Books
Masumi Yajima / Univ. of Calgary / AFP file |
A researcher checks a 3-D model of the human body, projected from the
walls and floor of a virtual-reality room at the University of Calgary. Such
blends of medical and cybernetic innovation are likely to become more
widespread in the next 50 years. Click on the image for a larger version.
|
How will the world look in the year 2058? Sixty thinkers from around the world rise to that challenge in "The Way We Will Be 50 Years From Today," a collection of essays edited by longtime journalist Mike Wallace.
The consensus view is that we'll muddle through many of the issues that vex us today - including climate change and terror threats. And we'll hit upon so many medical and technological wonders that today's 50-year-olds will have a fair chance of finding out firsthand how the world will look in 2058.
Find out more about how today's pioneers size up tomorrow's frontiers. Then, weigh in with your own vision of the way things will be 50 years from now.
CONTINUED >>
Earlier in the week, we talked about children's books on scientific topics - but of course, science isn't just for kids. In fact, there are so many science-oriented volumes out there that it'd be unfair to give you a top-10 list. Instead, we'll start out with seven pairs of recently published books that address topics ranging from climate science to space history to ghost hunting. Then you can chime in with your own favorites for holiday giving (and anyday reading). You might even win a prize.
CONTINUED >>
Houghton Mifflin |
Science-oriented books for
kids include "Prehistoric
Actual Size" (not shown
here at actual size).
|
In the old days, a kid’s prime source for science information was the "How and Why Wonder Book" series, or maybe a bookshelf’s worth of encyclopedia volumes. Today, the printed word has to compete with computers – and that’s led to a new generation of children’s books on science that follow fresh formats. Check out some of the freshest goodies in this week's special report from the journal Nature, then tell us about your own favorite science books for children.
In Nature's roundup, Harriet Coles observes that publishers have gone to gimmicks ranging from pop-up pages to companion CD-ROMs in order to keep young readers engaged - and keep the grown-ups buying books.
CONTINUED >>
Flat World Productions |
Mr. and Mrs. Square have a mealtime chat with their granddaughter Hex in Seth
Caplan's version of the two-dimensional mathematical fable "Flatland.""
|
It's been more than 120 years since Edwin A. Abbott came out with one of mathematics' best-loved fables, "Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions," but the tale takes on a whole new dimension in animated retellings released direct to DVD. The cartoons turn out to be as much about today's social milieu as about math - just as the original story was back in Abbott's day.
CONTINUED >>
Scaled Composites |
There are reasons why "rocket science" is the quintessential hard thing to do. Last week's fatal explosion at Scaled Composites' desert test site, where the historic SpaceShipOne rocket plane was born, showed just how hard and tragic rocket science can be. Even SpaceShipOne's greatest successes came amid great risk - and that message comes through loud and clear in "Rocketeers," the fruit of more than three years of research, interviews and rocket tours by freelance journalist Michael Belfiore.
CONTINUED >>
Summer is prime time for escapist fiction - but as long as you're escaping, why not head for some science, speculation and social commentary as well? Here are a few suggestions for sci-fi escapism in print and on TV:
CONTINUED >>
Simon & Schuster |
World-famous physicist Stephen Hawking and his daughter Lucy have finished a fictional tale that's aimed at the middle-school set but takes on grown-up topics ranging from black holes to the origins of the universe. Lucy Hawking says the book, "George’s Secret Key to the Universe," should give kids a better grasp on the cosmic mysteries that are her father's specialties.
Has the father-daughter team come up with new scientific explanations that can turn cosmology into child's play? “There's something really great," Lucy Hawking told me, "but if I tell you, it would spoil the plot." Despite the Harry Potteresque air of secretiveness, she went on to drop a few hints about what kids will find when they crack the book open in October.
CONTINUED >>
Simon & Schuster |
Walter Isaacson’s 704-page, 2.4-pound biography of Albert Einstein may not provide a solution to the great question that nagged the physicist to the day he died – but thanks to Isaacson's access to a treasure trove of letters released just last year, "Einstein: His Life and Universe" provides the most definitive word yet on Einstein's personal puzzles.
You'll get the latest take on the inner sources of his genius, the "triangular geometry" of his sex life and the ambiguities of his religious beliefs. And you just might learn something new about relativity, too.
Read on for a Q&A with the author of America's best-selling biography.
CONTINUED >>
Can a brain scan tell what's on your mind? Can your mind change your brain? And what is this thing called consciousness? Over the past week or so, cerebral subjects like these been popping up in a variety of contexts: Researchers report that they can indeed analyze magnetic-resonance readings to guess what experimental subjects intend to do before they do it (shades of precrime!). Meanwhile, The Wall Street Journal's Sharon Begley discusses her new book, "Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain," with Earth & Sky. (You can read a PDF excerpt on National Public Radio's Science Friday Web site.) And The New Yorker profiles the work of consciousness researchers Patricia and Paul Churchland. (You'll have to check out that article at the library; it's not online.)
If you're into the whole scientific debate over consciousness, you could preorder next month's scheduled release of Douglas Hofstadter's latest book, "I Am a Strange Loop." But in the meantime, get an overview on the topic by checking out Susan Blackmore's "Conversations on Consciousness," a series of interviews with top philosophers and neuroscientists. Let's call this January's belated selection for the Cosmic Log Used-Book Club, our monthly effort to highlight books with cosmic themes that can usually be found at your local library or secondhand-book shop.
Post your suggestions for this month's CLUB Club selection, and if I choose yours as the next cosmic book of the month, I'll send you either Richard Restak's "The New Brain" or Peter Ward's "Life as We Do Not Know It."
Cornell Univ. |
There’s a new flood of books about the relationship between science and religion – and just as the various Christian gospels were aimed at different audiences, so too are these. On one hand, E.O. Wilson’s “The Creation” reaches out to believers, while on the other hand, Richard Dawkins’ “The God Delusion” rallies the unbelievers to mount a full-scale attack on religion.
Perhaps the hardest-to-categorize gospel comes from someone who shuffled off this mortal coil 10 years ago: astronomer Carl Sagan, whose lectures on science and religion are being released this week in a book titled “The Varieties of Scientific Experience.” The talks were originally delivered in Glasgow in 1985 as part of the Gifford Lectures on Natural Theology (the same lecture series that spawned William James' "The Varieties of Religious Experience" back in 1902).
Although Sagan's observations are more than 20 years old, they deftly deal with today’s controversies over intelligent design, cosmic origins and God’s role in the universe. In fact, the words often sound as if they were written today:
CONTINUED >>
