptations are shaped by the experience of living in trees where large venomous snakes hunt. In the present day, there is what looks to me almost like a cult of self envenomation, found among people who keep venomous snakes (mainly), who inject themselves with venom regularly in order to stay, maybe, immune in case of an accidental bite. But they seem to be doing something more than this, almost using the venom as a sort of drug or, fascinatingly, as an elixir to extend life. On top of this, there is even an expanding practice of using snake bites, or ingesting the powdered form of snake venom, as a recreational drug. This set of not too unrelated human stories sits intriguingly amid myriad stories of venom use among a wide range of animals, including several mammals, fish, cone snails, snakes and lizards, etc.
There are a few other books that I want to mention, that are not strictly science books, or that are great but that would appeal to a narrower audience.
The first is a book you should buy instead of a science book, this year, if you are only going to buy one book. This is Shawn Otto’s “The War On Science.” I’ve written a review of it here. Please follow through to the review, look it over, then get yourself a copy of this important book.
Howard Wainer’s “Truth or Truthiness” appeals to people who consider themselves skeptics, but may not be as much interest to a wider audience. But if you call yourself a Skeptic and have not seen it yet, have a look it!
Earthquake Time Bombs is an important book to read if you live in an earthquake area and care that YOU ARE ALL GONNA DIE!!! No, but seriously, Robert Yeats is THE expert on earthquake risk and hazard, and I loved this book even though I don’t live in an earthquake prone area. But, I’m really into geology. Are you? If so, check it out.
Anyone interested in, or engaged in, the Evolution-Creation discussion should have a copy of THe Grand Canyon: Monument to an Ancient Earth on their shelf. Check out my review to see why.
The American alligator is found only in the US, and is widespread in Texas. It is found at several inland localities, and along the coast. And, it turns out that the preferred locations for many of the important activities in the day to day live of the American alligator overlap a great deal with humans.
Louise Hayes, biologist, and photographer Philippe Henry have produced, with TAMU Press, Alligators of Texas, a highly accessible, well written, and richly illustrated monograph on these beasts.
If you are into Alligators and their relatives, regardless of where you live, this book may be an important addition to your collection. If you live in Texas in any of the Alligator areas (near larger rivers, the coast, etc) then you need this book along side your bird guides and plant ID pocket volumes. Not that you need to know how to identify an Alligator, but rather, to learn all about them.
A note on where the alligators are. I originally posed this review here, during a brief blackout period on this blog, and there I made mention of the Rio Grande. This prompted a faithful reader to ask how Alligators could be in the Rio Grande but not in Mexico. This question made sense, and, by the way, made me think of what was going to happen to the Alligators when the Great Wall of Trump was built down the middle of the Rio Grande Rive. (But I digress.)
Anyway, I contacted Louise Hayes, the book’s author, for clarification.
Here’s the bottom line. The Alligator’s current natural range does not extend into Mexico. There is a distribution map in the book that marks the counties in which the Alligators live, by county, and many counties that border on the Rio Grande have Alligators, so it looks like their range goes right up to the river, but it doesn’t. Dr. Hayes notes that she would like to have a second range map in the book that makes it more clear, possibly in the second edition.
Note that there are Alligators outside that range, including in the Rio Grande, now and then, but these are unusual occurrences and, as noted in Dr. Hayes’ email to me, often likely to be the result of human release.
Some of you have read my story (not currently available on line) about the Crocodiles in Lake Edward and the Semliki River, on the Congo-Uganda border. Crocs had been wiped out in the basin several thousand years ago due to a volcano, and because the Upper Semliki is separated from the rest of the Nile drainage by strong rapids, Crocodiles has not migrated back in. But during the 1980s, Crocs appeared there, and no one is sure if they were reintroduced by someone (there were rumors) or if they just happen to have made it. In just a ver few years, what were first seen as crocs running about 50 cm long had become 2 meter long. A large lake, plenty of fish, no competitors.
Anyway, this is a great looking book, if you are into Alligators, get one, if you have a nature lover in Texas on your holiday shopping list, then you are done!
LOUISE HAYES has been studying American alligators in Texas since 1985 at sites such as Brazos Bend State Park and the J.D. Murphree Wildlife Management Area. PHILIPPE HENRY is a professional wildlife photographer based in St. Mathieu du Parc. His photographs have been published worldwide.
by Geraldine Brooks is currently, and I suspect briefly, available for $1.99
by climate scientist Michael Mann and Washington Post political cartoonist Tom Toles is one of the most current, and in many ways, the most fun, of the climate books. The authors go right after the science deniers, but not at the expense of a lot of excellent explanation of the science itself, and the overall political situation. The cartoons are great, the text is engaging.
. Michael Mann shared a Nobel Prize with the IPCC and the other scientists for their work on climate change. That process involved the production of the Scientific Basis for Climate Change IPCC report, which is redone every several years, and includes all the science behind the broad consensus. Dire Predictions represents that science in a fully understandable way, and adds additional material on the other aspects of the problem: Policy. This is a basic on the shelf text you need in your home, and that your kid’s science teachers need in their classrooms.
, Shawn Otto’s latest popular yet scholarly work on the effort to destroy science, is a must read. Climate science isn’t the only science under attack. This book covers it all.
by Paul Douglas and Mitch Hescox is specifically written for your Uncle Bob, is Uncle Bob is a conservative Evangelical Christian. Paul is the country’s top meteorologist-communicator who happens to be a conservative (he claims) Evangelical Christian. Paul wrote the science in this book and it is real science, no holding back. Mitch is an Evangelical Christian guy who supplies the scriptural-religious part of the story. The book, obviously, is about how if you are an Evangelical Christian you should not be a dick about climate change.
by Joe Romm is unique among climate change books. Romm looks at the actual personal impacts of climate change, in the near and longer term future, on typical Americans. Think about it for a second. Many Americans who live in the north plan to eventually retire to warmer, southerly climes. Is that a good idea, with global warming and sea level rise happening? Are you sure that shorefront (or near shorefront) property on the Gulf Coast is a good idea right about now? What about your investment portfolio, what with changes happening in the energy industry and uncertainty in other areas? This is the book that covers that.
by Dana Nuccitelli attacks climate science denialism by rushing right through the battle lines into enemy territory and deconstructing their bogus tripe. This is like the Guns of Navarone, where the guys sneak pas the Nazis and boow up their stuff, but with models. Just how have those alternative ideas and predictions, made over the last several years by climate change deniers, done, compare to the mainstream science? Well, read the book and find out. But I’ll bet you can guess.
by Dava Sobel
by Sean Carroll
by Rachel Ignotofsky
by Ed Yong
by Peter Wohlleben
by Hope Jahren
by Don Proghero
by Christie Wilcox
, a highly accessible, well written, and richly illustrated monograph on these beasts.