Reading Material

So anyway, I got a little sidetracked in my previous post. I meant to thank Melanie again for organising my New Scientist subscription :)
I've also been reading some other books lately - something that I haven't done much of in recent years (besides conference proceedings!). In a way I enjoy being almost completely disconnected from the net during my (admittedly rather scant) personal time, because I have missed sitting back or snuggling up with a good book.

The most interesting book I've been reading is Kinsey, A Biography, by Jonathan Garthorne-Hardy. I haven't finished it yet - it's rather thorough - but it's the book that the recent film was based on, so I sort of know how the story ends anyway. But it's the detail that is fascinating, which you just don't get no matter how much you read online. I admire Kinsey greatly, because he was arguably a genius in two fields that most interest me - evolution and sex.

I also picked up The Constant Gardener, the film of which I loved (and first read about in New Scientist, incidentally - an example of that magazine's aforementioned socio-political coverage);
and The Harsh Cry of the Heron - a sort of guilty pleasure, it's the concluding sequel to a fantasy series (Tales of the Otori) whose appeal is the same lightweight fantasy that makes Harry Potter appealing to such a wide audience.

Finally, I've just finished reading Priceless, an autobiography by Charlie Daniels that I picked up randomly because it looked interesting. Charlie Daniels was a successful madam in the UK's sex industry, and her life story is indeed captivating - in a train-wreck kind of way - but unfortunately I thought the writing was somewhat forgettable.

One cool thing about Sydney is the number of independent bookstores that I like browsing, even if I don't buy anything. There's a bookstore on Oxford St (the epicentre of the gay and lesbian community) - no, not that kind of bookstore :p, though unsurprisingly with a decidedly mature and alternative bent - a few independent and second-hand bookstores along the main street of the very trendy and hip Newtown area (along with a T2 store :) ), and one small-but-packed-to-the-ceiling bookstore in the CBD, that I've visited so far. It all makes Dymocks and Angus & Robertson and the like look rather ordinary!

New Scientist and Science

My first issue of New Scientist was finally delivered today! I'm very much looking forward to getting up-to-date on the world of science again. And not just science research, either - one of the things I like about New Scientist is that it often covers current social and political issues that pertain to science, and I usually agree with the position that the magazine takes. I like to think that it's bipartisan, above the conservative/progressive political divide - but doesn't everyone like to think they're unbiased? :p
The thing that I find interesting about this viewpoint is that we usually think of science as progressive, but the process of scientific peer review, a cornerstone of science, is necessarily conservative.
I was having a discussion with someone the other day, who was telling me about a maverick scientist who had "scientifically proven" that the human mind could reorganise cell structure etc. Hijacking "science" like this bothers me. Regardless of the actual truth of those claims (which I couldn't argue specifically since I didn't know anything about them), no lone man - or team or organisation - can scientifically "prove" anything - same goes for all pseudo-scientific claims. The best one can do is present evidence and have it accepted by the scientific establishment. (Which of course doesn't make it true, but is the closest thing to "proving" it.)
So, it's a bit strange, but I, who usually have very little faith in conservatism, strongly agree with the role of the scientific establishment in scientific progress.

Disclaimer: I'm not a scientist and can't speak for anyone else. But why let a trifling detail like that get in the way of a good rant?