| Title | : | The Best American Science And Nature Writing 2012 |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 0547799535 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780547799537 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 352 |
| Publication | : | First published January 1, 2012 |
First, Best, and Best-Selling
The Best American Science And Nature Writing 2012 Reviews
-
The guest editor of the the 2012 volume of this series, Dan Ariely, lays out an interesting viewpoint in his introduction. His view of science is activist and centers on humanity, which makes sense since he’s a professor of psychology and behavioral economics. He writes that, for him, “...one of the main goals for science in the years to come..." is "...to figure out the human condition and design our environment to reduce our tendency for error and maximize our potential.” That affects his selections noticeably, I think, and though it did not bother me, I can imagine the focus might irritate some readers whose views, interests, or goals for science are broader.
One idea Dan Ariely promotes in his introduction that I think may be a hard sell is “science-based paternalism.” There are people who seem to trust science as little as they trust government, so Ariely’s statement that “we should use science as an input to help us understand which areas of life we should regulate to a higher degree and to come up with interventions that balance effectiveness with minimum impact on personal freedoms” is problematic. I don’t disagree with the statement, but something about it makes me uneasy. Maybe because I’m somewhat scientifically literate, but am certainly not capable of verifying research and/or conclusions. I’ve waded out to my knees at best. When I encounter scientists, I can lob out two or three good questions before they lose interest in me (always the overzealous student).
Anyway, the articles in these volumes are written for general readers and first appeared in magazines such as Outside, Wired or National Geographic. If you’re interested in science journalism, the profiles at the end of the book about the writers are probably food for thought. The articles in this volume were arranged in six parts; Bacteria/Microorganisms, Animals, Humans (the Good), Humans (the Bad), Society and Environment, and Technology. I’m going to highlight the articles that caught my fancy:
There were two in the Bacteria/Microorganisms part that mentioned the Human Microbiome Project, which is “an effort to characterize the thousands of species of microbes that live on or in us.” Did you know that “90 percent of the cells residing in your body are not human cells”? No sense in getting freaked out about it. Scientists are looking into the importance of these symbiotic relationships, including how it might affect our behavior and the development of our brains.
In Part Two: Animals, one article profiles a man, Jack Horner, who is trying to create a dinosaur, not the impossible Jurassic Park way, but by modifying chicken genes to make “a chickenosaurus.” Another article is about testing rats in order to ultimately improve human endurance through genes. The fact that those test rats got the article included in a section about animals may piss you off if you’re an animal lover.
Part Three and Part Four are both called Humans. The first is supposed to be the Good, the second is supposed to be the Bad. The Good included an article called Sleeping with the Enemy by Elizabeth Kolbert, which reports that evidence connects humans to hundreds of species extinctions, and not just in modern times. (PS Did you know there is a Neanderthal Genome Project?) Another article in the Good concludes with observations from neuroscience that seem to damn us to destroy the earth, since “we are born to be ‘good consumers but not good conservationists.’ ”
The choices in the Bad were also sometimes confusing to me, though I enjoyed the articles themselves. For example, The Feedback Loop by Thomas Goetz was about how “feedback loops aren’t just about solving problems...” but “...could create opportunities.” What’s so bad about that? The Bad could be named the Depressing. Two articles focus on the brain. In Beautiful Brains by David Dobbs, adolescent risk-taking is analyzed in terms of brain development and David Eagleman, in The Brain on Trail, highlights how developments in neuroscience, now and in the future, has “legal implications”. That wasn’t depressing, but the sense that our behavior is the result of biology, not free will, was. Also, if bad behavior has a “biological explanation” rather than a moral one, isn’t that Good, in a way?
I’ve gotten carried away and must wrap it up. Lots of articles titulated. One, Ill Wind, in Part Five: Society and Environment, mentions “the discovery of the global mercury cycle” which “underscores the need for an international treaty to address such pollutants.” Reread that quote! Mercury. In the Atmosphere. Circulating. The City Solution by Robert Kunzig explains why even many environmentalists are recognising that the world’s increasing population is best packed into cities.
Finally, if you’re a fiction writer, volumes like this, with their multitude of topics and personalities, should spark ideas, so go nuts. -
This book was utterly, completely fascinating. I can't recommend it enough.
In case the title doesn't render it obvious, this is a collection of articles written on science and nature topics. Nearly all of it is written for a mainstream audience, so one need not be a scientist to comprehend the vast majority of it. (One article about quantum physics was over my head.)
I will admit - some of the articles I half expected someone to pop out of the woodwork and ask me, "Really? You believed that? You ACTUALLY believed that there are scientists out there working on reverse engineering dinosaur DNA from chickens? I mean, how gullible are you?!" Because, yeah, there is this fascinating article about just that. Similarly, an article about the advances in performance enhancing drugs used in mice - creating super-mice who need not exercise to build muscles both intrigued and frightened me even as I thought, 'This is a hoax, right?' And who knew octopuses (octopi?) were such intellectual creatures?
There are thought-provoking articles, and frightening ones. Articles about brain tumors and growths, and brain chemistry itself, affecting our fundamental personalities calls into question who we are are people. The article about people getting crushed to death in crowds (a la the Wal-Mart Black Friday crush some years back) was so interesting - but scary to me as I (no, really!) read it in line on my Kindle at a crowded amusement park. The article about air contamination, especially from unregulated parts of Asia, was downright frightening. The article about efforts to grow test tube meat was thought-provoking and has me half-convinced this is the way to go.
And I have to stop there, because otherwise I would just be listing every article in the book. Just...go read it. And then let's discuss it. And then next year's edition too. -
Worst Sci & Nat anthology ever. Some, or even many, of the articles would have been interesting to read by themselves, but they were all very "human-centric" shall we say, with lots of hubris. The first 1/2 of the book had so many mice experiments I started marking them in the margins. So stupid: what century do we live in? And who thinks experimenting on mice has any relevance to anything other than proving the sadism of the scientist? And then, in the Animal section... huh, it was all about experimenting on animals.
I will probably continue to read this series. But gah, when will humans grow up??? -
This series is amazing. For the scientist & non-scientist alike. When they say the best writing of the year? THEY ARE NOT KIDDING.
-
So cool to read this in 2024, 13 years after these essays were published. It is very easy to get lost in a modern digital news feed, absentmindedly scrolling headlines while under the impression that I am somehow remaining informed. These days, even when I do click through to the article, it is often topical but lacking in substance than depth. Just the other day I read through
this article from BigThink, only to find that the author said nothing original and provided no methodology behind their vague advice. Not to mention the fact that half of the articles out there seem to be written by bots, and that proportion is only growing. Reading long form science writing is refreshing, and discovering that many of the ideas in this book have only grown in relevance made for quite a rewarding read.
I won’t be reviewing all of these essays (there’s too many), but here are my highlights:
“The Peanut Puzzle” by Jerome Groopman dives until how little is known about the immunological mechanisms underlying the development of allergies, especially peanut allergies. An entire generation of Americans born between 2000 and 2010 has a higher proportion of peanut allergies than the previous because they were raised under the care of parents who, following the most up to date guidelines of the UK Department of Health and the American Academy of Pediatrics, limited their kids’ exposure to allergens from a young age. As it turns out, exposure is necessary for the immune system to develop appropriate responses to novel substances, as was just being relearned by the medical community around 2010. As a teacher I see so many students come into my class with peanut allergies, and I can only hope that the average severity of these allergies will diminish as my career continues.
“Faster. Higher. Squeakier.” by Michael Behar explores research into enhancing human endurance and athletic performance with just a pill. As is typical, there are multiple drugs discussed that have shown incredible promise in mice. Given that today drugs like AICAR and GW1516 are still experimental and “ not approved for use in humans anywhere in the world” according to the US Anti-doping agency, these researchers’ hopes and dreams seem not to have materialized. People are always looking for miracle drugs that are going to enhance performance and longevity, and it always seems to turn out that what works in lab mice doesn’t have the same effects in humans. I will always be skeptical of single drug or single gene health solutions, and will always believe that exercise, sleep, diet, and social interaction will do you far more good than any number of supplements.
“The Wipeout Gene” by Bijav P Trivedi explores efforts to fight Dengue fever in Mexico and other tropical regions by genetic engineering of mosquitoes. Specifically, Oxitec was breeding female mosquitoes whose flight muscles failed to develop, with the hopes of crashing local Aedes aegypti populations. There are many environmental, ecological, and social pitfalls that go with releasing genetically engineered organisms into the wild, even if your goals are entirely humanitarian. The group led by Anthony James seemed to be proceeding through this endeavor with all of the proper local and governmental approval. Initial results were promising. At the very end of the article the possibility of a gene drive is mentioned as the next step. Gene drives are an even more extreme method of genetic engineering, since they have the potential to extinct the species locally, and perhaps even globally. Gene drives in mosquitoes are still being debated today.
“The Touchy-Feely (But Totally Scientific!) Methods Of Wallace J. Nichols” by Michael Roberts explores new approaches to ocean conservation. Wallace J Nichols believed that our approach to getting the public interested in the man made degradation and pollution of our oceans emphasizes the negative far too much. He believed that more articles, more statistics, and more conferences among academics are not going to lead to any substantial improvements in marine ecosystem health anytime soon. Rather, Nichols shifted his research towards how the human brain experiences the ocean, because he strongly believed that by focusing on the positive influence of the ocean and its living things on our brain, our emotions,and our well-being, we can get people to pay attention. Nichols seems to have been both controversial among academics and a catalyst for bringing people together to experience the marine world and all it has to offer. Nichols’ heart, his passion for conservation, and his message as communicated by Roberts in this article are punctuated by his sudden passing this year.
“What you don't know can kill you” by Jason Daley explores how misguided people are when it comes to evaluating risk. It turns out that we evaluate risk based on the emotional salience of the danger, rather than the actual statistical likelihood that we will encounter said danger. The classic example is that many people have a fear of flying, despite the fact that automobiles in the country outnumber aviation deaths by a factor of 1,000 each year. Shark attacks and bear attacks are another example, and few people fear cows despite the fact that they kill 20 Americans per year, more than sharks. If you think this is inconsequential, consider nuclear energy: events like Three Mile Island and Fukushima have struck fear in the hearts of the public, preventing nuclear from being a politically viable option for the last 30 years in this country. Germany recently shut down all of its nuclear plants rather than invest the money required to keep them running, on the sole basis of Merkel’s misgivings. It might surprise you to find out that burning coal and oil have led to far more deaths per kilowatt hour Of energy than nuclear has, due to air pollution. I would argue that Merkel endangered her citizens and their environment by shutting down the countries’ plants, since the demand that they were meeting was replaced with coal, oil, and natural gas. Pneumonia and asthma simply seem far less scary to us than radiation poisoning, even if they are what is far more likely to do us in. In other words, humans tend to reason emotionally instead of statistically, which raises Challenge and questions about math education, insurance rates, and a well reasoning public in our democratic country.
“The brain on trial” by David Eagleman is easily the standout for me in this collection. Unlike many of the other essays, Eagleman is not interviewing a scientist or reporting the results of cutting edge scientific research. Rather, Day is a thought piece that incisively describes how our legal system is entirely based on the idea that adults have free will. In everyday life we have no trouble assigning blame and describing actions as one person's “ fault”, and for many court trials this line of reasoning is adequate. However, As we learn more and more about the brain and psychological disorders, as we develop more and more nuanced genetic and environmental causal explanations for peoples' behavior, The entire concept of “fault” rests on shakier and shakier grounds. Eagleman does an excellent job dismantling our intuitions about why criminals commit the crimes they do. More than this, he goes on to say that he is certainly not in favor of dismantling the courts, but rather proposes a new approach to how we punish and respond to crime as a society. Eagleman suggests that we should evaluate criminals at least to some extent based on their likelihood to commit future crimes and therefore further endangered society, and then put the appropriate interventions in place. In other words, we should be depersonalizing their crimes as we learn more and more about the mechanisms underlying behavior, but removing some of the blame is not the same as exculpating them. Rather, we should be asking ourselves “ given this person's history, their neurology, their nature, their nurture, And their likelihood to harm others in the future, what is the most moral response we can have as a society?”
“The Cryptocurrency” by Joshua Davis is the article that feels the most aged and at the same time is possibly the most riveting. When Davis wrote this article Bitcoin was less than 2 years old, the world was still recovering from the financial collapse of 2008, and the word “blockchain” was far more esoteric than it is today. In addition to describing for us what Bitcoin is, Davis goes on a journey to see if he can track down the mysterious and elusive inventor of bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto. In the last 15 years, since this article has come out Satoshi has become a figure of legend on internet Message Board circles, since he invented a world changing technology under his pseudonym and promptly disappeared. Given the Mystique that surrounds Satoshi still today, Davis's hunt seems almost comically misguided in hindsight. Perhaps my favorite part of reading this article Was reading about early Bitcoin purchases when the price of Bitcoin was $10 per coin. Davis himself uses 12 Bitcoins to purchase a night at a hotel room, having selected the hotel solely because it accepts Bitcoin. If he still had those 12 Bitcoins today they would be worth nearly $800,000. Whatever your thoughts on cryptocurrency are, it is almost painful to consider that someone who bought $200 worth of molly on the dark web Using Bitcoin would be a millionaire today if they had simply held on to the Bitcoin and forgot about it. -
Well...this volume hits kind of a weird middle-space for me. Taken individually, the essays in this edition of Best Science and Nature Writing are good pieces of journalism. Six come from The New Yorker, three each from Scientific American, Wired, and National Geographic, two each from Outside, The Atlantic, and Discover, and singles from California Magazine, Popular Science, and Orion. But together...somehow they strike me as lacking in breadth, if that makes sense.
After an introduction focusing in scientific paternalism, Ariely divided the essays into subjects: Bacteria/Microorganisms, Animals, Humans (the Good), Humans (the Bad), Society and Environment, and Technology. However, two of the bacteria/micro essays are about nearly the same thing (normal human microbiota and how that plays into immune response/chronic disease) while the third concerns new food allergy research and treatment. It's hard to determine what's "good" or "bad" about the human sections - I can't tell where the dividing line is ("Sleeping with the Enemy" is in the good section, yet is about how modern humans displaced/bred out the Neanderthal - and extincting species is something we seem to be good at, while "The Feedback Loop" - about how we can modify human behavior to combat speeding and medication non-compliance - is in the bad section). John Seabook's New Yorker article "Crush Point" (which I read in the original publication) is a good piece of human interest/courtroom reporting but doesn't seem to contain a lot of "science" regarding crowd dynamics. It probably would have been better to list the articles alphabetically by author rather than try to group them.
Many of the articles, no matter the scientific ground grown in from paleontology to neurobiology to computer science, apply the information therein to society as a whole. Lab-grown beef, knock-out genes in Mosquitos that could fuel reactions to GMOs, a hazy article about why humans have a connection with an auquarium (the Roberts article about Wallace J. Nichols was an odd one), urban sprawl, molecular gastronomy, an eccentric physicist and the real-world probability of a theoretical quantum computer, if we must defend our humanity from the likelihood a computer could pass the Turing Test/how to be a more "human" human - everything circles back to human or human-like behavior. Given that Ariely is a psychologist that's not surprising but it makes the collection very flat and more like a pet than a presentation of good scientific work across all disciplines. -
This issue of the anthology was another good one. Not every article was fascinating but most were interesting. There was a very good piece about Svante Paabo and his work on Neanderthal DNA and another about Wallace J Nichols, who does ocean conservation by appealing to people’s emotions instead of reason. One article began with a story of a teenager in jail for driving 113 mph, which inspired the author to explore how and when the brain reaches full maturity. Another brain story looked at the Texas tower killer who had a brain tumor, leading to an explanation of how brain abnormalities can lead to crime. Crush Point by John Seabrook looked at crowd behavior, beginning with the incident at a Walmart in 2009 in which shoppers crushed an employee on Black Friday. Walmart refused to pay the $9000 OSHA fine for insufficient crowd control training and preparation, lost the court case, and then appealed it, spending many millions to avoid taking the blame. The City Solution by Robert Kunzig began with a story of the Englishman who first wrote about “garden cities” (suburbs), continued with an explanation of how cities are better for the environment than suburbs, and ended with the same Englishman. Test Tube Burgers by Michael Specter explored an industrial park in Holland devoted to research on artificial meat, supported in part by PETA to end cruelty to animals. Several stories focused on biographies of scientists, including Mad Science about Nathan Myhrvold and his scientific cookbook; Dream Machine, a story about England’s David Deutsch, who wrote some of the first article about quantum computing and who believes firmly in the multi-universe theory; and The Crypto Currency, which explained the mystery behind Bitcoin and its inventor. The editors saved the best for the last as the final piece, Mind vs. Machine, described a contest that does the Turing test to see if a computer can fool people into believing it is human. The author was a contestant and described the scene well, leading to startling conclusions – that what makes us human is not the logical thinking but rather the social, sensory and emotional parts of our consciousness.
-
I can't get enough of these books. As always, a fascinating selection of articles. Learned about the science of crowd catastrophes, people who compete in Turing test competitions, human pheromones, and turning on certain genes in modern organisms to express ancestral traits. The most interesting piece had to be "The Brain on Trial", where David Eagleman dismantles free will and identity, showing how ambiguous and problematic it can be to make any sort of legal decision, and then discusses how we can use neuroscience to come up with more informed legal decisions. Of course I will be reading 2014's edition as soon as it comes out.
-
Fascinating! I like the way this year's editor, Dan Ariely, arranged the stories from those dealing with very small subjects to those tackling progressively larger-scale topics. If this one has a main theme, I'd call it consciousness and cognition in their varied forms, from hive intelligence to human psychology and neuropsychiatry to machine learning and artificial intelligence.
Highly recommended for anyone interested in the above topics, and what could be more interesting (I'm biased, being a cognitive entity myself)? -
Three and a half stars, really. Consistently good writing but not consistently interesting to me, which is likely to happen with any collection of writing on science and nature. The essays that I enjoyed the most were the ones about octopuses and bitcoins.
-
What drew me to this book was how it was divided. There are sections on bacteria and microorganisms, animals, humans (the good), humans (the bad), society and environment, and technology. I’ve always fancied myself a pseudo-scientist or at least an admirer of science and throw in nature, or the nature of things, and I’m that much more interested. Although writers scientists usually are not so I forget how these writings tend to be a bit more laborious. The author Brian Greene is one of the few scientific authors that puts things in a way that I can understand and even then, I’m pushed to my very limits so I had to oftentimes stop and ponder or re-read passages and even then I had to just trudge forward and trust that my understanding was largely correct or that the meaning of something would become apparent to me. Some of the essays that stuck out to me as interesting were one on the bitcoin and how it was created and then abandoned by its creator but seems to be holding its own in terms of value (as of the writing in 2012), one about a competition where people are competing against computers to seem the most human in written correspondence and the resulting strategies and epiphanies about human communication that are realized by the author. One interesting essay dealt with recipes, not made for taste but made for the purpose of using alternative forms of cooking that were most efficient in terms of making a chemically perfect meal. Other essays had intriguing titles such as “Ants and the Art of War”, “The Teeming Metropolis of You”, “How to Hatch a Dinosaur” about using DNA to replicate features to almost attempt to move evolutionarily backwards. It was interesting and a challenge to read but admittedly, I grew tired of reading it about 2/3 of the way through and was ready to be done. Then other things came up and I put the book aside for a while. I’m happy to have finished it and am ready to move on, having lost the initial excitement and intrigue with which I launched into it.
-
I have not followed these books chronologically, rather I have based my choice on editors and the content of the articles. The articles are written for a general audience and are not filled with academic argot. You will find yourself amazed with the the evolution of crowd control, personality changing brain tumors and the beautification of reptilian scales to feathers. There are many more, to review all of them would kill all the excitement. Every new chapter fills you with knowledge and awe.
Do not hesitate to read this, this book has something for everyone. -
Interesting, mostly, and all well written; which is what one hopes for in scientific writing, but not what one always gets. Have to admit to having glazed over on both the technology articles.
-
Lots of interesting stuff in bite-sized pieces.
-
Maybe only for the Sy Montgomery, maybe I'll want more from the series. :shrug:
-
Really puts into perspective the problem of human activities and their responsibilities, but it doesn't solve it.
The problem still lingers. //Only read David Eagleman's part. -
Of the two dozen stories, seven deserve special attention. ... Two articles deal with cities and urban phenomena. Three articles deal with the human brain, another with that of the octopus.
Crush Point
— Crowds as part of urban life.
— Mob psychology, crowd surges, crowd management.
The City Solution
— What cities do well and right.
— City dwellers tread lighter than their rural and suburban counterparts.
— "Get the transportation right, then let things happen," said Peter Hall, planner and historian at University College, London. People in dense cities drive less.
Deep Intellect
— Octopus consciousness, exemplified by one at the New England Aquarium, Boston.
— Octopus and human intelligence evolved independently.
Sleeping with the Enemy
— All non-Africans carry between 1 and 4 percent Neanderthal DNA.
— One of the largest sites of Neanderthal bone remains was found a few miles from the painted caves at Lascaux. ...
Beautiful Brains
— The adolescent brain. The human brain reorganizes itself until age 25 or so.
— The adolescent brain values reward more than adults do.
— "We enter a world made by our parents. But we will live most of our lives and prosper (or not) in a world run and remade by our peers."
The Brain on Trial
— About behavior and why people violate social norms.
— Technology will lead to better measurement of problems in the brain.
— A pretense: That each brain responds the same to challenges, and that each person deserves the same punishment for violations.
The Teeming Metropolis of You
— You are mostly not you. Ninety percent of the cells in your body are microbes, not human cells.
— Two unrelated North Americans share only 10 percent of their intestinal bacteria.
— "We are just beginning to understand the role our biota plays in human health and disease." -
Ariely’s selections as Guest Editor for this 2012 Best American Series intrigue and electrify. Unfortunately, Ariely selected writing by three times as many men as women, which calls into question not the quality and quantity of science and nature writing by women today, but the objectivity of those in power in the field to publish and commend the best of it. The collection, arranged in six parts—Bacteria and Microorganisms, Animals, Humans (good and bad), Society and Environment, and Technology—intermixes contemporary concerns with futuristic possibilities. Essays such as Jerome Groopman’s “The Peanut Puzzle,” Sy Montgomery’s “Deep intellect,” and Michael Behar’s “Faster. Higher. Squeakier.” explore topics present in the national discourse, like the cause of allergies and their remediation, the extent of animal intelligence, and the role of performance enhancing drugs. Alongside these timely essays sit prescient pieces that beckon emerging discussions about cryptography and virtual but veritable currencies, the reach of artificial intelligence and the underexplored microbial world. Collectively, the 2012 selections present existential questions and ethical dilemmas without moralizing or answering the queries: Are we smarter than machines? What is unique about human intelligence? Can we feed the burgeoning population with lab-grown meat? Can we reverse the evolutionary process, and should we? This strong collection invites awe, begets wonder, and stimulates contemplation.
-
I love this series, but this edition was disappointing. It's simply wandering too far from its roots. When the first edition of The Best American SCIENCE AND NATURE Writing came out in 2000, David Quammen was the guest editor – an actual “science and nature writer”. The next year it was E.O. Wilson. Close enough. But the farther they get from the original hatching of the idea, the farther the guest editors get from the science and nature writing theme. This year? Dan Ariely, a behavioral economist. I don’t even know what that is but I can assure you his taste in science and nature writing is far more dry and human-centric than my own (and, I’m guessing, much of the readership for this series). I can excuse dedicating 82 pages to “Technology”, even though a couple of the articles were real clunkers. But to then dedicate only 57 pages to “Animals”, and within those few pages to include, for example, an article on the development of a human endurance drug simply because it is being tested on lab mice – is despicable. And then to follow it with an “Animals” article about fighting Dengue fever, qualifying because it involves genetically-modified mosquitoes - is pathetic. Dan Ariely, you promised your kids a pet and bought them a virtual goldfish, didn’t you?
To Tim Folger or whoever chooses the guest editors for this series: Do better next time. Please. -
Some thoughts. My computer has been broken for two or more months so I've been doing all my entries on a smart phone, which is a pain. So now it's fixed and I'm still typing on a phone
I had to go out of town the week before Christmas and had three days to get my act together before the day. Had a real nice visit with friends on the day, but on the two hour drive home I realized I was sick. The point of this is I had little time to read on my trip and too disoriented while sick to focus on a page.
Today I sat down to finish the last four pieces in this book, got distracted, read a review of another that's been in my slag pile for a year. It is a collection of writing from several genres. The reviewers tell me that two pieces are the best, so of course I immediately read them and I agree, but I have now even less interest in reading the rest. That qualifies, in my flu befuddled mind as a spoiler. I'm not usually warned off by knowing the twist, who gets the girl, or who the killer is. I'm usually told by the book jacket, a well meaning friend, a comment or a review in the papers. So I always think duh.
I intended to tell you which of the articles I liked from this years collection including their titles, but no more. Tomorrow when I feel less feverish ill discuss the subject matter a bit on my big boy computer. -
"It was the best of the series; it was the worst of the series...." I have enjoyed this series for years. It features a guest editor, a prominent science writer or scientist who writes for the general public, who picks his or her of the science articles from publications for the general reader, under the general direction of the series editor, Tim Folger. It normally includes a very broad selection of topics in science and nature.
This year Dan Ariely broke with tradition and has organized his selections according to a theme. As a result, the selection is much narrower. In many ways it makes for a more interesting read, but it also makes me feel I've not received what I have come to expect. Folger lists some "Runners up" at the end of the book, which I may feel more compelled to follow up than I normally would. I will also be more interested in its "competitor" series , The Best American Science Writing, which I had stopped reading because, for some odd reason, it is not available in electronic format.
Highly recommended, but don't be disappointed if you have read and enjoyed this series in the past and do not find what you expected. -
Best American Science and Nature Writing 2012 gets a three out of five, and not more, because I don't think many of the pieces were that memorable. That might say more about my memory rather than the editors' selection, so take this review however you'd like. Some of the pieces I do remember that were fascinating were the following:
This whole "bitcoin" thing, where an anonymous guy made his own currency online and then got people interested in investing in it raises all sorts of new questions about the future of currency.
Octopuses are quite smart and have very different personalities and temperaments.
Whatever this jazz people call free will is, it's severely limited and instead of having a lot of control over our wills, we too often go along with negative feedback loops, repeating old bad habits time and time again. Luckily, however, some of these negative feedback loops can be overcome with technologies to exploit them, as in the case when people slow down as a result of their driving speed being displayed for them on a big digital sign that also acts as a speed detector.
I'm sure there were other good articles, but those three were most memorable for me. -
The majority of the individual pieces are pretty well-written and a handful of them quite intriguing. However, they don't stick together well as a compilation, making them less gripping in a book format. My primary expectation from this book was to have a good overview about different "sizzling" current topics and my hope was that good writing would make this process enjoyable. However, with the general disconnect between topics, it failed to sustain my interest. I could not gather much when I tried chapter hopping and first paragraph skimming. The titles are ornamental, there are no chapter "abstracts," and the introductory paragraphs for several of the articles are quite discursive. So "skimming" wasn't exactly helpful. I decided to move on from this book after making my way through about a third of it.
-
First I need to state that I didn't read every essay in this collection. I spent the past few months skipping around and only reading the ones that caught my interest, so I find it very difficult to rate this collection as a whole. Some of the ones that stand out in my memory include The Peanut Puzzle by Jerome Groopman and The Long, Curious, Extravagant Evolution of Feathers by Carl Zimmer, but by far the best essay in this collection was Deep Intellect, by Sy Montgomery. If I was rating the entire book on that essay, and that essay alone, I would give it five stars. It's the kind of essay that I want to make people read, which is really the best kind of essay, in my opinion.
I'll also admit that this is the first of the series that I have read, and I'm curious now how this collection compares to others in the series. -
I actually like the writing and would give it 4 stars but the ebook is poorly constructed so that it can't be read in "night mode." In night mode, every page is blank. I think the problem is that they are "hardcoding" the font color to be black so that then if the reader changes the background to black, everything disappears.
It is equivalent to buying a paperback book and finding out that the pages are printed such that they can't be read outdoors.
Sure, the author and publisher should be allowed to do so if they wish but they should provide their reasoning. Otherwise, buyers can't find out until after they purchase it. The result is that it is really a defective e-book. -
I look forward to this collection every year and as usual, 2012 does not disappoint. Recommended wholeheartedly.
*Viewed from the perspective of most of its inhabitants, your body is not so much the temple and vessel of the human soul as it is a complex ambulatory feeding mechanism for a methane reactor in your small intestine.* Brendan Buhler, The Teeming Metropolis of You
*Then she went to college and landed her first "real" job: ridgidly procedural data entry. She thought back longinly to her barista days - when her job actually made demands of her intelligence.*
Brian Christian, Mind vs. Machine
