Christina's Thoughts

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24. Foundation by Isaac Asimov
25. Foundation and Empire by Isaac Asimov
26. Second Foundation by Isaac Asimov
27. Foundation's Edge by Isaac Asimov
28. Foundation and Earth by Isaac Asimov

It's been a long time since I read the Foundation series. And I have to say that, upon rereading them, I was rather less impressed than in the past. Oh, there are some interesting ideas, certainly. Extraordinarily weak characterizations, but interesting ideas.

The idea of Psychohistory is an interesting one. And I think it is, in general, quite plausible. We can already make some crude statistical predictions of human behavior. I think it's reasonable to suppose that one could predict the behavior of entire worlds and interstellar unions, at least in the short run. However, several problems exist in Asimov's idea of psychohistory:

( lengthy rant )

Also, another rant, more general to a lot of sci-fi, but present also in the Foundation series. The idea of a single galactic language. There are thousands of languages on Earth, including dozens with tens or hundreds of millions of speakers. I cannot believe that only one language would leave Earth. Speakers of many languages would leave Earth, especially once space travel became relatively cheap. The first wave would probably only have a few major languages, such as English, Spanish, Chinese, maybe a few other European languages. But other languages would follow. The earliest planets would almost certainly be multilingual. In the early days of space exploration, there would be few suitable planets available for colonization. And the first colonies would be small in number. I cannot believe that the first colonists on a planet would be able to stake a meaningful claim to the entire planet. There would be a number of independent settlements. Later on, as space travel became easier and the number of colony worlds grew, you might be able to have colonies staking a claim to their entire planet, so later worlds might be monolingual, but different worlds would have different languages. Some would speak English, some Spanish, some Chinese (probably several different Chinese languages), Japanese, Hindi, Swahili, German, Italian, Romanian, Russian, Arabic, Farsi, Urdu, and a whole host of other languages. Even small languages like Icelandic might find worlds of their own. Furthermore, even if somehow only a single language left Earth (all but one language had died out by that point? Don't believe it. I could buy the number of languages declining to a few dozen, but not to one), over the 8,000 years that had been said to have passed between the origins of hyperspatial travel and the rise of the Galacti Empire (and the 12,000 years between the rise and fall of the same), there'd be plenty of time for each world to evolve its own language. The Indo-European family of languages, which includes languages as distinct as English, French, Russian, Farsi, Hindi, is descended from a common ancestor generally believed to have been spoken somewhere around 6,000-10,000 years ago. 20,000 years would be enough to turn a single language into descendants unrecognizable as being related to each other (at least, under current linguistic understanding; but given both intermixing of languages and the obscuring tendencies of linguistic changes, I suspect that it would never be possible to reconstruct a family stretching back that far). There could be no "Galactic". At best, there'd be a dominant language, such as "Trantorian", known and used throughout the Empire, in the same way as English is often used in our world by non-native speakers. Even Star Wars did better than Foundation in that regards! C-3PO was said to be "fluent in over six million forms of communication"!

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12. As Nature Made Him: The Boy Who Was Raised As A Girl by John Colapinto

As Nature Made Him is about the famous "John/Joan" case. It began in 1967, when a botched circumcision caused an 8-month-old baby boy named Bruce Reimer to lose his penis. At the time, phalloplasties were still very crude, and they were unable to construct a useable penis. Seeking help for their son, his parents met Dr. John Money, who believed, as was commonly held at the time, that gender identity was purely learned, a result of early childhood experiences. He told them that they would be able to perform sex reassignment surgery on their infant son, turning him into a girl, and that, if they raised her as a girl, she would grow up to be a well-adjusted woman. Desperate for help, they agreed, and Bruce became Brenda. As it turned out, Bruce was part of a set of identical twins, with a twin brother named Brian.

Early reports claimed that the operation was a success and that Brenda had taken to a female identity very well. At most, there were admissions of "tomboyish" behavior, but it was claimed that she was happy as a girl.

The truth, however, was that she did not take to the female identity, and from an early age realized that something was wrong. She identified more with boys than with girls, despite her parents' best efforts to encourage femininity. The surgery performed in infancy was only the first phase, and a follow-up would be required later in life, during adolescence. In addition, beginning at 12, she was to be put on hormones to induce feminine puberty. She consistently refused to even discuss the surgery (which was explained to her as simply a need to correct a birth defect; at that point, she had no idea that she'd been born a girl) and initially tried to reject the hormones as well.

Eventually, at age 14, her parents told her the truth. She subsequently rejected a female identity, and began living as male, completely refusing the hormones (and later receiving a masectomy to remove the breasts that had begun to develop, and testosterone injections to remasculinze his body). He didn't like the name he'd been originally given, and chose to go with either Joe or David, letting his parents choose between the two.

The case disappeared from the publicity after that. David just wanted to live his life quietly without publicity, and Dr. Money didn't want to admit that the supposed greatest evidence for his belief in learned gender identity was, in fact, a complete refution of that belief. It wasn't until the 1990s that the story first came out, at the time, using the pseudonyms "Joan" and "John" for Brenda and David. A few years after that, David agreed to come out publically with full details about what he'd gone through, particularly after he'd learned that his case had been use to justify other attempts to feminize boys with damaged genitals, which had also failed to instill a female identity.

It's a fascinating, powerful book. Very sad story.

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11. Parasite Rex: Inside the Bizarre World of Nature's Most Dangerous Creatures by Carl Zimmer

Parasite Rex discusses parastism in a wide variety of organisms, both of hosts and of parasites, mostly multicellular, but also some unicellular organisms. The book discusses the various tactics used by parasites to evade their hosts' immune systems and to modify their hosts to fit their needs, including behavioral alterations (such as Toxoplasma making rats less fearful, and thus more easily caught by cats, which are thus themselves infected), as well as adaptations by hosts to attempt to control or evade parasites. It's a fascinating read. Parasites have some of the coolest adaptations in the natural world. In a way, they're really the champions of evolution, displaying far greater sophistication than many free-living creatures. Indeed, species of parasites are believed to outnumber species of free-living organisms by some four to one, there are even parasites that parasitize other parasites!

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4. Deaf President Now!: The 1988 Revolution at Gaullaudet University by John B. Christensen and Sharon N. Barnartt
5. Deaf in America: Voices From a Culture by Carol Padden and Tom Humphries
6. The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood

Deaf President Now!

This was a description of the Deaf President Now riots in March, 1988 at Gallaudet University, a university in Washington, DC for Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing students, the oldest such institution in the United States. Wikipedia has a decent summary of it. The book goes into great detail about both the lead-up to the riots, the actions taken by some students and various Deaf individuals outside of the school to promote the idea of a Deaf President, and the actions taken to protest the choice of Elizabeth Zinser as President. It details both how the riots gained support among the student body and outsiders, and the actions taken by both sides, as well as the reasons for its success. It's an intriguing story and, in an amusing coincidence, I happened to start it on the 21st anniversary of the beginning of the protests, and ended it on the anniversary of the end!

Deaf in America
This book, written by two Deaf individuals, is a description of Deaf American culture and history. One of the authors, Padden, has also written a number of linguistic analyses of ASL. They describe various subdivisions among the D/deaf. They talk about, for example, how Deaf culture is transmitted from generation to generation, "learning to be Deaf" as the first chapter puts it. They also discuss differences between Deaf and hearing cultures, and confronts assumptions made by hearing people about the Deaf. They describe changes since the late 20th century in the relationship between Deaf and hearing cultures

The Handmaid's Tale
Very interesting book. Rather unusual style, but quite engrossing. Read it in about 4 days. Amusingly, on Twitter, when I mentioned starting it, I got two replies. The first "ooh, that's one of my favorites! enjoy :)" the second "ugh I strongly dislike that book @_@" Strong responses both ways. :D Anyhoo, I found it quite interesting. Rather frightening. A bit implausible at parts, but otherwise very good.

1. Apocryphal Tales by Karel Čapek
2. The Earth After Us: What Legacy Will Humans Leave in the Rocks? by Jan Zalasiewicz
3. Life As We Do Not Know It: The NASA Search For (and Synthesis of) Alien Life by Peter Ward

Life As We Do Not Know It is, as the title implies, a discussion on non-Earth-like life, especially as it may exist in the Solar System. The author starts with a discussion on just what Life is, and then goes on to describe specifically Earth life. He then goes on to discuss various theories about the origin of life on Earth, and their relevance to possible alien life. Finally, having covered those topics, he goes on to describe possible non-Earth-like forms of life, including both alternate forms of carbon-based life and the possibility of silicon-based life (which he thinks may be possible under certain conditions).

In chapter 6, he discusses the possibility of "alien" life on Earth. That is, life that falls outside of the standard DNA-based life, including the possibility of cellular RNA life. It is thought by many that the first forms of life would've been RNA-based, and it's possible that some such forms still exist. RNA viruses exist, and he argues that viruses are living, but he also discusses the possibility of autonomous RNA-based cellular life, and the difficulty we'd have in detecting such life. He erects a new taxonomic level above the domain called a "dominion", of which he argues there are two known on Earth, "Terroan" (DNA-based life) and Ribosa (RNA-based life). Later in the book, he proposes a second, even higher, level, the "Arborea" (from Latin "arbor", tree), which would be all life descended from a single origin. As all life on Earth is believed to have a common ancestor, that category would have no practical use at present, there being only a single known Arborea, the Terra arborea, but if we discover life on other worlds, then we might well need to establish multiple arboreas.

After having set out these basics, he then goes on to discuss the possilibity of life on various planets, starting with Mercury (which he rules out), Venus (life may be possible in the upper clouds, but surface conditions are unlikely to permit any form of life), the Moon (again, no liklihood of actual life, but there's a good possibility of fossil bacteria from Earth and other world from material ejected in asteroid collissions), Mars (quite likely, and good evidence suggestive of some kind of microbial life; he also considers the possibility that there might be fossils of multicellular life from the early days of Mars), Jupiter's moon Europa (possible, but he thinks the chances are low), Saturn's moon Titan (he considers this highly probable, and argues that Titan may even have multiple forms of life, but carbon-based and silicon-based in different environments), and finally Neptune's moon Triton (possible, but not a huge possibility)

He also discusses the fear that we may have already infected other planets with our own bacteria. Personally, I don't think that's much of a concern. It seems to me that if native organisms had evolved on those other planets, they'd be far better adapted to local conditions, and Earth life couldn't possibly hope to compete. Only if those planets were dead could Earth life succeed. And in that event, contamination wouldn't be a problem, since we wouldn't be harming other life.

It's a very interesting book, and I would highly recommend it to anyone interested in astrobiology. He focuses entirely on microbial life, since there's very little chance of multicellular life in our solar system outside of Earth (and any life outside of our solar system would remain unaccessible to us in our lifetimes; barring the aliens themselves visiting, of course).

1. Apocryphal Tales by Karel Čapek
2. The Earth After Us: What Legacy Will Humans Leave in the Rocks? by Jan Zalasiewicz

The Earth After Us explores the concept of what fossil evidence will be left of humanity 100 million years from now. It describes how a hypothetical alien race, or, alternately, a future sapient species, would, in exploring the Earth's past, come to discover the existence of humanity. In doing so, he also provides an education about how paleontologists reconstruct the past, and about geological processes that shape the Earth.

He describes the effects that humanity would leave in the fossil record. The wide-spread mass extinctions, the otherwise-inexplicable movements of plants and animals across oceans, and so forth, imagining these beings slowly working out the remarkable hypothesis that there may have been an intelligent civilization at the time of the Sixth Extinction. Finally, he describes the potential for fossilization of actual humans and human artificats, the so-called "Urban Strata", and the various fossilized signs of human actions, such as mine shafts and oil excavation and the like. He describes the places that would have the best chance of preservation (coastal areas, especially in river deltas), and considers what would be likely to survive and in what form, and what they would be able to deduce about humans. Very little of details. They could get some idea of our appearance from preserved skeletons - and the common practice of burial would ensure quite a few fossilized remains. One could only imagine the excitement when the first cemetary was excavated! And potentially the confusion, if this hypothetical species did not have any similar practice. Why were the bodies arranged in such neat rows and so well-preserved? Clearly they must've been rapidly buried, but how did the burial preserve them in such uniform positions? At any rate, there is a good deal that they could not deduce. There would, for example, be no evidence that would allow them to deduce that humans were largely hairless, and, as our skeletons would make our mammalian nature clear, it is reasonable to assume that they would conclude that we were covered with fur, especially since some of our settlements were in areas that would've been quite cold during our existence. It is possible, he noted, that some statues might survive. If so, they would gain some better understanding of our appearance, depending on how well-preserved those statues were. There might even be a few specimens with soft tissue preserved. Very few of those, however. Standard burial practices, while they'd preserve the skeleton beautifully, do not prevent decay of soft tissues. Some very general behavioral patterns could be deduced. It would be found that our population was clustered in a few large settlements, which would indicate a highly-social species. They'd also find, at least in some sites, a fairly small number of juvenile skeletons, indicating a high degree of parental investment. Though, there would be some confusion, given that the sites they found would be spread out over various regions of Earth and various times, and some times and places have far greater child mortality. They'd know that we must've had some efficient form of transportation, given the wide extent of our species and the uniformity of certain plants and animals, but it's unlikely that they'd find any evidence of what kind of vehicles we used. There would be many skeletons with healed fractures and crippling injuries which would also indicate a highly-social species that took care of its wounded. On the other hand, they'd also be likely to find mass graves from wars and genocides which would show intraspecies violence.

It's unlikely that they would be able to deduce the significance of most of our buildings. After all, as he pointed out, we're not even sure what structures like Stonehenge were made for, and that's only a few millennia ago and built by our own species, whose psychology we understand! How much more difficulty would a completely alien race have in determining the significance of the distorted remains of our buildings! They'd be able to deduce that, for example, a stadium probably had some purpose as a form of bringing large groups of people together, but they'd have no way of knowing that it was for purposes of entertainment as opposed to, say, education or government or religion (assuming that they even understood the concept of religion ...)

He also touched briefly on the artifacts left on the Moon. Those would still be in nearly-pristine condition 100 million years from now. However, the chances of our hypothetical aliens stumbling upon them would be extraordinarily tiny, even if they decided to look.

Our evolutionary history would also be a mystery to them. Most non-human primates exist in areas that have very poor prospects for fossilization. It's unlikely that any evidence of those primates would survive 100 million years into the future. Thus, we'd seem to have appeared from nowhere. There might even initially be speculation that we had not been native to Earth at all, though further examination would reveal too much similarity to other mammals for that theory to be considered plausible for long.

A new year, a new book list!

1. Apocryphal Tales by Karel Čapek

Apocryphal Tales is a collection of short stories relating to various events in history and literature, as well as a collection of "Would-Be Tales" and a page of "Fables".

The main section, the Apocryphal Tales themselves, are reinterpretations of other stories. For example, The Ten Righteous relates to the story of Soddom and Gomorrah in the Bible, particularly to the part just before the angels visit Soddom, where Abraham negotiates with God to get him to agree to spare the cities if he could find ten righteous people. In the story, Abraham and Sarah are trying to come up with a list of ten righteous people, and each one the other strikes down for various reasons. The Five Loaves is a look at the Miracle of the Loaves and Fishes, where Jesus is said to have fed a crowd of 5,000 people with just 5 loaves of bread and two fishes, which miraculously multiplied to enough to feed 5,000 people, with twelve basketfulls of leftovers. The story is told from the perspective of a baker, who talks about how, yes, Jesus has some great ideas. All that love your neighbor stuff, giving to the poor, and so on, that's great stuff. He was strongly tempted to follow Jesus. Until he remembers that miracle. What did Jesus have against the bakers, that he's depriving them of a livlihood? Why, if that sort of thing became common, bakers would be out of a job! Lazarus tells the story of Lazarus and his sisters Mary and Martha learning of Jesus' arrest. Mary insists that they should go to Jerusalem, because she is sure that Jesus is planning some great miracle there. Lazarus wants to go, but ever since he died and Jesus brought him back (or, "that time I was really ill and Jesus healed me" - he's very uneasy talking about his death), he just couldn't bring himself to risking his health, and there's such a nasty wind up there in Jerusalem ...

Not all of the stories are biblical. Hamlet, Prince of Denmark is a "missing scene" from Hamlet, in which Hamlet, after having put on the play, decides that he really likes acting, and maybe he'll become an actor instead. Or maybe he'll write plays. Then he goes on to consider other possible careers. Maybe he'll become a great orator, rouse the people to great things. But he can't be all of those, so which should he be? Romeo and Juliet is about a young Englishman visiting Verona, who comes across a priest who knew the story firsthand. Only, he learns that Shakespeare took quite a few liberties. Romeo didn't kill Paris, he only wounded him. And he didn't poison himself, he ran away in fear of retaliation. Juliet did take poison, but she didn't die. Instead, she ended up marrying Paris and having 8 children.

The Fables are one-liners attributed to various historical figures. For example, Alexander the Great: My goal is achieved. I have made India a part of Macedonia for all time and Bulletin from Herod's Headquarters: Our regiments have scored a brilliant victory over the infants of Bethlehem

Would-Be Tales are a collection of very-short-stories, from 2-8 pages in length.

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47. The Neptune File: A Story of Astronomical Rivalry and the Pioneers of Planet Hunting by Tom Standage

The Neptune File is about the discovery of Neptune. It begins with a chapter describing the discovery of Uranus, in 1781, which is interesting in itself. Herschel, the discoverer of Uranus, proposed the name Georgium Sidius (Georgian Star) after King George III. In Britain, it came to be referred to as the Georgian Planet or simply the Georgian. The French proposed that the new planet be named after its discoverer, feeling that mythological names were obsolete in modern times. It was an Austrian astronomer who gave it the name Uranus, which was quickly adopted everywhere outside of Britain and France. Of course, those two nations eventually adopted the name Uranus as well. There had been many proposals in mythology for the name, including, interestingly enough, Neptune. Among the names proposed were Cybele (wife of Saturn), Hypercronius ("Above Saturn"), Minerva (goddess of wisdom) and Oceanus (the mythical river once thought to encircle the world - proposed as the new planet was at the edge of the then-known Solar System). Personally, I think Minerva would've had a nice ring to it (as well as avoiding the jokes about "your anus"). Another name, proposed by the German astronomer Georg Lichtenberg, who was well-known as a satirist in addition to his astronomy, was Astrea, the goddess of justice, reasoning that, as she had so manifestly failed to establish her reign on Earth, perhaps she had fled in anger to the outermost reaches of the solar system.

Herschel had been a musician with a strong amateur interest in astronomy. He had taught himself how to make telescopes, and had, without his even knowing it, become the best maker of telescopes at the time. In his description of the discovery of the new planet, he casually mentioned lenses with a power of 2,010 times - this at a time when Britain's Royal Observatory's strongest telescope could only magnify 270 times! This astonished professional astronomers, who thought that he must have been lying about his telescopes, until they saw for themselves that he was right. He was propelled to fame by his discovery and given a pension by the King of £200 a year - about £18,000 in today's money, which allowed him to retire from music and pursue his astronomical passion full-time. He also earned quite a good amount of money building telescopes. His sister assisted him in his observations, and later became a noteworthy astronomer on her own.

Careful comparisons of earlier records of observations found that Uranus had been observed a number of times in the past (the earliest being 1690) without its nature being realised, having been noted as a simple star.

Uranus' orbit was calculated, but it soon began to accumulate relatively large errors. No one could calculate out an orbit that would accurately predict its position - any attempt began to deviate after a few years. In 1820, a new table was produced of Uranus' predicted positions which was based solely on observations since 1781 - those earlier observations being declared inaccurate, since they couldn't be fit in with the calculations. Those predictions, too, began to accumulate errors after a few years.

Attempts were made to figure out why Uranus was behaving so oddly. Some even thought that perhaps gravity worked differently so far away. Several astronomers suggested that perhaps there was yet another planet out there affecting Uranus' orbit, just as, for example, calculations of Jupiter and Saturn's orbits must take into account each other's gravity.

In the 1840's, in Britain, a mathemetician named John Couch Adams calculated out an orbit for a hypothetical trans-Uranian planet, but did not publish his findings. He submitted them to the Royal Observatory, but, due to a number of miscommunications and the skepticism of the Director, George Airy, about the outer planet hypothesis, it was not initially acted upon. Shortly thereafter, in France, a man by the name of Urbain Jean-Joseph Le Verrier approached the same problem, from a different angle. He, however, did publish his findings. He published a paper that showed that the discrepencies in Uranus' orbit could be the result of an unseen planet, and produced a rough estimate of its position, promising a more precise figure in a later paper, as he was still working on the problem.

In Britain, Airy read Le Verrier's paper and saw that his approximation was very close to Adams' prediction. This convinced him that Adams had been on the right track after all. However, he did not openly publish this. Instead, he secretly sent the information to the observatory at Cambridge University. Both Airy and Adams had studied at Cambridge, and Airy wanted Cambridge to have credit, not only for producing the person who first theorized the new planet, but also for first observing it. Realizing that they'd have a head start on the rest of the world (since they were the only ones with Adams' precise calculation, and Le Verrier had not yet produced his own figures), they began searching the sky around the area that Adams predicted the planet would be, in 1846.

Le Verrier published his findings, and several observatories on the Continent began searching. As it turns out, Neptune was observed at Cambridge on July 30 and August 4. However, the Cambridge astronomers only checked some of their observations from those two dates, planning to analyze their observations later, and so they missed the new planet!

On September 23, 1846, an observatory in Berlin found a faint star in a spot that their star charts did not show any star very close to Le Verrier's (and Adams') prediction. The next night, that "star" had moved, confirming that it was, in fact, the theorized planet. The Cambridge astronomers had been beaten.

The French, and Le Verrier in particular, proposed that the new planet be named Le Verrier (and, at the same time, they brought back the by-then forgotten name Herschel for Uranus), arguing that new planets (and asteroids) should be named after their discoverers, just as comets commonly were. Other names were, of course, proposed by other groups, including Neptune. The astronomer who first observed it suggested Janus, the god of borders, as it was at the outer edge of the solar system. That name was rejected on the basis that they had no way of knowing whether there were further planets, and if there were, then the name would be invalidated.

Airy soon afterwards published Adams' earlier predictions, arguing that Adams, rather than Le Verrier, should have the credit. This sparked a heated debate between the two nations. The French felt that the British were attempting to rob them of the honor of discovering the planet. Those involved in the British effort were made to report to Parliament on their failure to publish the predictions and to find the planet. Especially when it was revealed that the planet had actually been observed almost two months before the Germans found it! Eventually, Adams and Le Verrier were given co-credit for predicting the planet.

After enough observations had been made of Neptune to calculate out its orbit, it was found to orbit a bit closer, and to be a bit less massive, then Adams and Le Verrier had thought (during the period that they had had data for, the effects of the predicted orbit and the actual orbit were very similar). As they had for Uranus, earlier observations were examined to see if Neptune had ever been observed before its discovery (by looking at observations of the areas where Neptune would've been). The earliest observation found was May 8 and May 10, 1795 (just 14 years after Uranus' discovery), by the French astronomer Michel Lalande. Amazingly enough, Lalande had not only observed Neptune on those two dates, but had noted its movement. But rather than realizing what he'd found, he assumed that he'd made an error on the May 8 observation! But, perhaps it's just as well that he hadn't, as it produced the opportunity for the then-unprecedented idea of discovering a planet without seeing it, just by calculations.

The final chapters discuss the short-lived hypothesis of an intra-Mercurial planet to explain peculiarities in Mercury's orbit (which was later found to be a product of General Relativity) and the Planet X hypothesis, and then, finally, the use of the same basic idea to discover extrasolar planets

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46. Nine Fairy Tales by Karel Čapek And One More Thrown In For Good Measure (translated by Dagmar Herrmann)

Nine Fairy Tales is a whimsical collection of modern fairy tales by the early 20th century Czech author Karel Čapek, who is best known for the play Rossum's Universal Robots. Unlike that one, however, this is far more light-hearted. The "One More Thrown In For Good Measure" of the subtitle was written by his brother, Josef Čapek. Several of the stories take place in modern times, and are rather amusing in the juxtaposition of everyday events with fairy-tale elements such as elves and fairies and hydras and wizards and so forth. For example, The Great Policeman Tale is about a group of policemen discussing various cases they'd had, involving various supernatural beings, but discusses in a very matter-of-fact manner. Then there's a bit of fourth-wall-breaking in The Great Doctor's Tale where the lumberjack character is thinking to himself If this weren't in a fairy tale, I'd say it's against the rules to hack off a fellow's noodle for no good reason. It's an act of the devil that got me into a fairy tale, for sure. In real life, nothing like this would happen to me!

It's a very entertaining collection of stories.

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43. The Age of American Unreason by Susan Jacoby
44. Your Inner Fish: A Journey Into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body by Neil Shubin

Interesting books, both. The Age of American Unreason follows the rise of anti-intellectualism in contemporary America, on both sides of the political spectrum, and also describes earlier such periods, but argues that the present phase is more serious. Your Inner Fish is a short description of how the human body, as it is now, has been shaped by evolution. It mostly focuses on vertebrate evolution, but also deals with the advent of multicellularity. The subtitle is a bit misleading as it doesn't really talk about our unicellular past, and is mostly focused on the past 375 million years. Still, it's quite an interesting book.

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40. The Missionary Position: Mother Theresa in Theory and Practice by Christopher Hitchens
41. A Magnificent Catastrophe: The Tumultuous Election of 1800, America's First Presidential Campaign by Edward J. Larson
42. It Can't Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis

It Can't Happen Here is a novel written in 1935, at the height of the Great Depression, when there was active speculation as to whether the US would follow nations like Germany and Italy into fascism. The title is derived from the common sentiment about that possibility. "It can't happen here! Not in the US!"

In the book, a fictional senator from New England named Berzelius "Buzz" Windrip gains the Democratic nomination from FDR in 1936 and goes on to become President. Windrip rose on a populist platform, promising everyone in the nation at least $2,000/year ($30,000 in today's money) and other dramatic economic promises (which, of course, were never fulfilled), as well as promising to crack down on crime, cultural decadence, etc., and employing racism and, to a lesser extent, anti-semetism to propel him to the Presidency. Upon becoming President, he immediately set out to implement a Fascist/Nazi-style dictatorship, complete with concentration camps (mind you, this was at a time when most Americans thought stories of concentration camps were exaggerated or lies, or simply didn't care what was happening in Europe). Within a year, America is little better off than Nazi Germany. His M.M.'s ("Minute Men", the SS equivalent) patrol the nation, arresting dissidents. Recalling American history, the Minute Men's uniforms were based on the Union uniforms during the Civil War, and the name derives from the Revolutionary War citizen-soldiers. Berzelius builds up the military, eventually entering a war with Mexico, which involved propoganda very similar to Nazi Germany's invasion of Poland (alleged attacks by Mexican soldiers on border towns, for example), rather foresightful, considering that it was written four years prior to that invasion. It was a very good read.

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38. Grammar, Gesture, and Meaning in American Sign Language by Scott K. Lidell

Anin-depth description of ASL linguistics, and some thoughts on linguistics in general. It's a bit technical. I found it quite interesting.

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37. Podkayne of Mars by Robert A. Heinlein

Podkayne of Mars is one of Heinlein's books written for younger readers. It is about a teenage girl from Mars, related to a high-ranking senator of the Martian Republic. She and her brother tag along with him on a trip to Venus. It's a fast read, quite entertaining and very light reading. Podkayne (or "Poddy" as she goes by) is a delightful character, while her brother's a bit of a sociopath.

Current Music: Jill Sobule - Too Cool to Fall in Love

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35. The Book of Name Signs: Naming in American Sign Language by Samuel J. Supalla
36. Significant Gestures: A History of American Sign Language by John Tabak

The Book of Name Signs, as the name implies, is about the custom of name-signs in ASL. It discusses the two systems used, and briefly describes the history of it, and has an appendix with several hundred name-signs of the arbitrary name-sign system.

Significant Gestures describes the history of ASL and the difficulties faced by the language and the Deaf in the 19th and 20th centuries. It also gives some linguistic analysis of ASL.

Both were interesting books.

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34. Toolmaker Koan by John Mcloughlin

This had some interesting ideas. It's a sci-fi novel, copyright 1988. One thing that always amazes me is how much the fall of the Soviet Union took people by surprise. Toolmaker Koan takes place in the 2030's, starting in 2031, 13 years after the "One-Day War" (a brief nuclear exchange) between the United States and the Soviet Union. In the aftermath of this war, two major alliances were formed, an American-led Columbian Alliance, covering the Americas, and the Soviet-led United People's Democratic Republics of Eurasia and Africa, which covered the Eastern Hemisphere. So, not only did the author not forsee the fall of the Soviet Union - just before it happened! - but he thought they'd become much more powerful! All of Eurasia, Africa, and Australia were under Soviet control.

However, that's a relatively minor part of the plot, as it takes place almost entirely in space, with the details of Earth politics unimportant.

A Soviet probe sent out to the Oort Cloud discovers an alien probe travelling towards Earth. The Soviet immediately send out a ship to investigate. The Americans also learned of this contact, and sent their own ship, amidst a growing threat of war back home. Contact is made, and a rather interesting alien artificial intelligence is met.

This intelligence is extremely old, and has been exploring the universe for a long time, having discovered, on its own, some unexplained method of instantaneous travel. In its explorations, it has learned of what it calls the "toolmaker koan" or "toolmaker conundrum", a dilemma wherein tool-making cultures inevitably destroy themselves just as they reach space-travel. The intelligence is hoping to assist at least one species in avoiding self-destruction, which is why it visited Earth.

In addition, there are representatives of another species, who had also destroyed themselves long ago in the same process.

It's a rather interesting novel, although there are a number of weaknesses. In particular, while I certainly agree that technological species have the capacity to destroy themselves, and that it probably has happened numerous times, I disagree with the notion that it's inevitable. There's also a number of unexplained and, quite frankly, highly implausible, characteristics of the other self-destructing alien race.

Over all, however, I'd say it's a worthwhile novel.

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33. The Last Human: A Guide to Twenty-Two Species of Extinct Humans by G.J. Sawyer and Viktor Deak

The Last Human is a collection of descriptions of various extinct hominid species, from Sahelanthropus tchadensis, which may have been a common ancestor of humans and chimps, or possibly one of the earliest members of the lineage that lead to humans, up through Neanderthals and Homo florensis and, despite the subtitle, Homo sapiens. Each section describes the fossil finds, where they were found, the climate of the area and other life in the area, and what they would've looked like, and what can be deducted about their diet and behavior. It's filled with gorgeous images of reconstructions of these various species.

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32. I Am Legend by Richard Matheson

The edition I read contained not only the namesake novella, but a number of other short stories. I read a few of the stories, but couldn't get into them. I Am Legend, however, was a very good story. There's very little similarity between the book and the movie. The main character has the same name, he is the only "normal" human left in the city, with vampire-like creatures all around him. That's about it, however. In the book, for example, Robert Neville was simply killing the vampires. They were also far more similar to the traditional vampires of myth than in the movie. It also took place in Los Angeles, rather than New York. Not sure why they switched coasts. In the book, Neville had no connection with the original plague, other than losing his wife and daughter to it. It's not clear, in fact, what he originally did.

( spoilers )

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28. The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins (30th anniversary edition)
29. The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins
30. Coming To Life: How Genes Drive Development by Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard
31. Variable Star by Robert A. Heinlein and Spider Robinson

( The God Delusion )

( Variable Star )

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26. The Dragon Seekers by Christopher McGowan

The Dragon Seekers, subtitled How an Extraordinary Circle of Fossilists Discovered the Dinosaurs and Paved the Way for Darwin, describes the lives and work of several 19th century "fossilists", the predecessors of today's paleontologists. He talks mostly about Mary Anning, Thomas Hawkins, William Buckland, Gideon Mantell, and Richard Owen.

Mary Anning was an interesting figure. She was a woman of low social status, the daughter of poor laborers, who were Dissenters (that is, not members of the dominant Church of England). Despite the handicaps of being a woman, being poor, and of her religious background, she came to contribute a great deal to the developing science. At the age of just 12, she discovered the first pleisiosaur, and made a number of other important discoveries. She had begun, like her family and many other locals, collecting fossils to sell to rich tourists, but she was more than just a collector. She studied the fossils, read everything she could about other fossils and about zoology, and even dissected living relatives of the fossils she was finding to understand more about them. In her time, however, she did not get anywhere near the credit she deserved. Wealthy male paleontologists would publish papers and give speeches about the new discoveries, without mentioning her, or, at most, only in indirect references such as "the proprietor of the fossil". She was never allowed to join the Geological Society, although she was given a posthumous honorary membership a few years after her death, and her name was rarely mentioned in those meetings, although her importance was recognized, and she did have some fame in her time. But she never had any formal academic honors, nor did she ever make money from books that were published on her finds. The only money she ever made was in selling her finds. As one friend of hers reported "She says the world has used her ill ... these men of learning have sucked her brains, and made a great deal by publishing workds, of which she furnished the contents, while she derived none of the advantages"

Thomas Hawkins was a rather eccentric man, who was infamous for adding to his fossils to give them the appearance of completeness, while obscuring which parts were original and which parts were added. He became the center of a major scandal over fossils he'd sold to a London museum which were found to be artificially enhanced, a scandal which found its way into Parliamentary hearings.

William Buckland was a conservative, who continued to support Catastrophism, long after it had been discredited. Catastrophism was the belief that the world had been visited by repeated catastrophes (of which Noah's flood was the most recent), massive disasters that wiped out life and were followed by new Creations, a theory devised to explain the presence of extinct animals, and the lack of modern animals in earlier eras, in an attempt to reconcile the Genesis account with the fossil evidence. He refused to accept that humans had ever coexisted with extinct animals, since that would imply that God's creations could fail. Humans belonged the the most recent creation. He was an eccentric, and a popular lecturer at Oxford. In his later years, however, his mind began to fade, and his eccentricity grew into outright madness.

Gideon Mantell was, along with his fossiling, a social reformer and a medical doctor, and a rather progressive person for his time, but a man with a tragic family life. One of his daughters died at the young age of 14, and his wife and other children left him, although he did later reconcile with his children, but never his wife.

Finally, Richard Owen. Owen was a major figure in zoology. He dissected countless animals, comparing their anatomies, and comparing them to the fossils he found. He was the first to realize that the Megalosaurus,Iguanodon, and Hylaeosaurus were part of a new type of reptiles, which he named Dinosauria. He pointed out a number of major anatomical differences between them and present-day reptiles, and produced rather remarkable estimates of the full sizes of those creatures, which, at that point, had only been discovered as partial skeletons, striking down the overestimates that previous paleontologists had given them, by naively scaling up from modern-day reptiles. Owen was a friend of Charles Darwin, and provided many of the key pieces of evidence that Darwin would later use in his Origin of the Species (although Owen had no knowledge of Darwin's work until it was published). It is ironic that Owen's work proved so important for Darwin's, as Owen was bitterly opposed to Darwin's theories. The publication of Origin destroyed his friendship with Darwin, and to his death (in 1892), he remained steadfastly opposed to Darwin's theories.

( previous books )
25. Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides

Middlesex is about an individual with a rare genetic condition called 5 Alpha Reductase Deficiency, a rare intersex condition. It can manifest in a variety of ways, but in the case of the character in the book, the individual, while having XY chromosomes, is born with a female external appearance. However, at puberty, the individual changes, and develops into a male body.

The story alternates between the present-day life of the narrator and the story of his family, beginning with his grandparents, living in a small Greek village in Turkey. After the chaos of the Greco-Turkish War, they flee to America, eventually having two children, a son and a daughter. The son later marries his second cousin, and they have two children, a son, and a daughter, the daughter named Calliope, the narrator. It then follows Callie's life (while still alternating with Cal's present-day life), her childhood and adolescence, and the confusion that comes in adolescence when she does not develop normally, and the discovery of her condition, and her, and her family's, reaction. Callie is taken to a doctor who specializes in gender identity and intersex conditions. The doctor believes that Callie should be given hormones and surgery to make her a normal-appearing woman, but Callie, by this point, has come to identify as male, and runs off, becoming Cal. Eventually, the family is reunited.

I rather liked it. Last night, I stayed up until 6 in the morning reading it. The format of the story is also quite interesting, alternating between first person, restricted third person, and omniscient third person styles.

( previous books )
24. Under a Green Sky: Global Warming, the Mass Extinctions of the Past, and What They Can Tell Us About Our Future by Peter D. Ward

Under a Green Sky discusses several mass extinctions of the past, including the Permian-Triassic Extinction, which are believed to have been triggered by global warming, caused, in those cases, by increased volcanism. He describes the rather hellish conditions that were associated with these extinctions, and also goes into great detail about how scientists figured out these events, the evidence that was gathered, and how they were analyzed, and the controversies over those explanations, and, indeed, the initial controversies over the very existence of sudden mass extinctions, as opposed to the old belief in gradual extinctions.

He also describes how the world is presently headed in this direction once again, thanks to our own, anthropogenic, global warming.

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23. Wonderful Life by Stephen Jay Gould

Wonderful Life is a description of the Burgess Shale fauna, from the early part of the Cambrian Explosion. Gould describes some of the bizarre creatures found in that period such as the 5-eyed Opabina (which, as he puts it, "might grace the set of a science-fiction film, if considerably enlarged beyond its actual length of 43-70 mm") and the mysterious, and suitably-named, Hallucigenia, which we aren't even sure which end is front and which end is back, or even which is the top and which is the bottom!

Gould does more than simply describe these creatures, though. He also describes the history of their interpretations, starting from their discoverer, Wolcott's, attempts to identify them as simply primitive representatives of current animals, and why he made that error. Further investigation has shown that many of them do not fit in any of the current phyla, and those that do often do not fit in any of the subphyla of said phyla. It is a fascinating story of scientific investigation that lead to this radical reinterpretation.

Gould argues that the Burgess Shale fauna demonstrates that major groups often have maximal diversity of forms early in their history, and then those are reduced to a smaller number, with further diversity increasing only within those narrow bounds. The explosion of phyla in the early Cambrian, followed by the reduction to only 30 or so for most of the post-Cambrian world, being a perfect example. Gould's argument is that the creatures who survive are not necessarily superior, but, to a considerable extent, luck. That, if some alien biologist had visited Earth 540 million years ago, they could not have predicted which groups would survive and which would die. There would be no way of predicting that the rare Pikaia would survive to give rise to the dominant large-animal group (the chordates - that is, us) while the rather common and elegant Marella would die out with no descendants, as did the giant (relative to its time - about 2-3 feet in length, at a time when most animals were no more than 3 inches or so) and fiercesome Anamolocaris.

He argues for a much greater role for chance and historical contingency than is commonly accepted (to some extent, his ideas have become more common since he wrote this book).

The book is written with a minimum of technical jargon and should be of interest to any intelligent layman with an interest in the issues covered.

( previous books )
22. Us and Them: Understanding Your Tribal Mind by David Berreby

Us and Them discusses how humans divide people up into various groups, how we see people as fitting into such categories as, say, White, Black, Christian, Jewish, rich, poor, gay, straight, American, French, mother, father, etc., and the effects of these categorizations. He discusses experiments that show how easy it is to create a sense of "Usness" in a random group of people, and the methods used by rulers through the ages to shape the Us/Them distinction, for example, attempts to make a group of people permanently "them", to prevent their subjects from empathizing with an oppressed group, and, likewise, the attempts by stigmatized groups to break out of those limitations. He also discusses how perceptions of group identity can shape behavior. For example, one experiment found that Asian-American women asked questions relating to race did better on a math test than those asked questions relating to gender! Their performance was influenced by the stereotypes relating to, respectively, Asians (good at math) and women (bad at math).

His thesis is that this human-kind perception has both good and bad aspects. On the one hand, a sense of being part of a group can encourage one to live up to the ideals of that group. You can try to be a good mother, a good father, a good citizen, a good Christian, etc. On the other hand, it can also create hostility to those seen as Them. It also, as he points out, was probably a crucial development in human evolution, allowing us to form groupings that were too large for personal knowledge of fellow members to work. By allowing symbols to define groups, by allowing groups to be formed by other than personal experience, it allowed humans to create tribes and cities and nations and the like, groups who contain far too many members for anyone to know more than a small portion of.

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21. We by Yevgeny Zamyatin, translated by Mirra Ginsburg

We is a dystopian satire, written in 1922, in the early days of the Soviet Union. It is said to have been an influence on 1984 and Brave New World, but it is, I think, superior to those works. It is far less dark than 1984, with a wonderfully satirical feel to it, as opposed to the preachiness of 1984.

We takes place 1,000 years after the establishment of the One State, a worldwide nation, run on the basis of pure logic and mathematical precision. It is written as a diary by the narrator, D-503, chief builder of the spacecraft Integral. The Integral is to bring happiness to alien worlds who may still be living in the "primitive condition of freedom". By way of evangelizing to any aliens who may be discovered, all citizens of the One State who are capable of doing so are ordered to produce writings exalting the joys of the One State.

D-503 begins innocently, enthusiastically, believing in the perfection of the One State and the carefully-regimented, unfree, society. However, he encounters a woman, I-330, who causes him to question his society. Gradually he loses faith in the One State, descending - as he sees it - into sickness, into madness. He develops a sense of individuality, a soul.

Despite his growing discontent, he continues to see the problem as being within himself, not with the One State.

Amidst this discontent, which is shared by a growing number of citizens of the One State, a bold new discovery is announced - State Science has found the location of the imagination in the brain, and has developed an operation which will remove the imagination, removing the last barrier to "happiness".

( previous books )
20. The Mask of Benevolence: Disabling the Deaf community by Harlan Lane

The Mask of Benevolence was a fascinating book about the way that programs devised and run by hearing people for the Deaf often end up causing more harm. He talks about such issues as oralism, total communication, cochlear implants, and so forth, as well as the prejudices and stereotypes that have been attached to the Deaf by the Hearing majority.