A Reason for Everything by Marek Kohn

This is a popular  account of the lives and ideas of some of the major British figures in evolutionary theory.  

After rather sensibly omitting Darwin, whose life is already adequately covered by several excellent biographies, Kohn concentrates on Alfred Russel Wallace,  Ronald Aylmer Fisher, J. B. S. Haldane, John Maynard Smith, William. D. Hamilton, and Richard Dawkins.  Although he tries to portray all of them, except Maynard Smith, as eccentric, I think that Wallace comes across as a fairly normal and sympathetic character, in spite of his interest in spiritualism.  The fact that the right-wing leanings of Fisher and Hamilton are balanced by the communism of Haldane and the young Maynard Smith refutes the common assumption that evolutionary theory supports right-wing politics.

Most of the book seems to have based on Kohn's researches into the letters of the main characters, but the material on Hamilton seems to be based largely on Hamilton's 'Narrow Roads of Gene Land' and concentrates rather too much for my liking on his apocalyptic views on the accumulation of damaged genes.  However, I think that the most valuable contribution of this book are the parts based on interviews with that epitome of evolutionary common sense, John Maynard Smith.  These give interesting insights into his relationship with Hamilton who apparently bore several grudges against him (for instance, Hamilton thought that Maynard Smith had abused his position as a referee of Hamilton's 1964 paper to get his own ideas on kin selection into print first) .   Maynard Smith's death in 2004 was a great loss.

Update on Sat 2005-08-13 by Tristram Brelstaff

Charles H. Smith of Western Kentucky University runs a wonderful web-site on Alfred Russel Wallace at http://www.wku.edu/~smithch/index1.htm.

Dreadnought Geese

Canada geese seem to have a tendency to move from one place to another in single file.  Sometimes, when there are a lot of them, this can be quite an impressive sight.  When I see them moving over water like this they remind me of the British Grand Fleet sailing to the Battle of Jutland.  Earlier this year, I saw 50 or 60 of them moving like this down through the middle lake to the bottom lake in Reading University grounds.  Just this evening I saw 18 of them proceeding in single file down the Kennet, with a Greylag goose at their head.

Update on Sat 2005-08-13 by Tristram Brelstaff

This must have been the picture I was thinking of: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Grand_Fleet_sails.jpg (It probably has nothing to do with the Battle of Jutland.)

Some Time with Feynman by Leonard Mlodinow

In 1981 a young physics graduate joined the faculty at Caltech.  He was given an office on the same corridor as Murray Gell-Mann and Richard Feynman.  This is his account of his conversations with these two giants of 20th Century physics.  It is a small, slight book - I read it in one evening and two half-hour train journeys -  but is a marvelous read, both witty and warm.

Update on Sat 2005-08-27 by Tristram Brelstaff

In this book Feynman tells of how he once discussed with his son what it would be like if there were two time dimensions instead of just one.  I was very interested to read this because the same idea occurred to me just a few months ago, arising from my thinking on formal specification and object identity. 

The Kraken Wakes by John Wyndham

A newly married couple, both radio journalists, are taking their honeymoon on a cruise liner.  One evening they see five red meteors crash into the sea.  It is the start of an alien invasion of the Earth in which the invaders colonize the deep sea trenches and then start to move upwards onto the land.  An exciting, apocalyptic tale set in a post-war world in which governments are stupid and short-sighted.  Contains one or two quite contemporary themes, but is dated in parts.  The aliens remain unseen and inexplicable throughout which makes them really threatening.  A good bed-time read, and well worth the £1.49 I paid for it at the local Oxfam bookshop.

Update on Sat 2005-07-16 by Tristram Brelstaff

It so happens that BBC Radio 7 are in the middle of broadcasting a reading of this book in 16 half-hour episodes.

A Pigeon takes to the Water

This evening I was watching some Canada geese on the Kennet in central Reading when something rather strange happened: a feral pigeon flew down and landed on the water amongst the geese.  I must have forgotten itself because the splash it caused seemed to surprise it and it immediately flew up again.  I suppose that it could have been picking up a piece of bread off the water but I didn't see any bread, and nobody was feeding the geese at the time.  I prefer to think that this bird just made a mistake and recovered just in time