Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

No One Else Can Come in and Copy You

Patenting Life: Tales from the Front Lines of Intellectual Property and the New Biology by Jorge Goldstein

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Ok, keeping with the gene-theme this summer, I’ll now be briefly turning my attention to gene patents. Jorge Goldstein’s Patenting Life: Tales from the Front Lines of Intellectual Property and the New Biology is a great introduction to biological patents in the US (and beyond). It’s also a rather personal narrative; Goldstein entered the field of patent law at a time when biotechnology was experiencing some rapid advances (many of them mentioned in the previous book I reviewed), and he describes his career as like […]

The Dark Corners of the Past

Great Scandals of the Victorians by Debbie Blake

Public Faces, Secret Lives by Wendy L. Rouse

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Great Scandals of the Victorians: Disreputable Stories from the Royal Court to the Stage – 3.5 stars For all that Victorians had a reputation for being straitlaced, they had their fair share of scandals – and some of them ended up having major effects on contemporary society, sometimes even driving forth social changes which still affect us today. I love a good gossip session about people I’ve never met, which is why history is one of my favorite subjects. In this book, we learn about […]

Great Book—But Still Not Pleased With The Outcome.

The Genome Defense: Inside the Epic Legal Battle to Determine Who Owns Your DNA by Jorge L. Contreras

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I love a good turn of narrative non-fiction. Back in the early years of my PhD—which was in genetics—the topic of gene ownership and gene patents was a huge deal. If you were working in the field, there was no way you could have avoided getting dragged into the discussion; whether you were hearing about it from a medical perspective, an agricultural perspective or a ‘shit, I was broke doing my degree all those years ago so you’ll never guess what I did*’ perspective, you […]

Everyone should read this book

21 Things You May Not Know About The Indian Act by Bob Joseph

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This book is absolutely essential for anyone looking for a layperson’s understanding of one of the only race-based pieces of legislation in the world. If you’re Canadian, it’s helps you understand your own country, and hopefully, get inspired to advocate for us to do better. And if you’re not Canadian, it can help you look more critically at how race is dealt with in your country. While your country my not have explicitly racist legislation, there are a lot of policies and ideas in the […]

An Indictment of the Court System

Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson

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Bingo Square: Adaptation (movie) I vaguely remember reading the movie review on Pajiba when this movie came out, and it described it as good but formulaic, so I didn’t go out of my way to watch it (not that I have been watching a lot of dramas to start with).  When it became free to rent, I decided to check it out, and while I can see why from a movie reviewer perspective one might describe it as formulaic, there is a reason for that […]

If I Knew Nothing About Congress This Would Have Been Mildly Interesting

The Dance of Legislation by Eric Redman

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Bah. I am still annoyed we had to read this terrible book for our course. We are not new to the government or understanding the branches of government. I think if you are a new federal employee you should check out this book. I was probably also not pleased because we had to hear an all day lecture about how Congress works (the House, the Senate), the Judiciary, and then the Executive Branch. My face was just a literal grimace when we finished. You know […]



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