Fred Bortz

The latest Science Shelf newsletter is now available at
www.scienceshelf.com/news.htm.

Highlights include links to new or soon to come reviews of:

• Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife by Mary Roach

• Life as We Do Not Know It: The NASA Search for (and Synthesis of) Alien Life
by Peter Ward

• A Left-Hand Turn Around the World: Chasing the Mystery and Meaning of All
Things Southpaw by David Wolman

I was personally saddened to learn of the death of the Richard E. Smalley of Rice University, the man who found and named buckyballs, at the age of 62. I interviewed Dr. Smalley in the summer of 1995, a year before he won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry, for my 1997 book To the Young Scientist.

With both sides of the Intelligent Design Trial in Dover PA willing to fight all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, I’m concerned about nominee Harriet Miers’ ability to separate her personal religious views from her duties to the Constitution.

It’s the beginning of a new month and time to visit the new Science Shelf newsletter again at http://www.scienceshelf.com/news.htm.

I was reading New Scientist at the breakfast table, and noticed that its featured book review was of a title that I had also found compelling, Master Mind: The Rise and Fall of Fritz Haber, the Nobel Laureate Who Launched the Age of Chemical Warfare by Daniel Charles.

In an interview with the online Astrobiology Magazine, Brother Guy Consolmagno, the Vatican’s Astronomer, discusses Intelligent Design (ID). I think he’s right on target.

One of the nice things about having a blog is that it gives me a place to toot my own horn to people who are interested in my work.

My new book, Beyond Jupiter: The Story of Planetary Astronomer Heidi Hammel, has been published.

The latest Science Shelf newsletter is now available online.

You may also want to look over the new additions to the Books Received page.

Discover the true source of creation here.

Methinks the author has been hitting the sauce (marinara that is) a little too often.

We now return you to our normal serious programming.

That’s all, folks!

Part 1 was posted under media and entertainment as a heads-up to an upcoming book called The Republican War on Science by Chris Mooney. The book deals more closely with energy and environment than any other Science Blog category, so I’m posting the full review as it appears on my Science Shelf website here.

If you want to buy the book from Amazon.com through the Science Shelf, click here.