Science magazines often have a page for answering the “dumb” questions we all like to ask – and the answers make a ready-made collection for a book. Scientific American and New Scientist have both done this – now Outside Magazine‘s “The Wild File” gets its second collection (the first, called Why Moths Hate Thomas Edison wasn’t available for review at the time of writing).
The style here is slightly more laid back and facetious than the columns from the general science magazines, but the effect is very readable and easily digested.
Brad Wetzler is the contributing editor responsible for the column – chances are, the way magazines work, that words aren’t always his, but he’s responsible for the overall feel, and gives us some excellent insights into the natural world. Not surprisingly, given the the magazine this features in, these are mostly nature questions, though the book does begin with an astronomy section before moving on to your body, the planet and living creatures (plants included). As is often the case with these collections, some of the most enjoyable answers are those that shatter old wives tales and “common knowledge”, such as “you lose most of your body heat through your head (so wear a hat)” – wrong. Or “does hot tea cool you in hot weather” – sorry, no. Others are just those sort of questions children delight in asking, and the child in all of us wants to know the answer to (can African and Indian elephants mate, for example). Others are just plain odd – for example, how far can you get away from a McDonalds in the US. But it’s fair to say there’s not one of these little factoids that isn’t quirkily interesting.
The only real criticisms are for the tendency to end a piece with a fairly lame witicism (e.g. on a query about the return of the “dust bowl” phenomenon referred to in the novel The Grapes of Wrath, we are told “Forget about migrating to California, and stock up on Evian while you can.”), and the missed opportunities. The answers to questions quite often seem to miss out on great opportunities to throw in a “wow factor” piece of information. For example, the question about why the moon often appears large near moonrise misses the surprising fact that the actual visual size of the moon is as small as the hole in a punched piece of paper held at arms length. And the answer to the question “I’ve heard it’s sometimes possible to see stars during the middle of the day. True?” misses the opportunity to dispose of the old chestnut that you can see stars from the bottom of a well or up a chimney. Not the end of the world by any means, but a pity.
All in all, though, an easy read of bite-sized delights, idea to fill in a few minutes on the train or simply to get some answers to those infuriatingly obvious questions that no one seems to bother answering. Something that’s amazing about this sort of book is, though there are several around, they all seem to come up with enough new and engaging questions to be well worth reading. Great fun.
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Review by Brian Clegg
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