The Questioning Librarian

I freely admit a very great and growing disillusionment with Michael Shermer. While previously I had immense respect for him and what he had to say, I've been disappointed with some of his recent columns in Scientific American, and freely criticized his post dismissing the problem of income inequality in the United States when it was posted a few weeks ago. His libertarian flag is flying high again in his August column for the magazine in which he appears to side with known climate change denier Bjorn Lomborg in asserting that climate change is just one of many problems we face, and by no means the most important. The article is somewhat muddled, making it difficult to determine just what, exactly, Shermer is calling for.  He agrees that climate change is real, and a threat, and that something should be done, but he attempts to cast a lot of doubt on how severe the effects of climate change will be. Shermer writes that while global warming is real, "predicting how mu...

It is remarkable the uses to which the creativity of our species is turned. The same cognitive abilities that create the iPhone and The Odyssey  summon up sarin gas and cluster bombs. It also turns itself to finding a myriad of ways to make alcohol, and this is on display in Amy Stewart's The Drunken Botanist , a natural history that represents a near-exhaustive catalog of all the plants we use to create the drinks that many of us love. If a plant is palatable and non-toxic, someone, somewhere has tried to ferment it.  While there is little of depth in this work, the sheer breadth is remarkable. Starting with the usual suspects we are accustomed to in our booze, from barley and grapes to rye and potatoes, Stewart proceeds to take us on a whirlwind journey through some of the lesser known plants that make an appearance in some of the alcohol we love--and some we may not even consider trying, like sorghum beer, wine made from the nuts of the monkey puzzle tree, or tobac...

A poster for the 1966 film version of Bradbury's novel I miss Ray Bradbury. Even having lived for 91 years and authored over three hundred short stories, it seems still too short a time to have graced our society with his presence, still too few works for someone of his talent. I don't remember exactly when I first read Fahrenheit 451 , sometime in junior high, followed quickly by the haunting stories in The Martian Chronicles , but I know that like many of the classics I read in 7th and 8th grade I didn't understand it nearly as well as I should have. Fahrenheit 451  strikes me much more now than it did then, perhaps because we are much closer to Bradbury's dystopian future than when I first read it. I recently finished re-reading the book in advance of a book discussion at the library this week, and it is remarkable how prescient Bradbury was, writing in the early fifties during a time of increased paranoia about the advance of communism and censorship of oppos...