The Bald Scientist

My book reviews so far, and other goodies…

Hi everyone! you know that one of the things that I like to do here is to post book reviews. For your convenience and your reading pleasure, here are the links to the book reviews that I have written to date, more or less in chronological order. Please note that I usually post a shortened …

The Sting of the Wild by J. O. Schmidt – Book Review

This is a most enjoyable book, written by a scientist who really knows his stuff. Moreover, he loves his chosen research area. His fascination with the topic is more than evident -and quite contagious!- in every single page of the book. The author took me through a series of interesting tales based on the biology …

Useless book reviews

This one is not a proper blog post. It’s more of a comment on something I saw that was quite amusing. It somehow reminded me of this political season. I love books. It is no secret. I love science. That’s no secret either. As many others like me surely do, I keep a “wish list” at …

Book Review – This Is Your Brain on Parasites

This is a pretty good book that left me wanting for more. I have to admit that I learned quite a few things from it. The author was quite ambitious (in the best way) in her treatment of the topic, providing quite a few interesting examples of parasites that influence the behavior of their hosts. …

The Biodiversity of the Universe – 2016 edition

2 years old post – Slightly updated… ~~ I am fully aware that life as we know it, as it is manifested on Earth, is by far represented by microorganisms. Bacteria and related organisms are the ones that really rule our planet. This is just a fact. May I tell you a secret, though? I like multicellular …

I’m afraid for my science – 2016 edition

I published the original version of this post nearly four years ago, in the week when Neil Armstrong died. If anything, what I had to say then is more relevant than ever. I have updated this post accordingly. Also, if you want to know why do I bother writing about science, go here… Please let …

My autism and science fiction story – Free for five days!

Hello all! My autism and science fiction story, “The Voice of the Heart” is absolutely free for five days! The promotion runs from April 17-21, 2016. I’d be very grateful if you’d post a review of it. Of course I want to know what you liked, but I am especially interested to know what you did not …

Book Review – Science Blogging: The Essential Guide

  Science Blogging: The Essential Guide by Christie Wilcox, Bethany Brookshire, Jason G. Goldman, Editors. Yale university Press, 2016. There is a little something for everyone in this book. On the other hand, as the editors themselves clearly state in the introduction, each chapter will likely be useful to only a subset of its targeted …

A great time as a guest in the God-Talk podcast

The four and a half regular readers of this blog know (you know who you are, thanks for your faithfulness!) that I have a special interest on science and faith. I will not elaborate on this aspect of my life right now except to say that and I am a very hopeful agnostic (Although my …

“Miseducation” in 140 characters or less

Last night I had a lot of fun, quite unexpectedly too. It all started when Dr. Neil DeGrasse Tyson tweeted this: Now, I never followed him until last night, so I learned about this tweet because some of my friends. The thing is that his statement will be instantly recognized as wrong by virtually anyone, …

Slow down…

“What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done; there is nothing new under the sun.” ~ Ecclesiastes 1:9; HCSB Digital Text Edition. “All of this has happened before and all of it will happen again” ~Battlestar Galactica (The Reimagined Series) Hi! The very first thing that …

The First Toxin

“Nature is the best chemist. During the course of evolution, through literally millions of years, a wide variety of organisms have developed substances used for defense against predators, or to become predators themselves. As part of the evolutionary process, chemical structures beneficial for the survival of the organism are conserved…” —Yours Truly 1 Toxic substances …

The improbability of you

I am always thinking about something… For example, it is very common to hear people stating that each of us is a unique and unrepeatable individual; we usually hear this within a “motivational” context. Well, it is true, no question about that. But most of us do not usually know how **true** this is. Let’s …

Of Blogging and Friendships

This is a rather short post with some thoughts that I had today on the title’s topic… True friendships are a blessing. They are also rare, and highly dependent on the specific context of your relationship with the other person. One thing is for sure, almost invariably, you choose your friends, with a little bit …

Great quotes by great scientists – Francis Crick

This is a really good one, from the codiscoverer of the structure of DNA, Dr. Francis Crick. He was a true “scientists’ scientist”. I surely do not have to tell you about his multiple scientific achievements. However, what I like about him the most is his ideation of the “gossip test”. As I described in …

Happy Darwin Day … and planarians… (:-)

For Darwin Day 2016. I bet you did not know that Darwin studied planarians too! He did, and the above quote is just a small sample of it. This guy really was something else! Anyway, I wish all my fellow “Darwinophiles” a very, very happy Darwin Day! “From so simple a beginning…” (:-) ~~ **If …

Darwin Day – Planarians

For Darwin Day 2016. I bet you did not know that Darwin studied planarians too! He did, and the above quote is just a small sample of it. This guy really was something else! Anyway, I wish all my fellow “Darwinophiles” a very, very happy Darwin Day! “From so simple a beginning…” (:-)   ~~ …

Great quotes by great scientists – V.S. Ramachandran

  It’s been a while since I have posted a “great quote by a great scientist”. Enjoy! (:-)… ~~ **If you like what I write, kindly spread the word about this blog! Pretty please? **I am a published writer! For my Amazon author page, click here. **Want to see more of the things I write? Go …

Great quotes by great scientists – V. Ramachandran

It’s been a while since I have posted a “great quote by a great scientist”. Enjoy! (:-)…         ~~ **If you like what I write, kindly spread the word about this blog! Pretty please? **I am a published writer! For my Amazon author page, click here. **Want to see more of the things …

Autistic Monkeys – Ethical considerations

Note added on Jan 30, 2016. Here is a link with an interesting article on the ethical considerations of this research: http://gizmodo.com/ethicists-voice-concerns-over-creation-of-humanized-au-1754939733 ~~~ Original post: “The laboratory monkeys run obsessively in circles, largely ignore their peers and grunt anxiously when stared at.” (My Italics and bold face) This is the very first line of a newspiece …

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