Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


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The sequel is never as good as the original

The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex by Charles Darwin

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Back in 2020, I finished out the year by reviewing On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection. Since then, I’ve been trying to motivate myself to work my way through Darwin’s follow up: The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex. Knowing that the ideas in Descent of Man were controversial, Darwin held off publishing until 12 years after Origin of Species. His thoughts on natural selection being well received, however, he felt comfortable proceeding to the next step, namely, “. […]

All About the Birds. And the Bees. And the Arthropods. And Anyone Else Desperate Enough to Pen a Letter.

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I’m about to undertake a big move shortly, which means I’m currently going through most of what I own, trying to work out what needs to go in storage what can be palmed off to other people, and what I need to sell. For most of my books, they’ll end up with either my sister or a younger family member. Which comes to my re-read of Dr Tatiana’s Sex Advice to All Creation: can I successfully pass this off to a twelve-year-old without upsetting her […]

Evolutionary Biology is on notice

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3.5 stars I like Cordelia Fine and her work. Part of that, I’m willing to admit, may be confirmation bias — she clearly identifies herself as a feminist and is very upfront that her work is reflective of that viewpoint. But I was also trained as a scientist, and from that perspective my position is that many of her critics and detractors (and I’ll note here that for brevity’s sake I’m not including in this category people who have fundamentally sexist views and who probably […]



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