You know those books that anthologize the best of this and the best of that? A bunch of them are now cheap in Kindle form:
The Best American Mystery Stories 2018 (The Best American Series ®)
The Best American Comics 2018 (The Best American Series ®)
The Best American Travel Writing 2018 (The Best American Series ®)
The Best American Sports Writing 2018 (The Best American Series ®)
And since you are busy looking at books, look at mine! In Search of Sungudogo
Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right
In her new preface, Jane Mayer discusses the results of the most recent election and Donald Trump’s victory, and how, despite much discussion to the contrary, this was a huge victory for the billionaires who have been pouring money in the American political system.
Why is America living in an age of profound and widening economic inequality? Why have even modest attempts to address climate change been defeated again and again? Why do hedge-fund billionaires pay a far lower tax rate than middle-class workers? In a riveting and indelible feat of reporting, Jane Mayer illuminates the history of an elite cadre of plutocrats—headed by the Kochs, the Scaifes, the Olins, and the Bradleys—who have bankrolled a systematic plan to fundamentally alter the American political system. Mayer traces a byzantine trail of billions of dollars spent by the network, revealing a staggering conglomeration of think tanks, academic institutions, media groups, courthouses, and government allies that have fallen under their sphere of influence. Drawing from hundreds of exclusive interviews, as well as extensive scrutiny of public records, private papers, and court proceedings, Mayer provides vivid portraits of the secretive figures behind the new American oligarchy and a searing look at the carefully concealed agendas steering the nation. Dark Money is an essential book for anyone who cares about the future of American democracy.
Press your preference, hold back your hate. Don’t damage the duck until you know which duck is yours. We all do better when we all do better, even those you disagree with. There is an endless list of rhetorically clever utterances to make the same point: express your passion inside the Party, but then, get in line and vote blue. (Or red if you are for some strange reason a Republican interested in my advice, which is highly unlikely). Continue reading Politics 101: Knowing When To Hold ‘Em, When To Fold ‘Em
As outlined here in a post at Get Energy Smart Now, there is a new candidate in town in a major mid western Senate race. Siegel notes:
Today, a Climate Hawk is announcing his candidacy in the crowded Iowa Democratic Party primary for the chance to send Koch-funded, Koch-created, Koch-parroting climate-science denier Jodi Ernst to the pasture.
As his announcement video makes clear, Iowa farm boy Vice Admiral Mike Franken, U.S. Navy (retired), places climate change as core to his priorities, as core to his campaign, as core to his understanding of Iowans’ concerns about today and tomorrow.
This is important because Franken has an excellent chance of doing well in this race and replacing an in place Republican and climate change denier. Michael Franken is a true climate hawk.
He will be seeking the nomination of the Democratic Party.
You saw the film The Day After Tomorrow. This is that. Not like in the movie, but still…
Warming causes melting of ice, adding fresh water into the North Atlantic, which interferes with a major current system that at present warms Europe.
Consequence: The planet warms dangerously, while at the same time, large parts of Europe become much cooler, to the extent that people may not be able to live there in the manner they do now, or produce very much food there. Gibraltar would have a climate similar to the coast of Maine, and Berlin would have a climate similar to the Northwest Territories or northern Hudson Bay.
The models have predicted this, but it now seems that they’ve under-predicted it. It appears to be happening faster, and more furiously, than expected.
Superlative: The Biology of Extremes
Go for a swim with a ghost shark, the slowest-evolving creature known to humankind, which is teaching us new ways to think about immunity. Get to know the axolotl, which has the longest-known genome and may hold the secret to cellular regeneration. Learn about Monorhaphis chuni, the oldest discovered animal, which is providing insights into the connection between our terrestrial and aquatic worlds.
I’m not endorsing every idea or story in this book. One can not write a book about adaptations and have any evolutionary biologist worth their salt not bump on things. But the author does an honest and straightforward job of representing the research, and you’ll learn quite a bit that is new, see new perspectives on things you’ve considered in the past, and you’ll enjoy LaPlante’s writing.
I will probably be recommending this volume as a holiday gift for the Uncle who has everything or the teenager who likes natural history. Teachers of wildlife biology, evolution, or related topics will be able to mine this volume for stories. The use of footnotes is notable.* I recommend Superlative
A science rocket sent to Planet Jupiter collected information on that giant gas planet’s gravitational field. This has led, through the use of modeling, to the idea that Jupiter was smacked into by another planet early in its life. Bottom line: There should be heavy stuff (heavier than the gasses that make up gas planets) only in a compact core in the middle of the planet, over which the gasses that make it a gas planet accreted. The gravity information seems to suggest that heavy material is distributed more widely. Continue reading Everything you always knew about Jupiter is slightly different
Are you following this story from Russia? The Russians lied about it numerous time, and I don’t think we can expect them to ever tell the truth. But it appears to have been a test of a highly improbably weapon (a nuclear powered missile) that resulted in either an explosion that shoved a lot of radioactive material into the atmosphere, or an actual but accidental nuclear explosion.
A village was ordered to be evacuated. Then they cancelled the evacuation.
There is evidence that the bodies of the slain scientists, and/or others injured at the site, who were blasted in the explosion, were so radioactive that the doctors that attended to them also need to be treated. It also may be the case that the nuclear device is in the sea and needs to be recovered.
This is a real mess.
I have two quick things to say about recycling, and these are narrowly focused comments, but please feel free to discuss the issue more broadly in the comments, because I’m writing something more detailed and you can possibly influence that.
1) Do recycle. We have seen a handful of recent reports on authoritative (supposedly) media (like public radio) explaining how the entire recycling industry has collapsed and all the recycling goes into the trash, so YOU should therefore put your recycling in the trash as well. This is INCORRECT at several levels. More on that later. The short version: Let the recycling company decide what gets put in the trash. Your information will never be accurate or up to date compared to theirs.
2) Don’t feel too good about recycling, even if you do it all the time. It isn’t enough to save the planet. Do more. Now. More than that even.
Isaac Asimov’s robot books form a somewhat confusing and internally contradictory, but overall fantastic and important corpus of science fiction. One of the Asimov robot books is on sale right now super cheap in Kindle format: The Caves of Steel (The Robot Series Book 1)
Referring to Wikipedia (so get mad at them, not at me, if this seems wrong to you) the robot series of books (not counting short stories) in order of the stories themselves runs something like this:
The Caves of Steel (The Robot Series)
The Naked Sun (The Robot Series)
Did you ever wonder how Richard Dawkins got so smart? Or why he looks so much like Hermione Granger? Well, read this book to find out the answer to those two questions, and so very much more:
An Appetite for Wonder: The Making of a Scientist
In An Appetite for Wonder, Richard Dawkins shares a rare view into his early life, his intellectual awakening at Oxford, and his path to writing The Selfish Gene. He paints a vivid picture of his idyllic childhood in colonial Africa, peppered with sketches of his colorful ancestors, charming parents, and the peculiarities of colonial life right after World War II. At boarding school, despite a near-religious encounter with an Elvis record, he began his career as a skeptic by refusing to kneel for prayer in chapel. Despite some inspired teaching throughout primary and secondary school, it was only when he got to Oxford that his intellectual curiosity took full flight.
Arriving at Oxford in 1959, when undergraduates “left Elvis behind” for Bach or the Modern Jazz Quartet, Dawkins began to study zoology and was introduced to some of the university’s legendary mentors as well as its tutorial system.
It’s to this unique educational system that Dawkins credits his awakening, as it invited young people to become scholars by encouraging them to pose rigorous questions and scour the library for the latest research rather than textbook “teaching to” any kind of test. His career as a fellow and lecturer at Oxford took an unexpected turn when, in 1973, a serious strike in Britain caused prolonged electricity cuts, and he was forced to pause his computer-based research. Provoked by the then widespread misunderstanding of natural selection known as “group selection” and inspired by the work of William Hamilton, Robert Trivers, and John Maynard Smith, he began to write a book he called, jokingly, “my bestseller.” It was, of course, The Selfish Gene.
Here, for the first time, is an intimate memoir of the childhood and intellectual development of the evolutionary biologist and world-famous atheist, and the story of how he came to write what is widely held to be one of the most important books of the twentieth century.
By Ben Folds
Hey, I have that shirt!
There is an interesting set of Kindle books for cheap available right now, including one by Robert Heinlein. Continue reading Heinlein Book Cheap And More
There was a time not long ago when the title of this post would invoke in most Americans the assumption of a work of fiction, perhaps a novel by Tom Clancy.
Today, of course, it invokes current events, and looking at that title, one might assume this to be a reference to some current Washington Post story. Indeed, if you came across this post because it was tweeted or facebooked, that is almost certainly what you think we are talking about here.
But no. Continue reading The plot to overthrow the US Government and install a fascist dictator
cPanel is a widely used front end used on servers for people to operate things like their blog, email system, other web related functions, etc. It is a way to avoid using the command line. So, for instance, you might buy into a hosing package, and that may allow you to set up a WordPress site. Your host give you the info to log into your own cPanel. There, you press the “one click install” button and whoosh, you have a web site. Continue reading ALERT!! cPanel is ruining the Internet!
