My set the inaugural Green Showoff last night was also a chunk of my talk at the Story today, so I thought I’d post it here. I did my PhD on kids science books. When I tell people this, they often get a sort of “aww bless” expression on their faces. Patronising f*ckers. Written by … Continue reading »
Filed under books …
Energy and Climate Change: Some Good Reads
This post originally appeared on the New Left Project. A friend recently asked me for book recommendations on energy and climate change. “I want books” they stressed, “not policy briefing papers or essays or scientific reports. Something to curl up on the sofa with, something that digests and explains the issues and spins a few good yarns … Continue reading »
Book Review: Secrecy and Science
Wanna know a secret? Of course you do. Ok, it’s not really a secret, it’s just a story that’s a bit closed off. It’s an interesting story, about a military research centre which held an open day, but it’s in a niche academic book with a £55 pricetag. It’s a good book, painstakingly researched and … Continue reading »
Advertising the Space Race
Book review of Megan Prelinger’s, Another Science Fiction: Advertising the space race 1957-1962 (New York: Blast Books). A shorter version of this appeared in the August edition of Public Understanding of Science. There’s a lot of loose talk about science fiction; about the great influence fiction has on science or, conversely, a great cultural crash between … Continue reading »
Five Books
I was interviewed for the Browser’s “Five Books” feature last week, talking about children’s science literature. I did my PhD on kids’ science books. People sometimes think it was a strange, even trivial, thing to study – that children’s literature is just a bit of fun compared to the serious business of science, or that non-fiction … Continue reading »
Book Review: Free Radicals
With his new book, Free Radicals, Michael Brooks has done something which surprised me: he’s produced a popular science version of Against Method. Against Method, if you don’t know it, is a philosophy of science book by Paul Feyerabend, published in 1975. It argued against the idea that science progressed through the application of a strict universal method, and … Continue reading »
Boobie-cakes
Breasts, by Genichiro Yagyu. Part of the Japanese My Body series, this children’s book about breasts comes from the people who brought the world Everybody Poops, The Gas we Pass, The Holes in Your Nose, All About Scabs and, my personal favourite, Contemplating Your Bellybutton. It focuses on the relationship breasts play between mother and child, and includes several pictures of breastfeeding. It’s … Continue reading »
David Kirby’s ‘Lab Coats in Hollywood’
Dinosaur model from the 19thC, still on display in a South London park. Verisimilitude. Good word, isn’t it? It’s one of my favourites. It means ‘the appearance of being true or real’. It’s not just a term for people who study semiotics: philosophers of science use it too (or at least Popper does), as a … Continue reading »
Why Don’t You? A review of ‘Making is Connecting’
I’ve mentioned David Gauntlett’s new book, Making is Connecting, a few times recently: on my work blog, my knitting one, and on the Guardian’s Notes and Theories. It’s an interesting book worth talking about. It’s about the social meanings of creativity and 21st century maker cultures, be these makers of blogs, woolly cardigans, cupcakes, podcasts … Continue reading »
A bit of Victoriana
Everyone loves a bit of Victoriana at Christmas, so I thought I’d dig out some of my notes on children’s science books in the 19th century. (preface of John Henry Pepper’s Playbook, 1860, via googlebooks clip) The 19th century was the age of professionalisation of science. The word “scientist” wasn’t coined until 1833 [EDIT: or … Continue reading »
