Best American Science & Nature Writing 2008
I haven't read all of this yet. Only a few of the articles, actually. But what a few they were!
Wow, that sounded overly excited.
"Zonkeys are Pretty Much My Favorite Animal" by Jon Cohen, sounds like a cheesy title I would've written. But in the article, he talks about hybrids. Including zonkeys. Which are not a cross with a monkey, as I first thought. It's a zebra and a donkey. And zonkeys and zorses do look pretty darned cool. Pizzlies (grizzlies and polar bears) just look weird to me. I'm not sure I found a believable picture of a liger.
Turns out hybrids are more common than I and most people would think. What's really weird is if you do a search on Google images, you can't be quite sure which ones are real pictures and which ones are photoshopped. The real ones look so unreal.
Also, turns out hybrids are a good way for a species to get in some new dna to play with. Even if a lot of them are sterile. And sometimes they even go off and form their own species.
Anyway, was cool. Go look for some weird animal hybrid pics!
"The Interpreter" by John Colapinto was a very long article, which I didn't realize when I got into it. But it didn't matter, because I was hooked and had to keep reading all about Piraha. Either Piraha proves Chomsky wrong, or it needs to be studied more. How weird to imagine a culture with no stories and no envisioning of the future. Who think 'few' 'some' and 'many' as their only concept of numbers.
But that's not even the only weird and cool part of the language. Speakers of it can even sing or hum it and still get across what they're trying to say. Without consonants, without vowels. I imagine like how you can say 'I don't know' just with a hum.
And then more linguistic awesomeness with "Untangling the Mystery of the Inca" by Gareth Cook. It's all about khipu. The cords they used as records, by putting knots in. A numbering system had been decoded, but now people are working on reading the khipu for far more than numbers. What really cool things are we going to learn about the Inca when they finally crack the khipu?
These anthologies of science writing as really good. I enjoy the science and nature writing ones slightly less. But they're all full of interesting and well-written articles. 2008's just started off with an especially good bang, so I had to tell you all.
Wow, that sounded overly excited.
"Zonkeys are Pretty Much My Favorite Animal" by Jon Cohen, sounds like a cheesy title I would've written. But in the article, he talks about hybrids. Including zonkeys. Which are not a cross with a monkey, as I first thought. It's a zebra and a donkey. And zonkeys and zorses do look pretty darned cool. Pizzlies (grizzlies and polar bears) just look weird to me. I'm not sure I found a believable picture of a liger.
Turns out hybrids are more common than I and most people would think. What's really weird is if you do a search on Google images, you can't be quite sure which ones are real pictures and which ones are photoshopped. The real ones look so unreal.
Also, turns out hybrids are a good way for a species to get in some new dna to play with. Even if a lot of them are sterile. And sometimes they even go off and form their own species.
Anyway, was cool. Go look for some weird animal hybrid pics!
"The Interpreter" by John Colapinto was a very long article, which I didn't realize when I got into it. But it didn't matter, because I was hooked and had to keep reading all about Piraha. Either Piraha proves Chomsky wrong, or it needs to be studied more. How weird to imagine a culture with no stories and no envisioning of the future. Who think 'few' 'some' and 'many' as their only concept of numbers.
But that's not even the only weird and cool part of the language. Speakers of it can even sing or hum it and still get across what they're trying to say. Without consonants, without vowels. I imagine like how you can say 'I don't know' just with a hum.
And then more linguistic awesomeness with "Untangling the Mystery of the Inca" by Gareth Cook. It's all about khipu. The cords they used as records, by putting knots in. A numbering system had been decoded, but now people are working on reading the khipu for far more than numbers. What really cool things are we going to learn about the Inca when they finally crack the khipu?
These anthologies of science writing as really good. I enjoy the science and nature writing ones slightly less. But they're all full of interesting and well-written articles. 2008's just started off with an especially good bang, so I had to tell you all.