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Apr. 17th, 2004 12:23 pmI just finished this book, The Best American Science Writing, 2003. The book is somewhat mistitled as the book was published in 2003, yet contained essays and articles, all of which had been published in 2002.
The articles were published from a variety of sources, from Science to National Geographic to the New York Times. The book spans huge fields of science, from Alzheimers research to dairy goats genetically engineered to secrete spider silk within their milk. Interesting stuff.
Two articles really grabbed me.
The first is an article named 1491, originally published in Atlantic Monthly, about the population of the Americas, pre-Columbus. Completely fascinating, and quite eerie. There are a controversial group of scientists who are finding evidence that the Indians were quite numerous (estimates range from the classic population of 1-2 million, to the modern 15-20 million, to the fantastic 100 million -- more than the population of Europe at the time). Once the English and French and Spanish started to arrive, disease absolutely decimated the continents. Figures are estimated at a 95% mortality rate. For example, early expeditions to Massachusetts were abandoned because of strong Indian settlement, yet when the Mayflower arrived, all they found were open forests and abandoned villages. Similarly with de Soto, who described Indian cities in the Southeast where three or four cities were visible from each point, yet later expeditions found 200+ miles separating small nomadic villages. I'm not even getting into how the Indians carved nature for their own agricultural uses, to the point where there probably never was such a thing as a pristine American wilderness.... This article was just fascinating.
The second, is an article from Wings about the humming pitch of mosquito wings, and how the sound affects their mating habits. Sounds dry, but I fell in love with this paragraph, the last line in particular:
Take a tuning fork of the appropriate pitch (humming frequencies of three hundred to eight hundred cycles per second will do nicely), tap it so it will hum, and introduce it into the cage [of mosquitoes]. You will note that the male mosquitoes will take to flight and aggregate around the fork. They are irresistibly attracted to the sound. While the fork is humming, you can draw the males from the cage and walk about with them, leading them by the fork until you are ready to return them into the cage. You will not lose males as long as the fork is vibrating. Love, one is tempted to muse, even in the world of mosquitoes, takes priority over freedom.
The articles were published from a variety of sources, from Science to National Geographic to the New York Times. The book spans huge fields of science, from Alzheimers research to dairy goats genetically engineered to secrete spider silk within their milk. Interesting stuff.
Two articles really grabbed me.
The first is an article named 1491, originally published in Atlantic Monthly, about the population of the Americas, pre-Columbus. Completely fascinating, and quite eerie. There are a controversial group of scientists who are finding evidence that the Indians were quite numerous (estimates range from the classic population of 1-2 million, to the modern 15-20 million, to the fantastic 100 million -- more than the population of Europe at the time). Once the English and French and Spanish started to arrive, disease absolutely decimated the continents. Figures are estimated at a 95% mortality rate. For example, early expeditions to Massachusetts were abandoned because of strong Indian settlement, yet when the Mayflower arrived, all they found were open forests and abandoned villages. Similarly with de Soto, who described Indian cities in the Southeast where three or four cities were visible from each point, yet later expeditions found 200+ miles separating small nomadic villages. I'm not even getting into how the Indians carved nature for their own agricultural uses, to the point where there probably never was such a thing as a pristine American wilderness.... This article was just fascinating.
The second, is an article from Wings about the humming pitch of mosquito wings, and how the sound affects their mating habits. Sounds dry, but I fell in love with this paragraph, the last line in particular:
Take a tuning fork of the appropriate pitch (humming frequencies of three hundred to eight hundred cycles per second will do nicely), tap it so it will hum, and introduce it into the cage [of mosquitoes]. You will note that the male mosquitoes will take to flight and aggregate around the fork. They are irresistibly attracted to the sound. While the fork is humming, you can draw the males from the cage and walk about with them, leading them by the fork until you are ready to return them into the cage. You will not lose males as long as the fork is vibrating. Love, one is tempted to muse, even in the world of mosquitoes, takes priority over freedom.
