It’s hard for me to gauge exactly how interesting a book like this may be to someone else, because when asked about my fantasy dream career, I say epidemiologist. And not the fun kind – the data wonk kind. I think objectively, this book is objectively “exciting” if you have a tolerance for fairly dry excitement, and a lot of details on slow, frustrating, painstaking searches for pathogens, outbreaks, sources of contamination, and underlying causes of the things that plague us. Despite the rather dramatic […]
Okay, fuckety bye.
So firstly, this was fun and liked it and I admire its enthusiasm. Any book that tries to break down the taboo veil surrounding swearing is good in my book. I do not understand the fixation that some people have about swearing, and I probably never will. But this book does a really good job laying out a general overview of, as the title tells you, why swearing is good for you. This is actually why I’m only giving it three and a half stars, […]
The female of the species is more deadly than the male
The follow up to Vronsky’s Serial Killers: The Method and Madness of Monsters, Female Serial Killers: How and Why Women Become Monsters does exactly what it says on the cover and takes a look at the female of the species, examining the psychopathology that led some of the most notorious of female killers into committing their crimes. Slightly hamstrung by the fact that there has been nowhere near the level of study into female serial killers as their male counterparts, Vronsky therefore has fewer statistics […]
Mitten Kittens, Sonic Hedgehog, and a Better Understanding of Genes
Space genes! Bloody space genes! If you’ve been keeping an eye on popular science news recently, you’ve probably come across the story of a comparative study between current astronaut Scott Kelly and his retired astronaut brother, Mark. Along with this came the breathless headlines, tweets and shares on how 7% of Scott’s DNA had changed after his time in space! They weren’t identical twins anymore! Which is insane! NO! Argh!!! The media ran riot with the idea that massive changes had occurred […]