The Weekly Smörgåsbord #7
Posted by Darin Hayton on 04/18 at 12:01 AM
After an unfortunate hiatus, The Weekly Smörgåsbord returns with the latest list of interesting posts and articles.
- Taking a Stand for Science — Part of the on-going criticism of homeopathy that has attracted so much attention recently in Britain.
- That Barnes & Noble Dream — An old post at Slate that raises a number of the issues of concern to me about why historians of science don’t write for a broader audience.
- Joining up the dots — The Renaissance Mathematicus offers up another of his nice posts on, well, Renaissance mathematics (and related subjects), this one on 15th-century astronomy.
- The Story of Bartram’s Garden — Bartram Gardens is a local institution, so it was nice to see an article about it in the Smithsonian. One of my students is writing a paper on the gardens, making this article all the more relevant.
- Like Freedom? Thank a Scientist — A review of Timothy Ferris’s book, The Science of Liberty, which is sitting on my pile of books to read.
- Mythbustin’ — Skulls in the Stars has a wonderful knack for finding interesting, old scientific papers. I could spend all day just reading these old articles.
- The Array of Contemporary American Physicists — Will over at Ether Wave Propaganda continues to provide his historiographic insights. In this post, which is not explicitly historiographic, he addresses a number of issues related to digital humanities, on-line scholarship, and web-based resources.
- The Bounds of Natural Philosophy, part 1 and The Bounds of Natural Philosophy, part 2 — Will’s two-part historiographic post on natural philosophy as an analytical category.
- German Design Elements — Ptak Science Books has some wonderful posts. I can’t resist German print design.
- Monetizing Madness — another Ptak Science Books post, this one on 18th- and 19th-century accounts of madness.
- The Obviousness of Oblivion — finally, Ptak Science Books looks at a RAND Corporation report on the consequences of nuclear war, the worst consequence seems to have been the destruction of industry and government leadership.