Category Archives: science

A human is a messy receipe

Posted on August 24, 2017 by smellincoffee

“There is an important distinction between a blueprint and a recipe. A blueprint is a detailed, point-for-point specification of some end product like a house or a car. One diagnostic feature of a blueprint is that it is reversible. Give … Continue reading →

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Astrophysics for People in a Hurry

Posted on May 7, 2017 by smellincoffee

Astrophysics for People in a Hurry© 2017 Neil deGrasse Tyson200 pages Astrophysics for People in a Hurry is exactly what it says on the tin, a brief cosmological primer that presents the basics of cosmology, explains the ways we are … Continue reading →

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Garbology

Posted on February 15, 2017 by smellincoffee

Garbology :Our Dirty Love Affair with Trash© 2012 Edward Humes288 pages Readers who are passionate about garbage — a description which includes sanitation workers, victims of SimCity, and ecologists, I assume — will find no shortage of books on the … Continue reading →

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The Future of the Mind

Posted on February 5, 2017 by smellincoffee

The Future of the Mind: the Scientific Quest to Understand, Enhance, and Empower the Mind© 2014 Michio Kaku400 pages In The Future of the Mind, physicist Michio Kaku talks with psychologists and neurologists like V.S. Ramachandran (Phantoms in the Brain, … Continue reading →

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A Whirligig Tour of the Beautiful Basics of Science

Posted on January 31, 2017 by smellincoffee

The Canon: A whirligig Tour of the Beautiful Basics of Science© 2007 Natalie Angier293 pages Science is amazing! Why is so much of the writing about it so lame?   Natalie Angier’s The Canon first reviews the principles of scientific thinking … Continue reading →

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Looking ahead & some also-reads

Posted on January 31, 2017 by smellincoffee

I intentionally launched this year off with some fun reading, so we’re off to a good start and there’s more on the way.  Yesterday Amazon held a flash sale for science books, and I picked up a few relatively recent … Continue reading →

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Sapiens

Posted on December 7, 2016 by smellincoffee

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind443 pages© 2014  Yuval Noah Harari In Sapiens, Yuval Harari presents a natural history of the human race from its flowering across Eurasia to a worried reflection on the prospects of of technohumanism. The book’s … Continue reading →

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Week of Enchantment: Nerd on Pilgrimage

Posted on October 14, 2016 by smellincoffee

I left Las Cruces in the early morning, joining the interstate with no problem at all. This was,  I realized with a sigh, my last Epic Drive.  At some point today I would arrive in Albuquerque, and from there I … Continue reading →

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TBR: And Then There was One

Posted on July 12, 2016 by smellincoffee

Dear readers,  we approach the end for the To be Read Takedown Challenge! Richard Francis’ Domesticated: Evolution in a Man-Made World proved disappointing, not because of the quality of content but the focus thereof.  Although Domesticated sells itself as a … Continue reading →

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10% Human

Posted on July 11, 2016 by smellincoffee

10% Human: How Your Body’s Microbes Hold the Key to Health and Happiness© 2015 Alanna Collen336 pages Walt Whitman wasn’t thinking of bacteria when he mused — “I am large, I contain multitudes” — but Alanna Collen could have gotten … Continue reading →

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