Tag Archives: Books

Is there still room on the shelf for an almanac?

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When I was a kid, I loved the almanac. I don’t remember where they came from, but every couple of years a new one would appear in the house, and as soon as I got my hands on it, it moved into my room and anybody who wanted to look stuff up in it after that needed to see me first. And, actually, much of the time I could give them whatever info they needed if they just asked me, because I knew the contents.

I have on my desk the “The World Almanac for Kids 2013” produced by World Almanac. It has a picvture of a ballerina, a frog, a football player with the New York Jets, somebody who looks like he is on a TV show and a kid with a fancy hair cut, could be Justin Beiber. It has the Olympic symbol, Big Ben, and the “Tower of London” and a bit of the earth as well. On the back is a chimp, some nemo-fish, two young women and a young man who are probably all TV or movie personalities or singers, and the White House with a “Vote 2012” button.

I’m telling you all this because it gives a feel for what the book is all about: The inside is like the outside, with every page full of images, generally of young people all of whom are very pretty and healthy and happy and most important, well informed looking. There are graphics and diagrams and things to do. It is printed in cheapish paper which will allow you to feel OK about taking a pair of scissors to it or drawing on it, as needed. It is only the 2013 Almanac, after all. Use it up and then get a new one next year!

I’m not sure if almanacs are still useful or cool for kids because all kids in America how have smart phones or the equivalent. Right? Or maybe the Almanac is for kids who are poor and don’t have internet access. Or maybe, just may be, it is for kids who still like books.

Or for parents who still like books to give their kids so they will maybe like books a little bit still.

Here is the publisher’s writup:

The World Almanac® for Kids is the best-selling reference book for kids, with more than 4.4 million copies sold. Filled with thousands of fun, fascinating facts and essential homework help on a wide range of subjects, this annual, full-color almanac has been completely updated and fully redesigned, with a fresh new look, hundreds of new photographs, dozens of completely new features, and a wealth of puzzles, games, activities, maps, and much more. An ideal homework aid that is fun to read for kids and adults alike, The World Almanac® for Kids 2013 provides timely and timeless information on popular subjects such as animals, science, sports, music, U.S. history, and more. Readers will find out what’s hot in 2012 with full-color photographs and facts about favorite sports and entertainment superstars!

At less than 10 bucks, I actually think this is a good Xmas present for kids in upper grade school or middle school. I do, however, have a criticism I’d like addressed in future editions. The “biology” section does not really have much on Evolution, and the “Famous Scientist” section does not have Charles Darwin as one of the biologists.

When I saw this I became enraged and spit all over the computer screen, naturally, but then I contacted the publishers for an explanation of this outrage. I was assured that they were not anit-Evolution or anti-Darwin, and that what was going on was quite different. They said that they rotated over time through subtopics, so even though Evolution was not part of the biology section this year, it could be some other year, and even though Darwin was not one of the scientists this year, he could be some other year.

This is wrong, of course. Biology IS evolutionary biology, and certain key scientists should always be mentioned because they are always part of the history of the science (until they are replaced, of coruse). What has to happen this: The editor has to talk to me now about next year’s edition, and we can start working on how to ALWAYS have “Evolution” but at the same time always make it different and interesting, current and engaging. Same with Darwin and the other key scientists. We can make this work, and I assume that by this time next year when I’m asked to review this book for the kiddies, The World Almanac for Kids will have adjusted the way it presents life science to get it more in line with how life science works; key concepts and people are always there, and what changes is the new interpretations and new discoveries being made.

Zombie Tits …

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… Astronaut Fish and Other Weird Animals…

"Look, for the last time, we're not angry lesbians! We just considered all of the options and it makes more sense for us to reproduce on our own!" ... "Ha! I told you she'd yell. Yo owe me fifty bucks."
I remember when the story of the blood shooting lizard of the American Southwest was first figured out. The native people of the area had always spoken of the ability of a particular lizard to spew a stream of blood from its eyes. This would be done to thwart attackers. Naturally, as is often the case, scientists working in the area wrote this off as a quaint native belief. And, as is often the case, the quaint native belief turned out to be valid aboriginal knowledge and the scientists were wrong. In this case, it was a scientist working in the area, I think studying these very lizards, and his dog who “discovered” what was already known. It turns out that the dog invoked the response, and this is how the research scientist came to witness the event.

The blood spurting lizard of the American Southwest is only one of a large number of Stories of the Bizarre and Wonderful things in nature covered in my colleague Becky Crew’s new book, Zombie Tits, Astronaut Fish and Other Weird Animals. The book is not actually out yet but it will be soon, and you can probably pre-order it.

There are a lot of books out there that will take you through a tour of the animal kingdom, and frankly they all start to look a lot like each other, covering the same sexy or bloody themes, making constant and generally unsupportable references to how if a frog does that than a human must work this way, or if a fish does that than this is why women shop and men watch football, etc. etc.

Zombie Tits is not one of those books. Topically, it is organized in easily recognized themes (Hunters, Lovers, Prey, Odd bodies, you know, the usual stuff). And various animals are discussed under each them, and as far as I can tell with good attention to accuracy and detail. But the way it is done is a little … different. How shall I explain this …

OK, I’m just going to say it. This book is what you would get if you dropped 750 mics of LSD, stat down with the Animal Diversity Web site, and alternated between reading about interesting animals and writing totally tripped-out stories with those very same animals as the characters in those stories. Then you would get this book.

I can’t tell you how often I am on the verge (without the LSD I quickly add, and I’m sure Becky did not take that route either) of writing stuff like this, and if you pay attention you’ll see that some of my better bloggy essays do weave a story between the cold and hard and the odd. But Becky does not hold back at all.

From the chapter “Secret boys’ club” on Concave-eared torrent frogs (Amolops tormotus) in which there is a very nicely written detailed account of current research on the mating calls and related behaviors of this interesting amphibian, we find a long digression that begins:

Seriously, female concave-eared torrent frogs, get a load of these jerks. They have their own language now? Why can’t they just email each other about …. whatever it is boys talk about? Do they really need an entire secret language so they an make comments about the concave-eared torrent frog equivalent of boobs at any possible opportunity?

… and ends with …

'Hello?' ... 'Hey, it's me.' ... 'Oh, hey, Giant Squid. What do you want? I'm trying to get dressed for work over here.' ... 'I know, I'm watching you,.' ... 'Argh, would you quit it with that stuff? You guys should have to apply for a licence to see so far away. You're all a bunch of creeps.' ... 'That's a really ugly tie.'
… and they can LOL about how your best friend clearly wants to do all of them (I’m right there rolling my eyes with you, female concave-eared torrent frogs), but you’ll always be the only ones who actually have the concave-eared torrent frog equivalent of boobs, and there’s nothing the least bit funny about LOLing about something you just LOL’d your way out of seeing.

For some reason I’ve mainly picked sexy passages from the book, but honestly, that was totally random. I just stuck a finger in and that’s what happened. The topics are more diverse than that. But don’t worry, not too much more diverse.

Zombie Tits, Astronaut Fish and Other Weird Animals has a list of references per chapter and other supporting resources in the back matter, is not illustrated but is nicely printed, well written, and just feels good in your hands when you read it. Must be that cream paper and perfect binding combination. Of course, I’ve probably got a pre-publication copy here so I can’t say what the final will look like.

This book is for anybody interested in animals and stuff; it will bring new exemplars to the discussion, make you laugh, and perhaps more important, will probably be read and enjoyed by a large audience who would normally read Cosmos instead of animal books. Becky is tricking people into learning cool stuff. Thank you Becky.

Becky blogs here.

Birds of Central Asia (Princeton Field Guide)

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Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan … they all have birds, it turns out. Until now there has never been a field guid to the birds of this regino. Raffael Aye, Manuel Schweizer, and Tobias Roth have written one, and it is called, fittingly, Birds of Central Asia: Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan.

It covers 618 species using 143 plates with multiple birds on a plate, set up in classic Peterson Field Guide format with the range maps right with the bird descriptions across from the illustrations. The illustrations are drawings showing key features. There is a brief but informative overview of habitats to help make sense of the range maps and some helpful information on organizations linked to Central Asian birds and birding, but overall the front matter (and back matter) is minimal. I think that was a good choice given how many birds needed to be crammed into this one book.

To me, the Central Asian bird fauna looks lot like the Central North American bird fauna but with about double or triple the diversity and most of the names are different! The area covered is rather large, running from the Sapsian Sean to China (west to east) and the southern border of Russia to Pakistan and India (to the south). If you are going to the region, this is a good choice among the many …. oh no, wait, there is only one field guid. Let me rephrase: If you are going to the region, you will find this field guid to be useful and the fact that it has no competitors has not diminished its quality. It is a great field guide.

What size camera aperture can read a license plate from Earth orbit?

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Answer: About 20 meters. Th Hubble Space Telescope’s aperture is 2.4 meters. So, you really can’t do it at the present time.

This is one of a large, seemingly inestimable number of practical need-to-know and esoteric questions addressed in Lawrence Weinstein’s book Guesstimation 2.0: Solving Today’s Problems on the Back of a Napkin, a followup book on the earlier Guesstimation: Solving the World’s Problems on the Back of a Cocktail Napkin.

I should say that I personally have an uncanny ability to estimate things. This comes from being an archaeologist with a lot of experience in CRM. For years I had to estimate how much projects would cost and at the same time, how much dirt needed to be moved, how big patches of land were, how thick layer of dirt might be, and how many rusty nails were sitting in a big-ass pile of rusty nails. And so on. I am very rarely surprised at the number something turns out to be. Weinstein’s book is an attempt by an expert estimator to help you to learn to be almost as good as I am at this. Just as important, probably, is that he actually goes ahead and makes these estimates so you can see what the answer to interesting questions might be.

Having said that do remember that estimation is a sociopolitical act as well as a mathematical activity. One can produce estimates that are helpful to a particular cause. You may already be familiar with the question of “should we use cloth or disposable diapers” which became the hotbed of discussion several years ago between environmentalists and economists (who are almost always anti-environmentalist, given who tends to butter their bread, as it were). I would not want to guess at Weinstein’s politics, but he shows the bias we often see with number crunchers. In asking the question, how much of a car’s energy requirement would we obtain if we covered the car with solar panels, we seem to see an unfortunate anti-environmental slant. The answer is calculated with numbers that seem biased against getting a very large number and still end up being between 2 and 8%. This is written off as insignificant, but I’m pretty sure that if I came up with a version of gasoline that gave everyone 8% better mileage, I’d get rich.

Anyway, it is a fun book and if you are planning to give someone a present that will cost about 10.00, this is a good choice because they probably don’t already have it!

Stock up on napkins!

Cotingas and Manakins: Amazing birds, amazing bird book

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Five families of birds make up the group that could be referred to as the Cotingas and Manakins, which in turn include species with such colorful names as “Pale-bellied Tyrant-Manakin,” “Bare-necked Fruitcrow,” “Peruvian Plantcutter,” and “White-browed Purpletuft.” And certainly, you’ve heard of the Andean Cock-of-theRock. These birds and their relatives are THE famous colorful amazing birds of the Neotropics, the birds people who go to the Jungles of Central and South America go to see. “… the song of the Xcreaming Piha,… the loudest bird on Earth, is used by moviemakers to epitomize jungle soudns the world over, no just in its native South America,” we are told by the authors of Cotingas and Manakins, an amazing new book that you need to either add to your collection right now or give to your favorite birder.

This volume by Guy Kirwan and Graeme Green (no relation) is a thorough and nearly comprehensive guide to the largest groups of South American bird species, including all of the usual key features. There are numerous photographs, excellent maps including both details of movement and migration and, most intriguingly, information about what is NOT known about the distributions of some of the species, so when you are in the field looking at them you can wonder if you’ve discovered something not previously known.

The book covers over 130 species in detail, with 34 color plates (drawings) by Eustace Barnes, and about 400 color photographs and numerous maps. From the authors…”The aim of the book is… to summarise all of the available information on cotingas and manakins in such a way that readers are enthuses to discover more about the birds themselves.” The authors mentioned above and other contributors to the book are all experts in these birds and this region.

This is not a pocket guide; It is a big thick book that is almost 700 pages long, on nice high quality paper. But if you are going to the rain forests of Central or South America you will need to bring it along with your binoculars. Have a nice trip!

Rising Sea Levels: Cause and Impact

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Rising Sea Levels: An Introduction to Cause and Impact is a new book by Hunt Janin and Scott Mandia. Janin is a writer of non fiction and scholarly books, and Mandia is a professor of physics and a science communicator who specializes in climate-related issues.

To me, sea level is one of the most interesting and important of climate related issues. Interesting because I’ve done archaeology at the edge of the sea, sometimes beneath it, sometimes racing ahead of it, and often, looking at changes in human settlement caused by its rise since the Last Glacial Maximum. Important because one of the most fundamental variables in human land use patterns is, well, where the land is (and isn’t), and that is defined in large part by where the sea is (and isn’t)!

Janin and Mandia acknowledge that the last few thousand years of human development and history occurred during a period of little or no sea level change, but now, sea level rise is a factor. They address the relationship between climate change, the hydrologic cycle, and sea level rise, discuss storm surges (very relevant to those in the northeastern US on this fine Thursday morning after the Superstorm) and the relationship between sea level and glacial ice (or lack thereof). The book is mostly organized geographically, with major chapters looking at each ocean basin forming the core of the work, flanked by background information, science, theory, and overviews of sea level rise impact and an introduction to who is whom in the field of climate change rise. There is an appendix chock full of cool stuff.

Of New York City, the authors note:

New York City has a watery past and will have a watery future. It is situated at the mouth of the Hudson River in southeastern New York State and has a fine, deep, naturally-sheltered harbor which was the keystone of its prosperity. … The city today is vulnerable to storm surges from winter Nor’Easters … and from summer hurricanes, as well as from the prospect of sea level rise. Much of the metropolitan region is less than 16 feet (4.8 meters) above mean sea level. It is estimated that, by the 2050s, adding as little as 1.5 feet (0.46 meters) of sea level rise to the forecast storm surges from a Category 3 hurricane which follows a worst-case track would cause extensive flooding in many parts of New York City…. areas subject to flooding would include the Rockaways, Coney Island, much of southern Brooklyn and ?Queens, portions of Long Island City, Astoria, Flushing Meadows-Corona Park, lower Manhattan, and eastern Staten Island from Great Kills Harbor north to the Verrazano Bridge.

Which is pretty much what happened on Monday night, without too much sea level rise having happened yet. Obviously, this book is important…

The Aviator: Science Fiction of the Post Global Warming World

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How can you go wrong with blimps?
The Aviator is a new book that gives you a world of post-global warming climate and interesting developments in transportation technology and artificial intelligence. It is written by New Zealand based writer Gareth Renowden. The Aviator explores a post-apocalypse world where the apocalypse is not nuclear war or a large object hitting the earth, or even an outbreak of zombi-ism, but rather, unfettered human-caused climate change. The story itself is an excellent read and even qualifies as a page turner. But there is another element that readers don’t need to now, but would enjoy knowing: The author has the science on climate change right.

The truth is, a future Earth with continued climate change could end up in a number of different states, but the planet ala The Aviator is a reasonable approximation of a switched-over climate, brought to us by someone who knows the science well. I’m less sure about the interaction between Artificial and Regular “Intelligence” depicted here, but Renowden does give us an interesting interaction between fictional tropes. Climate change is real and unfettered could easily look like it does in this book. Renowden’s artificial Intelligence is, in contrast, heavily and boldy imagined, and the use of the concept in Renowden’s book is highly speculative. So, we have an interesting mix of higher and lower probabilities joined together with what is an otherwise well imagined and very well told story regardless of the science fiction itself.

I have truly enjoyed it.

The book’s web site is here.

Siege of Stars by Henry Gee

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Henry Gee, the Nature editor, has a novel in three parts … Siege of Stars: Book One of The Sigil Trilogy … that I found hit home very closely like maybe Henry was me reincarnated and then transported back through time so his, er, our timeline would cross. This is not surprising since Henry and I have had overlapping interests in science for several decades, so his novel references a sense of understanding of the landscape, the kind of thing a geologist or archaeologist achieves either over time or because of an innate capacity. One of his characters is such an archaeologist. Another overlap is our experience observing academic culture. We tend to breed within (“we” meaning academics, not Henry and me specifically), and sometimes we form teams where thinking, understanding, and explaining are done as a compound organism. Also, and this may be too much of an inside reference, Book 1 at least is pretty much Cenozoic, which is cool.

Siege of Stars: Book One of The Sigil Trilogy is Book 1 of the Sigil Trilogy. It is a story about how the universe, and Earth, got to the present state, which turns out to be a rather dramatic historical set of events involving improbable beings doing large scale things in large scale, and Scotch. Siege is compelling, grandiose, and breathtaking in its spacetime and its characters are intriguing, personal, and complex. It has a classic parallel story structure which enhances the book’s page turning quotient. This book of Henry’s is going to be high on the charts. Oh, and there is a hint of Kilgore Trout. Not enough that you’d notice it and entirely confined to the plot.

I recommend you read it as soon as it is available. You might be able to get an advanced copy here.

Henry Gee is the author of several books including The Science of Middle-Earth: Explaining The Science Behind The Greatest Fantasy Epic Ever Told!, In Search of Deep Time: Beyond the Fossil Record to a New History of Life, and editor of Nature’s Futures column, which is anthologized here.

The Linux Command Line

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I just got a copy of The Linux Command Line: A Complete Introduction. I read one review of it a while back which was quite positive, suggesting that the book was both really useful and really not boring. Here’s the description from the publisher:

You’ve experienced the shiny, point-and-click surface of your Linux computer—now dive below and explore its depths with the power of the command line.

The Linux Command Line by William Shotts. No Starch Press. Image from the publisher.
The Linux Command Line takes you from your very first terminal keystrokes to writing full programs in Bash, the most popular Linux shell. Along the way you’ll learn the timeless skills handed down by generations of gray-bearded, mouse-shunning gurus: file navigation, environment configuration, command chaining, pattern matching with regular expressions, and more.

In addition to that practical knowledge, author William Shotts reveals the philosophy behind these tools and the rich heritage that your desktop Linux machine has inherited from Unix supercomputers of yore.

As you make your way through the book’s short, easily-digestible chapters, you’ll learn how to:

  • Create and delete files, directories, and symlinks
  • Administer your system, including networking, package installation, and process management
  • Use standard input and output, redirection, and pipelines
  • Edit files with Vi, the world’s most popular text editor
  • Write shell scripts to automate common or boring tasks
  • Slice and dice text files with cut, paste, grep, patch, and sed

Once you overcome your initial “shell shock,” you’ll find that the command line is a natural and expressive way to communicate with your computer. Just don’t be surprised if your mouse starts to gather dust.

I will be reporting back on this later, but it looks good so far.

How to Identify Dragonflies and Damselflies

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I want to tell you about a cool book, but first, here’s something interesting about Dragonflies. Terrestrial animals (like humans) require long chain fatty acids but don’t synthesize them from basic parts. Higher terrestrial plants don’t make the biggest of these molecules either, but plants do make molecules that can be turned into things like EPA and DHA in animals. So, while terrestrial animals can get what they need by consuming other animals or by starting out with plant molecules, it is a long slog from a bunch of readily available simple molecules to large and hard to get but very important long-chain polyunsaturate fatty acids. This is why nutrition experts tell us to eat fish or fish oils. Fish have lots of these molecules already in them.

ResearchBlogging.orgWhere to the fish get them? Well, at the base of aquatic ecosystems are algae that produce these molecules. So, stuff that eats stuff that eats stuff in aquatic systems eventually eats these algae directly or indirectly. And here’s where Dragonflies come in. They hatch and mature through non-adult stages in the aquatic ecosystem. There, the Dragonfly larvae are little tiny super predators, eating other invertebrates and even tiny fish. In this manner they concentrate long chain polyunsaturated fatty acids. Then, they emerge as adult insects and fly around where terrestrial animals munch on them. In this way, these rare and important complex molecules become a bit more abundant in terrestrial systems than they otherwise might. This applies broadly to “emerging” insects that start out in an aquatic form, but in some environments the Dragonflies are a major factor. More generally, dragon flies move piles of biomass across the landscape, away from ponds and lakes where bio-molecules naturally accumulate because stuff goes down hill.

Citations for two recent research papers that discuss this are below.

Book cover.And now for the book. There are over 300 species of Dragonfly and Damselfly in North America east of the Rocky mountains. Dragonflies and Damselflies of the East (Princeton Field Guides) by Dennis Paulson covers them all. We’ve been dragging this book up to the cabin (it is a bit large) for several weeks now and we’ve been able to identify everything. Beyond that, Dragonflies and Damselflies of the East has a lot of good information in it about the morphology and anatomy…essential if you want to do identification…and taxonomic relationship among these critters. There are a lot of photos and they are spectacularly good and very useful. There are also plenty of other illustrations and line drawings, and range maps that look great and are easy to use. The introductory sections are rich in detail about Dragonfly and Damselfly ecology and biology.

Paulson also has a Dragonflies and Damselflies of the West, which I’ve not seen but looks similar based on the descriptions. To be clear: The East book is mainly “East of the Mississippi” but also covers a range pretty far west, as obviously the Mississippi is not a Dragonfly boundary. If you are anywhere in or west of the Dakotas or Texas, you may want the Western book.

Images provided by Princeton Press.

M. I. Gladyshev, A. Yu. Kharitonov, O. N. Popova, N. N. Sushchik, O. N. Makhutova, & G. S. Kalacheva (2011). Quantitative estimation of dragonfly role in transfer of essential polyunsaturated fatty acids from aquatic to terrestrial ecosystems DOKLADY BIOCHEMISTRY AND BIOPHYSICS, 438 (1), 708-710 DOI: 10.1134/S1607672911030094

O. N. Popova, & A. Yu. Kharitonov (1). Estimation of the carry-over of substances by dragonflies from water bodies to land in the forest-steppe of West Siberia CONTEMPORARY PROBLEMS OF ECOLOGY, 5 (2012), 49-56 DOI: 10.1134/S1995425512010043

Abstract: The results of many years’ monitoring of the number and distribution of dragonflies in the Chany area of the Baraba forest-steppe are presented. An estimation of the biomass carry-over by dragonflies from water bodies to land ecosystems is given. The data presented provide evidence of the important role of dragonflies in the migration of substances from water bodies to land.

Music of the Birds. And more!

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Music of the Birds by Lang Elliott is a classic book and CD combo well over 10 years old, that provided bird lovers with a chance to learn to identify and appreciate the songs of numerous species. Over the last decade or so many other CD-based bird song offerings have become available. More recently, Lang teamed up with Marie Read to produce an iBook (iAuthored) version of Music of the Birds which takes advantage of the iAuthored iBook format in many ways. This is my first review of an iAuthored book, and obviously the first one on this blog, so I want to use the opportunity to discuss what a iAuthored iBook does. Continue reading Music of the Birds. And more! →

The Rocks Don't Lie (geology and flood myths)

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The Rocks Don’t Lie: A Geologist Investigates Noah’s Flood by David Montgomery is new book on the Noachian flood. It is by a real life geologist and is not a creationist book. Might be a good gift for your annoying creationist relative.

Here is a write-up from the publisher:

In Tibet, geologist David R. Montgomery heard a local story about a great flood that bore a striking similarity to Noah’s Flood. Intrigued, Montgomery began investigating the world’s flood stories and—drawing from historic works by theologians, natural philosophers, and scientists—discovered the counterintuitive role Noah’s Flood played in the development of both geology and creationism. Steno, the grandfather of geology, even invoked the Flood in laying geology’s founding principles based on his observations of northern Italian landscapes. Centuries later, the founders of modern creationism based their irrational view of a global flood on a perceptive critique of geology. With an explorer’s eye and a refreshing approach to both faith and science, Montgomery takes readers on a journey across landscapes and cultures. In the process we discover the illusive nature of truth, whether viewed through the lens of science or religion, and how it changed through history and continues changing, even today.

… and here is a FREE COPY of a chapter of the book courtesy of the National Center for Science Education.

Oh, and in case you were wondering, no, it is not even close to true that “every culture has a flood myth.” But there is a falshood pertaining to that question: See “Every Culture Has A …”

______________________________–
Photo of the geology of Red Rock Canyon, Nevada by the author.

Everything You Wanted to Know About Indians But Were Afraid to Ask

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Here in Minnesota, and in surrounding states, there is some real tension between Native and Immigrant communities. The poorest, most drug-ridden, down trodden and repressed communities here are often Native, and conveniently these communities tend to be (but not always are) located far away from urban areas or other places with a lot of white eyes. Health in Native communities is of major concern to the usual institutions and people that are concerned with such things.

Indians make White people nervous. White people are either worried that the Indian has kooties, or are criminals or something, or they are worried that the Indians will think poorly of them or feel bad about, you know, all that bad shit that happened between our people. And some of that bad shit, here in the Upper Plains and the far western edge of the Eastern Woodlands, is very recent. From here, I could drive to Wounded Knee II in a day. I’ve been told that there are still people…white people…in the southern part of Minnesota with curios made of human body parts taken out of the mass grave filled with those executed at the end of the Dakota War of 1862. Many of our historical monuments, homes, and other sites relate to those troubled times. Fort Snelling, the home of one of the Minnesota Historic Society’s facilities (a State institution) was one of those forts where the guys in blue uniforms parodied on F Troop garrisoned. That is where Chief Shakopee was killed when the blue uniformed soldiers arranged a “running of the gauntlet,” a gauntlet manned by Shakopee’s enemies, as a means of executing him. There were starvation camps set up to cause the population of Native people to go down. There are lakes, towns and counties named after the engineers of those concentration camps. I’m thinking that many Native people know a lot more about these things than the White people do. For instance, my in laws, and many of their friends, and several cousins and relatives have cabins on on lakes in Cass County. I think very few of the White people know who Cass was. Lewis Cass, after whom the county and a major lake in the area were named, was one of those architects. I do end up on a Native reservation for several days a year in that area. The reservation is entirely located within Cass County. That would be like having a Jewish homeland in a province or region named after Himmler.

So, why am I talking about this? Because one of Minnesota’s own, a professor at Bimidji University, just upstream from Cass Lake, has written a book called Everything You Wanted to Know about Indians But Were Afraid to Ask. This is not just another white guy talking about Indians. Author Anton Treuer is Native, and I just saw him interviewed on a Minneosta political and news show, and that made me want to get the book. It seems to be a sort of FAQ of questions that a lot of White people have about Indians. I’m not sure how much of a focus there is on this region vs. the country, or North America, as a whole, but in the interview, Treuer did discuss the issue of diversity; a question one might have about Indians could sound fairly dumb if you reversed the situation and said something like “What do White people think about abortion?” or “What kind of cars to White people drive?” …. There are hundreds of Native tribes.

I’m looking forward to learning stuff I didn’t know. I’ll have to look Anton up and see if he’s around during the summer. Maybe we can grab a cup of coffee and swap tales about academia!

Treuer and his book are also written up here, in the Strib.

Congratulations Shawn Otto!

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Fool Me Twice: Fighting the Assault on Science in America by Shawn Otto has won the prestigious Minnesota Book Award. The award is very well deserved.

Here’s my writeup of the book, and here’s a radio interview with the author that we did a couple of months back.

Shawn’s book is a critically important analysis of science policy, its potentials and failings, in a world of denialism and politics. As you know, Shawn has been involved with Science Debate (see the big badge on the sidebar?) and the Science Pledge. I’m pleased to announce that in the political campaign that I was recently involved in, both candidates seeking a party endorsement for US Congress made reference to material from Fool Me Twice.

Congratulations, Shawn!

An Excellent Book on Energy: Before the Lights Go Out…

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On Sunday, I interviewed Maggie Koerth-Baker, the author of Before the Lights Go Out: Conquering the Energy Crisis Before It Conquers Us. The interview was live on radio, but you can listen to it here as a podcast.

Maggie is the science editor at Boing Boing, a journalist, and has had an interest in energy and the related science and engineering for some time. Her book is an overview, historical account, and detailed description of the energy systems that we use in the United States, outlining the flow of watts, CO2 emissions, methods of making more watts, what we use it all for, and more. Maggie focuses on the electrical power grid, which is actually responsible for more greenhouse gas emissions than internal combustion powered transport (cars, trucks, etc.), but she does touch on the latter. She focuses on the US but she draws from overseas examples in discussing what is normally done, what is not normally done, and what we might do in the future. She develops compelling and sometimes startling imagery and provides interesting and lively metaphors useful in describing and understanding sometimes very abstract problems related to making, delivering, and using energy.

Here’s the bottom line. If you want to have an intelligent conversation about energy, especially related to current problems and needs in the US and especially related to the electrical grid, you have to either know all the stuff that is in Before the Lights Go Out, or read the book before you engage in that conversation, or, if you can’t manage either of those, then maybe you should just shut up. Seriously.

I’ve been engaged in conversations about energy at a significantly heightened pace over the last several months, for various reasons, and I’ve found that the stuff that comes out of people’s mouths (my own included) is very often either very out of date or was never very correct to begin with. Maggie’s book is a very engaging way of fixing that. If you read the book, you will be caught up.

I caution those of you who might listen to the podcast that we only touched on part of what is covered in the book! You can’t just listen to the interview and skip reading the source material! Having said that, I’m not going to go into great detail here either. Listen to the podcast, get the book, read it, and report back. You will probably have interesting questions and additions to add to the comment section.