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The Best American Science And Nature Writing 2010 Paperback – September 28, 2010
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Freeman Dyson, renowned physicist and public intellectual, edits this year’s volume of the finest science and nature writing.
- Print length416 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- Publication dateSeptember 28, 2010
- Dimensions5.51 x 1.04 x 8.11 inches
- ISBN-109780547327846
- ISBN-13978-0547327846
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The chilling story of the abduction of two teenagers, their escape, and the dark secrets that, years later, bring them back to the scene of the crime. | Learn more
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Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
About the Author
TIM FOLGER is a contributing editor at Discover and writes about science for several magazines. He lives in New Mexico.
Product details
- ASIN : 0547327846
- Publisher : Mariner Books; Original edition (September 28, 2010)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 416 pages
- ISBN-10 : 9780547327846
- ISBN-13 : 978-0547327846
- Item Weight : 13 ounces
- Dimensions : 5.51 x 1.04 x 8.11 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #2,038,506 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #831 in Science Essays & Commentary (Books)
- #1,970 in Nature Writing & Essays
- #2,618 in American Fiction Anthologies
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* "The Missions of Astronomy" by Steven Weinberg - Weinberg is a Nobel Prize winner and particle physics expert (currently at UT Austin) who decided he was not current in the history of science - so he decided to teach a course in it. This article looks to be adapted from one of his lectures. He starts out explaining how the ancients used the gnomon - similar to but not the same as a sundial. A gnomon is a vertical pole on a flat, level patch of ground open to the sun's rays. Daily charting of its shadow by Greeks led to "a discovery around 430 BC that was to trouble astronomers for two thousand years: the four seasons, whose beginnings and endings are precisely marked by the solstices and equinoxes, have slightly different lengths. This ruled out the possibility that the sun travels around the earth (or the earth travels around the sun) with constant velocity in a circle." It was not until the 17th century that Kepler explained that the earth's orbit is not a circle but an ellipse. A scientific reading of "Odyssey" reveals that Homer could accurately navigate by reading the stars and Weinberg explains how he did it. On a ship in the Mediterranean a sea captain explained to Weinberg how ship navigators used celestial methods until only recently - now replaced by GPS. The captain lamented that the younger captains don't know how to use a sextant and a chronometer.
But astronomy also experienced an overestimation of its usefulness. Much of the royal support for compiling tables of astronomical data in the medieval and early modern periods was motivated by widespread reliance on astrology. Many scientists, including Ptolemy and Newton were heavily into astrology. Weinberg closes by taking a swipe at NASA's wasteful program of manned spaceflight - cherished by NASA's funding and PR department but terribly cost-inefficient compared to unmanned projects. "All the satellites like Hubble or COBE or WMAP or Planck that have made possible the recent progress in cosmology have been unmanned."
* "A Life of its Own" by Michael Specter - "Scientists have been manipulating genes for decades - inserting, deleting, changing them in various microbes has become a routine function in thousands of labs." Now they are attempting to manufacture drugs and chemicals from entirely synthetic genes, analogous to a software designer rearranging loops of code for a new purpose. Artemisinin is key in treating malaria but the herb that creates it is difficult to produce by cultivation. Jay Keasling et al inserted genes from 3 organisms into E. coli with the idea of making that bacteria produce artemisinin. Within a decade his company figured out how to make the bacteria increase its production by a factor of a million, bring a course of treatment from $10 to $1. The scientific response has been reverential but Keasling is baffled by opposition to what should soon become the world's most reliable source of cheap artemisinin. Opposition comes from farmers of the herb and from the same groups that call genetically engineered food "Frankenfood."
Specter discusses the ethics of the era of biological engineering - peppered with suggestions that the E coli that makes a malarial drug could also make biofuels or (substitute your favorite product). To be brought up to date on this subject, this fascinating article is hard to beat.
* "The Sixth Extinction" by Elizabeth Kolbert - Of the many species that have existed on earth over 99% have disappeared. There have been at least 20 mass extinctions on earth with 5 stand outs known as the "Big Five" - but extinction has been a contested concept. Until recently the view that "God created species fixed for all eternity" prevailed. Then in 1812 Frenchman Cuvier wrote an essay featuring the absence of mastodons, whose bones littered two continents, saying, "Life on this earth has often been disturbed by dreadful events....Innumerable living creatures have been victims of these catastrophes." The English edition included an introduction suggesting Cuvier's idea proved Noah's flood. Darwin embraced the idea of extinctions but didn't believe they were caused by catastrophes. Kolbert says, "Mass extinctions strike down the fit and the unfit at once....it takes millions of years for life to recover and when it does it generally has a new cast of characters....It is now generally agreed among biologists that another mass extinction is under way."
Extinctions of large mammals and birds have repeatedly happened shortly after the arrival of humans. This has happened in North America, South America, New Zealand, Australia, Madagascar, Hawaii, and many other locations. It happens as a result of hunting, burning, farming, logging, building, water diversion, atmospheric pollution - in general, habitat destruction. As Kolbert painstakingly demonstrates, it is now happening to frogs. They are dying of a fungus spread by doctors. A related fungus appears to be decimating the bat population.
Somewhere toward the end of the article, Kolbert tells the familiar story of the Yucatan peninsula meteor that killed off dinosaurs 65 million years ago. For this Sixth Extinction though, the perpetrator walks upright.
* "The Believer" by Andres Corsello - Memoir about Elon Musk, the genius who was reading 8-10 hours a day by the time he was 10 years old. He learned how to program software on his own and sold his first company, a media software company for $307 Million. Next he developed a company that morphed into Paypal that he sold to Ebay for $1.5 billion. He's the CEO of Tesla, maker of the first all-electric sports car. He's the chairman and controlling shareholder of SolarCity, turning the company into one of the nation's biggest installer of solar panels. He created the company SpaceX, whose short-term goal is to commercialize orbital rocketry but whose long-term goal is a mission to Mars and beyond. He is the vision guy, the money guy, the marketing guy, the engineering guy and the software guy all wrapped into one - not meaning he does all these things singlehandedly but he can talk shop with the hundreds of experts of all types he employs. The reason he is included by Dyson is probably this: They both believe humanity on earth will end - if not by our own self annihilation, by the explosion of a caldera or a direct hit by a huge meteor. He feels his life's work is extending the lifespan of human life itself.
"One Giant Leap to Nowhere" by Tom Wolfe - It is almost a concensus view among cosmologists that manned spaceflight is far too expensive and that unmanned robotic spaceflight is the way to go. Dyson disagrees as does this author, both of whom believe Congress lacks the proper vision necessary for what should be NASA's real purpose - manned spaceflight.
"Cosmic Vision" by Timothy Ferris - A fascinating survey of the telescopes around the world that have illuminated our understanding of the universe. The largest ones have mirrors up to 10 meters in diameter, but "tomorrow's enormous telescopes will do as much in one night as today's do in a year."
* "Seeking New Earths" by Timothy Ferris - Nowadays, new planets orbiting stars other than our own are found every week. The goal is to find one in the "goldilocks zone" - one just far enough from its sun to be the right temperature. Of course, it also has to have other characteristics that would make it habitable for life "as we know it." Ferris says this is like trying to find a "firefly in a fireworks display" or "listening for a cricket in a tornado," but as techniques and telescopes improve, there probably will be billions to choose from.
* "Don't!" by Jonah Lehrer - By testing 4 year olds' ability to delay gratification (postpone eating 1 marshmallow in order to get 2), psychologists can predict, with a high degree of certainty, that the kids who can hold out for the second marshmallow will do better in life. Furthermore, for those who can't delay their gratification - they can be trained. Turns out it's not just about marshmallows - it's also about saving for retirement. The author believes learning self-control is nothing if not early cognitive training. "We should give marshmallows to every kindergartner," he says. "We should say, `You see this marshmallow? You don't have to eat it. You can wait. Here's how'"
* "Out of the Past" by Kathlene McGowan - "Instead of being a perfect movie of the past...memory is more like a shifting collage, a narrative spun out of scraps and constructed anew whenever recollection takes place...reactivating a memory destabilizes it, putting it back into a flexible, vulnerable state." Called reconsolidation, "old memory is actually changed as it is recalled." Put another way, memory and imagination are not that different and even happen in the same circuits of the brain.
* "Brain Games" by John Colapinto - "In a specialty [behavioral neurology] that today relies chiefly on the power of multi-million dollar imaging machines to peer deep inside the brain, [Vilayanur] Ramachandran is known for his low-tech methods, which often involves little more than interviews with patients and a few hands-on tests - an approach that he traces to his medical education in India in the 70's when expensive diagnostic machines were scarce." His first paper was published in "Nature" when he was 20 and in medical school. With only his powers of observation and a simple test, using his fellow students as subjects, he discovered some previously unknown features about stereoscopic vision. With four aquariums, some coral reef flounders, and testing he devised, he "effectively ended the debate on flounder camouflage." His best known work involves his work with neuroplasticity and "mirror therapy" with phantom limb pain, which afflicts up to 90% of amputees. Ending with speculations about schizophrenia and autism, this is a captivating article.
"The Alpha Accipiter" by Gustave Axelson - Northern goshawks hunt by executing surgical strikes in thick woods - weaving among the trees, flying at speeds up to fifty-five miles an hour. They lose their acrobatic flight advantage beyond the forest edge.
"Flight of the Kuaka" by Don Stap - The bar-tailed godwit takes the longest nonstop migratory flight documented for any bird. "The flight is nonstop, no food, no water, no sleep as we know it, flying for eight days." In the days preceding this migration from Alaska to New Zealand, the bird gorges itself on marine invertebrates and doubles its weight. Its intestine and gizzard shrink, leaving more room to store fat. The scientists that implanted radio transmitters and followed the flights could barely believe it. They thought the birds did it following the coastline with frequent stops.
* "Modern Darwins" by Matt Ridley - Although Darwin had to guess on many of the particulars of evolution, he was remarkably accurate. Today's scientists don't have to guess - evidence of each living organism's pathway to its current state of being is scattered throughout its DNA - "They consult genetic scripture." The evolution of change turns out not to be due to gene changes but in the regulation of these genes - switches at either end of the genes that turn them on or off. The core genes that control basic metabolic processes are remarkably constant whether you're an earthworm or a Nobel Prize winner. This discovery "overturned a long-held notion that the acquisition of limbs required a radical evolutionary event....the genetic machinery necessary to make limbs was already present in fins....it involved the redeployment of old genetic recipes in new ways."
* "The Superior Civilization" by Tim Flannery - This is a book review on Edward O. Wilson's and Bert Holldobler's brilliant book about ants. An ant colony is a "superorganism" whose individual ants and groups of ants function somewhat like the cells and organs in our bodies to create a single functional unit. Coordination within the unit "occurs through ant communication systems that are extraordinarily sophisticated and are the equivalent of the human nervous system." Here's a unique bit of ant trivia: "....exploring ants count their steps to determine where they are in relation to home. This remarkable ability was discovered by researchers who lengthened the legs of ants by attaching stilts to them. The stilt-walking ants, they observed, became lost on their way home to the nest at a distance proportionate to the length of their stilts."
"Still Blue" by Kenneth Brower - A mature blue whale is the largest life entity that has ever existed on earth and weighs more than the entire NFL. It was almost hunted to extinction until it gained international protection in the 60's. Our author accompanies a group of scientists who tag and track the blue whales who spend their winter near Costa Rica.
"The Lazarus Effect" by Jane Goodall - The Lord Howe Island stick insect is about the size of a large cigar. It existed on only one island on earth until 1918 when a ship brought rats to the island. The rats thought they were delicious. Thought to be extinct since 1920, a group of rock climbers found some specimens that managed to escape to a single bush on a volcanic rock 14 miles from Howe's island. They painstakingly captured enough to replenish the species in several zoos around the world. In her second story an American woman discovered and rescued a very small and beautiful breed of horse from obscurity and extinction in Iran. After extensive testing these horses proved to be Caspian horses, the ancestors of the Arabian horse.
"Darwin's First Clues" by David Quammen - It is a widely accepted view that Darwin, after his voyage on the "Beagle," developed his theory of evolution over the next decade or so. Quammen makes the case that he formulated much of his theory during the voyage. In the process, we are treated to a view of his journey that concentrates less on the Galapagos and more on South America.
"All You Can Eat" by Jim Carrier - Shrimp are "a perfect protein delivery system." Fat and happy shrimpers made a killing until the 80's when catches flattened worldwide. Eventually, the supply was replenished but not from the sea. Shrimp farms took over but proved to be incredibly dirty and harmful to the environment. As a result, shrimp farms are banished to 3rd world countries whose inhabitants would get rid of them if they only could - meanwhile, their biggest client is Red Lobster restaurant.
"A Formula For Disaster" by Felix Salmon - In 2000, Wall Street "quant" (mathematical guru specializing in creating new financial products) David Li came up with a breakthrough formula that "made it possible for traders to sell vast quantities of new securities, expanding financial markets to unimaginable levels. Eventually his formula was instrumental in causing the unfathomable losses that brought the world financial system to its knees.
"Not So Silent Spring" by Dawn Stover - A blackbird was terrorizing the neighborhood, imitating ambulance sirens, car alarms, and sounds of the city. Beluga whales are changing their calls or switching them to new frequencies because underwater noise from ships have increased about tenfold. Some species that are unable to adapt are suffering precipitous declines in population.
* "The Catastrophist" by Elizabeth Kolbert - The author bolsters the case for human-induced climate change, featuring the work of James Hansen - sometimes called the "father of global warming." This article is perfect for a short primer on the problem and the difficult politics making solutions challenging. There is broad agreement among scientists that coal represents the most serious threat but there is no aspect the author leaves out. The United States stands alone in having a major political party that refuses to acknowledge that humans are the cause of this problem and must provide the solution if there is to be one.
"Scraping Bottom" by Robert Kunzig - The oil sands industry is transforming the economy and the ecology of Northeastern Alberta, Canada. Because of Alberta's tremendous oil reserves, the United States now gets more oil from Canada than from any other nation. Though it's destroying their environment, even the Indians have mixed feelings - it's making them employed and rich. I've been expecting a good article about this topic for years and this is it.
* "Purpose-Driven Life" by Brian Boyd - Early man was quite superstitious and many of the superstitions were retained as the major religions took form. In recent centuries, science found natural causes for earthly events and many of the gods retreated to gaps left unexplained, especially when Darwin's theory suggested that humans, too, could have emerged without supernatural help. Some have thought that the idea of evolution leaves mankind without meaning or purpose but our author disagrees. This is an excellent article, featuring the comment by Stephen J. Gould that if we could rewind and replay the tape of evolution, humans and human intelligence would not reappear.
"The Monkey and the Fish" by Phillip Gourevitch - When self-made American Millionaire Greg Carr was not yet forty he decided to devote the rest of his life to philanthropy - to causes he could pour himself into, body and soul. After a few fits and starts he settled on the preservation of what used to be one of the top safari parks in Africa: Gorongosa National Park at the southern tip of the Great Rift Valley in Mozambique. The title of this selections comes from a story (from the point of view of the indigenous villagers) that illustrates how difficult it is to salvage an ecostructure and still treat the indigenous peoples fairly: "A monkey was walking along a river and saw a fish in it. The monkey said, Look, that animal is under water, he'll drown, I'll save him. He snatched up the fish and in his hand the fish started to struggle. The monkey said, Look how happy he is. Of course, the fish died and the monkey said, Oh, what a pity. If I had only come sooner I would have saved this guy."
I have only a few more to comment on and will do so through edits shortly.
DB
The only drawback of this year's issue is the editor, Freeman J. Dyson. Sounding somewhat less adolescent than talk-radio, he welcomes the reader with a rant about what he calls the "orthodoxy" of "environmental alarmists". Startling, given Dyson is asserted to be one of the great minds of our time. One would have presumed he could read and study measured data - something talk-radio never heard of and wouldn't understand if they had.







