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Saturday, June 19, 2004 Reading Update Oxygen: The Molecule That Made the World by Nick Lane. The first things I think about when hearing the word "oxygen" is breathing air, the periodic table, and torturous o-chem classes. But oxygen is so much more than some ephemeral, invisible gas that is essential for life. In Oxygen, Nick Lane paints a grand scale of what this molecule is about--from evolution to aging. Lane answers, in his free radical biased point of view, what exactly happens when you get radiation poisoning and how we got the levels of oxygen of today. And what about aging? Lane explains that aging is caused partly from free radical damage. That is, without going into the actual chemistry, leaky and/or damaged mitochondria (the energy powerhouses) of the cell release reactive oxygen species into the body which does physical damage to the cell itself as well as the DNA. That's why people keep on extolling the virtues of antioxidants like vitamin C. This book isn't so much eclectic as being divided into two subjects--I think you'd have to read the entire thing to really appreciate it but one could say that the first half is geared more towards evolution freaks and the second half for the health freaks. An Obsession with Butterflies: Our Long Love Affair with a Singular Insect by Sharman Apt Russell. With a quirky and humorous writing style, Russell whole-heartedly jumps into the magnificent, and to some frivolous, mania on butterflies. An Obsession with Butterflies is personal, accessible, yet scientific. You'll have way too much fun reading it before realizing you're actually learning something. Butterflies start out as the ultimate ugly ducklings--caterpillars, or "bags of goo" as the author affectionately calls them, that strip plants bare in order to get enough nutrients for their metamorphosis and more importantly, developing their germ cells. Butterfly sex can be surprisingly brutal--although some butterflies lure their mates with courtship and pheromones, Monarchs use the caveman routine: the male forces the female to the ground and then carries her off in flight. In some species, rape is the norm. Apollo butterflies capture virgins; after a violent mating, the male secretes and glues a sphragis (the butterfly equivalent of a chastity belt) over the female's abdomen. Some Heliconius species of butterflies practice a form of pedophilia called pupal mating. Which is what you'd imagine: the male butterfly waits around on a plant with females and right before she emerges from her pupal state, the male punctures the pupa with his genitalia to mate. Of course, the book isn't solely about butterfly lifestyles--the author also includes sketches of well-known lepidopterists like Vladimir Nabokov and current problems concerning these insects. Butterflies nowadays can help a scientist gauge ecological diversity as well be bred in butterfly houses for collectors. Engaging the Enemy by Nora Roberts. I don't exactly remember what went through my head when I picked this book up, but I think it had to do with a line on the back cover which in reality would never happen. Also--I should have looked at the original publication dates--because most novels in this genre written in the 1980s are pretty bad. Engaging the Enemy is actually a republish of two novels: A Will and a Way and Boundary Lines. The first one has the cliched plotline of an eccentric relative leaving a will where the hero and heroine could have his fortune if they lived together in his house for six months (of course, they hate each other in the beginning). The second story took place on ranches among cows and horses and the like while the hero dragged the heroine around like a macho caveman. Suffice to say, I didn't like either story and chucking it in the fireplace (if I had a fireplace) would be too good of a demise for it. Monster of God: The Man-Eating Predator in the Jungles of History and the Mind by David Quammen. The man-eater, the top predators, although fixed in our collective myths and imaginations as horrifying monsters that reduce humans (normally self-absorbed and self-dubbed as the pinnacle of the food chain) into prey, are disappearing. Quammen visits a variety of places in the world to find that the top predators are vanishing at an alarming rate due to human overpopulation, politics, and greed. The agricultural peoples living on the outskirts of predator country see the lion, tiger, or bear as both attached to the landscape and a necessary evil. A well-protected city dweller whose only brush with danger is the city zoo wouldn't understand that out on the edges of civilization, it really is life or death. These people's livelihoods--their herd animals--are constantly preyed upon as lions and the like have less space to hunt. People usually get eaten because they are foolish--they wander alone in bear country or swim in crocodile infested waters. The Siberian tiger rarely attacks humans (and usually only when you shoot it first) and prefers, rather, the yapping dog you've chained to your front yard. Quammen's concluding remarks are rather bleak--once all these top predators are gone and no longer in our psyches as something to be wary and in awe of, we'd truly be alone in the universe. In the middle of: I'm literally in the middle of Jack McDevitt's Eternity Road which I've been trying to finish for the past couple of months. Also thinking of starting of Stephenson's The Confusion sometime soon as well as Garth Nix's Abohorsen which is the last book in a fantasy trilogy with a setting vaguely reminiscent of WWII England. No foreseeable non-fiction in the near future (i.e. the coming week). [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 9:53 AM : ]
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