“… das ist Enzyklopädie der Erfahrungen

Dieser Neue Physiologus ist eine Zitatmontage aus literarischen Enzyklopädien

• alphabetisch, systematisch und mit Gebrauchsanweisung
  
• aus den besten Quellen geschöpft: von Herodot und Plinius bis Ror Wolf
  
• aus vielen Dialekten: Starck- und Dummdeutsch, Rotwelsch, Skat- und Waidmannssprache …”

Da macht das Stöbern Freude. Hier z. B. eine (nicht besonders physiologische) Kritik von Mankells Krimis.

(via Schockwellenreiter)

“… a medium for information about the Center and its programs, data about science fiction, informed commentary, and occasional news about SF in general. It also will provide links to other SF information sources.”

Try A basic science fiction library and Libraries in Science Fiction.

“If you enjoyed Brave New World, try some of these Utopias, Dystopias, and Near-Future Reads”.

“January's ‘Essential Science Fiction Library’ isn't a survey of what SF fans have on their shelves, or a scholarly list of important works, but a compilation of fiction intended to capture curious readers' imaginations and inspire further investigation.”

MP3s of a six-LP set of science-themed folk songs (Space, Energy & Motion, Experiment, Weather, Nature, More Nature. Try Introduction To Nature Study. (via Schockwellenreiter)

A review of three recent books on the origin of life by Antonio Lazcano in the American Scientist.

Life on a Young Planet, by paleontologist Andrew Knoll, focuses on the first three billion years of biological history on our planet, with considerable emphasis on the information provided by the fossil record. By contrast, physicist Fred Adams and geneticist Paul F. Lurquin attempt in their respective books to describe more grandiose schemes: They start with physics and the Big Bang, continue through the origin of life on Earth and conclude, almost inevitably, with chapters on the purpose of it all.
Origins of Existence: How Life Emerged in the Universe by Fred Adams (The Free Press, 2002, forthcoming in paper in October from Pi Press under a new title, Our Living Multiverse).

Life on a Young Planet: The First Three Billion Years of Evolution on Earth by Andrew H. Knoll (Princeton University Press, 2003).

The Origins of Life and the Universe by Paul F. Lurquin (Columbia University Press, 2003).

(At the bottom of the review you'll find a citation from Camus, which I find completely misstaken in an evolutionary context.)

Thomas C. Grubb, Jr. : The Mind of the Trout.
A Cognitive Ecology for Biologists and Anglers. (Univ of Wisconsin Pr, June 2003)

How and why do trout think? How do they decide where to eat and which food to eat? Why do they refuse to behave as predicted, stumping anglers by rejecting a larger fly for a smaller one or not responding at all to anything in an angler's box?


(Mind the dogs.)

E-Text: The History of the Devil and the Idea of Evil from the Earliest Times to the Present Day von Paul Carus, 1900 erschienen. (via das kollektiv)

Mit einem Kapitel über die noreuropäische Dämonologie von Johannes Gehrts sowie einem über die Inqisition.

Das Virtuelle Labor hat ein neues, lesenswertes Essay von Henning Schmidgen über Helmholtz ‘psychologische’ Zeit-Experimente. Es basiert auf einem früherem Beitrag in Endeavour (2002, 26:142). Ein großer Teil der Primärliteratur ist gleich im virtuellen Labor verfügbar. Schade nur, dass die Essays in zerstückelten HTML-Seiten daher kommen.

Unter dem Titel Form annehmen: prähistorische Kunst und wir (Taking shape: Prehistoric art and us) versucht Victoria James in The Japan Times dahinter zu kommen, was
prähistorische Kunst uns über die Entstehung des modernen Menschen sagen kann. Dabei kommt allerdings nicht viel bei herum. Sie erwähnt jedoch ein neues Buch von Randall White (Prehistoric Art: the Symbolic Journey of Humankind, Harry N. Abrams, July 2003): “‘Prehistoric Art: The Symbolic Journey of Humankind’ by Randall White of New York University, published last month, is a visually stunning account of the art and artifacts of early humans around the globe.”



p. s. Paul Bahn in The new scientist: “White himself considers this book's title "pretentious". I consider it misleading, since the vast majority of this work deals with the Palaeolithic art of Eurasia - a tiny, if important, fraction of world prehistoric art.”

An Essay by George Johnson.

“The primary reason [Galileo] was hauled before the Inquisition, [Arthur] Koestler argued [The Sleepwalkers, 1959], was not for teaching Copernicus's view that Earth and the planets revolved around the Sun, but for offending so many of his sympathizers […]

Pushing this idea furthe two new books, ‘Galileo's Mistake,’ by Wade Rowland (Arcade Publishing [July 2003]), and ‘Galileo in Rome’ by William R. Shea and Mariano Artigas (Oxford University Press [September 2003]), almost seem to sympathize with the inquisitors, making Galileo look like the dogmatist.”

Also interisting: ”Centuries after Galileo's book was banned, the physicist J. M. Jauch resurrected Salviati, Sagredo and Simplicio to discuss whether a new theory called quantum mechanics provided a true picture of an underlying reality or was just a convenient mathematical tool. He called his book "Are Quanta Real? A Galilean Dialogue" (Indiana University Press, 1973).”

Elizabeth Svoboda reports reasearch from neurochemist Gavin Lambert. He proposes that people may actually be driven to suicide by anxiety-causing serotonin spikes in spring and summer, which follow long winter periods of low serotonin activity. The story is based on a brief report by Lambert et al. in the American Journal of Psychiatry (2003; 160, 793).

There's a new book “A Concise History of Ornithology” by Michael Walters and Christopher Helm (june 2003), reviewed by fatbirder, a site about bird watching.

In eine Suchmaschine getippt: “proboscis snail”. Und dabei über folgenden Artikel von Richard Howey in der britischen Mikroskopie-Zeitschrift Micscape gestolpert: Snail's Teeth, Spicules, and Other Bizarre Delights: Or Beauty is in the Eye of the Beholder (“Zähne, Stacheln und andere bizarre Erfreulichkeiten: Oder die Schönheit ist im Auge des Betrachters”).

Dies ist aber keine Proboscis, sondern eine Radula:

Ich bin umgezogen und habe in der neuen Wohnung noch kein Telefon- geschweige denn einen Internetanschluss, da die Telekom nicht in Quark kommt. Zumindest an meinem Arbeitsplatz kann ich jetzt wieder an's Netz, so dass es hoffentlich hier jetzt weitergeht.