reviews

Sex and the Single Bird... Authors:  Tim Laman and Edwin Scholes It’s all about sex.   So much of what’s beautiful and bizarre in the animal kingdom is related to sex.  From the peacock’s fabulous tail to the elk’s enormous antlers – maybe even the giraffe’s long neck – some creatures put a remarkable amount of evolutionary energy into structures and behaviors designed solely for one thing.  Sex.  The more the better.  Perhaps no place on earth is this more apparent than on the island of New Guinea – second largest in the world – home to the strangest family of [...]

Bombs Are Easy... Author:  Daniel Clery We rely on it every day, even if we may not think about it much.  A burning hot ball of mostly hydrogen plasma, our sun is the ultimate source of most of our light, food and energy and other stars like it are where the atoms that make up everything around us were forged.  Producing massive amounts of energy by simply slamming hydrogen ions together at high temperatures, scientists have found the sun tantalizing as the world has become increasingly strapped for energy resources.  If humans could learn how to mimic the sun’s handiwork, [...]

Toil and Drudgery... Author:  Michael Ian Black Writing about one’s entirely ordinary life isn’t easy.  Doing so with humor and poignancy presents even greater challenges, especially if you’re an irrepressible whiner.  But somehow, in You’re Not Doing It Right, forty-something comedian Michael Ian Black manages to make his life story interesting by deftly balancing loads of self-deprecating wit with plenty of observational humor, making me laugh frequently. Black, a writer with numerous screenwriting, directing and minor screen appearances on his resume, could have written about his experiences in the entertainment world, but instead he opts for the completely mundane.  High [...]