Girl Warriors by Rachel Sarah

Rating: WORTHY!

From an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

This is a book consisting of short bios of 26 young female climate "warriors" and how they came to prominence. No, Greta Thunberg isn't one of them, but she gets a lot of mentions! I think the author wanted to shine the spotlight in other directions for a change and there's nothing wrong with that.

The girls are as follows. They're in the same order as in the book, but I'm not actually sure if there is any order with regard to how these names appear. Each item in the list contains the nationality and very briefly, something they're known for. I don't list their ages because that's not as important as what they've done. One entry consists of two sisters, so there are only 25 listings.

• Daphne Frias, USA - voice against pollution
• Saoi O'Connor, Ireland - climate striker
• Maya Penn, USA - fabric recycling
• Selina N Leem, USA - rise in sea levels
• Elsa Mengistu, USA - national director Zero Hour
• Catarina Lorenzo, Brazil - coral reefs
• Ridhima Pandey, India - climate change awareness
• Isha Clarke, USA - green new deal
• Hannah Testa, USA - plastic pollution
• Haven Coleman, USA - human-caused changed
• Lilly Platt, Netherlands - plastic pollution
• Ayisha Siddiqa, USA - greenhouse gases
• Melati and Isabel Wijsen, Indonesia - plastic pollution
• Kallan Benson, USA - climate awareness
• Shreya Ramachandran, USA - water shortage
• Jamie Margolin, USA - founder of Zero Hour
• Imogen Sumbar, Australia - fire risk
• Bella Lack, UK - climate impact on wildlife
• Malaika Vaz, India - endangered animals
• Mabel Athanasiou, USA - waste reduction
• Elizabeth Wathuti, Kenya - tree planting
• Sarah Goody, USA - environmental activist
• Vanessa Nakate, Uganda - drought
• Haile Thomas, USA - healthy eating
• Isabella Fallahi, USA - youth voice

One thing that I immediately noticed is how prominent the USA is in that list. It's sad that there couldn't have been greater diversity - not in skin color or ethnicity, but in which nations these people represent. 60% of them are in the USA, and while some of those have ancestry or are immigrants from other countries, it's still sad that a nation with little more than 4% of the world's population gets the lion's share of this story especially when the US contributes a lion's share of pollution.

What - there are no activists in China? There's only one representative from the same Pacific islands that are going to be impacted hugely forms ea-level rise? There are only two in Africa, which as a continent has low emissions, but is suffering a great impact from climate change. The USA, which has actively sought to destroy environmental agreements and legislation over the past four years, swallows the Earth's resources and causes pollution wa-ay out of proportion to its population - or any other portion of the world. Maybe the author thinks the USA needs more activists to offset the selfish damage it's doing?

That important beef aside, the stories are heart-warming and inspiring. That's what's most important, and it's why this book is well worth reading. Strong women, storng views, dedicated work. It's all in here, and I commend it as a worthy read.

The Ends of the World by Peter Brannen

Rating: WORTHY!

Peter Brannen is a science journalist and in this audio book he talks (or more accurately, Adam Verner talks, since he's the actual narrator) about the five major extinctions that Earth has endured. These are far from the only extinctions Earth has seen in its four billion year plus history, but they are the most significant ones. Arguably, one major event that is relatively recently being recognized - something which destroyed at least a third of marine life diversity, and a significantly larger proportion of terrestrial diversity - is the end-Guadalupian extinction which took place ten million years before the Permian. Brannen does not mention this one. I don't know why. Perhaps since it's so close to the Permian he considers it all part of the same thing. Ten million years isn't a lot in geologic time after all!

As Brannen makes clear in his disturbing evocations, these events were truly horrific times, when the planet was brought to its knees in a series of nightmare scenarios. Earth froze or was virtually boiled, and or was shaded with debris and poisoned with noxious gases from volcanic or impact events, and nearly all life became extinct, only to resume when the crisis was over, to redevelop, re-evolve, and to spread widely and fantastically; then to be culled severely again by the next global tragedy. It's a miracle anything survived at all, let alone enough to allow humans to grow out of what came before.

The thing is though that only one of these extinctions can really be laid at the door of an asteroid impact. That's the most famous one - the dino extinction, and even that cause is disputed. The others? Climate change. The same sort of thing that is going on now, right under our noses, the only difference being that in the past it happened quite slowly whereas we are heating-up the planet far faster than anything nature has ever contemplated.

No other review I've seen has listed these events, but the five extinctions covered in this book are these:

• Ordovician-Silurian - 440 million years ago
• Late Devonian - 365 million years ago
• Permian-Triassic - 250 million years ago
• Triassic-Jurassic - 210 million years ago
• Cretaceous-Tertiary - 65 Million Years Ago

There's a reason these geologic periods in Earth's hugely-long history have boundaries and names and it's because of (from our modern eyes) abrupt changes in species diversity and composition. Flora and fauna changed and the period got a different name to mark these boundaries. Amazingly, nightmarish and totally weird organisms grew, flourished, and spread, and then disappeared, only to be replaced by an entirely new set of fantastical creatures. The resilience of nature and the inventiveness it exhibits is astounding.

I really enjoyed this book and fully commend it. My only complaint may have been related just to my copy, but I got this from Chirp and I played it through their app on my iPhone in the car on my daily commute. As usual with these books, it worked perfectly, in this case though for only about eighty percent of the book. Right around that mark, it began giving me grief. Other books have played to the very end without issues, but a couple of books I've had problems with, and this was the second that I can recall. It would play for a minute or so and then stop for no apparent reason. I'd restart it, and it would do the same over and over. A different book I began listening to had no such issues - but it has not reached eighty percent yet! We'll see how that goes. (It went fine!)

Apart from that I have no complaints and commend this book fully as educational and entertaining.

The ABCs of Global Warming by Charles Siegel

Rating: WORTHY!

From an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

This book about the dire effects of climate change - effects we have been seeing for some time and are seeing increasingly - does what it says, offering "What Everyone Should Know About the Science, the Dangers, and the Solutions." It keeps it succinct, laying out the facts, backed by copious (200+) references, explaining simply and quickly what the various problems are, dismissing the objections authoritatively, and laying out the do's and don't's of how to fix the problem, rooted in science, not in "I'm in my own reality" speak that a certain thankfully ex-president of the US chose to speak - no doubt for business reasons rather than for any benefit to our planet.

The book is short, easy to understand, and in my opinion, it ought to be essential reading for every student. I commend it as a worthy read.

The Classic Slave Narratives by Olaudah Equiano, Mary Prince, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Jacobs

Rating: WORTHY!

This book really is four books in one, beginning with Olaudah Equiano's story (told here as Gustavus Vassa and running to about 170 tightly-packed pages) and followed by Mary Prince (c60pps), Frederick Douglass (c90pps) and finally Harriet jacobs (c160pps) this book makes for a depressing and disturbing read - and should be required reading in schools so that those clueless assholes who've been chanting 'all lives matter' lately, will actually 'get it', and understand that yes, all lives do matter, but by blindly chanting that, you're missing the point, morons.

The list of inhuman actions in this book - in any one of these four books for that matter - is both predictable for anyone who knows human nature, and horrifying. Given that most people were 'good Christians' during the entire time these crimes against humanity were taking place serves only to starkly highlight how utterly useless religion is as a moral code.

It's also an eye opener for those who did not know that slavery was in place in Africa long before it was exported to the USA and other nations. Africans were helping in this evil trade. It wasn't just a white folks industry, although you can successfully argue that white folks were the ones who took it to new depths. In Africa, black lives did matter - even those of slaves.

I commend this as a worthy read.

Seven Skeletons by Lydia Pyne

Rating: WORTHY!

Narrated very well by Randye Kaye, this book written by a woman who also has a Y in both first and last name, was an excellent study of how fossils become celebrities. It is not about human evolution or the human family tree, so you'll need to read elsewhere for that information. Nevertheless it can be argued that a bit more of the evolutionary side and the linkages (or lack of same) between these fossils would have served well, I feel.

That said I enjoyed it immensely. The book covers these seven fossils (listed here in order of discovery):

• Homo neanderthalensis, specifically the Neanderthal known as La Chapelle-aux-Saints 1, which was discovered in 1908, although the first example of the Neanderthal was discovered in 1856 in the Neander Valley in Germany.
• the Taung Child (Australopithecus africanus), discovered in a quarry in Taung, South Africa in 1924.
• Peking Man (Homo erectus pekinensis) was discovered starting in 1929 at Zhoukoudian near Beijing.
• Lucy (Australopithecus afarensis) was discovered in 1974 at Hadar in Africa. A team at the University of Texas-Austin where the author also has an affiliation, x-rayed Lucy's skeleton and came to the conclusion that she died probably from a fall from a tree, although this is disputed. The author doesn't mention this, so I assume this took place after the book was finalized, the book being published the same year the study was conducted (2016).
• Homo floresiensis, discovered in 2003 at Liang Bua on the island of Flores in Indonesia.
• Australopithecus sediba was discovered in the Malapa Cave in South Africa in 2008.

The seventh one covered is the Piltdown hoax - remember it's not about fossils per se but about fossil celebrity, which is why this hoax was included.

The story is about how and why these fossils became celebrities, and not necessarily about how important they are to science or how rare they are, or whatever. In that, the book does a good job detailing how they were found and what happened to them since then, including their path to stardom and the reasons for it. I commend this as a worthy read.

Erasing Death by Sam Parnia

Rating: WARTY!

The title of this was misleading because he's not talking about erasing death, merely putting it off for a while by learning ways to bring back people from near death by applying the latest scientific and medical advances to keep them alive and fully functional, and some of what's known is counter-intuitive. That much was interesting, and there were many parts of this book that were quite engrossing. Unfortunately the author has larded the rest of the book with so much rambling, back-tracking, historical story-telling, annoying repetitiveness, and so on that in the end, I can't commend this as a worthy read.

The book could have been maybe a third the length it is, and would then have made for a solid read, but it seemed to me like all the author was interested in doing was stream-of-consciousness direct to paper with no editing. It rendered what could have been a truly interesting and informative book into a tedious effort on my part in skimming pages until I found something new and original and engaging to read. As it is, I can't commend it at all.

Simply HTML5 by eBookLingo.com

Rating: WARTY!

From an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

I’m not sure who wrote this or what they were trying to achieve with it, but frankly it was a mess. Regardless, it's a shame the actual authors didn't get a mention. Anyway, I read this as I typically do, on my iPhone, and the layout was really bad. The contents list occupied no less than sixteen screens and was so poorly laid out that it was useless for any practical purpose. I checked this out on my iPad for comparison and it was only marginally better on that.

The layout of the book itself wasn't much of an improvement, with one topic running into another in a way that was messy and confusing. There seemed to be no overall plan and there was a lot of repetitiveness. I wondered if this was another example of a book being written as a print book, with the ebook version being tossed in either as an afterthought or as nothing more than a means of allowing reviewers such as myself, who don’t merit print versions, to at least see it. If that’s the case, then it did them a disservice because it was a mess and, I assume, poorly represented the print version.

The contents table was a prime example, because it was supposed to be tappable - in that you could tap on a heading and go there, but it had a long series of periods leading from the section title to the page number. Page numbers are irrelevant in an ebook. All you need is the link to tap on, but the links were so close together and so close to the edge of the page that you were more likely to swipe to the next or the previous screen than to go to the chapter heading, or you were equally likely to go to the chapter heading before or after the one you thought you were tapping. It could have been a lot better.

The HTML examples used in the book consisted of the HTML text first, then a green and white divider, and then the HTML as it would be seen on a browser (specifically in this case FireFox 80.0.1). I used 84.0.1 to test some of these examples and ran into issues with them – notably the ‘draggable’ attribute, which simply didn’t work. Other attributes did work. Some of the examples, though, made no sense. At least not to me.

Let me just say at this point that I’m far from an expert HTML coder, but I do use it on my review blog. I don’t go in for anything spectacular or fancy, but I’ve been doing it a long time, so I do have experience and I do understand the principles well. I also have some amateur programming experience in other languages, so I’m far from a newbie at this, but as I said, by no means an expert. I pass this information on just to say that my problems with this are not from a lack of familiarity with this sort of thing.

So when I read this: "HTML attributes values are generally case‐insensitive" and then just a couple of paragraphs later: "In HTML the tag and attribute names are not case‐sensitive but most attribute values are case‐sensitive" that's not my lack of understanding, it’s a direct contradiction! If it had been just one or two things, I would have thought little of it, but I kept on encountering problems of this nature.

For example, I read later, "Now their are some HTML attributes that are called boolean attributes." The word 'their' should be 'there' (there's no there, there! LOL!), but that wasn't the real problem. The problem here was the poor description and the examples. I read, "A boolean attribute when placed in an HTML element represents a true value, and when not placed in an HTML element the boolean attribute represents a false value." If it’s not placed, it’s not an attribute? Well duh! It just seemed pedantic and too wordy.

The book doesn't explain this, but a Boolean value, named after George Boole, is an either-or, a plus or minus, a 'yes' or 'no'. It’s one or the other with nothing in between. It’s the way digital computers work: everything to them is a one or a zero (or technically a low voltage - like four volts - representing the one, or an even lower voltage - 2 volts - representing the zero), but the examples given don't make sense. After several examples of this type: <div itemscope=itEmScOPe>This is a valid HTML boolean attribute. </div>, we get a last one like this: <div itemscope="true">This is NOT a valid HTML boolean attribute. </div>, but this is precisely the same as the others - text within quotes! How is it any different? It’s not made clear what's being said here, and this whole section ends with: "I think you get the point of what is a valid and not a valid boolean attribute from the above example." No, I actually didn’t!

In another example, demonstrating the use of the paragraph elements, the code showed this:

Here is an example of the HTML<p> element below. <p>This is the first paragraph.</p> <p>This is the second paragraph.</p>

Which should work fine, but the example output showed this:

This is the first paragraph. This is the second paragraph.

Note that there's no paragraphing at all - it’s two sentences in the same paragraph!

Here’s just one more example: <p>The misspelled word <u>pharoah</u> should be spelled pharaoh.</p> This is valid HTML code and should result in the word 'pharoah' being underlined, but the example they showed for the output was this: The misspelled word pharoah should be spelled pharaoh. In other words - no underlining!

It was this kind of problem combined with a seemingly haphazard approach to teaching the reader how to use HTML that turned me off this book and made me DNF it. There is a need for books like this, but this one seemed too scattershot to really teach things in a logical and meaningful way. I think instead of the host of tiny unconnected examples it offered, the book should have oriented itself around creating a whole web page, but doing it in step-wise fashion, each new section of the book focusing on one aspect of HTML, and each adding new things to the overall page, teaching the reader how it all works as it goes.

In that way the reader could have created one page, stored it on their computer, added the new bits to it as they went along, and enjoyed watching the page grow in their browser. In this way they would have created something that worked, and that they could see improve as they went along. They could then later adapt it for their own purposes if they wanted, being confident they knew how it all worked, instead of typing in seemingly random bits of HTML which do only unrelated things, contributing nothing to any organized, overall web page design for the reader, who see zero growing from all their efforts.

But that's just me. I like the step-wise and the logical for books like this, and this one seemed to dissipate too much effort on going every which way without trying to build a coherent whole out of what was being taught. It’s for these reasons that I cannot commend this as a worthy read.

Why Balloons Rise and Apples Fall by Jeff Stewart

Rating: WORTHY!

Life is short and books are long - if not within the covers, then when referring to how many books there are otut here int he world demanding to be read!

That's why I'm glad this was a short, fun book about physics. I could have happily continued reading had it been longer. It's an easy read and makes concepts quite clear - for the most part. There were a couple of times I had to do a double take, and while I don't for a minute profess to be a physicist, the things seemed off to me. I shall mention those below, but overall, this book was well-written, fun, and entertaining, with a nice sense of humor running through it and plenty of readily understandable explanations about what are, let’s face it, often difficult concepts to get one's mind around.

The book has a series of short sections, starting with asking what physics actually is, and each covers a different physics topic. Nothing important is left out, not even relativity and quantum mechanics, so if you want a basic grounding in physics, this is a great place to begin. It covers: astrophysics, electricity, energy, forces, heat, magnetism, matter, motion, all delivered well and educationally without straying too far into technical jargon or obscure explanations.

I ran into a problem on page 55 in a boxed section discussing an experiment by Dutch philosopher and mathematician Willem Jacob 's Gravesande, who experimented with dropping brass balls onto a smooth clay surface and measuring the depth to which the balls penetrated the clay, deriving a formula from it. Émilie du Châtelet made subsequent use of this, but she gets no mention in this book. The author talks about the brass balls falling at different speeds, but as he points out in this same book, acceleration under gravity is constant regardless of the weight of an object! So speed would seem to be far less relevant than mass in this case? Maybe I'm missing something, but it seemed odd to me.

The other issue I had was on page 92, where the author was discussing inflating balloons. He said that once a balloon is inflated and sealed, the pressure inside equals the pressure outside, but I for the life of me could not see this. The air in the balloon is under pressure - it has to be to inflate the constricting rubber (or whatever) of the balloon skin. If it equaled what was outside, then surely the balloon wouldn't sink to the ground as they typically do, but float at whatever height you set it? Again, maybe I'm missing something here, and maybe it’s purely the weight of the rubber that's causing the balloon to sink rather than the extra weight of the compressed air inside, otherwise it would float, but it seems to me that the pressure inside has to be greater. If it were less, the balloon would rise, surely? The author seems to admit this himself a paragraph or so later when talking about hot air balloons.

But whether this is a mistake of some sort, or whether I'm up a gum tree takes nothing away from the overall quality of the book, which I commend as a worthy and educational read.

The Hidden World of the Fox by Adele Brand

Rating: WORTHY!

Here we go! New Year, new plan. Why or even how it takes 26 hours rather than 24 for everyone to gather in the new year is baffling to me, but I love it because of that! For my part, my efforts from here on out will be to my own material rather than to reviewing the work of others. I began this review blog in the hope that I would achieve two things: the first was to learn from analyzing the work of others, and the second hope was that others might be tempted to read my work based on the sort of reviews I put out.

I tried to avoid merely championing my own writing, but I was not shy of mentioning my own work if it was relevant to what I was reviewing. While the first hope was realized in that I did get some good insights to how and what I wanted to write, the second was not. I guess people have no loyalty to writers these days and I can't blame them. You gotta read what trips your trigger!

What I learned was more of a negative than a positive, in the sense that I knew exactly what I didn't want to write. Everything else came from that and going forward, I intend to travel that same path and build on it, with a diversion here and there. One of these diversions I'm going to be setting up for publication today, although it won't actually be available until later in the month. In fact today marks the setting-up of three books all of which will be published this month. Hopefully this is symbolic of a work ethic I will embrace this year and beyond. Once again I embark upon a voyage in the Weal Sea!

But to this review, which is short and sweet, just like the book! This audiobook was read beautifully by Jane McDowell. It was short, yet replete with information about foxes. Most of it is of the British "red" fox, but it covers foxes in general, with specific examples from different parts of the world, and in doing so it imparts an overall picture while giving engaging and fascinating details of a fox's life in Britain. There's so much to learn about this misunderstood member of the dog family.

The author, a mammal ecologist who has studied foxes for many years, challenges many misconceptions about these mammals while educating the reader to the realities of it, which are much less scary and far more charming. In additional to revealing an extraordinary story about what foxes are and are not, and how they live and move and have their being, including their contributions to the environment, she also discusses how we might move ahead successfully together with them through neither vilifying nor holding foxes in adoration. I commend this as a worthy listen.

How Did They Do That? by Caroline Sutton

Rating: WORTHY!

I label this as a worthy non-fiction book, but this is sometimes in a loose sense because there seem to be some stories in it where fact and fancy have not been adequately discriminated, but overall I enjoyed it. It makes for a great restroom book because although there are three hundred pages of short (some longer, some very short) stories of the origins of various things, ideas, and people, and so on, most are quite short. The stories are eclectic and no attmept whatsoever seems to have been amde to organize them by any method - topic, category, chronology or otherwise.

The stories themselves are fun though, educational and intriguing. They're largely US-centric, be warned, but not exclusively so. They may cover the building of the Great Wall in China, the building of the Empire State building in NYC, the secret marriage of Mae West, the origin of coffee, Ford's union-busting brutality, how they made Superman fly in the Christopher Reeves era, and who made the first parachiute jump.

I found the book entertaining and fun, and I commend it as a worthy read.

Vital Dust by Christian de Duve

Rating: WORTHY!

This is one of my favorite books and covers a topic that doesn't get as much attention as evolution. It covers the origin of life - I mean it had to come from somewhere before it could evolve, right? LOL! De Duve died almost a decade ago, but he has left us a treasure here which covers every aspect of life from non-life, with the available evidence (as of his writing this book in 1995).

The book is extensive - some three hundred pages plus an extensive bibliography, glossary and other supportive material, such as additional reading suggestions. It's divided into several broad parts, starting with one on chemistry, and following that with how the genome came to be, moving on to how cells formed, the first 'real cell' as we know them today, multicellular life, and the development of intelligence.

Each part is subdivided into sections going into more detail on various aspects on the main topic. For example, The Age of Chemistry is split into sections on the search for origins, the first catalysts of life, fuel for emerging life, and the advent of RNA.

I whole-heartedly commend this as a worthy read.

Your Inner Fish by Neil Shubin

Rating: WORTHY!

This is a really superb book about a prediction made by the theory of evolution which was followed up by the author and resulted in the momentous discovery of Tiktaalik. ("We were the Tiktaaliks. We were exterminated" - a little bit of Doctor Who humor there...). There was a gap in the flow of evolution from what one fossil (Panderichthys) represented as a fish, and what the next fossil in line (Acanthostega) represented in terms of fish coming out onto land over time. Panderichthys was some 380 million years old. Acanthostega was around 365 million years old.

You see that fifteen million year gap? That's the kind of thing that creationists like to point to when they make their baseless claim that evolution is "just a theory". Since they can present no scientific evidence supporting their position, creationists are necessarily reduced to pointing out what they blindly believe are gaps or errors in the scientific theory of evolution.

The author, Neil Shubin, and his colleagues decided that if there was a evolutonary link between Panderichthys) and Acanthostega - while not necessarily a direct one between the two, but if there existed any such thing - It would be found in rocks datable between those two fossils. Such rocks were to be found on Ellesmere Island in Nunavut, Canada, so Shubin and co went there and dig - and lo and behold, they found the transitonal form exactly where prediction said it would be, and evolution was vindicated once again.

This book covers more than just Tiktaalik though. It goes on to discuss several curiosities we humans have which cannot be explained if we were specially created by a god, or if we were intelligently designed - because we are most assuredly not intelligently designed, as Shubin demosntrates. What Shubin shows here is that you can only explain various traits, organs, and behaviors we humans exhibit, by evolution. They're inexplicable, not to say inexcusable, if there was some sort of intelligent design! I commend this book completely.

The Blind Watchmaker by Richard Dawkins

Rating: WORTHY!

One mroe book of Dawkins's to fnish up my set of reviews, and this one was awful! Just kidding. No. Richard dawkins write and awful book? never! This was another excellent one. The title refers to idiotc creationist (is that a tautology?) William paley and his claim that if he found a watch lyign onthe ground eh woudl assume an intelligent creator had made it. he woudl not assume that it arose through mutation and such over time, btu his anaology is flawed, as Dawkins shows.

Dawkins goes on then to completely undermine the creationist claim that complexity cannot arise by itself (it actually doesn't - it arises from the alws of physics and chemistry!) by tackling their prize argument - that of the eye. There is actually a short documentary - which may be on You Tube by now, for all I know - and which takes its title and content from this book. In it, a very young-looking Dawkins makes the same argument with video support. I don't think it's his best documentary, but it's worth a look if you're a Dawkins fan.

In the video he demonstrates the "biomorphs" which he discusses in this book. I was never very impressed with those visually, but in the underlying workings, they do handsomely demonstrate how a small tweak in one "dimension" (the biomorphs have eleven, if I recall, one for each of their 'genes') can have disproportionate effects on the overall appearance - something the creationists simply don't get - along with everything else they don't get about evolution.

So overall, I commend this book as well worth reading.

Climbing Mount Improbable by Richard Dawkins

Rating: WORTHY!

Coming off the release of yet another children's work of fiction, and before I start on the next, it's time to look at some non-fiction print books that I've owned for a while, read some time ago, and never got around to blogging. These will all be science-based works, mostly about evolution, that have been useful to me, educational and helpful.

It's been a while since I've done battle with the idiot creationists, the main reason being that it's a waste of time. There is no creation science. It does not exist in any way, shape, or form. There is creation religion - blind belief unsupported by any evidence - and it's a waste of time arguing with those who swallow those lies, because there is no amount of fact, or evidence, or science, or truth that you cam set before them that will ever impact in any way upon their brainwashed hive mind. But if you want to take on that hopeless challenge, or evne just be better armed to defend your own scientific views, these are some of the boosk you might find useful to have on your reading list.

Last but by no means least, this is I think also in my top three. Or four! There are so many to choose from. This is another one taking aim at the evidence-free non-science (read: nonsense) of creationism by addressing the baseless creationist claim that evolution is too improbable to have happened - hence the title! With his usual wit, solid facts, clear arguments and fine writing, Dawkins takes the creationists to the cleaners and makes them pay for the job. I commend it fully.

Unweaving the Rainbow by Richard Dawkins

Rating: WORTHY!

Coming off the release of yet another children's work of fiction, and before I start on the next, it's time to look at some non-fiction print books that I've owned for a while, read some time ago, and never got around to blogging. These will all be science-based works, mostly about evolution, that have been useful to me, educational and helpful.

It's been a while since I've done battle with the idiot creationists, the main reason being that it's a waste of time. There is no creation science. It does not exist in any way, shape, or form. There is creation religion - blind belief unsupported by any evidence - and it's a waste of time arguing with those who swallow those lies, because there is no amount of fact, or evidence, or science, or truth that you cam set before them that will ever impact in any way upon their brainwashed hive mind. But if you want to take on that hopeless challenge, or evne just be better armed to defend your own scientific views, these are some of the boosk you might find useful to have on your reading list.

In the way that The Greatest Show on Earth was a paean to evolution, this book does the same thing for science in general. It's divided into intriguing chapters thus:

• The Anaesthetic of Familiarity
• Drawing Room of Dukes
• Barcodes in the Stars
• Barcodes on the Air
• Barcodes at the Bar
• Hoodwink'd with Faery Fancy
• Unweaving the Uncanny
• Huge Cloudy Symbols of a High Romance
• The Selfish Cooperator
• The Genetic Book of the Dead
• Reweaving the World
• The Balloon of the Mind

I commend this as a worthy read for the passion, the science, the arguments, and the great writing.

The Greatest Show on Earth by Richard Dawkins

Rating: WORTHY!

Coming off the release of yet another children's work of fiction, and before I start on the next, it's time to look at some non-fiction print books that I've owned for a while, read some time ago, and never got around to blogging. These will all be science-based works, mostly about evolution, that have been useful to me, educational and helpful.

It's been a while since I've done battle with the idiot creationists, the main reason being that it's a waste of time. There is no creation science. It does not exist in any way, shape, or form. There is creation religion - blind belief unsupported by any evidence - and it's a waste of time arguing with those who swallow those lies, because there is no amount of fact, or evidence, or science, or truth that you cam set before them that will ever impact in any way upon their brainwashed hive mind. But if you want to take on that hopeless challenge, or evne just be better armed to defend your own scientific views, these are some of the boosk you might find useful to have on your reading list.

This is an unabashed paean to evolution and a direct refutation of creationism, lining up as it does, evidence for the former, and kicking down the flimsy lies and evidence-free claims of the latter. It ought to be a school textbook with every student required to read it. I commend it heartily. This may well be my favorite Dawkins book; certainly it's in the top three and I commend it unreservedly.

River Out of Eden by Richard Dawkins

Rating: WORTHY!

Coming off the release of yet another children's work of fiction, and before I start on the next, it's time to look at some non-fiction print books that I've owned for a while, read some time ago, and never got around to blogging. These will all be science-based works, mostly about evolution, that have been useful to me, educational and helpful.

It's been a while since I've done battle with the idiot creationists, the main reason being that it's a waste of time. There is no creation science. It does not exist in any way, shape, or form. There is creation religion - blind belief unsupported by any evidence - and it's a waste of time arguing with those who swallow those lies, because there is no amount of fact, or evidence, or science, or truth that you cam set before them that will ever impact in any way upon their brainwashed hive mind. But if you want to take on that hopeless challenge, or evne just be better armed to defend your own scientific views, these are some of the boosk you might find useful to have on your reading list.

This book digs into the origin of life rather than the evolution of life, and while the two are separate sciences, they do have a lot in common in that at some point there had to develop a molecule that could survive and replicate itself, as well as change over time in order to survive and thrive in the changing conditions in which it found itself. That's all that evolution is when you get right down to the genomic level. The book also looks at where life might go which is really nothing more than speculation, if somewhat informed speculation. But it's a fun read and I commend it.

The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins

Rating: WORTHY!

Coming off the release of yet another children's work of fiction, and before I start on the next, it's time to look at some non-fiction print books that I've owned for a while, read some time ago, and never got around to blogging. These will all be science-based works, mostly about evolution, that have been useful to me, educational and helpful.

It's been a while since I've done battle with the idiot creationists, the main reason being that it's a waste of time. There is no creation science. It does not exist in any way, shape, or form. There is creation religion - blind belief unsupported by any evidence - and it's a waste of time arguing with those who swallow those lies, because there is no amount of fact, or evidence, or science, or truth that you cam set before them that will ever impact in any way upon their brainwashed hive mind. But if you want to take on that hopeless challenge, or evne just be better armed to defend your own scientific views, these are some of the boosk you might find useful to have on your reading list.

So here's the one that started it all. Originally published in 1976, the book took a different approach from most books on evolution and started from the perspective of the gene and the genome in general, almost imparting a personality and ambition to genes to propagate themselves at all costs. Dawkins presents it as a sort of a competition, with the most ruthless genes succeeding and weaker ones be damned. In a way it makes sense, but like any perspective on science, it's not the whole story, hence the criticism and controversy this book has stirred up. The fact is though, that it does help sometimes to turn a topic on its head and think outside the box in order to gain a deeper understanding. That's what this book did and why it became so controversial and garnered criticism. I commend it as a worthy read.

A Devil's Chaplain by Richard Dawkins

Rating: WORTHY!

Coming off the release of yet another children's work of fiction, and before I start on the next, it's time to look at some non-fiction print books that I've owned for a while, read some time ago, and never got around to blogging. These will all be science-based works, mostly about evolution, that have been useful to me, educational and helpful.

It's been a while since I've done battle with the idiot creationists, the main reason being that it's a waste of time. There is no creation science. It does not exist in any way, shape, or form. There is creation religion - blind belief unsupported by any evidence - and it's a waste of time arguing with those who swallow those lies, because there is no amount of fact, or evidence, or science, or truth that you cam set before them that will ever impact in any way upon their brainwashed hive mind. But if you want to take on that hopeless challenge, or evne just be better armed to defend your own scientific views, these are some of the boosk you might find useful to have on your reading list.

This is a collection of Dawkins's essays and is divided into sections containing ramblings on various topics with section headings such as "Science and Sensibility," "Light Will be Thrown," "The Infected Mind," "There is All Africa and Her Prodigies in us" among other topics. The essays, of which there are over thirty, cover a variety of subjects including evolution, fossils, ethics, religion, and as the book cover suggests, "reflections on hope, lies, science, and love." While this is not my favorite of his works, and may be a bit far ranging for some readers, I commend this as a worthy read for anyone who wants a complete collection.

The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins

Rating: WORTHY!

Coming off the release of yet another children's work of fiction, and before I start on the next, it's time to look at some non-fiction print books that I've owned for a while, read some time ago, and never got around to blogging. These will all be science-based works, mostly about evolution, that have been useful to me, educational and helpful.

It's been a while since I've done battle with the idiot creationists, the main reason being that it's a waste of time. There is no creation science. It does not exist in any way, shape, or form. There is creation religion - blind belief unsupported by any evidence - and it's a waste of time arguing with those who swallow those lies, because there is no amount of fact, or evidence, or science, or truth that you cam set before them that will ever impact in any way upon their brainwashed hive mind. But if you want to take on that hopeless challenge, or evne just be better armed to defend your own scientific views, these are some of the boosk you might find useful to have on your reading list.

I've read a heck of a lot of what Dawkins has written and it's hard to believe that I've never published a review of any of his books yet, so that gets set straight right now, right here! The first book that brought him to prominence was The Selfish Gene getting on for a half century ago now, and that's one that also set the precedent for controversy that has followed a lot of what he's done and written since. He's been putting out books every few years and also doing TV documentaries. This particular book came out in 2006.

The aim of it is to undermine religious arguments claiming to establish the existence of a god. The book has been criticized for failing to tackle some arguments, but it was never Dawkins's intention to write a definitive refutation of all religious arguments, especially not the ones he considered have been refuted long before he published this. There are other books for that such as Atheism, the Case Agaisnt God and The Atheist Debator's Handbook which I shall review on another occasion.

This book covers questions of whether any god exists - what the ideas are - what people believe, and then considers the arguments for any god's existence - the so-called religious "proofs" from yesteryear, including Thomas Aquinas's "proofs" and so on. Chapter 4 is titled "Why There Almost Certainly is no God" with Dawkins characteristiclaly taking the scientific perspective which errs on the side of caution rather than stridently staking out a position which is what the creationists and other believers do. He points out that the proposition is so lacking in evidence or support that it's really not worth considering seriously.

In subsequent chapters he discusses morality, why religion isn't harmless (as if that wasn't self-evident), and childhood abuses. The book is a solid refutation of religious belief and dominance in society, and is a good starting point for any atheist to educate themselves and arm themselves with some good solid arguments to refute religious claptrap and bullshit. I commend it.