London, 1849, you are a doctor and the dreaded disease, Cholera, is literally hitting the city the like the Bubonic plague. Your neighbor was fighting fit on Monday, and Wednesday morning you watched him go out on the corpse cart. The epidemic will go on to take over 50,000 lives before petering out a few months later. But based on its track record, you know it will be back. What do you do? If you’re John Snow, anesthesiologist and part-time medical investigator, you march through […]
The Reality of Burns
My first five-star book of 2015! I was a little worried about picking up a long, dense, science non-fiction book after so much young adult reading the past week or so. But this book was fantastic. I found it at Powell’s in the health and medical section and I’m just so glad I did. Ms. Ravage does a really excellent job of describing what really goes on when someone is burned. I imagine that when most of us think about a burn injury, we picture […]
Castaway Story for the Cosmos Age, LOVE
This is a story about an astronaut named Mark Watney who is accidentally left behind on Mars after his crew believes he is killed during the emergency evacuation of their base camp on Mars (I know I already said Mars, but omg Mars) in a freak windstorm. Our hero has to figure out how to survive with his available resources, ration his remaining supplies, and try to get back in contact with Earth, knowing that his food will run out before they can rescue him. The author, Andy Weir, […]
Neil deGrasse Tyson is a National Treasure
HALF CANNONBALL! Neil deGrasse Tyson is national treasure. Hopefully you all are aware of this, either because you’ve known for years, or because you caught the fantastic Cosmos this year. About three years ago I was lucky enough to see him speak at the local university, where he told vivid stories that helped me understand the scale of things in the universe and on earth, including one story that aided me in fully grasping how much money Bill Gates really has. Mr. Tyson is coming […]
A book easy enough for your dog to understand, but maybe not you.
I’m a bit of a closet physics fan. It’s hard to admit, seeing as the classes I struggled with most in college were my physics courses. But if you don’t force me to work out equations for things like how a ball bounces, and just talk to me about all the weird stuff that physics predicts, I’m an enthusiastic student. While there are a lot of mysteries to be understood in this world, there is one thing that really bothers me. I don’t get relativity. […]
A superb layperson’s guide to DNA and genetics, told with a smile and charm.
It starts with a papercut. The book that is, not the origin of life. Rutherford starts by breaking down exactly what happens when you cut your finger in a jaw-dropping three-page extravaganza of cells, electrical signals and scintillating prose that puts you in a state of awe. Awesome is a word that is regularly overused, but one that really does apply here when we are talking about such astounding ideas and realisations, with this minute level of detail illustrating just how finely tuned every little aspect of […]