Blogcritics The critical lens on today's culture & entertainment
Watching a large block of the Olympics last night yielded a few semi-random thoughts: The men’s and women’s gymnastics apparatus finals: I can understand why these incredibly strong, flexible, tough, determined, fearless, crazed little freaks of nature (in the best possible sense) dedicate their (mostly) young lives to their sport: …
Read More »Tag Archives: Science
If life begins at conception, then death begins at birth
Perhaps the area where the president is most beholden to the religious right, and the area of my greatest disagreement with him, is where the pro-life extreme bleeds into stem cell research policy. I have no logical problem with those who are pro-life: I may disagree with them, but I …
Read More »Pain Killer by Barry Meier
Politics play a critical role in how medical patients are treated. Cultural norms and the politics that implement those norms determine even what is considered a treatable medical condition in the first place. Nowhere has the politics of medicine been more evident over the last century than in the treatment …
Read More »A Really Large Topic
One of the single most important individuals in the establishment of tbomedia.co.uk, John Scalzi, has some very exciting news: Today is the official release date for The Rough Guide to the Universe. That’s in the US, mind you; in the UK, it’s already been out for a month, and I’m …
Read More »Dragons: Fossils and the Collective Subconscious
Like music and dancing, virtually every human culture has created images of dragons, even the Inuits who live where there aren’t even any reptiles. Why is this so? The NY Times has an interesting look into this phenomenon: A huge scaly serpent, usually with the wings of a bat or …
Read More »European Explorers: Not Quite As Bad As Previously Thought
A couple of weeks ago in celebration of Columbus Day, we discussed a series of books containing a quite unfavorable picture of the explorer, much of it written in his own words. Columbus clearly was, shall we say, insensitive to the well-being of the natives he found in the New …
Read More »A Plague of Frogs: The Horrifying True Story
First off, don’t be fooled by the title: A Plague of Frogs: The Horrifying True Story would be more aptly, but less apocalyptically, entitled A Plague on Frogs: The Disconcerting True Story. I eagerly dove into William Souder’s real-life scientific adventure/mystery with neo-Biblical visions of amphibians raining upon good Lutherans …
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