Mundane Monday: Framed Cat

So I hear the Mundane Monday Challenge might be winding down. Only a couple of more weeks! The challenge is to find a mundane object and frame it beautifully. I think I have to settle for interesting, rather than beautiful, when it comes to frames. But I never go wrong with cat pictures.

Book Review: They’re Not Dumb, They’re Different by Shiela Tobias

This review was first written in 1992, and I wonder how much has changed. The projected shortfall in scientists has not come to pass. It is more difficult than ever for PhDs to get jobs in science. But the challenge of public scientific literacy remains.

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They’re Not Dumb, They’re Different: Stalking the Second Tier by Sheila Tobias

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This independently funded book, called an “occasional paper,” probably isn’t available in the local bookstore. I came across a largely favorable review of it in Science magazine, and sent for a copy. It addresses the question “what turns people off science?”

Thursday Doors: Milpitas

In 2016, the City of Milpitas set up the first Geotour in California. Geotours are a series of geocaches that are arranged around a theme with the goal of introducing the cache finders to a new place (and its doors).

Mundane Monday: Look at all that Water

The CA drought is officially over in many areas. In fact, there is too much water falling from the sky right now. I’m nostalgic for the dry, sunny days, or even for the fluffy white wintry skiing snow I see falling on my Boston-area friends.

Book Review: Bestial by Arielle K. Harris

Bestial by Arielle K. Harris

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Just after Valentine’s Day, I am reviewing this tale of troubled love. Warning: contains spoilers.

Mundane Monday: Gnarled Tree in Fremont

There is nothing like a deadline to focus your mind. It’s true of teenagers, it’s true of adults.

Book Review: Bully for Brontosaurus by Stephen Jay Gould

Bully for Brontosaurus: Reflections in Natural History by Stephen Jay Gould

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I recently unearthed some book reviews that I wrote when I was in Neurosciences graduate school at Stanford in the early 1990s. There I was the editor of a student newsletter called the “Neuron Free Press,” and we published book reviews about Neuroscience topics. 

This newsletter was published while the internet was coming into its own, before blogs. The dead tree versions of these reviews that I found at the back of an old file cabinet may be the only copies still in existence.  The books are no longer new but I think each one has retained its relevance and stood the test of time.

The first book covered is Bully for Brontosaurus, reviewed back in Autumn 1991 when its author, the great evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould, was still alive and writing. I think it’s especially appropriate for Darwin Day.

Mundane Monday: Rainbows

I don’t think I would have ever expected to call rainbows mundane. But they are getting that way during this rainy CA winter. Last week alone 3 out of 5 mornings had rainbows.