Tag Archives: science

The Life of Birds

Posted on May 23, 2010 by smellincoffee

The Life of Birds © 1998 Sir David Attenborough 320 pages As I drove home from the library last week, I watched a beautiful white bird soar above the highway for several minutes. As it passed close by overhead, I … Continue reading →

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The Trials of Life

Posted on May 5, 2010 by smellincoffee

The Trials of Life: a Natural History of Animal Behavior© 1990 Sir David Attenborough320 pages Following up on last week’s The Private Life of Plants, I enjoyed another of Attenborough’s books documenting the extraordinary natural world: this with a focus … Continue reading →

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The Private Life of Plants

Posted on April 28, 2010 by smellincoffee

The Private Life of Plants © 1995 David Attenborough 320 pages I spend a little time every week contemplating my home library’s eviscerated science section, hoping against hope to find some interesting volume amid the remains. Last week, picking through … Continue reading →

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Lost Discoveries

Posted on March 24, 2010 by smellincoffee

Lost Discoveries: the Ancient Roots of Modern Science — from the Babylonians to the Maya© 2002 Dick Teresi453 I spotted this while collecting books for a paper on the emergence of Renaissance science, and it looked so interesting that I … Continue reading →

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It’s Raining Frogs and Fishes!

Posted on March 11, 2010 by smellincoffee

It’s Raining Frogs and Fishes: Four Seasons of Natural Phenomena and Oddities of the Sky© 1992 Jerry Dennis; illustrations by Glenn Wolff323 pages It’s Raining Frogs and Fishes is a collection of nearly forty essays on the many mysteious of … Continue reading →

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The Greatest Show on Earth

Posted on November 5, 2009 by smellincoffee

The Greatest Show on Earth: the Evidence for Evolution© Richard Dawkins 2009 470 pages 2009 is the “Year of Darwin”, giving us nice round anniversaries for both Charles Darwins’ birth and the publication of his most famous work, The Origin … Continue reading →

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The Cosmic Connection

Posted on October 28, 2009 by smellincoffee

The Cosmic Connection: An Extraterrestrial Perspective© 1973 Carl Sagan273 pages Carl Sagan penned The Cosmic Connection in the interests of communicating his own exhilaration at the human exploration of space. He begins by expressing his appreciating for being alive when … Continue reading →

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Beautiful Minds

Posted on October 5, 2009 by smellincoffee

Beautiful Minds: The Parallel Lives of Great Apes and Dolphins © 2008 Maddalena Bearzi, Craig B. Stanford 368 pages As this was a personal reccommendation from a friend, I opted to read it before continuuing in Saylor’s Roma sub Rosa … Continue reading →

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Death by Black Hole

Posted on September 10, 2009 by smellincoffee

Death by Black Hole and Other Cosmic Quandries© 2007 Neil deGrasse Tyson384 pages Although I’ve encountered Dr. Tyson before — chiefly through interviews in podcasts like The Skeptic’s Guide to the Universe and the Humanist Network News — I’ve never … Continue reading →

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The Demon-Haunted World

Posted on September 6, 2009 by smellincoffee

The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark © 1995 Carl Sagan 457 pages Carl Sagan’s Demon-Haunted World is a classic of the modern skeptical movement. I initially began to phrase that “will be considered”, but quickly changed … Continue reading →

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