Fred Bortz's blog
Discover the true source of creation here.
Methinks the author has been hitting the sauce (marinara that is) a little too often.
We now return you to our normal serious programming.
That's all, folks!
Part 1 was posted under media and entertainment as a heads-up to an upcoming book called The Republican War on Science by Chris Mooney. The book deals more closely with energy and environment than any other Science Blog category, so I'm posting the full review as it appears on my Science Shelf website here.
If you want to buy the book from Amazon.com through the Science Shelf, click here.
This really fits in several Science Blog categories besides brain and behavior, since it is a review of an upcoming book (media and entertainment) about members of the animal kingdom, and it ultimately connects to understanding human culture (anthropology). Readers of all those sections will be interested in discovering Our Inner Ape: A Leading Primatologist Explains Why We Are Who We Are by Frans de Waal.
While browsing in my community library yesterday, I noticed that a book that I had reviewed a year ago, The End of Oil: On the Edge of a Perilous New Future by Paul Roberts, had come out in paperback with a new afterword.
As the book's title and subtitle imply, experts now recognize that demand for oil may soon exceed the production capacity of even the largest suppliers. The world's economy is heading for a painful transition, and Roberts makes the case that we are unprepared for it.
We have an elephant in the china shop of science.
That is the warning sounded by Chris Mooney in his upcoming book The Republican War on Science.
Again, I'm placing this entry in the "business & economy" category, because Science Blog has no place to discuss education directly. Since our future economy is at risk because of dangerous trends in our educational system, I hope this posting gets the attention of policymakers who can do something about the near elimination of critical thinking as an objective in education.
I've been writing long enough not to obsess over being turned down, especially when the editor is a long-time friend who takes the time to tell me why a book proposal doesn't fit the publisher's present plans. In this case, however, the reason for the turndown suggests that an organization that once took the lead in promoting innovative and critical thinking can no longer justify the risks in doing so.
Kansas Board OKs Evolution Knock is the headline of this CBS/AP story that begins: "The Kansas Board of Education voted 6-4 to include greater criticism of evolution in its school science standards, but it decided to send the standards to an outside academic for review before taking a final vote."
There is no Science Blog category for Education, so I've labeled this "Business and Economy," which are two areas that are bound to suffer in the next several decades if we don't do anything to reverse the disastrous direction that our education has taken under the misguided "No Child Left Behind" mantra.
If you love to read science books but would appreciate some informed guidance, I invite you to visit my Science Shelf book review archive (www.scienceshelf.com), where I publish my own book reviews and offer space to guest reviewers.
I'll post messages about site updates here, and, if this blogging works out for me, I may also publish my reviews here after they appear in print.
