Author: Josh Witten

http://www.thefinchandpea.com

Whither Water

8431325708_e9eb970bf2_bEva has been delighting us all recently with descriptions of her trips to spectacular water engineering trips to locations like Haarlemmermeer and Hoover Dam. At the end of January, I went on my own trip to see a water engineering project. I don’t know if it counts as spectacular, but it was fun and interesting. As a prelude to ScienceOnline 2013, Scott Huler showed a lucky few what he had learned about the Raleigh storm water sewer system while researching his book on the infrastructure of modern cities, On the Grid.

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You can see all my photos from the tour (well all the ones that turned out OKish) at my Flickr page. Continue reading “Whither Water”

The Unfeathered Bird – A review in three parts

Skulls of Galapagos Finches by Katrina von Grouw - The Unfeathered Bird (2012 Princeton University Press - Used with Permission)
Skulls of Galapagos Finches by Katrina von Grouw – The Unfeathered Bird (2012 Princeton University Press – Used with Permission)

Katrina van Grouw‘s The Unfeathered Bird is a complicated book that combines elegant writing, copious information, and beautiful illustrations with bird anatomy. There may only be one person on earth prepared to handle all of that on her own. She wrote the book. And, it took her over 25 years.

We don’t have anyone that can cope with The Unfeathered Bird on their own. That’s ok. A multifaceted book should get a multifaceted review. So, we created a dream team of reviewers: artist Michele Banks focused on the artistry, Rebecca Heiss (PhD in avian physiology) focused on the avian physiology information, and Josh, me, focused. . .well it is not entirely clear what I focused on, like usual.

Michele Banks: The Art of The Unfeathered Bird
Rebecca Heiss: The Birds of The Unfeathered Bird
Josh Witten: The Layers of The Unfeathered Bird

The Layers of “The Unfeathered Bird”

The Unfeathered Bird by Katrina van Grouw

My copy of Katrina van Grouw‘s The Unfeathered Bird demanded to be placed on my coffee table. In the same way that everything about a cheetah says fast, everything about The Unfeathered Bird says coffee table book. There are 385 illustrations of 200 bird species. It is 287 pages long and weighs a couple of kilograms. When a book like that asks space on your coffee table, you ask “how much space?”. Fortunately, I have a sturdy coffee table.

I also have two small children (hence the sturdy coffee table). As a result, my first encounter with the content between the covers was not the orderly perusal with wine I had been planning for that night. Instead, it started with my 4-year-old, The Frogger, opening The Unfeathered Bird and asking, while staring at an immaculate illustration of a skinned bird foot, “Daddy, what is this book about?”

“It’s a book about birds. It shows you the insides of birds so we can learn how they work.” Continue reading “The Layers of “The Unfeathered Bird””

No place like home

Frasier’s Apartment Floorplan by Inaki Aliste Lizarralde (Copyright-Inaki Aliste Lizarralde; Used with Permission)

TV homes can be confusing. In reality, the rooms can be different sets. It can make it hard to figure out exactly how one space relates to another. Iñaki Aliste Lizarralde has come to our rescue with colorful and detailed floorplans from modern and classic (and modern classic TV shows). Some are going mad for the Big Bang Theory floorplan, but the Simpsons and Frasier are my jam. Just look at the detailed layout of the magical, sound proof kitchen!

Iñaki, if you are taking suggestions, The Cosby Show and Full House? Pretty please.

So I take it you aren’t happy with ENCODE…

Mike is very busy being an awesome scientist. So, I have the duty of reacting to the latest “ENCODE takedown” published by Graur et al in Genome Biology and Evolution: “On the immortality of television sets: ‘function’ in the human genome according to the evolution-free gospel of ENCODE”. The title kind of tells you that the ENCODE consortium has a snowball’s chance in Hell of coming out of this one looking good – not that the paper was written by unbiased critics. Continue reading “So I take it you aren’t happy with ENCODE…”