Why Don't Spiders Stick to their Webs

Why Don't Spiders Stick to their Webs - Robert Matthews ***

Every publisher is on the look-out for a successful formula, and as New Scientist has discovered, its series based on the Last Word column, where readers' scientific queries are addressed by other readers, are big sellers. Another success in the 'quick answers to scientific questions' field is Robert Matthews' Why don't Spiders Stick to their own Webs, featuring columns originally published in the Sunday Telegraph. But the difference here is that, where Last Word answers tend to read like a lecture by a pernickety academic (or a scientifically inclined comedian), Matthews gives us his wisdom like a benificent and well-read uncle, entertaining his guests at the dinner table.

What is appealing here is the wide-ranging nature of the topics. On one page you might discover the best properties to buy on the Monopoly board, while elsewhere we are told (at least from Pascal's viewpoint) whether it is rational to believe in God. Matthews demolishes myths, like the suggestion there are more people alive now than ever lived before (probably wrong by a whopping factor of 10 to 15) to 'nobody really knows' questions like 'How big is the universe?' (Matthews fudges this a bit by giving a size for the visible universe, rather than the real thing, and in a later question contradicts himself by incorrectly saying 'the radius of the visible universe is 13.7 billion light years'.)

All in all, it's highly entertaining stuff. You will enjoy yourself, learn a bit, and gain several 'Did you know...?' stories to entertain friends and relations. The only problem with the book is that it is getting a trifle elderly and could do with an update. It was originally published in 2005 and doesn't seem to have been updated since. Specifically, this tends to impact on medical and dietary questions, where advice has moved on, including the strong evidence against homeopathy being anything but a placebo effect, which makes Matthews' support for it look rather odd. Perhaps the most obvious failing is when he answers the question 'Why does a magnet held near a television produce weird colours' and gives an answer that assumes everyone's TV and computer monitor is still a cathode ray tube. This is a book that predates flat screens.

Overall, then, good fun and plenty of enjoyable factoids, but it's a shame that it hasn't been updated. (Entertainingly, this does appear to be the same book another of our reviewers gave 5 stars back in 2005, but then, of course, the need for an update was less pressing.)

Paperback:

Kindle:

Using these links earns us commission at no cost to you

Review by Brian Clegg

Comments

Luna: Moon Rising (SF) - Ian McDonald ****

I'm not the natural audience for this book. Game of Thrones l eaves me cold - and it's hard not to feel the influence of GoT (and a whole lot of Dune ) underneath a veneer of science fiction and the trappings of a South American drug cartel in the cod-medieval family power battles and chivalric details. There are even dragons (of a sort). I'd be really sad if the future did involve this sort of throwback feudalism. However, remarkably, despite this I found Luna: Moon Rising kept me engaged. The fact is that Ian McDonald can put together a good plot with intricate machinations, which is enough to carry the reader through what can be a bewildering collection of characters. The two page scene-setter saying who did what to whom at the start was useful, but I could have done with family trees for the main family as I was constantly forgetting who was who - especially easy as McDonald endows many families with characters with the same first initial (e.g. Ariel and Al...

Adventures of a Computational Explorer - Stephen Wolfram ***

Stephen Wolfram, the man behind the scientist's mathematical tool of choice, Mathematica, plus a whole host of other software products, including the uncanny Wolfram Alpha knowledge engine, is undoubtedly a genius of the first order. In this book, we get an uncensored excursion into the mind of genius - which is, without doubt, a fascinating prospect. The book consists of a collection of essays and speeches that Wolfram has produced over the last ten to fifteen years, covering an eclectic range of topics. Like all such collections, the result is something that lacks the coherence of a book with a narrative that runs through it, inevitably introducing a degree of repetition and a mix of interesting and not-so-interesting topics - but there's likely to be something to catch the attention anyone who is into computing or mathematics. One of the most interesting pieces is the opening one, where Wolfram describes being a consultant on the SF movie Arrival. He seems to hav...

The AI Paradox - Virginia Dignum ****

This is a really important book in the way that Virginia Dignum highlights various ways we can misunderstand AI and its abilities using a series of paradoxes. However, I need to say up front that I'm giving it four stars for the ideas: unfortunately the writing is not great. It reads more like a government report than anything vaguely readable - it really should have co-authored with a professional writer to make it accessible. Even so, I'm recommending it: like some government reports it's significant enough to make it necessary to wade through the bureaucrat speak. Why paradoxes? Dignum identifies two ways we can think about paradoxes (oddly I wrote about paradoxes recently , but with three definitions): a logical paradox such as 'this statement is false', or a paradoxical truth such as 'less is more' - the second of which seems a better to fit to the use here. We are then presented with eight paradoxes, each of which gives some insights into aspects of t...

Search This Blog