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2 Works 203 Membros 9 Críticas

About the Author

Christie Wilcox is a scientist and an award-winning science writer. Her writing has appeared in Discover, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Scientific American, Slate, and Popular Science. Visit her website at www.christiewilcox.com. Follow her on Twitter at @NerdyChristie.
Image credit: via amazon

Obras por Christie Wilcox

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Really enjoyed this book. There were some funny bits, interesting anecdotes and a healthy dose of science. I see a few reveiwers felt she was a bit too "scintific" but I really didn't feel this to be the case. I think the large number of components in the venom made it difficult to completely avoid "jargon," but she always did a great job of explaining things. Worth a read just to find out there are venomous sharks! Who knew? ( maybe everyone but me, until now)
 
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cspiwak | 7 outras críticas | Mar 6, 2024 |
Really expected more. Just a broad brush about venom. Which is what the book is about. But was hoping for thoughts on how evolution worked. Some deeper history. Info about some of the animals was great but much of it I was already aware of.
½
 
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bermandog | 7 outras críticas | May 10, 2023 |
I believe it was two--maybe three--years ago when I read the National Association of Science Writers was sponsoring a science blogging book. I didn't want to wait, but I what choice was there? Now my library has a copy, and clearly I should buy one for myself.

Twenty-seven science bloggers took turns writing the twenty-six chapters and afterward in this book. You don't get just one opinion or one person summarizing the opinions of others in the field, but many popular science bloggers all had a topic to cover, all offering their perspective on becoming successful through that topic. To clarify, in this book and right here, "successful" is disseminating science on the Internet to as many people who are interested as possible. It's about outreach and passion for knowledge.

As a sample, chapters in this book include the history of science blogging, networks versus independent, artwork and images, diversity, blogging as a resource for formal education, and finance.

I found most of the chapters useful or at least intellectually enlightening. Among the former, I appreciate learning how science blogs fair in the payment sphere. Among the latter, the history of science blogging. Easily the most useful and enlightening were the chapter on joining networks and the chapter on going "ronin". Even with casual blogging for several years, I hadn't grasped the role of networks or how to join. I imagine many science bloggers will benefit from the same chapters and more.

Science blogging, much like other Internet media, changes rapidly. This book gets new writers up to speed. It offers enough context for them to establish an intuitive feel for the industry and navigate future changes. Between that and the essays on specific topics, Science Blogging: the Essential Guide does its job.
… (mais)
 
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leah_markum | Oct 28, 2022 |
Venomous and I did not get off to a great start. You'd think it would be a sure bet, since Chapter 1 kicks things off with the platypus, possibly my most favourite non-domesticated animal, and one she visited with - as she notes on page 1 - at Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary "in Melbourne Australia". I've been to Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary and I have a picture of myself and the koala that peed on me to prove it (fun fact: koala pee smells sooooo bad). The thing is, Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary is in Brisbane, not Melbourne. Not a small error, either; one is at the bottom of the continent and the other at the top. Plus, Wilcox was there, so you'd like to think she knew she was in Brisbane and not Melbourne. Unless the koala pee stench got to her.

Anyhoo ... I was understandably feeling a bit cynical after that illustrious beginning, and the first few chapters were not enough to sway me either way, but I began to find myself invested - as measured by how much I started reading out to MT (I am a trial to this poor man, I know) - by chapter 6: "All the better to eat you with". This is the chapter about necrotising venoms, proving that I'm really no better than a 12 year old boy sometimes. But chapter 8 was even better: Mind Control. OMG.

Chapter 9 is about the pharmacological miracles that have been wrought by venom research, and reading it made me want to rush out to the world and scream nobody touch anything! simply because at the rate humanity is going, we'll exterminate the cure for cancer, et al long before we ever knew it existed.

Venomous is a popular science book and as such is filled with anecdotes that make it easier for the average arm chair science nerd to connect with the material being discussed; it also has a not insignificant amount of the harder science in the form of detailed descriptions of neural chemical pathways, etc. but I wouldn't call it inaccessible. In comparison, my recent read, Venom, is a far more hard-core scientific discussion and breakdown of the study of venom. (And it had much better pictures).

In an interesting six-degrees-of-separation chain of my TBR reads, Venom cited this book, Venomous, in the text, and Wilcox has cited The Botany of Desire by Michael Pollan, so I guess I know what my next non-fiction book is going to be.
… (mais)
 
Assinalado
murderbydeath | 7 outras críticas | May 20, 2022 |

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Estatísticas

Obras
2
Membros
203
Popularidade
#108,639
Avaliação
3.9
Críticas
9
ISBN
7

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