smellincoffee

The White War: Life and Death on the Italian Front, Mark Thompson

Concerning the 1915-1919 struggle between Italy and Austria.

Assuming Sagan's works are gratis...

Phantoms in the Brain, V.S. Ramachandran.

The Ghosts of Evolution, Connie Barlow. On 'ecological anachronisms',

The Wild Life of Our Bodies, Rob Dunn

Our Inner Ape, Frans De Waal

The United States calls itself a Republic, "the public thing", but I'm given to believe that in the 21st century, the public thing no longer exists. When a politician speaks of community or society he's booed down as a socialist: we're seemingly a nation of self-obsessed individuals, content with amusing ourselves and utterly oblivious to the greater world that exists outside of our homes, outside the state, and outside the present moment of time. Such a thought is discouraging, and yet I resist it by pretending the Public Thing still exists, by contributing daily as I can to the bank of the common good which may have failed long ago.

Ecclesiastes 3:19-22

For the fate of humans and the fate of animals is the same; as one dies, so dies the other. They all have the same breath, and humans have no advantage over the animals; for all is vanity. All go to one place; all are from the dust, and all turn to dust again. Who knows whether the human spirit goes upwards and the spirit of animals goes downwards to the earth? So I saw that there is nothing better than that all should enjoy their work, for that is their lot; who can bring them to see what will be after them?

Micah 6:8

He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the LORD require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?

I've never used Google Scholar before, but it seems like a promising resource! Thanks. I did find one book today.."Twilight of the Mammoths: Ice Age Extinctions and the Rewilding of America (Organisms and Environments), by Paul Martin. I've registered with AAAS and am digging in...

The Consolations of Philosophy, Alain de Botton

Meditations, Marcus Aurelius

A Guide to the Good Life: the Ancient Art of Stoic Joy, William Irvine

Discourses, Epictetus

Enchiridion, Epictetus

Letters from a Stoic, Seneca

Analogues and Essays, Seneca

The Art of Living, Sharon Lebell (modern English interpretation of Epictetus' handbook)

Dhammapada

Plato's Podcasts, Mark Vernon

I to Myself, Henry David Thoreau

Essays, Michel de Montaigne

The Essential Epicurus

For the Love of Life, Erich Fromm

Just a few favorites. There's another I really like,but I can't "reccommend" it because in one chapter the author promotes homeopathy. (In Praise of Slow, Carl Honore).

I've long had a fascination with the animals that occupied the Americas before the arrival of humans -- not just the mammoths, but the beasts few hear of, like the American lion and rhinoceros. I've just read The Ghosts of Evolution, which drew out some ecological relationships that might have existed before these beasts went extinct, and it's ignited my curiosity all the more. While I know the amount of information available on these extraordinary creatures is limited given that they're extinct and we only have fossils to go by, are there any books out there that take American megafauna as their subject?

Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors is probably my favorite Sagan book. Also, look for Billions and Billions; it's a collection of essays, published posthumously.

The immune systems recognizes specific structures of the viruses (antigens, this term is not specific to viruses but to anything the immune system recognizes). If the genes for the given structures mutate, the resulting structure might be altered in a way that is not recognized by the immune system anymore.

Okay, thanks. I'm going to be reading a bit more on viral reproduction to sort out what happens where.

I'm a history student, but I like science and make an effort to maintain a well-rounded education. Tonight while reading on mutation in Richard Leakey's introduction to The Origin of Species, I wondered to myself how viruses like the influenza virus mutate to become resistant or immune to our vaccinations and so on. I made a few web searches, but turned up nothing useful. The only thing I found was this:

A virus is essentially a parasite: it enters a cell, hijacking its metabolic and reproductive machinery in order to replicate and to do this successfully it has to adapt to the creature it infects.

 

Most viruses do not mutate all that much N but the influenza, like the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), is a notorious exception.

 

Flu viruses mutate in two ways

"Influenza viruses have an inherently high rate of mutation, which means that they are very flexible genetically and can adapt to a new environment," Maria Zambon, head of the flu laboratory at Britain's Health Protection Agency, said in an interview.

 

Flu viruses mutate in two ways: a slow, low-key change that usually is a minor public-health problem; and a fast, highly important genetic transformation which is the source of the alarm today.

Could someone elaborate?

I'd also recommend SkyLab: America's Space Station for those who want to learn more. I read it in high school, and it quickly became one of my favorites.

Depending on your child's reading level, LiveScience.com might be a good place to try. I think that a ten-year old could understand most of the articles there, as they are written for a popular audience. LiveScience also sells kids' science toys.

I was just wondering if anyone will like to help me in discussing 'importance of science in children's learning'. Why is Science so important? If it's important, how does children develop scientific understanding? If science is not important in children's learning, do they ever develop scientific understanding?

 

Grateful for your response.

I was raised in a fundamentalist cult that actively discouraged a lot of learning, especially science. A love for learning in childhood was squelched when I was sucked into the cult in high school, but once I left it around the age of nineteen, I rediscovered a love. While in my case I was merely finding that love for learning again, I have read many stories of people who discovered the joys of science and history when they started leaving their own backgrounds -- and these were adults. I think it is possible for an adult to gain a love for learning, but the older a person gets, the more prejudices they're prone to acquiring. That said, I think it's more important to instill a love for education in children than getting them to memorize facts, because those facts vanish by and large once people leave the educational system.

Hello, all! My name is Stephen. I'm a history major going into librarianship, but I really enjoy science. I've been trying to find a good forum for discussing science, in the interests of learning more and finding people who share a similar joy in learning about the world. I do a lot of nonfiction reading in the area of science, and my favorite author by far is Carl Sagan.

About a year ago I read a great book titled Theories for Everything, which is almost a general history of science. The book is divided into six general areas, written by three authors, each experts in their respective fields. Nothing is incomprehensible. It will definitely become part of my personal library.

Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theories_for_Everything

National Geographic:

http://shop.nationalgeographic.com/product/212/3233/114.html

Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/Theories-Everything-Illustrated-History-Science/dp/0792239121

I'd recommend it to those who are interested in the history of science, or who want a general overview of a specific topic. National Geographic has the chapter titles available on their website.