A lucid essay with which to while away a couple hours.
A slender meditation on the ticking clock by memoirist and novelist Hoffman (Appassionata, 2009, etc.), a self-confessed “chronophobiac.”
All people in all cultures have 24 hours in which to live each day. But time is different for different people, a point that the European-born and well-traveled Hoffman well appreciates. For instance, an English fellow might wander into a critically important meeting full of insouciant composure, suggesting that the British “are the lords of time and that they’ll be pressed by no man, or career incentive.” However, the author adds, look at how fast a Londoner walks on the street, scurrying to get to that meeting in order to exude that calm, while an American may stride, slink or hopscotch at a slower pace but then give the appearance of being rushed to the point of distraction—after all, time is money. Back in the days of the Evil Empire, Eastern Europeans had nothing but time, with little to do and few defined responsibilities other than not causing any of the bosses trouble, meaning they could smoke, drink and philosophize all day long. Good for them, since, as Hoffman writes, there are plenty of good medical reasons to relax, take your time, not hurry and get plenty of sleep—all things that the present culture seems to frown on. The author writes lyrically of melatonin and monotony, life spans and lipids, though depressingly of the daily digital bombardment that makes it impossible to escape time, since everything, from the tiniest TV broadcast to the teeniest Twitter, is ubiquitous. Yet, she counsels, “if we try to pack all moments with digital quanta, then we run the danger of laying waste, or killing the time that is given to us.”
A lucid essay with which to while away a couple hours.Pub Date: Nov. 2, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-312-42727-6
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Picador
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2009
It may come as a surprise that there are still scientific dissenters from Darwinism, but here's the proof, in a book that calls on biologists to put organisms, not molecules, at the center of the science. Goodwin (Biology/Milton Keynes College, England) begins with the proposition that specifying the chemical composition of a substance tells us nothing about its form: graphite, diamonds, and fullerenes all consist of pure carbon but differ radically in shape. Similarly, where many biologists assume that the makeup of an organism's DNA tells them all they need to know about it, Goodwin brings to the table the disciplines of physics and mathematics. He applies the insights of chaos theory to the activity of an ant's nest and to children's play, to the growth of slime molds and algae, and to fibrillation in the human heart. An older mathematical discovery, the Fibonacci series (in which each new number is the sum of its two immediate predecessors), appears to play a role in the position of leaves on a branch, as well as in the structure of quadruped limbs. But as important as his specific illustrations of his points is his contention that Darwinism has taken on a rhetoric not dissimilar to the Puritan ethic, with each organism struggling to overcome a harsh world and become fitter. Eventually, he believes, Darwinian natural selection will be seen as part of a larger physical and mathematical structure, in which the entire organism, as opposed to its DNA alone, is seen in context. In the concluding chapter, he cites several biologists who are working toward a comprehensive new biology, in which the rights of organisms and of nature are set against the claims of genetic engineering and other forms of meddling with the environment. An often exciting look at frontiers of biology beyond the well-tilled fields of gene research. (68 b&w illustrations, not seen)
Pub Date: Nov. 2, 1994
ISBN: 0-02-544710-6
Page Count: 243
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1994
A timely, comprehensive, and often interesting argument that the most pressing issue the Middle East faces is not land and borders but rather the supply and distribution of the region's water. A soil scientist with extensive consulting experience throughout the world, Hillel (Plant and Soil Science/Univ. of Massachusetts, Amherst; Out of the Earth, 1990) reveals how, in one of the world's most strategic and parched areas, ecological considerations, particularly concerning water supplies, may influence geopolitics as much as summit meetings, police forces, and arms build-ups. Hillel focuses on the region's four great rivers: the Nile, the Tigris, the Euphrates, and the Jordan. He shows how a 1967 dispute between Israel and Syria over water rights was a contributing cause to the Six-Day War; how Iraq and Syria nearly came to blows with Turkey in 1990 over distribution of water from the Euphrates; and how there has been considerable tension between Jordan and Saudi Arabia over an aquifer (a water-bearing layer of permeable rock and a rare geological feature in the arid Middle East) from which both desert kingdoms draw. Hillel also suggests ways that nations can avoid disputes through intercountry and regional agreements, and he proposes various means of increasing water supplies and assuring effective use—e.g., desalination, cloud seeding, drip irrigation, and improved transmission (pipeline leakage wastes fully half the water intended for some Middle Eastern cities). This is an impressively interdisciplinary study that combines insights from geology, archaeology, etymology, biblical and other ancient Near East studies, modern history, soil science, agronomy, ecology, and contemporary political analysis. At times, Hillel floods the reader with highly technical data that will interest only hydrologists or other specialists. Generally, however, this is a clearly written, often colorful, accessible, and useful work of regional studies.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-19-508068-8
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Oxford Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1994
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