Note: Since Goodreads only allows limited formatting, you can view a better-formatted version of this review at my personal site.

I picked this book up as part of a bargain deal at B&N on a bit of a whim. It's been awhile since I've sat down and read a book of essays, and I wanted to see what was up with the modern world of science.

Turns out, I'd already heard about a number of topics mentioned in this book, which isn't that surprising when you consider that even though the essays themselves were written in 2007, many of the events and discoveries they describe occurred earlier, sometimes many years so.

There were a few broad, recurring scientific themes among the essays, a few of which one might expect and others that might be less predictable. Of course, an essay sometimes contained more than one theme. Recurring themes include:

- Biology/Genetics: "Zonkeys Are Pretty Much My Favorite Animal," "Restoring America's Big, Wild Animals," "Our Biotech Future," "Malaria: Stopping a Global Killer," "The Selfless Gene," "Swingers," "Deadly Contact," "Darwin's Surprise"

- Anthropology/Primatology: "The Interpreter," "Untangling the Mystery of the Inca," "The Selfless Gene," "Swingers," "Science and Islam in Conflict," "First Churches of the Jesus Cult"

- Epidemiology: "Malaria: Stopping a Global Killer," "Children Are Diamonds," "Deadly Contact," "Darwin's Surprise," "Numbers Can Lie"

- Environmentalism: "Restoring America's Big, Wild Animals," "Malaria: Stopping a Global Killer," "Children Are Diamonds," "A Mighty Wind"

- Physics/Cosmology: "The Universe's Invisible Hand," "A Curious Attraction"

- Technology: "Our Biotech Future," "The Coming Robot Army," "The First Assassination of the Twenty-First Century," "Our Silver-Coated Future," "The Autumn of the Multitaskers," "How to Trick an Online Scammer into Carving a Computer out of Wood," "The CSI Effect," "Numbers Can Lie," "A Mighty Wind"

I don't have the space (or will...) to comment on each essay individually, so I will provide some brief thoughts only about the three I liked best and the three I liked least.
My Favorites:

"The Interpreter": I found this essay very engaging. It was well written, and the topic – a linguistic study of the language used by the Pirahã (pronounced pa-DEE-han for some inscrutable reason), an ancient tribe embedded deep in the Amazon forest of Brazil – was fascinating to me. Also, the fact that the protagonist of the story, Dan Everett, is a no-holds-barred Irish linguist who bucks academic tradition and lunges for the jugular of the generally accepted God of Linguisticism, Noam Chomsky, simply makes for a good story. I like too that the observations made are open: Everett, and the author, do not attempt to conclude how studying the Pirahã language ultimately will change our understanding of how language developed (and will continue to develop). Furthermore, Everett's passion and excitement are transparent in the narrative, and one almost feels ready to hop on a plane and join him in the remote jungle where he's built his life and livelihood.

"First Churches of the Jesus Cult": Early Christian church history has always fascinated me (though perhaps not quite as much as my friend Dave), and so some of my affinity for this article is perhaps preordained by the title. Once you get past the emotive framework bewailing the current state of Israel in conflict, this essay sheds an interesting light on the claims of the amount and severity of persecution experienced by early Christians. Basically, some evidence shows that Christian churches may have openly existed in locations that would seem to contradict such persecution claims, such as near Roman sentry stations. While there is some dispute about the date of these digs (which is significant because persecutions would necessarily be much less after Constantine declared Christianity the official state religion in the fourth century), it surfaces some interesting questions.

"The Autumn of the Multitaskers": At first blush, this might appear to be a lament of a luddite, or at least someone who wishes he had the gall to be a luddite. But the author makes some interesting points about the increasingly frenetic pace of technology and the waxing obsession with "multitasking" – which is one of those strange misnomers that everybody knows is inaccurate, but we all still use anyway. One of the more interesting sections of the essay is where the author considers the various metaphors that people have used to describe the human brain throughout the centuries, and hinges on the stunningly introspective question: "Would it be possible someday – through drugs, maybe, or esoteric Buddhism, or some profound, postapocalyptic languor – to stop coming up with ideas of what we are and then laboring to live up to them?"


My least favorites

"Children Are Diamonds": My dislike of this essay begins with it's narrative structure and ends with it's content. It apparently is intended to read like a doctor's journal, but staccato works best in beat poetry and drum solos and should stay out of the scientific essay. And, yeah, I get it already: There are sick kids in Africa and I should feel bad about it.

"A Bolt from the Blue": This essay begins with the story of a man who was struck by lightning and suddenly develops an affinity compulsion, and aptitude for playing piano. It then takes a look at similar cases and draws some parallels for people who have exhibited similar artistic tendencies well into adulthood. So far, so good. But then he starts talking like a psychologist, using words that normal people don't use, like "musicophilia." Where the epoxy met the catalyst for me was when the author said that there must be a neurological explanation, but he had no idea what it could possibly be. Not only did the article become more mundane and pedantic as it went on, it also became more ironical.

"A Mighty Wind": I quote the last paragraph: "I rant to myself that this is exactly why governments should step in and support responsible energy development: so that wayward, flawed sybarites such as myself don't have to make endless, irksome daily decisions when all we really want is a warm bed and a bowl of muesli. With a side of bacon. And a mug of hot imported coffee. Ja." I don't know if the author is being facetious or not (which equates to a big FAIL in my book), but it seems unlikely that he is given the treehugger's wet dream he describes as his vacation to Samsø, the Danish island that touts itself as "carbon negative." The author praises the use of government mandate and subsidy to achieve this monolithic effort and bitches to a bunch of Irish civil engineers he meets in his travels about why America (and the rest of the world) doesn't do the same. Of course he ignores some of the obvious problems with his utopia, such as the fact that government subsidies do not make anything "competitive" and they never can – if someting is "competitive" then it wouldn't need government subsidy in the first place. I have more to rant about on this one, but I'll leave it at what I've said already for now.



The other essays

Here's a broad general classification for the rest of the essays in the book, according to how much I liked them. Again, finding a story enjoyable or not doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the content.

Enjoyable:

"Zonkeys Are Pretty Much My Favorite Animal"
"The Universe's Invisible Hand"
"Untangling the MYstery of the Inca"
"The First Assassination of the Twenty-First Century"
"Our Silver-Coated Future"
"A Curious Attraction"
"Swingers"
"Science and Islam in Conflict"
"Deadly Contact"
"How to Trick an Online Scammer into Carving a Computer out of Wood"
"Darwin's Surprise"
"The CSI Effect"
"Numbers Can Lie"

Less enjoyable:

"Restoring America's Big, Wild Animals"
"Our Biotech Future"
"The Coming Robot Army"
"Malaria: Stopping a Global Killer"
"The Selfless Gene"

As the numbers show, I liked more of the stories than I disliked. And there were typically some small tidbits I was able to glean from the ones I didn't like. Overall, a decent read. ( )

A collection of mostly well written essays on every nerdy topic imaginable. Great for reading in snippets, and excellent for sparking curiosity about things like ligers, zonkeys, Mayan writing, the universe and much more. ( )

This is my 10th in the series. 2008 was an average year, though it will depend on your familiarity with the subjects. I tend to get most excited when learning new ideas or perspectives but most of the articles in this collection cover material I was previously familiar with. However some are well written they are sort of mini-classics. Four in particular stood out:

1. "The Interpreter" about linguist Dan Everett who is an interesting subject, the Amazon tribe is fascinating, the linguistic science curious, and the take-down of Chomsky delightful. A generous piece and probably the best of the bunch.

2. "Swingers" is about the Bonobo apes, I was disillusioned to learn they are not the peace loving hippie ape of yore, but actually tightly wound and capable of serious violence. Required reading for anyone who thinks Bonobo's are happy free sex swingers.

3. "Deadly Contact", this is the piece that led to the book Spillover (2012). Interesting but now I think reading the extended book version might be optional.

4. "How to Trick an Online Scammer", this is about the people who trick the tricksters, the Nigerian 419 scammers, nothing new there. But what raises this piece above the typical are the last few pages which discuss the larger meaning of trolling. There are a couple choice quotes that get to the heart of the dark side of online discourse, specifically how "dishinibation" can result in heroes becoming villains. It reminds me of a quote: "Who's the more fool. The fool or the fool who follows the fool." ( )

An anthology of "science and nature" (defined very loosely, which didn't really bother me) writing from magazines and journals. Like all anthologies, this one was of mixed quality, but overall I enjoyed it.

The articles I found most engaging were:

--a linguistics controversy regarding the nature of an Amazonian language called Piraha, which appears unrelated to any other human language and contains just 8 consonants and 3 vowels but possesses a huge number of tones, stresses, and syllable lengths.

--a rather disturbing article about biotechnology which seemed to basically ignore the ethical and ecological implications of genetic engineering and focused more on the "isn't it cool?" factor, suggesting that one day biotech will have advanced to a point where "Designing genomes will be a personal thing, a new art form as creative as painting or sculpture" and will be used to entertain bored housewives or children.

--an interesting but rather short-sighted article about robotics in the military. The author predicted that one day all important military forces will rely on robotic land forces (in addition to current air-based systems, like automated Predator drones). Basically he says that war will one day be fought only between robots & will essentially be meaningless because robots will decimate other robots & no human lives will be lost. Still, this article made me want to learn more about military robotics, which is not generally a reading area of mine. :)

--Islam and science - I don't remember why anymore, but I remember being irritated by this article.

--an article about viral outbreaks and how viruses spread across species

--And finally, an article about people who devote significant time & energy toward scamming people who run Internet scams and whether these people are racist, given that many internet scammers tend to be from African countries. This was a really weird article about a topic I'd never even heard of. The most outrageous story provides the background for the title, "How To Trick an Online Scammer into Carving a Computer out of Wood". A version of this article originally ran in the Atlantic Monthly & might be available online, if anyone is interested in really bizarre scams. ( )

I read this collection over a period of time, between other books. This collection stresses evolution, biology, viruses, epidemiology, linguistics and archeology over astrophysics. There are strong pieces by David Quammen on viral zoonosis and Olivia Judson on the genetics of altruism. There is a forceful piece by Michael Finkel on malaria. Ian Parker's article "Swingers" casts a skeptical and humorous eye on what we know about bonobos, and how the bonobo has become a cultural icon for self-satisfied and romantic humans. At the heart of the collection, Edward Hoagland's "Children are Diamonds" tours the Africa of starvation, illness, war and international aid. ( )