16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A fun look at the oddities of science, November 6, 2000
This collection of short essays on quirky scientific subjects is a fun read for the scientifically curious. In plain language, Ingram presents various mysteries - how a barmaid can remember fifteen orders when most people can only remember a series of seven, how a colony of single-celled Volvoxes can develop specialized roles that allow only a select few to reproduce, why humans are bipedal and largely hairless - and proceeds to discuss scientific progress on these matters. Ingram is not afraid of messy packages; he includes refutations and some strange sidenotes. Several of the issues in this book have not been solved and may never be (and some are ridiculous, such as building a ladder to the moon, a subject which the author treats with good humor AND good science), but Ingram always gives his readers a solid understanding of the problem at hand.
All in all, this is an entertaining book. Although working scientists might be disappointed by the lack of depth (the results of experiments are succintly summarized, for example), most people will be satisfied with the knowledge gained. Like Stephen Jay Gould's popular science books, this should find a spot on many bookshelves.
(Because of its accessibility, I recommend it for high school students as well as adults. Children as young as fourteen will find much to interest them.)
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10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Funny, informative and interesting, November 17, 2000
My day job is news editor for Science Daily, Discovery Channel's science news show. One of the our hosts is noted science writer and broadcaster Jay Ingram, who has a new book, The Barmaid's Brain. As someone who works with Jay every day, I'm sure my reaction to reading the book will be similar to that of anyone who watches the show regularly ... "Jay has a sense of humour????"
Who knew?
Truth be told, this is a delightful book. It's clear, and written in a very accessible style. More importantly, it presents a fascinating range of subjects ... everything from perpetual motion machines to Joan of Arc. It's a good synthesis of contemporary thought on a wide variety of topics. And perhaps most refreshingly, Ingram doesn't hesitate to shrug when he doesn't know the answer. Sometimes, as with his explanation of the aquatic ape hypothesis, he presents the information and says there just isn't enough information to make a reasonable judgement. Other times he'll say which answer seems more likely, but never tries to present it as the only possible answer.
In an age of quick fixes and "instant experts", it's comforting to be reminded that we sometimes don't know. We might think we know. We might be pretty sure we know. But ultimately, even an expert's judgement is often just a best guess. And that's something we could all stand to be reminded of. www.exn.ca/printedmatter
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5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Fun science, February 13, 2001
Accessible, lively and wide-ranging, Jay Ingram's twenty-one tales from the edges of science delves succinctly into an array of scientific oddities and mysteries from the source of Joan of Arc's voices and the Salem Witch phenomenon to the ingenious construction of the antlion's ambush pit and why sickle cell anemia confers evolutionary advantage.
A science writer ("The Science of Everyday Life," "The Burning House") and Discovery Channel host, Ingram has collected his personal favorites and organized them into five sections: Human Behavior, Curiosities of Life, Science and History, Natural Battles, How Things Work.
Why is that the barmaid routinely performs prodigious feats of memory yet misperceives the level of liquid in a tilted glass far more often than the average Joe (literally - the average Jane's perception is better than the barmaid's but not as good as Joe's)? Why does the moth fly to light? Something to do with navigating by moon, probably but then why is light lure stronger than sex? When is a cowbird egg in a cacique nest a good thing? Answer: when there are no bees and wasps nests around.
Then there's "Consumed by Learning" in which trained flatworms, chopped and fed to untrained flatworms, were able to pass on their knowledge. These results were greeted with such hoots of derision that the research was abandoned - leaving the question.
How about the sedentary British bird that learned to open milk containers and somehow spread this knowledge gradually northwards? In a Canadian experiment twenty-five percent of chickadees figured it out on their own and were able to tutor the less able. Strangely though, when tutor birds were placed in a cage with no milk container, the bird in the next cage figured out how to open its container. Telepathy? (This is not the conclusion the scientists arrived at.)
Ingram revisits the 1960s theory, popularized by Elaine Morgan, that human hairlessness, bipedalism, nose shape, tears, etc., indicate that "Homo Aquaticus" became a creature of the ocean shallows for a few million years. Pooh-poohed but not disproved.
He looks into Archimedes' war machines, the doomed quest for perpetual motion, the anatomy of laughter, a scary viral predator whose aggressive perfection is, thankfully, confined to bacteria. Presenting various theories with their pros and cons, he outlines a range of experiments and counter experiments and doesn't hesitate to digress when it's called for. He touches on the personalities and politics of science and keeps his quirky sense of humor at the fore.
Knowledge of science is not necessary but neither does it get in the way of enjoyment. Ingram's topics have been the subjects of whole books and for those whose curiosity is aroused, he provides a bibliography (no index).
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