Oh yeah - "Your Inner Fish" Neil Shubin [Book Review]

[cybermule]

Popular science books I either love or hate. Often the author is so patronising I want to kill him, or writes like a complete boring old fart and gives literate scientists a bad name. This book is good, though. Any intelligent person with a reasonable interest in genetics could get a lot out of it, and it was well written and engaging with only the minimum of bad jokes. Go for it, if the subject matter interests you.

Plus, any book that tells you how to extract DNA using only kitchen implements does get an extra bonus star from me :)

Comments

[quercus.livejournal.com]

I read that a couple of months ago and it didn't really grab me. It was well done, but somehow there just wasn't enough in it.

What I'd really enjoyed (and read shortly before) was Nick Lane's Life Ascending: The Ten Great Inventions of Evolution. This really does line the creationist "What did evolution ever do for us?" arguments up one-by-one and clubs them with a bat. I like it so much I then bought his Power, Sex, Suicide: Mitochondria and the meaning of life (but still haven't read it).

[quercus.livejournal.com]

You might also find this site, and this talk, of interest
http://www.ted.com/talks/bonnie_bassler_on_how_bacteria_communicate.html

(It's one of those "So this is why TB-L bothered to invent the intawebs" sort of sites)

[cybermule.livejournal.com]

Ah - how cool :) Coincidentally, I was spying on someone's powerpoint presentation on the same subject while reading the reviewed book on the train.

[quercus.livejournal.com]

I sat there hoping to again meet The Fundie I'd once sat next too previously...

[cybermule.livejournal.com]

Ah - ok. I thought it was a little thin, but then it's hard to extrapolate when you actually studied the subject. That book looks good - I'm quite fond of texts that do my arguments for me, as I get both validation and not having to vaguely grope for the right words :)