Thursday, July 26, 2007

Nasty Villains

My lovely wife, Debra, informed me of an online question about mean, angry, nasty fictional villains (redundant?). Booking through Thursday.

Who’s the worst fictional villain you can think of? As in, the one you hate the most, find the most evil, are happiest to see defeated? Not the cardboard, two-dimensional variety, but the most deliciously-written, most entertaining, best villain? Not necessarily the most “evil,” so much as the best-conceived on the part of the author…oh, you know what I mean!

Two villains, or villainesses came to mind, one from one of my favorite books (and movies), One flew over the Cuckoos nest, by Ken Kesey. It is, of course, Nurse Ratched. The other is from Stephen King's novel, Misery. One very creepy woman, Annie Wilkes. One read through this novel and you will never forget her.

Sunday, July 08, 2007

My Summer Science Reading List
In case you care...

- Wasp Farm by Howard Ensign Evans
- Parasites and the Behavior of Animals by Janice Moore
- Eros and evolution by Richard Michod
- The red queen: sex and the evolution of human nature by Matt Ridley
- Basic instinct: the genesis of behavior by Mark Blumberg
- The scars of evolution by Elaine Morgan
- Evolutionary ecology across three trophic levels by Warren Abrahamson and Arthur Weis
- Life on a Young Planet by Andrew Knoll
- Chimpanzee Politics by Frans de Waal
- Parasite Rex by Carl Zimmer
- The earth dwellers by Erich Hoyt
- The Last Human by Sarmiento et al.
- Dawkins vs. Gould: Survival of the Fittest by Kim Sterelny

My wife thought it would be a good idea to blog this list, so now you have it. I even tried to procrastinate posting this list (don't do today what you can put off until tomorrow), but when I went to get on the computer to check the weather forcast, she had gotten everything ready and all I had to do is type.

I won't get all of these read, I can try. Now, I'm off to fight an obnoxious 4 year old and put his keister in bed.