"Paradoxides" Bwhah-ha-ha-ha-haaa!

Trilobite!: Eyewitness to Evolution by Richard Fortey
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I don't want to give away who dunnit.
This book made me want to get a little hammer and go out looking for fossils. Okay, I've always sort of wanted to do that, but this intensified that feeling! Fortey might try just a bit too hard to be humorous which might go over well in a class but just made me groan.  It is plain that he has had a balanced education he's not letting go to waste, despite the childhood obsession that became his life's work.  Fortey weaves literature, personalities, and scandal into the trilobite story.  It was hardly necessary; trilobites and all the minutiae involved fascinate me.  Oh, and the eyes, their eyes!  I have two more Forteys in the stack to read.  They take such a gosh-awful long time to digest, but are worth it in the end.
I am also delighted that I too now know that Paradoxides is the "genus of the trilobite of the Middle Cambrian" just like Tim Brooke-Taylor.  You have to follow ISIRTA to find that funny.


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Supersense Me!

SuperSense: Why We Believe in the Unbelievable by Bruce Hood


My rating: 5 of 5 stars
This was an eminently readable book about a fascinating topic. Hood posits that supernatural thinking (which covers a wide range of beliefs from religion to the feeling that someone is looking at you) is one of the bag of tricks in all human brains that came to us thanks to evolution. Is it possible to be free from it? Probably not, and this Supersense has its use in creating a sense of community in people, in sorting, in categorizing. Religion, it seems, is just a bonus. I read a review about this book on The Friendly Atheist's blog and snagged a Kindle version immediately. I might have to get hard copy of it for reference, because flipping through a Kindle isn't the cakewalk I'd like it to be.
Hood's prose is clear enough for anyone to understand (unusual in an academic), and while he does tend to repeat himself, I did not find this annoying, especially in picking it up and reading it in short bursts. It helps to be reminded of what he talked about in previous chapters. So much of this book is meaty information that I highlighted most of it. I recommend it for atheists and theists alike.
For me, it was an eyeopener to realize that the rabblerousers decrying gay marriage, etc. were using a time-honored method of improving community cohesiveness by appealing to a visceral sense of disgust. Sure, you can also build community on positive beliefs, but it's so much easier to manipulate people using disgust. This opens a path for rebuttal, a chance to show you're taking the high road. Okay, maybe that's just me.

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Getting in Touch With My Inner Fish

Your Inner Fish: A Journey into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body by Neil Shubin

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars
Shubin uses his simplest prose to point out what science has shown to be glaringly obvious: you have an inner fish ... AND an inner worm (well, let's just say we've all noticed the worm). I adored this book. Mine was the Kindle edition. I only wish the illustrations were a bit more legible (putting on the old reading glasses helped the majority of the time).

What did I learn? That the anatomy found on earth uses the same old pieces of the pie over and over again, just reshapes them to new use. Gill slits become inner ear bits, etc. ... The convolutions in our abdomens are millions of years of reorienting other bits.

Our evolution is written in our very bodies and footnoted by all the other species that went their separate ways.

Bah! I put it badly. Read the book!


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Just like a fish, I have a top, a bottom (hee, I said "bottom"), two sides, two eyes, a mouth ... etc.