Books

From Cocktail Party Physics by way of Stranger Fruit… bold the ones you’ve read, asterisk the ones you intend to read: Micrographia, Robert Hooke The Origin of the Species, Charles Darwin Never at Rest, Richard WestfallSurely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman, Richard Feynman Tesla: Man Out of Time, Margaret Cheney The Devil’s Doctor, Philip Ball The Making of the Atomic Bomb, Richard RhodesLonely Hearts of the Cosmos, Dennis Overbye Physics for Entertainment, Yakov Perelman 1-2-3 Infinity, George Gamow (I’ve not read this, but I’ve read Mr. Tompkins in Paperback) The Elegant Universe, Brian Greene Warmth Disperses, Time Passes, Hans Christian von Bayer Alice in Quantumland, Robert Gilmore Where Does the Weirdness Go? David Lindley A Short History of Nearly Everything, Bill Bryson A Force of Nature, Richard Rhodes Black Holes and Time Warps, Kip Thorne A Brief History of Time, Stephen Hawking (I listened to it on tape on a drive to the Dallas CSICOP conference in 1992)Universal Foam, Sidney PerkowitzVermeer’s Camera, Philip Steadman The Code Book, Simon Singh The Elements of Murder, John Emsley Soul Made Flesh, Carl Zimmer (I’m currently reading this)Time’s Arrow, Martin Amis The Ten Most Beautiful Experiments, George Johnson Einstein’s Dreams, Alan LightmanGodel, Escher, Bach, Douglas Hofstadter The Curious Life of Robert Hooke, Lisa Jardine A Matter of Degrees, Gino Segre The Physics of Star Trek, Lawrence Krauss E=mc<2>, David Bodanis Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea, Charles Seife Absolute Zero: The Conquest of Cold, Tom Shachtman A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines, Janna Levin Warped Passages, Lisa Randall Apollo’s Fire, Michael Sims Flatland, Edward Abbott Fermat’s Last Theorem, Amir Aczel Stiff, Mary Roach Astroturf, M.G. Lord The Periodic Table, Primo Levi Longitude, Dava Sobel The First Three Minutes, Steven Weinberg The Mummy Congress, Heather PringleThe Accelerating Universe, Mario Livio Math and the Mona Lisa, Bulent Atalay This is Your Brain on Music, Daniel Levitin The Executioner’s Current, Richard Moran Krakatoa, Simon Winchester Pythagorus’ Trousers, Margaret Wertheim Neuromancer, William Gibson The Physics of Superheroes, James Kakalios The Strange Case of the Broad Street Pump, Sandra Hempel Another Day in the Frontal Lobe, Katrina Firlik Einstein’s Clocks and Poincare’s Maps, Peter Galison The Demon-Haunted World, Carl Sagan The Blind Watchmaker, Richard Dawkins The Language Instinct, Steven Pinker An Instance of the Fingerpost, Iain Pears Consilience, E.O. WilsonWonderful Life, Stephen J. Gould (haven’t read this, but I’ve read all of his books of collected Natural History articles) Teaching a Stone to Talk, Annie Dillard Fire in the Brain, Ronald K. Siegel The Life of a Cell, Lewis Thomas Coming of Age in the Milky Way, Timothy Ferris Storm World, Chris Mooney The Carbon Age, Eric Roston The Black Hole Wars, Leonard Susskind Copenhagen, Michael Frayn From the Earth to the Moon, Jules Verne Gut Symmetries, Jeanette Winterson Chaos, James GleickInnumeracy, John Allen Paulos The Physics of NASCAR, Diandra Leslie-Pelecky Subtle is the Lord, Abraham PaisI’d add some Oliver Sacks and A.R. Luria (neuroscience case studies), V.S. Ramachandran’s A Brief Tour of Consciousness, Charles Mackay’s Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, and some philosophy of science like Larry Laudan’s Science and Relativism (nicely written in the form of a dialogue between advocates of different views), Philip Kitcher’s The Advancement of Science, Thomas Kuhn’s The Copernican Revolution, John Losee’s A Historical Introduction to the Philosophy of Science, and Ian Hacking’s Representing and Intervening. There are lots more to list, but those are a few that I’ve read. My science reading has leaned very strongly towards cognitive psychology, neuroscience, philosophy of mind, and philosophy of science, which is only weakly represented on the above list, and on the creation/evolution debate, which isn’t really represented on the above list at all, except by Darwin himself. Now John Lynch can tell me that I really need to read Origin of Species. UPDATE (August 28, 2008): Enhanced with P.Z. Myers’ additions: Ascent of Man, Jacob BronowskiBasin and Range, John McPheeBeak of the Finch, Jonathan WeinerChance and Necessity, Jacques MonodDr. Tatiana’s Sex Advice to All Creation, Olivia Judson (reading now) *Endless Forms Most Beautiful, Sean CarrollEvolution: The Triumph of an Idea, Carl ZimmerGenome, Matt RidleyGuns, Germs, and Steel, Jared DiamondIt Ain’t Necessarily So, Richard LewontinOn Growth and Form, D’Arcy Wentworth ThompsonPhantoms in the Brain, VS RamachandranThe Ancestor’s Tale, Richard DawkinsThe Case of the Female Orgasm: Bias in the Science of Evolution, Elisabeth LloydThe Eighth Day of Creation, Horace Freeland JudsonThe Great Devonian Controversy, Martin RudwickThe Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat, Oliver SacksThe Mismeasure of Man, Stephen Jay GouldThe Triple Helix: Gene, Organism, and Environment, Richard LewontinTime, Love, Memory, Jonathan WeinerVoyaging and The Power of Place, Janet BrowneWoman: An Intimate Geography, Natalie Angier ...

Daniel Radosh has a new book out titled Rapture Ready!: Adventures in the Parallel Universe of Christian Pop Culture, which might be entertaining. There’s a chapter on creationism that talks about Ken Ham and Answers in Genesis, and possibly the split by Creation Ministries International, since Google Books tells me my name is mentioned on p. 279. Anybody at Scribner want to send me a review copy? Based on the reviews at Amazon.com, it sounds like Radosh gives Christian pop culture a sympathetic and even-handed portrayal that also points out its absurdities and self-contradictions, similar to the excellent documentary Hell House.

A parent complained about Sarah Brannen’s book, Uncle Bobby’s Wedding, about same-sex marriage, that was in the children’s book section in the Douglas County Library system in Colorado. Librarian Jamie Larue wrote an excellent, kind, and thoughtful response to the library patron about why the library is not going to move or remove the book.

Via Long or Short Capital comes a children’s story authored by FDIC Chairman Sheila Bair. The blog gives two versions of the story, first from the Amazon description of the book: Rock and Brock may be twins, but they are as different as two twins can be. One day, their grandpa offers them a plan-for ten straight weeks on Saturday he will give them each one dollar for doing their chores. But there is a catch! Each dollar they save, he will match. Rock is excited-there are all sorts of things he can buy for one dollar. So each week he spends his money on something different-a toy moose head, green hair goo, white peppermint wax fangs. But while Rock is spending his money, Brock is saving his. And each week when Rock gets just one dollar, Brock’s savings get matched. By summer’s end, Brock has five hundred and twelve dollars, while Rock has none. When Rock sees what his brother has saved, he realizes he has made a mistake. But Brock shows him that it is never too late to start saving. ...

Ed Brayton at Dispatches from the Culture Wars has a nice takedown of David Kupelian’s article at the WorldNutDaily bemoaning how atheists are being allowed to publish books in these Christian United States. Ed shows that Kupelian has no idea what he’s talking about when he writes about Christianity in American history.

That’s the title of Vincent Bugliosi’s latest book, which just reached #14 on the New York Times bestseller list on Sunday despite having virtually no mainstream media attention. It has sold 130,000 copies, but ABC Radio refused to allow an advertisement for the book on the Don Imus show, and both The Daily Show and The Colbert Report declined to show any interest in having Bugliosi on as a guest. The book sets out a legal case for a criminal prosecution of George W. Bush as being criminally responsible for the deaths of U.S. soldiers in Iraq. Bugliosi, the former Los Angeles County prosecutor with a perfect record of murder prosecutions, including the prosecution of Charles Manson which he recounted in his book Helter Skelter 30 years ago, most recently authored the book Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, a massive 1,612-page book that responds in detail to conspiracy theorists. That book is being made into a 10-hour miniseries by Tom Hanks for HBO. A shorter book, drawn from the content of Reclaiming History, has been published under the title Four Days in November.

A short conversation between Orson Welles and H.G. Wells (MP3) aired live on KTSA radio in San Antonio on October 28, 1940. The main subjects are the Welles’ radio production of Wells’ “War of the Worlds,” from two years prior, the accuracy of Wells’ science fiction, and a Wells-incited plug for Welles’ “Citizen Kane." (Via Alan Dean Foster’s remembrance of Arthur C. Clarke in the July/August 2008 Skeptical Inquirer.)

I just figured out that Trevor Paglen, the co-author of Torture Taxi, a book about how planespotting was used to track information about the CIA’s extraordinary rendition flights, is also the author of I Could Tell You but Then You Would Have to Be Destroyed by Me: Emblems from the Pentagon’s Black World, for which he appeared on the Colbert Report. At his blog, I’ve learned that the pilots of the CIA rendition flights associated with Khalid El-Masri have been identified at Sourcewatch, where you can also find extensive information about the planes and the fictional owners of the companies that operate them (in particular see the companies Premier Executive Transport Services and Bayard Foreign Marketing, which have both owned the same Gulfstream V (PDF), nicknamed the “Guantanamo Bay Express”). El-Masri, a German citizen, was kidnapped in Macedonia and taken to a CIA black site called the “Salt Pit” in Afghanistan, where he was tortured, then later released in Albania after a second order to do so by National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice (the first was ignored). He was taken because his name resembled that of suspected al Qaeda operative Khalid al-Masri. El-Masri’s lawsuit against the CIA and three private companies that operated planes involved with his transport was dismissed in 2006 on grounds of state secrets privilege, and the U.S. Supreme Court denied cert in 2007. He has also sued in Germany, where there are outstanding warrants for pilots Eric Robert Hume, James Kovalesky, and Harry Kirk Ellarbee. All three of these pilots work or worked for alleged CIA front company Aero Contractors Ltd., live in Johnston County, North Carolina and have been visited by the German press in unsuccessful attempts to interview them. The German warrants were passed to Interpol, but the German government declined to ask the U.S. for extradition after an informal request was given a negative reply. El-Masri was sent to a mental institution in 2007 after being arrested for arson and an assault on a truck-driving instructor.

Christian theologian Alister McGrath, author of The Dawkins Delusion, managed to help persuade Norwegian astrophysicist Øystein Elgarøy that atheists had the better arguments. Elgarøy, formerly a liberal Christian, is now an atheist and a member of the Norwegian Humanist Association. (Hat tip to DMB at the Talk Rational forum.) Eamon Knight (2008-06-27): Ooh, thanks for that link. As someone who has made a similar journey from conservative Xty through liberal to atheist, I found that story fascinating. Elgarøy was asking many of the same question I asked myself, during my t.o years. ...

Dan Barker has a new book coming out, Godless: How an Evangelical Preacher Became One of America’s Leading Atheists. It’s available for pre-order on Amazon.com. Also check out the organization run by Dan and Annie Laurie Gaylor, the Freedom From Religion Foundation. Ken (2008-07-09): Thanks for the heads up.I think that some day Mr. Barker will wear out his arguments form authority by repeating once to often that he is an ex-preacher. If anyone ever specifically debated him on the biblical passages that he is constantly misunderstanding, misapplying and misinterpreting his arguments form authority would come to a screeching halt.Besides, (1) since he does not believe that lying in absolutely immoral and (2) he recommends lying in order to avert danger and (3) he believes that religion is dangerous (4) he leaves the logical thinker with no choice be to not believe a single word that comes out of his mouth since he could lie all that he wants and not even consider it immoral.Just some thoughts.aDios,Mariano ...