Book Reviews – Page 78 – Everything Is Better With Dragons

Review: ‘Mars One: Humanity’s Next Great Adventure’

Edited by Norbert Kraft, MD, with James R. Kass, PhD, and Raye Kass, PhD

Published by: BenBella Books

Publication Date: 23rd February 2016

ISBN: 9781940363837

R.R.P (US): $16.99

Edition: Paperback

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Glyphosate, how you torture me

By Benjah-bmm27 (Own work) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

I’m a gardener, and spent years studying chemistry so this subject interests me. Therefore I am going to inflict it on you.

Chemicals are scary if you don’t understand them, and people especially get worried by the ones we use regularly on food plants and in horticulture, pesticides and herbicides. I want to concentrate on just one, Glyphosate; it is used in 750 different products worldwide and is the most popular herbicide in the world [1]. It’s a broad spectrum herbicide used in domestic, agricultural and forestry settings and by every council in the country to keep the paths tidy and cut the lines in to football and cricket pitches (except in Bristol, where they’ve experimented with vinegar after a successful campaign by local campaigners to ban the use of glyphosate there by the council).

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Review: ‘Truth or Truthiness’ by Howard Wainer

Published by: Cambridge University Press

Publication Date: 26th January 2016

ISBN: 9781107130579

R.R.P. (US): $29.99

From netgalley.com

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Review: ‘Human Evolution’ by Robin Dunbar

Published by: Oxford University Press

Publication Date: 1st November 2016

ISBN: 9780190616786

R.R.P.: $29.95

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A couple of quick reviews

Evening all,

After a busy eight days I was absolutely exhausted and my depression was acting up, so today I have done nothing. I’m feeling much better this evening so I thought I’d write a couple of reviews. I’ve been updating my writers CV and my log of submissions. It’s quite sad, I’ve had a few letters published but nothing else, except for a piece in an anthology about writing, I have two whole sentences in it. I sent a couple of queries off to local papers today but I don’t expect to hear anything, I haven’t when I’ve emailed them before. I keep looking at my submissions log and I’m sure I’ve missed things out; I know I’ve sent queries to a couple of newspapers and to local magazines, I think I must have forgotten to log them. How silly of me.

But that’s enough of that, on to the reviews. Both these books came from netgalley.com and I’ve already given my feedback on that website. I usually wait and do it all at once but I was twitchy last night and needed to distract myself.Continue reading “A couple of quick reviews”

‘Special K’ metabolite may provide a new drug to treat depression

The drug ketamine (a club drug sometimes called ‘Special K’) is legally used as an animal tranquilliser and illegally used to get high. Recent work has shown it also has a antidepressant effect. Continue reading “‘Special K’ metabolite may provide a new drug to treat depression”

Mumsy and the age of fossils

When we watched a programme about the evolution of life on Earth, Mumsy asked how geologists knew how old the rocks with the fossils in them were. I said ‘isotopes’, she said ‘what?’ This is my attempt to explain radiometric dating and some of it’s uses.

We’re going to have to start at the beginning, with atoms.

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