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"Before you know it as the years go by, you're just like other people you have seen, with all those peculiar human ailments. Just another vehicle for temper and vanity and rashness and all the rest. Who wants it? Who needs it? These things occupy the place where a man's soul should be." -- Henderson the Rain King

Saturday, February 11, 2006

Science Friction

Book #6 of my 2006 reading list? Michael Shermer's Science Friction: Where the Known Meets the Unknown.

I found this one to be fairly disappointing. I like Shermer's writing style and have always found his works to be well thought out and interesting, but this book felt like a fairly random collection of essays that were at best tangentially related. On the whole it didn't hold up for me. While some of the essays were interesting and well worth reading, I found others to be very skippable.

Although I wouldn't recommend rushing out to buy this one, I still think it's worth checking out Shermer's other works as he's one of the better more thought-provoking science authors that I've read in the last few years. If you're just getting started I'd go with something like How We Believe. There are also lots of Shermer's articles online, a few of which can be found here and in his magazine Skeptic.

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posted by Jamie at 11:53 PM