And if his name is familiar, it s because he created the mockumentaries Flock of Dodos and Sizzle, A

Death from the Skies! You may not know this, but I wrote a book. Nothing says holiday cheer like a trillion ton asteroid barreling down on the Earth at 45,000 kph. And it has a happy ending! The entire Universe dissolves.
Don t Be Such a Scientist This book, by Randy Olson, is a primer anchorage car rentals for how scientists and science-types should communicate with the public. As someone whose job it is to do that, I found it readable, funny, and of great use. I chuckled a lot reading it, seeing many people I know being described in its pages. Not specifically, of course, just in general.
At first I was thrown a bit by his comparison of science to Hollywood, but it soon became anchorage car rentals clear that the lessons Olson learned in Tinseltown really do need to translate to the way we talk about science, anchorage car rentals at least on TV and in movies. anchorage car rentals Books are still books, and blogs still blogs, but if we science supporters want to reach millions of people all at once, then we could do a lot worse than heed Olson s advice when we re on camera or in front of a microphone.
anchorage car rentals And if his name is familiar, it s because he created the mockumentaries Flock of Dodos and Sizzle, A Global Warming Comedy anchorage car rentals . If you ve seen those, you know what the book will be like! If you ve ever been in a conversation with someone and you ve tried to explain something scientific, this book is a good one for you.
Unscientific America Speaking of communicating science to the public, my Hive Overmind co-bloggers Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum wrote Unscientific America as a call to arms for scientists everywhere. This book doesn t complain about how the public doesn t get science, it actually has advice good advice for how people can take up this charge.
It s aimed at science anchorage car rentals lovers, but also at scientists themselves. Chris and Sheril anchorage car rentals are careful to show just where things have gone wrong: a public with a short attention span, media all too willing to make that worse (and to screw up science every chance they get, through ignorance or greed), antiscience promoters, but also scientists themselves. I see a whole lot of scientists trying to communicate science, but honestly not that many are good at it. That should be self-evident, even to scientists themselves; some are theorists, some experimentalists, some field workers, and so on; the point being we all have our areas of expertise. Not everyone is good in front of a camera, and we need to find the ones who are and groom them.
Chris and Sheril took a lot of heat from scientists about this claim, most of which I found ridiculous and unfair. Scientists need to accept our share of the burden of blame for where we are in America anchorage car rentals right now we do own part of it, folks and we need to shoulder that blame and do something about it. Also, there is a section in the book taking the so-called New Atheists to task for fanning the religious flames in America. Although the situation is pretty complicated, I think there is truth to what Chris and Sheril wrote, and I also think that this part of the book should be read by skeptics and atheists very carefully. I won t go into details anchorage car rentals here I ll save it for a lengthier post sometime but I think what they ve written is salient and should be considered by everyone.
Atheist s Guide to Christmas anchorage car rentals Speaking of which, this is a good book for the non-believer in your circle of friends and family. I ll simply point you to my previous exhortations about it and remind you that all proceeds go to the UK HIV charity Terrence Higgins Trust , a secular group that provides information, advice, and support for HIV positive people in the UK.
Why Does E=mc 2 Regular readers know about my friend Brian Cox, a particle physicist with CERN who has dastardly plans to destroy the Earth using the LHC is charming, funny, and an excellent spokesman for science. This book is a wonderful explanation of relativity, one of the best I ve read. It was inspired by his awesome wife Gia , who asked him the title question one day.
You ll need to think while reading this; it s not a breezy beach thriller. But I found it to be a very enjoyable and fascinating primer on, exactly, why energy equals mass times the speed of light squared. It explains things in ways that hadn t occurred to me before, and I found myself nodding my head as I suddenly understood anchorage car rentals concepts that had always bugged me (like, why do massless particles travel at the speed of light, and just why is that the ultimate speed limit of the Universe?). It s a great book, and I highly recommend it.
7th Son J. C. Hutchins is a science fiction anchorage car rentals writer anchorage car rentals and podcaster. He s among the new group of writers who serialize their fiction and give it away as audiocasts. Once an audience is built up, they can then turn their serialization into book form. I won t give away the plot of the book, but it s an engaging read involving some fun science fiction concepts. My only complaint is that he needs to write the sequel yesterday. Too bad it s not a time travel book!
Every year I review the books I read that year and send out the one I liked best. This year I didnt get much reading done, but I did manage to get in Simon Singhs book. So I sent out 20 copies of Trick or Treatment.
Right! Trick or Treatment is great. So is Ben Goldacre s Bad Science . I have a big pile of books I could ve recommended, but I had to draw the line somewhere. anchorage car rentals Writing book reviews is hard, and whenever I do I get emails asking me to review more. I love to read (and get free books!) but the pressure to write a positive review is something I prefer to avoid, especially when it comes to books from people I know. Still, there s no lack of great skeptic and science books to read in front of a cozy fire.
Not science, but IMHO a very interesting book about woo and politics is : Idiot America : how stupidity became a virtue in the Land of the Free / by Charles P. Pierce. He looks at both the history of people following gut feelings or beliefs rather than logical and skeptical techniques, and how that leads to dumbing down .
Archaeology is a science, too. Hint. And of course, a little fiction now and then is a good thing. Hint hint. And books make terrific new year s presents, too. Hint hint hint. Or Ground Hog s day. Hint click name hint.
While this is a really good selection, I m going to disagree with your pick of Unscientific America. The authors hash out personal vendettas with atheists and during their promotional tour of the book made a spectacle of trying to sic the NCSE on PZ Myers, Jerry Coyne and Richard Dawkins anchorage car rentals . No to mention that they hold scientists just as responsible for decline in scientific education as they do the cranks and quacks by quoting anchorage car rentals anti-intellectual commentary.
And their big solution? It s exactly what we try to do in schools today but fail because of short-sighted, uneducated politicos who rule school districts and see kids as product to be moved by meeting state test standards. Funny enough, they re not mentioned in the book even though they re one of the biggest anchorage car rentals contributors to scientific illiteracy today.
why din t you recomend bad astronomy its a must read I disagree with your two friends I think Bibleical Fundamentists have faned Religous flames more then Athiests have we who are religous have our share of blame .Did they mention that in many movies scientists are often the bad guys? I meen I ve seen movies were some mad scientist kidnaps people ,locks them up in his or hers lab ,and performes hidous anchorage car rentals experments on them. I think that this gives science a bad name and why many in America are t interested in science
I still don t understand why that book is called There s Probably anchorage car rentals No God if it s supposed to be the atheist s guide to Christmas. anchorage car rentals Either there s definitely anchorage car rentals no God, or it s an agnostic s guide to Christmas.
semantics. There are almost no atheists (I said almost) who claim there is definitely no god. These days agnosticism is quickly anchorage car rentals meaning that they may or may not beleive in a god and if they do they dont know which one.
Thanks for the advice, Phil. The book by Brian Cox seems interesting I like that kind. My 21 year old college son recently anchorage car rentals bought a hardcopy version of Death . Guess we raised him right. Besides, I wasn t about to give him mine!
Not really Bad Astronomy material, but Richard Dawkins book, The Greatest Show on Earth is quite readable for those who are new to biology and evolution. It isn t a polemic rant, it isn t as heavy as An Ancestor s Tale , but it is an informative book even for a biologist anchorage car rentals such as myself who has been on both sides of the evolution-creation debate. anchorage car rentals If you were turned off by Dawkins last book, you should give this book a try. He s reaching out, trying to educate and is not being insulting.
btw, I know I have The First Four Billion Years, and Why Evolution is True showing up under the tree tomorrow. Sorry Phil, there doesn t appear to be any Death from the Skies under the tree if I keep bumping the tree looking at presents I may get Death from the Skies when the tree falls on me and punctures me with various anchorage car rentals icicle ornaments.
I just bought the 7th Son on your recommendation, and read the first chapter, which starts with a 4 year old kid assassinating the president. I look forward to reading it (when I finish Stephen King s the Dome , the idea for which I think he got from the Simpsons Movie ). Death from the Skies ? Dunno. Is it any good?
I listened anchorage car rentals to that, In A Sunburned Country , and Notes From a Small Island on a couple of of 25 hour road trips I made last summer and all three books made the heat and dirt just a bit more bearable.
Late to the party here on books because I ve been out with the family, but I think that the Don t Be Such a Scientist book is an interesting choice. One of the reasons I also took a degree anchorage car rentals in journalism in addition to studying astronomy was so I could communicate astronomy but just as importantly, anchorage car rentals help other scientists communicate it, too. I see a younger generation of scientists coming up a bit more media savvy, but not always