Blogcritics Author: Nuthatch

Announcement: Short-content feeds

Phillip Winn — Sun, 26 Aug 2007 12:00:00 EDT

Sunday, August 26, 2007, marks the switch of all Blogcritics.org article feeds from full-content to short-content. This is the result of several converging factors, and is unfortunately a permanent decision (as permanent as any decision can be on the web, that is). We are aware of all of the reasons that this is a Bad Idea, and we are aware that some of you will be quite upset about having to click on something to read the free content, and we're sorry. Unfortunately, despite great effort, full-content feeds are not currently economically viable. Two other factors are involved: full-content feeds have resulted in an unprecedented level of content theft, with BC content appearing on many websites, usually spam sites, without attribution or permission. This duplicate content causes a cascading set of problems, not the least of which is that search engines generally aren't favorable to duplicate content, and don't always guess correctly. Finally, our RSS advertising partner is strongly in favor of short-content feeds. We hope that you'll continue to subscribe to BC via RSS, and when an article grabs your eye, it's only a click away, still free on the BC website. Thank you for your understanding.

Book Review: Silent Snow by Marla Cone

Nuthatch — Tue, 2 May 2006 04:57:11 EDT

Rachel Carson's landmark book about the ecological devastation of chemicals and pesticides alerted the public to the lurking dangers of the toxins around them. Nearly 45 years later, reporter Marla Cone's Silent Snow renders a very similar picture, only this time the dangers are piling up in an area that is hardly next door to many of us: the Arctic. And while far from the world's population centers, the frightening poisoning of the top of the world has implications for the entire global community.Cone is a prizewinning writer for the Los Angeles Times. Her reporting is excellent, her facts well-documented, and explanations concise, but her article-based journalism background was clear. This book read like a deep investigative piece that was stretched into a book. For example, one chapter on the cultural importance of traditional foods to Arctic people would have done the trick. Yet she came back to this point many times, without bringing anything new to the topic. It became redundant and distracting. I found that, despite her efforts to relay personal stories in Silent Snow, Cone was unsuccessful in bringing much warmth or real humanity to the book. The subject matter and implications of Silent Snow are nearly as vital as those in Silent Spring, but Cone lacks the artistry and grace in her writing that made Carson's work much more readable and classic. Even with these shortcomings, which many readers won't find as annoying as I did, Silent Snow is a compelling book. Cone clearly explains the seeming paradox of one of the world's most remote and pristine-appearing places being one of the most contaminated by modern and industrial chemicals. (For the curious, PCBs, for example, that become vaporized, travel on air currents and end up near the North Pole. When air temperature cools, toxins condense and fall to the ground. In warmer climates, they re-vaporize as temperatures rise, but about two-thirds of the PCBs that arrive in the Arctic stay in the Arctic, often only moving as far as to the edge of the ice floes.)She spends time going over the ethical health care dilemma faced by Canadian scientists. Do they warn native Arctic peoples to stop eating their traditional foods, which are responsible for toxin loads in some people that qualify their bodies as hazardous waste? Or do the health benefits of traditional foods, which have kept these populations virtually free of heart disease, for example, outweigh the risk from toxins? This is complicated by the cultural importance of native foods and the lack of affordable alternatives in a land where farming is impossible.This neatly illustrates that the impacts of contamination are not limited to humans because humans are at the end of the line of consumers in Arctic ecosystems. Studying wildlife in the Arctic is challenging to say the least, but Cone visits with scientists who have been working with seals, whales, and polar bears and trying to document the effects of chemical contamination on these and other creatures. One does not finish Silent Snow feeling any optimism for the fate of polar bears; if high toxin loads compromising their immune systems and altering their hormones don't doom them, global warming will. Finally, Cone describes various efforts (or lack thereof) of industrial nations to curb chemical contamination, and what the future might hold. Sympathetic while still being objective, accurate, and authentic, Cone has written an important book that it a must-read. After reading it, the Arctic doesn't seem so far away, but it's enormous problems feel dangerously close - perhaps, after all, right next door.

Nuthatch is an ecologist at a major Midwestern university; her research focuses on urban ecology and birds. Visit her natural history and science blog, Bootstrap Analysis.

Book Review: NO by Carl Djerassi

Nuthatch — Fri, 24 Mar 2006 05:21:14 EST

The "NO" in the title of this lab lit book by Carl Djerassi stands for nitric oxide, the erectile dysfunction-curing properties of which are the subject of this novel. It also sums up my recommendation of this painfully poorly written work of science-in-fiction. Djerassi is an accomplished scientist; among his credits is the development of the oral contraceptive pill. For that I am genuinely grateful. He is also a playwright and author, and if NO is any indication of his talents in this field, I'd be equally grateful if he quit writing.Being fond of interested in both science writing and penises reproductive health, I thought this novel exploring the ethics of research, development of biotechnology, capitalism, and academia would be a worthwhile read. Immediately, I found myself wading through stilted narration, undeveloped, one-dimensional characters, and enough wooden prose to reforest Madagascar.I knew I was in trouble when I opened the book to find a detailed preface explaining the whole premise of the book, for those of us dolts who might not be able to comprehend it. And in case we missed the fact that Djerassi is a Real Scientist, the author reminds us, in as many ways as he can, in passages which begin, As a chemist... Since my own scientific contributions... As a long-term insider of this tribe [research scientists]... As a founder, former officer and director, and occasional gadfly of several such companies -- as well as a university professor...All this before page 1!Any doubt I might have had that this book was an output of ego rather than literary skill was dissolved by page 13, when he has one character inform another of the recipient of a prestigious award: none other than Carl Djerassi, of course.These instances demonstrated, with a resounding lack of subtlety, Djerassi's dim view of the ability of readers to put together facts. Yet it didn't stop there. I find it both annoying and insulting to my intelligence when an author feels it necessary to provide background information on the setting or characters by trotting out excessively expository dialogue or artless narrative techniques such as clumsy switches to inner thoughts or personal letters. We have all three in the first ten pages of NO.In the very first paragraph, the main character is talking to his wife and explains "...recently, hot shots, like yours truly, here at Brandeis's Rosenstiel Basic Medical Sciences Research Center discovered..." Who the hell would say something that overwrought to a spouse, save perhaps a newly arrived mail-order partner? This bizarre conversational overkill continues within the inner dialogue of another main character, a female Indian post-doc. She also writes her adviser letters that begin, I'm sorry to say, "Dear Prof," and which contain not only the same types of extraneous detail described above, but also thoroughly unbelievable passages that I cannot begin to imagine any student communicating to a male colleague, such as, "And then there is the relatively primitive selection of cosmetics and female sundries available here..."Elmore Leonard is not my favorite author, but he does have ten rules for writing. I am sure this book violates most, if not all, of them. For instance, one rule is, Never use a verb other than "said" to carry dialogue. Leonard explains, "The line of dialogue belongs to the character, the verb is the writer sticking his nose in." In the opening pages, two characters mimed, sighed, interrupted, prodded, and exhaled dialogue. Leonard sums up his rules by saying that if it sounds like writing, he rewrites it. The overbearing voice of Djerassi and his amateurish writing are simply deafening in NO.I made a recent resolution to not feel obligated to read, or complete reading, every single book, journal paper, or magazine article that ends up in my hands. I realized that while I enjoy being well-read and able to spout arcane facts about topics that I really have no use for, I was wasting too much time digesting all this enlightenment. I felt especially compelled to read every page of any book I had purchased; not doing so made me feel guilty.I did not have to force myself to adhere to my resolution in order to put this book down. The writing was so atrocious, I couldn't carry on, not even to evaluate the plot. This book may be full of technical brilliance. It may, somehow, point out how research science functions and highlight timely and important ethical dilemmas. I don't know. Guilt-free (and with pronounced relief), I ditched this book on page 30.

Nuthatch is an ecologist at a major Midwestern university; her research focuses on urban ecology and birds. Visit her natural history and science blog, Bootstrap Analysis.

Book Review: 1491 by Charles Mann

Nuthatch — Mon, 20 Mar 2006 22:44:27 EST

I don't know a hell of a lot about anthropology or pre-Columbian Latin American history. And like most everybody else, my knowledge of what North America was like prior to European contact consisted of the usual glowing descriptions of pristine habitats and wide expanses of wilderness where a squirrel could scamper from Illinois to Virginia without touching the ground.1491 sure blew that notion out of the water, and opened my eyes to new ideas about how the Americas looked before the year 1492.Very well-written, thorough, and thought-provoking, 1491 discusses how humans came to and lived upon this continent - and the evidence presented indicates it was much earlier, from different directions, and with far greater impact than traditionally believed. Author Charles Mann covers migration routes to North America, the origins of other New World people (especially interesting in light of recent news that ancient skulls unearthed in Brazil resemble aboriginal Australians), and recent, much-elevated estimates of native populations before 1492. But it was the accounts of indigenous technology and profound environmental transformation that I found most provocative.Although sometimes lengthy and detailed, treatments of many ancient societies, such as the Maya and Inca/Inka, are fascinating and easy to absorb even for the uninitiated reader. I had no idea of the level of sophistication that characterizes some of these societies. I was intrigued to learn what a complicated and significant accomplishment it was for pre-Columbian people to develop maize, considered one of the greatest feats of genetic engineering humans have yet achieved.Compelling for me were the discussions on how pre-contact people altered and shaped the environment. Far, FAR from living lightly on the land, they made sweeping alterations that left little untouched. Native Americans (north of the Rio Grande) made constant use of fire, providing forage for herbivorous animals which they hunted. Through their use of fire, they were responsible for bison occupying eastern forests (if you consider woodland bison distinct from plains bison, they even shaped a species). When disease and conflict reduced the fire-utilizing human native populations, areas quickly reverted to the dense, rather than open, forests that most early historical accounts describe.The sections on how Amazonian Indians managed the rainforest by planting "orchards" of various palms and fruiting trees, and nurturing long-term crops from notoriously poor, lean tropical soils by tending constantly-smouldering fires in a form of slash-and-char agriculture was nothing short of a revelation to me. A minimum of an eighth of non-flooded Amazonian forest is anthropogenic - shaped by humans. This is an astounding figure.These were just a few of the things I learned in 1491. Mann turns to (and often ends up in the field with) many experts -- anthropologists, archaeologists, historians, botanists, political scientists, mathematicians, geneticists, medical researchers, geographers, ethnographers, chemists, and agriculture, ceramic, and textile specialists. Yet he is able to orchestrate this vast collection of knowledge and pull it together in a coherent, scholarly yet informal, and engrossing fashion.I love books that torpedo sacred cows, tear down long-held assumptions, and make me look at things in a different way. 1491 did all this. What a wonderful surprise to pick up a book outside my field, expecting only a change of pace, to discover plenty of material that gave me new perspectives and added richness and depth to my area of study, ecology. Understanding today's ecological issues requires just this type of cross-disciplinary vision.Some will call this book revisionist or even speculative, but 1491 is carefully researched and documented, balanced, and persuasive. New, challenging ideas deserve wide exposure and debate. If you or someone you know likes a little intellectual provocation, by all means get a copy of 1491.

Nuthatch is an ecologist at a major Midwestern university; her research focuses on urban ecology and birds. Visit her natural history and science blog, Bootstrap Analysis.

The Ivory-Billed Woodpecker Still Awaits Rediscovery

Nuthatch — Sun, 19 Mar 2006 13:55:17 EST

It has been nearly a year since the tremendous hoopla surrounding the announcement of the rediscovery of the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker, a bird presumed extinct for 60 years. The evidence that the bird still existed in the swamps of Arkansas was presented in a paper in the prestigious journal Science, and consisted of some suggestive analyses of sound recordings, a small handful of sightings, and, most importantly, a short grainy video. Many people, myself included, read this paper and looked at the evidence with discomfort. The title of the paper, "Ivory-billed Woodpecker persists in continental North America," was unequivocal, whereas the evidence was certainly equivocal. The last year has seen this evidence debated among virtually everyone interested in birds, with blogs being created defending both sides (most notably Ivory-bill Skeptic and Ivory bills Live!"). Last week, Science published the first peer-reviewed criticism of the evidence presented in the first paper; the lead author was well-known field guide author and artist David Sibley. A rebuttal by the original authors followed.The details of the critique themselves -- and believe me, they are painstakingly exhaustive -- are secondary to the bottom line, which is that the original authors did not prove that the Ivory-billed Woodpecker really persists. Good, solid science requires the rejection of the the null hypothesis (in this case, that the bird in the video is not a common related species, the Pileated Woodpecker). Sibley and his co-authors presented a case that the bird in the video could have indeed been a Pileated Woodpecker. In the Sibley paper, similar analytical tools were used to reach a different conclusion than in the original paper, akin to two researchers performing the same experiment and getting different results. Nor have the "results" presented in the first paper been replicated in two years of herculean search efforts in the Arkansas swamps by dedicated teams using the best technology. In the world of science, a situation of this nature would generally be considered to be at the "back to the drawing board" stage. And I think that's where the Ivory-billed Woodpecker is at. Still awaiting rediscovery.The "rediscovery" of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker has many implications for science and conservation.

Nuthatch is an ecologist at a major Midwestern university; her research focuses on urban ecology and birds. Visit her natural history and science blog, Bootstrap Analysis.

Book Review: Oaxaca Journal by Oliver Sacks

Nuthatch — Sat, 18 Mar 2006 14:04:14 EST

Oliver Sacks, a neurologist, has written some fantastic books. Most notable (my favorites) are his compelling accounts of people with unusual neurological disorders: The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, The Island of the Colorblind, and Awakenings (made into the movie starring Robin Willliams). Sacks is a gifted writer. These books are intriguing not only because of their unusual subject matter, but because Sacks can explain the medical science behind them clearly, and, even better, conveys his compassion for the human beings with these conditions, and what we can learn about our own lives through their stories.Oaxaca Journal is a departure from these books. It's a diary of a week-long trip he took to Oaxaca, Mexico with the American Fern Society. Other trip participants are more keen botanists, and Sacks seems to operate on the periphery, although the text is loaded with the names of numerous fern species they encountered; many are illustrated by simple pen-and-ink drawings. As I expected, the best parts of the book for me were when Sacks examined local culture. As he notes early in the book, "How crucial it is to see other cultures, to see how special, how local they are, how un-universal one's own is." This is a philosophy I embrace, but I was a little disappointed that Sacks did not go into the depth I might have expected, based on the insight he displayed in previous books. Oaxaca Journal was, in fact, a pretty light read. You'll learn something of Oaxaca (the description of the truly gigantic Tule tree in Santa Maria del Tule is enough to make me want to go there), and if you are into ferns or botany, you'll find the book especially enjoyable. But you won't find the same attention to detail, philosophical dissection, or intellectual curiosity that is a hallmark of Sacks' previous work. Sacks is only 72, but he comes off as a bit tired in Oaxaca Journal. I hope he has more of the "old stuff" still left in him.

Nuthatch is an ecologist at a major Midwestern university; her research focuses on urban ecology and birds. Visit her natural history and science blog, Bootstrap Analysis.

Book Review: City Birding: True Tales of Birds and Birdwatching in Unexpected Places

Nuthatch — Mon, 13 Mar 2006 16:12:43 EST

City Birding: True Tales of Birds and Birdwatching in Unexpected Places is a collection of short essays by many familiar nature writers and birders: Kenn Kaufman, Julie Zickefoose, Paul Kerlinger, Clay Sutton, and Paul Johnsgard are some of the authors. All share a story about their experiences with birds in primarily urban settings.Most people like to bird in wild, exotic, or at least away-from-home locations. Hence, birding lit often focuses on these types of locales. Examples would be the popular 2004 book The Big Year : A Tale of Man, Nature, and Fowl Obsession by Mark Obmasick, which chronicled three birders trying to out-do each other by seeing as many birds as possible in North America in one calendar year. Naturally, this took them to many interesting places; Attu Island in the Aleutians is featured prominently. One of my favorite birding adventure books is Kenn Kaufman's Kingbird Highway: The Story of a Natural Obsession That Got a Little Out of Hand, another cross-country birding tale, albeit one done on a much smaller budget.The truth is, most of us live in towns and cities. And if we bother to look, urban areas can be rich in bird life and unusual discoveries. These are essays on birding at sewage lagoons, landfills, parking lots, city parks, and other places many birders shun. As an ecologist who specializes in studying urban wildlife and someone who has discovered a Gyrfalcon in a parking lot and a Kirtland's Warbler on a commuter college campus, I live the stories in City Birding on a nearly daily basis, and I love to see books like this that open people's eyes to these neglected habitats.As with many anthologies, the writing can be uneven: some is good, some is a little wooden. Kaufman's story about a hawk, a hummingbird, and his cat in his own yard was the best crafted, Sutton's on the river of raptors in Veracruz, Mexico, the most moving. City Birding is a quick and enjoyable read that fills a niche in the birding lit. Grab a copy, and make a resolution to do a little city birding. You may be in for a very pleasant surprise.

Nuthatch is an ecologist at a major Midwestern university; her research focuses on urban ecology and birds. Visit her natural history and science blog, Bootstrap Analysis.

Book Review: The Bedside Book of Birds

Nuthatch — Mon, 13 Mar 2006 12:00:35 EST

I found The Bedside Book of Birds to be surprisingly strange, dark, and not an especially light-hearted, soothing read at bedtime. It is a very eclectic collection of short excerpts, poetry, essays, legends, folklore, etc. on birds or perhaps only mentioning birds, gathered into loose themes such as bird companions, sinister birds, how we use birds, and so forth. Each section is introduced by editor Graeme Gibson, a well-known Canadian author who is also into birds. The entire volume is lavishly illustrated with a wide variety of bird images from throughout history (the best part of the book, in my opinion). The majority of the selections come from very old texts. I found most of them just downright strange. Whatever the theme of the chapter, the passages seemed to dwell on the exploitation or killing of birds. Even a selection in the chapter Some Blessed Hope, entitled "The Pigeon and the Parakeet", was a love story that involved the offing of a couple's beloved birds in some sort of self-sacrificing demonstration of desire. Hey, I'm a realist. I know the world can be a gloomy, scary place. And I don't need all of my stories to have happy endings. But really, I don't want my reading-for-pleasure to include a story by Frank Kafka about a man being eaten alive by a vulture, which ends up dying by drowning in the man's blood after thrusting its beak "through my mouth, deep into me." Nighty-night! Sweet dreams!A review by The Guardian categorizes some of the writings as "whimsical," which to me seems way off-base. But the review is correct in noting that the book "...is aimed mainly at littérateurs with a curiosity for birds, rather than birdwatchers with an interest in literature." Phew, guess that let's me off the hook a bit, since I didn't really "get it." Nor did the reviewer at Fatbirder, who said, "It's a bit like one of those give-away CD compilations that falls out of your Sunday paper... there are the headline songs you just love, the familiar songs you never much liked and a whole load of others you have never heard of and never want to hear again."If you have a taste for obscure literature, the macabre, or just want a bird book that is unlike all others, The Bedside Book of Birds should be right up your alley.

Nuthatch is an ecologist at a major Midwestern university; her research focuses on urban ecology and birds. Visit her natural history and science blog, Bootstrap Analysis.

Book Review: Bel Canto by Ann Patchett

Nuthatch — Sat, 11 Mar 2006 13:04:34 EST

I have a friend who passes on books to me. She's much more inclined to read novels and literature than I am, so she has been largely responsible for much of my higher-brow reading the last few years. If it weren't for her, I would be reading science books almost exclusively.Bel Canto by Ann Patchett was the winner of the 2002 PEN/Faulkner Award, as well as several others. It has been sitting on my "to read" shelf for some time. The blurb on the back describes it as being about a lavish birthday party in honor of a powerful businessman, with entertainment by a leading opera singer, in which the entire group gets is taken hostage. This seemed like a rather tired scenario that didn't make me want to dive right in. But, finally, I picked up Bel Canto, and could not put it down.I've summed up the plot, and there isn't a lot to add. It is not the attraction of this book, but simply a framework for Patchett's beautiful writing. At the risk of sounding hackneyed, I have to describe it as vivid and lyrical, much like the soaring voice of the soprano who is a central character.The hostages include people of many nationalities, which allows Patchett to explore vastly different personalities. She manages to do so without resorting to any stereotypes. The improbability of the situation, which grows into a months-long stand-off, seems to get swept aside as you enjoy the hushed, subtle pleasure of Patchett's prose.There was really no satisfactory way to end this novel, and indeed the ending is abrupt and disappointing. I think it is a rare author that can write so elegantly as to completely overcome a thin plot and enthrall the reader. But Patchett accomplishes this feat, and I look forward to reading more of her work.

Nuthatch is an ecologist at a major Midwestern university; her research focuses on urban ecology and birds. Visit her natural history and science blog, Bootstrap Analysis.