Book Review: Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex

Just under twelve hours to go until I present at the Phi Alpha Theta Conference, as I am posting this.  Am I nervous?  Yes.  I am.  But I'm sure it will be a good experience.  And if not, I'll use my secret mind-wiping device to erase the memory of everyone present, and then do myself too (so I can live without that memory).  Oh wait, you weren't supposed to know about that.  Here, let me just apply my device on the world wide web....  Oops.  Batteries are dead.  Should have picked up some Duracels on the way home from work.  Well, just put a bookmark in it, and I'll get you later.  For now, here's my review of a rather interesting book.

Source: Amazon.com

Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex, by Mary Roach

When I first read one of Mary Roach’s books (Stiff: The Curious Life of Human Cadavers), I subtitled the review: “Everything you ever wanted to know about death but were afraid to ask,” or something to that effect.  This was on my old blog, of course.  Well I suppose I could subtitle this review: “Everything you both ever and never wanted to know about the science and history of human sexuality and will still be afraid to ask even after you’ve read the book.”  Yes, that seems to fit the situation as nicely as I can muster.

In fact, to maintain a certain amount of mystique in the book’s favor (and also to keep from seeming like a wacko or a sex addict or something like that), I’m going to give this review short shrift, so to speak.  What I mean is that I’m going to keep this one remarkably brief when compared to my Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters review.  I’ll point out a few of the vast trove of things that I learned within the book’s pages, and give a brief recommendation with some appropriate caveats, and call it good.  Hope that is alright with you.

Book Review: Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters

Not much time left in the semester now.  Thankfully, summer break will follow.  Sure, there are many things that need to happen this summer, but for now, it is easy to look forward and say that the future will be better than the past, or at least the immediate past.  Not to say life isn't grand.  Far from it.  But I'd be glad to have less school work for a brief period of time.

I've been working on the following review off and on for a little while, and I'm still not quite satisfied with it.  But you can only polish the proverbial nugget just so long.  So here goes:

Source: Amazon.com

Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters, by Jane Austen and Ben H. Winters

This is a tough one to review, and so I am going to borrow a long used trick of reviewing authors, and take someone else’s review to fill in some details that might aid the un-initiated.

When their father is eaten by a hammerhead shark, the Dashwood sisters and their mother are forced to leave their home behind, for it is their brother’s inheritance. In a world where the ocean has crept inland and even the gentlest sea creatures have acquired a taste for human flesh, a home with proper defenses round the perimeter is a must. The Dashwoods’ new home on Pestilent Isle has such defenses, but it is a strange place, and becoming stranger still. Nonetheless, it is a home, and they are pleased to have it. Now the sisters only need suitors who can protect them from giant octopi and devil-dolphins. In their world, such a man is one to swoon over.

From Tia Nevitt.com

I don’t know that I could do a better job of describing this book “in a nutshell” than Ms. Nevitt does (I’ll assume that this didn’t come from the book’s back cover flap and that thereby I would be stealing someone else’s theft).  I can certainly put in my two cents on the book’s contents as they struck me, but I’ll use her review a couple times more when referring to the book.  What she says gets the idea across significantly better than someone who is new to Jane Austen - aka: myself - could sufficiently do.

Thoughts from the White Board - March 25

Got a chest cold.  Not cool.  And my wife is watching The Vampire Diaries, which I downloaded for her so she could catch up on what her friends are talking about.  Also not cool.  I must admit, I watched one and a half episodes.  Good vampire ideas, but its too... 90210, but with vampires.  She agrees, but she's still watching it.  Funny how life works.

Book Review: The Hobbit

Another review, and then I'm back to working on my thesis.  Got my draft turned in, but I have to update it for the Phi Alpha Theta conference coming up next week.  Presenting will look good on my resume, I hope, and help me get into Grad school (again, I hope).  Luckily, I wrote this review last night on break at work.  It's a bit of a trip down amnesia lane, so please forgive in advance.

Source: Amazon.com

The Hobbit, by JRR Tolkien

What can I say about Tolkien’s classic tale that nobody else has already said?  Probably not much, other than to express my personal take on it, and so for those of you who think my posts carry on a bit, I promise to try and keep this one blissfully brief.  Notice I say try.  I promise to try.  Not to succeed.  Just to try.

In actuality, I first read The Hobbit in... I believe the 8th grade.  That would have been around the year 1990.  Yes, I’m really putting my age up for scrutiny, aren’t I?  Anyway, 8th grade was not a particularly good year for me, as I remember.  I was awkward and painfully shy.  That was actually the year that I decided to make an active effort to consciously act stupid, so that people would stop assuming that I was some sort of brainy guy.  Took me until I got into college and discovered that I really enjoyed learning stuff and that being smart was not a bad thing to fully come out of that bias/idea.  Yes, I’ve re-embraced my inner nerd in most ways.  But self confidence can help you to see past many an obstacle.  And besides, smart beats stupid.  I’ll lay cash on that.

Dual Review: John Carter / A Princess of Mars, by Edgar Rice Burroughs/John Carter (the movie)

I should be finishing the last touches of my thesis draft, but I'll put that off to the very last second and publish this review real quick.  The book/movie review that follows is something of an experiment, partially suggested by my wife.  That is, I give her full credit for the idea of reviewing the book and the movie it is (loosely) based on together at the same time, and any flaws in the outcome I'll take responsibility for myself.  Thanks hunie!

Dual Review: A Princess of Mars / John Carter (the movie)

Source: Amazon.com

Part One: A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs 

For something science fiction-related that was written in the early twentieth century, I’d have to say that A Princess of Mars was pretty good. The main character, Mr. John Carter, was interesting, though far too heroic for my tastes. After all, I grew up in a more cynical age when heroes shouldn’t be flawless, or at least in an age when heroes stopped being cardboard cutouts - ala Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger and what-have-you. You know what I mean? Who doesn’t remember some cheesy 80s movies where the hero does everything right and kills all the bad guys and saves the girl? And the chief bad guy is really sinister and cool? At least that was the day I lived in, as opposed to the muddled early 1970s, when movies were all about complex stuff.  Thank heavens for Star Wars, huh?

Ok, I’m almost getting off track here. Speaking of Star Wars, A Princess of Mars, and its lead character John Carter, have some attachment there, though not anything that I could say was directly lifted by old George Lucas. For instance, Carter does many Jedi-like tricks simply because he is from Earth and his body can do things on Mars that can’t be duplicated here, based on gravity there and so forth. Oh, and on the subject of our hero, Carter is a former Civil War veteran of the Army of Virginia, and a true genteel southern gentleman/soldier. There is a certain charm to that, and it came over well to me. It didn't hurt that the guy doing the audiobook reading did the accent fairly convincingly.

Thoughts from the White Board - March 16

I'd like to do my first "independent film" review, or a quick one of the last book I read (The Hobbit, by Tolkien), but I simply don't have time right now.  Trying to get through the last couple of articles I planned to read before starting the draft of my thesis.  If I can get these last few thoughts together from the newer stuff available on my thesis subject, I can feel more comfortable about tackling such a big topic.  The subject?  Iraq and the recent history of the region as seen through the lens of Weapons of Mass Destruction.  Not what I wanted to do my thesis on, but what I could do it on without going way too long and not finishing during the semester.  I'd rather write about how various states/leaders who took up communism differed from the original Marx/Engels theory base, but that will have to wait for another time, I suppose.

Thoughts from the White Board - March 14

Good thing it's Spring Break, as it appears somebody in the ordering stream at my job decided to kick us into seasonal mode.  Two full trucks last night, and I swear one must have been full of just lawnmowers!  Crazy.

Thoughts from the White Board - March 11

Some days the blog writes itself.  Today is not one of those days.  If I didn't specifically know better, I'd say I was high on dope or something.  Just got a case of the munchies and I'm... spaced out.  Is the government messing with us via Daylight Savings Time?  Is it a conspiracy?  Man, I feel paranoid now.

Book Review: J. Robert Oppenheimer (biography)

Another big book down.  The next few books I'm planning to read (after the two short book reviews I still have to do) are fiction, so perhaps that should help with the dry stuff.

Source: Amazon.com

J. Robert Oppenheimer: Shatterer of Worlds  by  Peter Goodchild

“Now I am become Death, the shatterer of worlds.”  This phrase, as given in Peter Goodchild’s biography of the physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, is a quote from a Hindu holy book .  The phrase is attributed to Oppenheimer’s reaction of the detonation of the Trinity device, the world’s first atomic bomb.  This event, which was the culmination of  Dr. Oppenheimer’s work at the newly created Los Alamos nuclear facility, changed our world forever.  

The book by Peter Goodchild describes this event, as well as the life of Oppenheimer before and afterward.  We see a thorough description of the physicist as a boy, and his wealthy upbringing and aloofness.  Oppenheimer was bright but cold, and the author notes that he developed the ability to cut people verbally when he perceived something they had said was false or  lacking in intelligence.  

Book Review: Blind Man's Bluff

 Another book review.  I am planning in the next couple of days to introduce my first review in my new segment I mentioned a few weeks ago.  The one about independent/fan-type films.  I watched a "fan-edit" recently that falls within that category, and am planning to write on it.  But for today, I'm just trying to get caught up on my book review list.  Unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on how you look at it, in the time I've been writing out these reviews, I've managed to get through one semi-large book and two more small ones.  So I'll be posting them in the preceding weeks as well.

Source: Amazon.com

Blind Man's Bluff: The Untold Story of American Submarine Espionage, by Sherry Sontag and Christopher Drew

Life under water for us air-breathing mammals is tough.  This is the second book I’ve read in recent months that deals with post-WWII submarine operations, and the story just doesn’t get much rosier.  Blind Man’s Bluff covers the whole spectrum of the Cold War submarine conflict, an undeclared war that was carried on by the United States and the Soviet Union for over fifty years.  Forget proxy wars like Korea, Vietnam or the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, this was the real cold war gone near hot.  

The book I read before this one that dealt with Cold War submarine antics was titled Red November.  Blind Man’s Bluff covers some of the same ground as that book, but not to the detail that it did on certain subjects.  Blind Man’s Bluff is really more of a general overview of the entire Cold War (and a little beyond), rather than lingering on Red November's specifically covered topics.  It discusses early U.S. disasters with our war-weary post WWII diesel-powered fleet, the growing tensions from the race to develop nuclear powered and then nuclear armed subs, the operations that led to U.S. Navy cable tapping in the Sea of Okhotsk and the Barents Sea (both right in the Soviet Union’s backyard, and both within what the Soviets claimed to be their territorial waters), and the lowering of safety specs that led to disasters such as the loss of USS Thresher and later USS Scorpion (the latter being one that the authors dwell on for considerable time due to the fact that an official explanation for that vessel’s destruction has not been established, at least not to my present knowledge).

Book Review: Guns, Germs and Steel

I'm done with my midterm paper for my Modern Middle Eastern History course, but it took most of the weekend.  So I won't be getting any more work done on my seemingly endless search for good graphics to use for the new Abnormal Signs. Yes, I know you've heard this weak sort of excuse from me before.  In the meantime, here is another book review.

Source: Amazon.com

Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fate of Human Societies, by Jared Diamond

Right off the bat, let me say that I had a harder time with this book, and so I will have to use a review from Amazon.com (I’m not a sponsor, by the way, but they can always sponsor me if they wish - haha) to flesh out the details.  Then I’ll tell you what I liked and what I didn’t, and we’ll close the book on this one, so to speak.

The premise of Guns, Germs and Steel is that a reasonable explanation can be extrapolated from available resources as to why civilizations like the ancient Meso-Americans, Australian Aborigines and other so-called “primitive” groups did not develop modern technology and global power as did Asians, Europeans, and Euro-Asians (like the Russo-Slavs, who are a kind of crossbreed of East and West).  Diamond describes the question here plainly by pointing out a conversation he had with a native of Papua New Guinea, one of the most primitive places on Earth, who asked the author why the peoples of New Guinea don’t have as much “cargo” (New Guinean speak for “wealth and goods”) as others in the world.  Diamond then attempts to use the resources at his disposal to tell us his hypothesis on why this is so.

The book goes on to describe how civilizations formed, what factors were involved, and what advantages and disadvantages certain peoples had based on geography and resources.  Much effort is put into discussing the rise of agriculture, the domestication of both plants and animals (some interesting points were made about the domestication of various large animals on continents, including the oft cited point that you can’t truly domesticate cats because cats are impossible to herd - just try it, I dare you), and other areas of the rise of what could be termed “classical” civilization.  The material was fascinating and quite dense.

Thoughts from the White Board - March 3

Ever notice how when you have an important task to do, everything else becomes so much more interesting?  Today is my day to write my midterm paper for my Middle Eastern History class, and I'm really trying.  But everything else seems...  well, like I said.  So much more interesting.  Even things I'd usually not enjoy doing seem fascinating, like the prospect of washing the dog or the idea of contemplating complex mathematical equations (for me that's algebra).

Sigh...

Book Review: The Picture of Dorian Gray

Mid-terms are almost over, and so I'm back to posting again after a short absence.  Today was rough, with an exam in Eastern European History and then the last part of my mid-term test in my Spanish class.  Just a paper for Middle Eastern History is left (due on Tuesday, so you know what I'll be doing this weekend) and then I can start worrying in earnest about my Senior Thesis.  Ok, on to that book review:

Source: Amazon.com

The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

Right up front, I’ll say this was a great book.  It’s a classic, so many readers may already know the story.  Therefore, I won’t go heavy on the details.  A simple overview and a recommendation is all I’ll provide on this one.

The premise of the book is that a young man, our Mr. Gray, gets a portrait painted by an artist, who in turn tells a friend that he doesn’t think he can paint anymore because he put too much of himself into the work of painting this young man.  The portrait is supposed to be quite striking and life-like.  The artist’s friend (I forget names, but that is one of the curses of reading so much in such quick succession... ok, I’ve looked up names on Amazon.com), Lord Henry Wotton, befriends Gray and leads him into a life of depravity through his influence.  The artist, whose name is Basil Hallward, doesn’t agree with this corruption of Gray, but has no influence over his young portrait subject.

Gray’s life is attached to the portrait through a wish he makes upon it.  He wishes that he may remain young and beautiful forever, and the painting begins to take on the signs of his misdeeds and his advancing years.  All the while Dorian Gray remains young and in the prime of life.  Eventually Gray murders Hallward in a fit of rage after showing him the painting and its curse.  He also manages to escape the wrath of the brother of a young woman whom he loved earlier in his life and then spurned.  Things seem to be going well for Dorian Gray, until he decides to cut himself loose from the painting and live without it “looking over his shoulder” so to speak.