"I am a paleontologist..."
My favorite nonfiction writer is the late Stephen Jay Gould.
He was a paleontologist.
Maybe I should have been a paleontologist.
Following up yesterday's post, here's some more TMBG.
He was a paleontologist.
Maybe I should have been a paleontologist.
Following up yesterday's post, here's some more TMBG.
Aw, hell. I can't resist. Bonus track. TMBG's second cover version of Hy Zaret's "The Sun Is A Mass Of Incandescent Gas" from Here Comes Science. Odd trivia: turns out Zaret wrote the lyrics for "Unchained Melody" and was the one who translated "The Partisan" into English (made famous by Leonard Cohen).
Anyway, the sun is soooooo hot....
Anyway, the sun is soooooo hot....
Comments
TMBG earned my undying love (well, cemented), when they issued a retraction and updated version of the sun song to reflect new scientific understanding.
They're AWESOME, and they understand how science works: by taking new data and proving itself wrong.
Still, as a writer, he had a skill at imparting his sense of wonder at the world and could write about things that I don't always find interesting--e.g. statistics and baseball--in ways that I enjoyed what I was reading even when it was over my head or landed in a particular personal blind spot (I consider myself a smart guy, if I'm allowed to say so myself, but I'm definitely not a mathy guy; SJG could write about statistical analysis in a way that I didn't put the book down even if I didn't really understand everything he was saying, and that's a helluva thing).