(Part 2) Reddit mentions: The best science essays books

I've heard nothing but awesome things about A Day In The Frontal Lobe from people who love reading and love neuroscience. It's one of my next planned reads.

Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time was a good read and the illustrated version was awesome.

If you want something a little lighter with an easy writing style and low base knowledge entry 13 Things That Don't Make Sense is good and fun to read.

Disappointed in this comment section.

Research shows it's worth arguing with science deniers. But tactics matter, and most people are bad at arguing. If you're interested in helping him understand climate change, Citizens' Climate Lobby has excellent communications skills training to help you have more productive conversations with people like him. I have had a lot of success with it.

You can also recommend to him the SGU podcast, or buy him the book.

You can also point out to him that if he's afraid of "MSM," he's probably getting more fake news.

For pleasure:

• The Disappearing Spoon
  
• Periodic Tales
  
• Stuff Matters
  
• Molecules of Murder
  
• The Elements of Murder
  
• The Elements
  
• Molecules
  
• Molecules that Changed the World
  
• The Chemistry Book
  
  Undergraduate
  
  
• Organic:
  Organic Chemistry as a Second Language, The art of writing reasonable organic reaction mechanisms
  
  
• Inorganic: Inorganic Chemistry, Molecular Symmetry and Group Theory
  
  
• Analytical: Principles of Instrumental Anlsysis, Fundamentals of Analytical Chemistry
  
  Graduate
  
  
• Organic: Advanced Practical Organic Chemistry, March's Advanced Organic Chemistry, Greene's Protective Groups in Organic Synthesis, Purification of Laboratory Chemicals, Strategic Applications of Named Reactions in Organic Synthesis
  
• Inorganic: Advanced Inorganic Chemistry

How do you feel about anthologies? The Best American Science and Nature Writing is an annually-published collection and since each entry is by a different author, you don't have to worry about stopping points as much - each "chapter" is self-contained.

I went down to a bar one night and had a beer. I was reading a book entitled The Next Fifty Years (written in 2000). In it, one of the writers wrote about the Mars-bound European Spacecraft Beagle 2, "which is scheduled to be launched in June, 2003."

I looked up from my book. It was June 2003. In fact, according to the news article I had read earlier about this very launch, the launch was happening the very same week. A book written three years ago and the launch was right on time just as it described. Wow!

The weird thing is, I had been slowly mulling this book over for weeks now. It struck me as quite odd that I would be reading this book at this exact time. But I shrugged it off. Time to go home.

I got in my car and glanced at my radio display. I had guessed I would be done and back home by 6PM. The radio read 5:50. I was right on track. About halfway home though, a thought crossed my mind. My radio display is a bit odd. When you first start the car, if you have the radio on, it often seems to randomly decide to show the station you are listening to instead of the clock. What station was I listening to? AM 550. I looked at the display - sure enough, it wasn't the clock. It was the radio station. I pressed the clock button to get the current time.

5:50PM. On the nose. I laughed and wondered if I was actually dreaming this entire afternoon.

Skeptic's Guide to the Universe is a fantastic new book to start with.

https://www.amazon.com/Skeptics-Guide-Universe-Really-Increasingly/dp/1538760525/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1575002564&sr=8-1

Je ne connais pas ton niveau, mais je te conseille ce bouquin pour une remise à niveau générale en mathématiques. Ça démarre très lentement mais c'est excellent.

https://www.amazon.fr/Tout-vous-appris-oubli%C3%A9-Maths/dp/2744076171

Vice comes off as hilariously naive in that post. "Every year, the online magazine Edge--the so-called smartest website in the world, helmed by science impresario John Brockman--asks top scientists, technologists, writers, and academics to weigh in on a single question...And the list is long. Like, book-length long."

Um, Brockman is a literary agent and publisher. Some or all of those folks are his clients. Every year he sells the answers, indeed in book form. Not that that's bad or that Brockman isn't interested in science, but come on, Vice, let's frame things realistically.

I would suggest you watch End:Civ and read the essay Industrial Society and its Future and the book How Shall I Live My Life. I think those should give you a pretty decent idea without being too much info to absorb all at once.

This book (in french, sorry!) suggest that they can cause oculo-motor dysfunctions that persists in time. It was written by an orthepedist from Belgium and it has a good bibliography.

Taillez tous les arbres fruitiers https://www.amazon.ca/dp/2815306026/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_Pgd7xbNSAD9YW



In french, really useful graphics and simple info

French

best in English

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000FCKRG0/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1

Hello,

Je rebondis sur la phrase "3/4 des gens sont stupides".

Je t'invite à lire ce livre "Je penses trop" qui a changé ma vision du monde et apporter des réponses qui ont du sens à des questions sans réponse.

https://www.amazon.fr/Je-pense-trop-canaliser-envahissant/dp/2813201960

Je ne comprenais pas le comportement des personnes, ce livre apporte des éléments de réponses intéressant.

Ces personnes ont une forte émotivité et ressente plus de chose. Ils se questionnent sur tout sans arrêt.
Ils font parti d’un tout, et ne comprenne pas la méchanceté ou le fait de vouloir faire du mal à autrui.
Ils ne se sentent pas à leur place dans les fêtes, ne supporte pas les discussions futiles ou superficielle, et ne trouve pas d’interlocuteur pour les sujets et les débats d’idées de toutes sortes.
Je comprends mieux pourquoi certaine personne ont du mal à prendre des décisions, voir à réfléchir vite et bien.

Merci pour le partage OP.

Dans la même veine il y a ce livre que j'ai trouvé plutôt bien fait : https://www.amazon.fr/Comment-pas-tout-remettre-lendemain/dp/2738117104

Le dernier de reeves.. Très très très bien..
https://www.amazon.fr/La-terre-et-les-hommes/dp/2221198948

( quand je dis HTML+javascript, c'est javascript le langage de prog.)

Si tu veux apprendre le C++, sous windows tu peux télécharger VisualStudio Community (je crois que c'est comme ça que ça s'appelle la version gratuite maintenant) de Microsoft et essayer.

Sur le net ya des tonnes de cours sur google, en français en anglais pour commencer. Il faut déjà pratiquer et mettre les mains dans le cambouis.

A savoir après des années de stagnation le C++ évolue (presque) vite, certains livres parlent de C++11 alors qu'on est au standard C++17 et bientôt C++20

Après, si tu veux vraiment apprendre des trucs pour :

https://www.amazon.fr/Programming-Principles-Practice-Using-C/dp/0321992784

https://www.amazon.fr/Tour-C-Bjarne-Stroustrup/dp/0134997832/

https://www.amazon.fr/C-Programming-Language-Bjarne-Stroustrup/dp/0321563840/

https://www.amazon.fr/Effective-Modern-C-Scott-Meyers/dp/1491903996/

Sans oublier sur le net les bonnes pratiques, à jour:

http://isocpp.github.io/CppCoreGuidelines/CppCoreGuidelines

Et sur youtube il y a plein de vidéos aussi, et des conférences.

Et je conseille d'apprendre le C en même temps, parce qu'en C++ on utilise beaucoup de librairies en C.

https://www.amazon.fr/langage-2e-éd-Norme-ANSI/dp/2100715771

Except it has been reproduced in numerous cases that are swept under the rug.

The book 13 Things That Do Not Make Sense covers the LENR controversy in some detail.

What a coincidence! (Well, we Christians wouldn't call it that, haha.) I just started reading "Fool Me Twice: Fighting the Assault on Science in America". It's been a fascinating, eye-opening read so far, and I highly recommend it, particularly since you're a scientist.

EDIT: Took out my botched explanation because I don't want to pass along incorrect information

Pareil pour moi. Le Paul Arnaud est LA référence en Chimie en France. J'ai acheté les versions de chimie organique et chimie physique à l'époque, et je ne regrette pas du tout.

Edit

Ce que j'ai utilisé en plus, si ça peut t'aider :
Chimie organique de René Milcent
Chimie organique en 25 fiches de Nadège Lubin-Germain & Jacques Uziel
Chimie organique hétérocyclique de René Milcent

Si tu veux une lecture de chevet le soir, je recommande vivement cet ouvrage aussi (en anglais) : Classics in Spectroscopy de Stefan Berger & Dieter Sicker

Quackwatch is a great source for debunking medical pseudoscience, and if you scroll to the bottom of the main page, you'll find links to other sites that might also help you understand the science to debunk pseudoscience:
http://www.quackwatch.com/


If you want to understand basic science, but don't have time to take a course, there's plenty of good content that can be found on iTunes -- especially the online courses.


But ultimately, your best resource will always be books. Specifically, you should start with physics. Milton Rothman's A Physicist's Guide to Skepticism is perhaps the best book for understanding how to debunk pseudoscience: http://www.amazon.com/Physicists-Guide-Skepticism-Faster-Than-Light-Pseudoscientific/dp/0879754400


After that, read Damned Lies and Statistics by Joel Best
http://www.amazon.com/Damned-Lies-Statistics-Untangling-Politicians/dp/0520219783/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1372276538&sr=1-3&keywords=joel+best


And then Lies, Damned Lies, and Science by Sherry Seethaler
http://www.amazon.com/Lies-Damned-Science-Scientific-Controversies/dp/0132849445/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1372276572&sr=1-1&keywords=sherry+seethaler


And then finish it with Bad Science by Ben Goldacre
http://www.amazon.com/Bad-Science-Quacks-Pharma-Flacks/dp/0865479186/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1372276598&sr=1-1&keywords=bad+science+by+ben+goldacre

I'll leave it to Richard Dawkins to explain. My skeptical bonafides do not require me to respond to ad hominem attacks.

Thirteen Things That Don't Make Sense was my introduction to semi-woo while I was still a hardcore atheist (I'm now "agnostic" ... I refer to Brahman as "God" but it isn't a "deity," IMO). It doesn't have this same level of weirdness, but it's certainly got hints that we have no idea what's really going on in several fields of study: http://www.amazon.com/Things-that-Dont-Make-Sense/dp/0307278816?ie=UTF8&*Version*=1&*entries*=0

Taking introductory chemistry in college fucked me up in good and bad ways (that is, I was too busy obsessing over functional minutia to comprehensively study the most relevant material needed for tests, that class got me my first and only C in college). I was trying to comprehend how electron shells work and almost broke down crying because, as I now understand, it's impossible to understand quantum activity through a standard model lens. The more I thought about how and why subatomic particles function, the more I came to understand string theory (without realizing at the time that's what I was doing). Just meditating on what science understands about the electromagnetic spectrum, gravity, the forces, etc. is enough to make me question if any of this is more than a pop-up book of 2-d information.

I will admit that I've always loved stories of woo-woo, but always believe there's a solid scientific explanation to any of it that may be true. I used to say, "Well, maybe ghosts are actually people in over-laying dimensions, and 'haunted' places are places where the 'veil' between realities is thinner than usual." But often I'd just reject "weirdness" as people hallucinating; however, I've had several SOBER experiences myself which defy explanation, and it's a lot harder to reject one's own experiences than it is to reject others'. Specifically, I've had others tell me what I'm thinking, verbatim, when I asked them to do so (a random, unpredictable thought that would be IMPOSSIBLE to fucking guess - BLEW MY FRIGGIN MIND), and I have, on NUMEROUS OCCASIONS, predicted exactly what was about to happen, prior to it happening, with no way of knowing how or why (ie no clues beforehand, that I was consciously aware of). Just digging around the web looking for explanations (but rejecting anything that's particularly "woo"ey), I started realizing that there's tons of experimental data showing that everything is whackier than we think.

Check out this video about consciousness: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJh-bcaw7SY

Then check out THIS video about how WE KNOW NOTHING ABOUT ANYTHING (kidding; it's about the double slit and similar experiments; but I'm pretty sure the former statement is the correct conclusion anyway): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=shWRKpf7Hwg