How To Build A Dinosaur

Extinction Doesn't Have To Be Forever
Jack Horner and James Gorman

The title and especially the subtitle of this book are somewhat, deliberately, misleading. Paleontologist Jack Horner was a consultant on the movie Jurassic Park, however, he is quick to point out that he does not propose, or have any idea how, to produce living examples of Tyrannosaurus Rex or the much touted Velociraptor. He wrote this book, with the help of New York Times science editor, James Gorman, to propose the idea of modifying the development of a chicken, to express the dinosaur like traits of a long tail, teeth and forelimbs with clawed fingers.

This book is written in the realm of science popularization. Like Stephen Jay Gould and Carl Sagan, Horner chose to write a book explaining his idea to the general public. Why? Most popular science books are written about advances in science that are already accomplished. This one is a proposal for experiments that scientists do not yet know how to perform. By doing this he has made the reader a part of the process, the way science is really done. Here is a thought experiment that may or may not ever be tried in the laboratory.

What the book does is show how ideas are bandied about in scientific circles, how new experiments are proposed and argued for and against, how they are not necessarily ever given the chance to see the light of day. The work needed to produce this chickeasaurus would cost many millions of dollars.

There would be a lot that could be learned from the effort, according to Horner, about the development of embryos, which could be applied to medical science, possibly preventing birth defects in human children. Or possibly producing embryologically modified, designer ubermenschen. Producing a dangerous invasive species that would have to be fought and destroyed by the air force is an impossibility, however. Science fiction fans will have to live with the disappointment.

Horner says that the traits that he wants to produce, a tail, teeth and clawed forelimbs, are already present in the genes of the domestic chicken, which is a descendant of an upright walking dinosaur. Horner insists that birds ARE dinosaurs and not just their descendants. His proposal is to learn how to trigger, and to stop, certain traits that appear during the development of the chicken embryo, in order to make the tail, teeth and forelimbs appear in the hatched adult chicken. His would not be a genetically modified creature, just one that had been coached along the way to be more dinosaur like than bird like.

I rather like dinosaurs. The chapters in which he discusses the latest discoveries and theories in paleontology were, to me, the most intriguing of the book. Although I can see that there would be spin offs, like those from the Apollo space program, from his chickenasaurus proposal, I was have not really bought in to the idea. Maybe you will think differently. Horner says that he would like to be able to bring a chickenasaurus out on a leash, when giving a lecture. King Kong anyone?

Book Review Blog Carnival Number Five

Welcome to the Book Review Blog Carnival. Every other Sunday the carnival appears, like Brigadoon, on some blog somewhere, with links to book reviews all around the world. If you write book reviews on your blog we would love to have you participate. Submissions can be made at Carnival Dot Com for the next carnival, which will be published on December 7th at Imaginary Lands.

We have a large group of book reviews for you today.

In Fiction:

Marina, of Momma Writes About Books reviews The Blessing Way the first in Tony Hillerman's Navajo Police mysteries.

Marina has also reviewed The Pearl Diver, by Jeff Talarigo. This is the story of a Japanese woman who is sent to a leper colony, where she loses her identity and becomes a caregiver for the other patients.

Coralie writes about Stephen King's The Stand in her blog Happily Oblivious. It's a post apocalyptic story in which the cause of the mass die-off of humanity is an accidental release of a biological warfare germ by the U.S. government. Oops!

Ruth Schaller at Books Books and more Books read The Family Bones by Kimberly Raiser. If you inherit a property in a small town with a name like Astral, just call a realtor. It will save you trouble.

Charli was unimpressed by Twilight by Stephenie Meyer. Find out why at Bloody-Kisses.org.

Alessandra, of Out of the Blue, has found the winner of the best title award with her review of The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big, Round Things by Carolyn Mackler.

Serena Trowbridge reviews Susannah Clarke's The Ladies of Grace Adieu on her blog, Culture and Anarchy. Culture I get, but anarchy?

Serena Trowbridge also read The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett, which is a story of the Queen (yes, that one) discovering the wonders of literature at the bookmobike.

NathanKP of Inkweaver Review writes about Things Hoped For, by Andrew Clements., a science fantasy mystery novel.

NathanKP also reviewed Un Lun Dun by China Miéville. This book is a through the looking glass journey from London to it's opposite - Un Lun Dun. Get it?

Heather J. of Age 30+ ... A Lifetime of Books has a review of the classic Jules Verne novel The Mysterious Island! Verne, or the translator, or Heather seems to have used a lot of exclamation points!

Tanya, of Children's Books: What, When & How to Read Them predicts that Chains by Laurie Halse Anderson will win the National Book Award for young people's literature. That happened Wednesday, so now we know, but, really, she predicted it before.

Jason Isbell, writing in Tired Garden, reviews Shade by John Olson, which is not a gardening book.

switch2life thinks that The 3 Mistakes of My Life. is so similar to author Chetan Bhagat's other books that Bhagat must use some kind of software to grind out books like sausage, although sausage may not be the kind of image an Indian novelist would want to be associated with.

Jeanne, from Necromancy Never Pays read Cycler by Lauren McLaughlin', which is not about bicycle racing. It is the story of a girl, Jill who becomes a boy, inevitably Jack, for a few days each month. How inconvenient.

Alyce reviews My Lady of Cleves by Margaret Campbell Barnes on At Home With Books. It's the story of Henry VIIIths wife number four. Henry could learn a lot from Larry King.

Kindlelicious would like to recommend Chris Moriarty's Spin Control. That is if you have a Kindle to read it on.

Keira writes, in Love Romance Passion, about her favorite book, Sleepless at Midnight by Jacquie D’Alessandro. I lie awake at night sometimes, too, but nobody writes romance novels about me. (With good reason)


In Non- Fiction:

Marina, of Momma Writes About Books has a short review of The Highly Sensitive Person by Elaine Aron. I took the self-test on Elaine's website. Not surprisingly, I scored "insensitive boor."

Barry Wright III has submitted a review of an ebook, The Life Uncommon by Nacie Carson, on his blog 3style life. No word on what has happened to Barry Wrights I and II at this time.

Woman Tribune reviewed The Wilde Women by Paula Wall. Even during the depression, Wilde women don't get the blues.

Nigel Beale, of Nigel Beale Nota Bene Books has discovered The Idler's Glossary a book about creative idleness. It could be a manual for bloggers, at least according to my wife, who wishes I would get up and do something useful.

Christina M. Rau reviews Hairstyles of the Damned by Joe Meno on her blog Livin' The Dream (One Loser At A Time) . Are the MSP (mainstream publishers) missing out on a good thing?

Mike Bergin has written a review of The LBJ: Avian Life, Literary Arts, which I thought at first must have something to do with President Johnson but, as it turns out, is a literary journal with a birding bent. LBJ = "Little Brown Job" which is an oblique refrence to what I have heard of as LGBs or "little gray birds," a term of art in the Audubon set. OK, so it's not really a book. You can find the review on Mike's blog 10,000 Birds.

Corey Finger, also writing at 10,000 Birds, has reviewed Birds: The Art of Ornithology by Jonathan Elphick, which contains 300 color illustrations from the Natural History Museum in London. They're pictures of birds, Hon.

Laurie Bartels reviews Neuroplasticity and the Brain That Changes Itself on SharpBrains: Your Window into the Brain Fitness Revolution by Norman Doidge. I need to get me some of that.

GrrlScientist of Living the Scientific Life has read Bottomfeeder: How to Eat Ethically in a World of Vanishing Seafood by Taras Grescoe. Oy, life wasn't complicated enough?

Dolfin from Lionden Landing submitted a review of Yoga Planet: 50 Fun Activities for a Greener World by Tara Guber and Leah Kalish,
Illustrated by Sophie Fatus, formerly known as My Daddy Is a Pretzel. I think I would have stuck with the first title.

Jim Murdoch reviews The Paris Review Interviews Vol. III , in which Martin Amis is quoted as saying All writers are Martians. Does that include bloggers?

Tim Gebhart, of A Progressive on the Prairie has a review of I Hate New Music by Dave Thompson. Thompson posits that rock music died in 1978 from an overdose of technology. I always thought it had something to do with a Chevy and a levy, oh well.

LAL wrote a review ofBook Review: Investing for Dummies for the blog LivingAlmostLarge. I wouldn't be caught dead reading a"For Dummies" book. I don't want to make to obvious.

Manoj reviews The Age of Spiritual Machines by Ray Kurzweil on Unreal Blog. Could a computer like "Hal" be built some day, that possesses consciousness? Do we really have consciousness? Can I have a ham sandwich?

Callista has discovered a book about book bloggers, The Bookaholics' Guide to Book Blogs by Rebecca Gillieron & Catheryn Kilgarriff. She completes the circle by blogging about the book about bloggrs who blog about books at her blog SMS Book Reviews.

Liz Fetter reviews Art History For Your Children, a series of 48 titles, on many many different artists from every period in art history, on her blog Power In Art . There must be a mail in certificate for a PHD diploma in the back of the last volume.

Coralie writes in Happily Oblivious writes about Ten Men Dead by David Beresford, which deals with the 1981 hunger strike by IRA prisoners at Long Kesh prison in Northern Ireland.

Douglas Karr of The Marketing Technology Blog writes about The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn’t" by Robert Sutton.

A last minute entry, Barry Wright III, of 3stylelife just finished reading The Sociology of Taste by Jukka Gronow. Is taste innate, he asks? Tell it to my plaid pants, I say. Still no word from Barry Wright I and II.

The Ten Most Beautiful Experiments

George Johnson
Knopf
ISBN: 978-1-4000-4101-5

Johnson is a science writer for the New York Times and has written this book as a top ten list of science experiments. I guess that makes him the Letterman of science. Johnson's list is not the ten greatest discoveries of science but rather a list of experiments done by individuals that he finds to be important, elegant and accessible. They are experiments conducted by individuals and were done on a very human scale, often on a table top.

Do you remember hearing about Galileo dropping things from the leaning tower of Pisa? Johnson believes that never happened. He gives a detailed account of the experiment that Galileo did, rolling balls of different materials down an inclined track, timing their descent by singing. This allowed Galileo to show that heavier objects do not fall faster than light ones and to figure out the math for the acceleration of falling bodies. Newton would develop his laws of motion based on Galileo's work. He talks about Isaac Newton but not about gravity. Newton did a series of experiments using prisms which revealed that light is made up of waves and showed that color is derived from white light.

There are several experiments in electromagnetism, Michael Faraday, James Joule, A.A. Michelson, Robert Millikan. Millikaa's experiments with oil droplets, magnetic fields and radium, in which he discovered the electron, are the most complex in the book. Johnson tried to duplicate them and was not successful, blaming himself for being unable to control the apparatus properly.

I don't know whether the experiments Johnson chose were the most beautiful or not. He left the impression that he wasn't so confident in his choices either.