Editorial Review

The nose knows, says Lyall Watson, and in Jacobson's Organ, he sets out to prove that a humble, often overlooked set of nasal pits helps us decide whom to hit on, and whom to hit. First identified in 1811 by Danish anatomist Ludwig Levin Jacobson, the vomeronasal organ has been implicated in the reception of pheromones, those ephemeral chemical signals animals use to communicate nonverbally.

Watson organizes his thesis around the seven broad classes of smells identified by pioneering naturalist Carolus Linnaeus: floral, goatish, musky, foul, nauseating, spicy, and garlicky. In each section, Watson presents evidence of a surprising and unacknowledged role of smell and pheromones in human life. Is it possible that first impressions are the result of chemical signals? Watson thinks so, and also that pair-bonding, fistfights, love of offspring, and memories may have more to do with our humble nose than we think. In what is bound to be one of his more controversial stretches, Watson implicates nasal plastic surgery in postoperative mood changes:

Every time a surgeon slices away at a nasal septum in the name of fashion or vanity, both sides of Jacobson's organ are at risk of being damaged or even removed entirely, without thought for the consequences....If you are considering cosmetic surgery on your nose, know that it could deprive you of the very things in life which having a new, cute, little button nose were supposed to improve.

Reviews (49)

beautiful book that will bring a smile, and a tear
I have to say this is my favorite book.Masson discuses the emotional lives of animals and goes through "evidence" of several emotions.I put evidence in quotations as the majority of the scientific community will discount this book.Masson uses anecdotal stories to say that animals do have emotions.However, as far as I know, there is really no way to prove emotions in other humans besides observations.Masson sticks it to the scientific community in much of this book and is highly critical of many current scientific viewpoints on animals and thier research.

That said, Masson uses beautiful stories that may bring a smile to your face and at times a tear.Brilliant use of storytelling.

Fauna Polemic
Jeffrey Masson states early in this book that he has been a vegetarian ever since an unfortunate incident during his childhood involving a pet duck.In a nutshell this incident defines both what is worst about this book, and why is it so compelling.

The author's personal biases are never far from the surface, although he manages to keep them from being too intrusive.Each chapter takes a different emotion -- fear, anger, compassion, shame, love, etc. -- and presents some evidence, usually anecdotal and apocryphal, about non-human animals that have displayed this emotion.There is no attempt to be comprehensive or authoritative; rather he picks and chooses examples which support his overriding proposition.Like Kristen von Kreisler (for whom he wrote the forward to her last book), the accumulated weight of a bunch of apocryphal stories will only convince the already-converted, but for those of us who share his bias the stories are heart-warming.

Where he falls down is in putting this evidence in context.He automatically assumes -- as a vegetarian -- that anyone who appreciates the emotions and intellect of animals would be unable to eat them or perform scientific experiments on them.Despite recounting tales of lions purring over a recent kill and cheetahs tenderly cleaning the face of their dinner, Masson sticks to his uniquely-human conviction that eating meat is morally reprehensible.He does not admit to the possibility that animal researchers could own pets, could separate their love for INDIVIDUAL animals from their careers investigating intentionally-anonymous lab animals.

In short, his is a very single-minded morality.

Without the undercurrent of ethical superiority this book would have rated five stars.

Editorial Review

In 44 B.C., a physician named Antistius examined the fresh corpse of Julius Caesar and, in science journalist Jessica Sachs's words, "announced that he knew which of the would-be emperor's twenty-three stab wounds had proved fatal," thus giving birth to a new science.

In making his announcement "before the forum"--the origin of the term forensics--Antistius relied on the medical knowledge of the day, which was none too developed. His modern counterparts have much better science at their disposal to account for causes of death, which, Sachs notes, tend to be "usually more than obvious to every police officer responding to the scene." Less obvious, and far more elusive, is the exact time death occurred, the datum that forensic pathologists seek to obtain but usually have to guess at, hampered "by death's infinite variations." Examining a dozen case studies that touch on the contents of Nicole Brown Simpson's stomach, a felled Confederate soldier's skull, the methods of an English serial killer, and the contribution of an Indiana-based student of maggots to the forensic ecology of human remains, Sachs explores the means by which pathologists measure the interval between death and a body's discovery--a determination with often profound implications.

Editorial Review

Working in his garden one day, Michael Pollan hit pay dirt in the form of an idea: do plants, he wondered, use humans as much as we use them? While the question is not entirely original, the way Pollan examines this complex coevolution by looking at the natural world from the perspective of plants is unique. The result is a fascinating and engaging look at the true nature of domestication.

In making his point, Pollan focuses on the relationship between humans and four specific plants: apples, tulips, marijuana, and potatoes. He uses the history of John Chapman (Johnny Appleseed) to illustrate how both the apple's sweetness and its role in the production of alcoholic cider made it appealing to settlers moving west, thus greatly expanding the plant's range. He also explains how human manipulation of the plant has weakened it, so that "modern apples require more pesticide than any other food crop." The tulipomania of 17th-century Holland is a backdrop for his examination of the role the tulip's beauty played in wildly influencing human behavior to both the benefit and detriment of the plant (the markings that made the tulip so attractive to the Dutch were actually caused by a virus). His excellent discussion of the potato combines a history of the plant with a prime example of how biotechnology is changing our relationship to nature. As part of his research, Pollan visited the Monsanto company headquarters and planted some of their NewLeaf brand potatoes in his garden--seeds that had been genetically engineered to produce their own insecticide. Though they worked as advertised, he made some startling discoveries, primarily that the NewLeaf plants themselves are registered as a pesticide by the EPA and that federal law prohibits anyone from reaping more than one crop per seed packet. And in a interesting aside, he explains how a global desire for consistently perfect French fries contributes to both damaging monoculture and the genetic engineering necessary to support it.

Reviews (15)

Building and Poetry, Entwined :)
This book should really be read twice.

It is one of the most powerful books that I have ever read.
It is poetic, and yet very precise and concrete, about the state of things as one perceives them in nature.

First he explains what is the Quality without a Name. Then he proceeds to distinguish it in our acts of construction by highlighting it in nature.

I have to confess that I am currently biased by General Systems Theory, Emergence and all these relatively new concepts, and cannot help but analyze this book from that perspective. It is a wonderful book that talks about stability in natural systems, and how this very beautiful and poetic stability is reached through natural processes. Nature has a way of 'stabilizing' its own systems. Nature itself is constantly changing in order to cope with this ever changing conditions.
The author assumes heavily that human beings, when letting themselves be free and at peace, are able to identify at the most profound levels with stable systems in nature. Everything nature does awakens our natural and hidden intuitions of beauty and stability, and it is at this moment, when we 'let go' of thoughts and ideas, that this beauty can be apprehended and completely acknowledged, making us whole, and by doing so, becoming a part of the Place as much as the place becomes a part of us.

The proposed way of building mimics, to the extent this is possible, nature's way of building, and constructs things in the world organically, this is, build them as if they were being generated from a seed, not "composed".
One starts with the very basics On Site, and lets go its preconceived ideas and images, and focuses only in the site, and in the specifics of the site: paths the Sun light travels, trees nearby, roads, accidents in the ground, previous buildings and, most importantly, the use that will be given to the building by those that will actually use it. This way, whatever the end results, the building thus created is constantly able to adapt to its surroundings, being able, through specific applications of the patterns proposed, to resolve the ever changing systems of conflicting forces which are constantly found as development progresses.

It is a truly beautiful book, even if you have no business in architecture, as is my case (Software Engineer). I can see how and why this book had such a tremendous impact on Software Development when it came out. However, this book actually goes much beyond the ideas in design and enterprise architecture patterns. It is a book for your heart. It is a book that will definitely change the way you face the world, the way you let yourself be in places, the fact that a building is much more than the geometries and materials used to build it.

A book everyone should read. Really everyone.

The Etymology of Software Architecture
I found this book so mesmerizing that I read it twice.During the first pass, I was surprised that the book was so philosophical and poetic in describing architecture. I expected something more technical.Later during the second pass, my goal was to find derivatives and analogies in software architecture.Based on what I found, I think every software architect would enjoy this book.

The writing style that I noticed in my first read of the book made me feel like I was reading an architecture bible.I hesitate to describe the book as religious, but the book's description "the power to make buildings beautiful lies in each of us already" and the description of the word "alive" giving architecture "the quality without a name" triggered an epiphany when recalling that the Bible says "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth." and, "So God created man in his own image."This is why I'd say this book has a primal, sacred aspect, and this is why we like to build.Additionally, the book especially moved me so my mind's eye was opened to see "alive" patterns and to think about the morphology of architecture filling voids and generating towns.

On the second pass of reading, I was struck by this software architecture analogy in the table of contents:"16. Once we have understood how to discover individual patterns which are alive, we may then make a language for ourselves for any building task we face.The structure of the language is created by the network of connections among individual patterns: and the language lives, or not, as a totality, to the degree these patterns form a whole."Could this be the guidebook for designing enterprise software architecture?

Obviously this book was the inspiration for the philosophy and vocabulary for software architecture, and I thought some of the following excerpts were noteworthy paradigm shifts.

"The patterns are not just patterns of relationships, but patterns of relationships among other smaller patterns, which themselves have still other patterns hooking them together---and we see finally, that the world is entirely made of all these interhooking, interlocking nonmaterial patterns."This sounds like the difference between patterns of software architecture and object-oriented software design patterns.

"Each pattern is a three-part rule, which expresses a relation between a certain context, a problem, and a solution."Deja vu for software patterns.

"You may be afraid that the design won't work if you take just one pattern at a time...There is no reason to be timid...The order of the language will make sure that it is possible."Likewise in software architecture design, as one design pattern is considered at a time to see how it fits needs into the large picture of design.If this pattern is later deemed to be dead, it can be replaced by an "alive" design pattern.

"Next, several acts of building, each one done to repair and magnify the product of the previous acts, will slowly generate a larger and more complex whole than any single act can generate."This correlates to software refactoring.

"It is essential, therefore, that the builder build only from rough drawings: and that he carry out the detailed patterns from the drawings according to the processes given by the pattern language in his mind."When I read this, I thought about the metaphor to the software architect's vision and design.The software architect's design needs to be abstract enough to accommodate change easily, but yet simple enough so software programmers can understand it, finish the detailed component design and build the component to fit the architectural whole.

Reviews (12)

Cold is a relative thing
Have you ever had your leg in a cast?And when the cast comes off your leg is small and wrinkled because of the muscle atrophy that took place during the weeks of inactivity while the cast was on? Have you ever wondered what a bear looks like when it comes out of hibernation, having spent 3 or more months lying around mostly sleeping?Are its muscles smaller?Bernd Heinrich's mind thinks like that, putting such questions together and then he goes off in search of an answer.
If you only weigh a few ounces and are covered in feathers and it's -30 deg outside tonight, how do you live till morning? And why is it a good thing if there's fluffy snow on that evergreen tree? Heinrich knows.
This book is all about how animals live through brutal weather, and the word "ingenuity' in the title is a fine descriptor.For us indoor folk, 20 deg is cold, but for some animals who can make it to -40, that's a cakewalk, and Heinrich will tell you how they do it.It's a wonderful set of stories and observations and scientific fact about many different animals.
I still don't know how it came to be that I found a turtle dying in my garden on a 10 deg day recently (why was he/she out in the first place?), but I know more about why I'd better go fill my birdfeeders before the sun sets so the birds will literally have energy to burn when it's 15 deg tonight!

Where are all the animals in winter?
I picked up this book because, living in the northeast, I wondered what happened to all of the animals in wintertime.Which ones hibernate?Which ones migrate?Which ones die?And I wasn't disappointed.Heinrich provides ample explanations, in understandable language, of what happens to squirrels, birds, insects, turtles, trees, and others (although there isn't much about fish).He is also a fantastic nature writer, weaving simple but elegant stories in and out of the science, stories mostly set in his two main observation sites, Vermont and Maine.And the overriding theme of the whole book is the battle of animals to regulate their temperatures and metabolisms to avoid freezing, in the harsh food conditions of winter.This is good introductory reading for anyone with questions about winter survival.