15: Soul Music, Terry Pratchett

More Discworld. Particularly good, because it deals with Death a great deal.

14: Oaxaca Journal, Oliver Sacks

A more personal book than Island of the Colorblind or An Anthropologist on Mars. This is the account of a botanical trip Sacks took. Ancient (yup, still behind by a month or two) notes once again retrieved from a bookmark, this time a McKay Used Books (Chattanooga and Knoxville) one.

In a bit where Sacks wonder why every culture has chocoholics, I find this piece, which perfectly explains my food preferences:

Is it the phenylethylamine, mildly analeptic [i.e., stimulating the central nervous system], euphoriant, supposedly aphrodisiac, which chocolate contains? Cheese and salami contain more of this.

Beans and corn (maize) provide all the essential amino acids. Really? Interesting.

Most of the world's plants—more than 90 percent of the known species—are connected by a vast subterranean network of fungal fillaments, in a symbiotic association that goes back to the very origin of land plants, 400 million years ago. These fungal fillaments are essential for the plants' well-being, acting as living conduits for the transmission of water and essential minerals (and perhaps also organic compounds) not only between the plants and fungi but from plant to plant.

In botany, whenever a new species is discovered, its formal definition is given in Latin. (This is no longer the case in zoology.)

Anacardiaceae: a family of flowering plants that include the cashew, mango, poison ivy, pistachio, and lacquer.

Ricinus communis is the source of castor beans, which in turn are the source of castor oil. Castor beans are also a source of ricin, the protein toxin that, delivered by umbrella, killed Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov in London in 1978.

Ants form 15% to 20% of the world's animal biomass and produce an awful lot of methane.

Fireflies contain nasty toxic substances not unlike those found in Digitalis, and eating them is not a very good idea. Every year, pet lizards (out of their natural, firefly-less habitat) die because they are fed fireflies.

Unlike chocolate and tobacco, rubber didn't make it big Europe until the late 17th century. Macintosh discovered how to ruberise fabric to make mac(k)intosh coats. More interestingly, Joseph Priestley invented the rubber, the pencil eraser, and thereby introduced the name "rubber" for the material.

Only one book added to the to-read list:

• David Wolfe, Tales from the Underground: A Natural History of Subterranean Life
  

13: Ten Discoveries That Rewrote History, Patrick Hunt

I took a class from Patrick and went on an archaeological field trip to the Grand St. Bernard pass with him. The book isn't, unfortunately, very good. It's pop-archaeology—a coffee table book without pictures.

12: The Island of the Colorblind, Oliver Sacks

If seeing patients, visiting archeological sites, wandering in rain forests, snorkelling in the reefs, at first seem to bear no relation to each other [...]

The perfect life, right?

I read this several months ago, and though I took brief notes on a Feldman's Books bookmark, I don't remember what half of them refer to. Ah well. Below the notes I managed to decipher.

Reading of island life re-awakened my desire to try breadfruit. Where can I find a breadfruit in the Bay Area? (The web tells me it's relatively easy to find canned jackfruit, but I feel like being difficult, and want a whole breadfruit.)

Holothurian==sea cucumber—that's knowledge you've been wanting your whole life.

Wittgenstein and Sacks are bad-asses that share an interesting trait that's not entirely foreign to me:

It is said that Wittgenstein was either the easiest or the most difficult of house-guests to accommodate, because though he would eat, with gusto, whatever was served to him on his arrival, he would then want exactly the same for every subsequent meal for the rest of his stay. This is seen as extraordinary, even pathological, by many people—but since I myself am similarly disposed, I see it as perfectly normal.

Nan Madol—interesting archaeological site off the eastern shore of Pohnpei.

Branchial myoclonus—rhythmic motion of palate, middle ear muscles, and certain muscles of the neck. Gill movement in man!

Victoria regia(=amazonica)—giant water lily.

Welwitschia mirabilis—a crazy living fossil.

Some of the largest living things on earth:

• Calamites, extinct giant horsetails. The giant trees were connected by underground rhizomes. All trees connected by a network of rhizomes were clones of the original tree and may be considered a single organism.
  
• An antarctic beech forest in Australia, where the trees are connected by runners and offshoots, said to date to the last Ice Age, 24,000 years ago.
  
• 37 acres of genetically homogenous Armillaria bulbosa(=gallica) in Michigan (since surpassed by a 2200 acres monster colony of Armillaria ostoyae in Oregon).
  

The wikipedia article makes good reading. Extremes are interesting.

Parkinsonian patients find it easier to walk stairs or rough terrain far more easily than a smooth, flat surface.

Coconut crabs are seriously strange—or at least surprising. This bit from the Relationship with humans section of the wikipedia article is, well, outrageous:

Children sometimes play with coconut crabs by placing some wet grass at an angle on a palm tree that contains a coconut crab. When the animal climbs down, it believes the grass is the ground, releases its grip on the tree, and subsequently falls.

New books to read:

• Alexander Humboldt, Personal Narrative of Travels to the Equinoctial Regions of America during the Years 1799-1804—I picked up Volume 1 already and sloshed through 60 of its 500-odd pages. I'm stuck due to its intimidating hugeness.
  
• Nora Ellen Groce, Everyone Here Spoke Sign Language: Hereditary Deafness on Martha's Vineyard
  
• Nordby, Hess, Sharpe, Night Vision: Basic, Clinical and Applied Aspects
  
• Stephen Jay Gould, Dinosaur in a Haystack
  
• Richard Dawkins, Climbing Mount Improbable
  

High Fidelity

I am three books behind in updating this blog, but instead of writing, or reading, I am going through Hornby's High Fidelity, looking for song references, and adding them to an iTunes playlist. Doing so, I ran across this bit, definitely in my top five best bits in the book:

    "What did you tell her about the shop for?" I ask the others.
    "I didn't know it was classified information," says Barry. "I mean, I know we don't have any customers, but I thought that was a bad thing, not, like, a business strategy."
    "She won't spend any money."
    "No, of course not. That's why she was asking if we knew any good record shops. She just wants to come in and waste our time."

I think this next one is, too, though it's not funny outside of context. So go read the book, will you?

    "Since when did this shop become a fascist regime?"
    "Since you brought that terrible tape in."
    

Playlist so far:

Got to Get You off My Mind, Solomon Burke
Sin City, The Flying Burrito Brothers
Baby, Let's Play House, Elvis Presley
Think, Aretha Franklin
Louie Louie, The Kingsmen
Little Red Corvette, Prince
Stir It Up, Bob Marley & the Wailers
Angel, Aretha Franklin
Papa's Got a Brand New Bag (Pt. 1), James Brown
Family Affair, Sly & The Family Stone
Let's Get It On, Marvin Gaye
The House That Jack Built, Aretha Franklin
Back in the U.S.A., Chuck Berry
(White Man) in Hammersmith Palais, The Clash
Tired of Being Alone, Al Green
Holiday, Madonna
The Ghetto, Donny Hathaway
Free Nelson Mandela, Special A.K.A.

Bought (from Amazon mp3) specifically for this list: "Sin City", "Family Affair", and "Tired of Being Alone".