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Zoobiquity - Barbara Horowitz & Kathryn Bowers
by ladyofcampfires
In spring 2005, cardiologist Barbara Horowitz was called from her usual work place, the UCLA medical centre, to an entirely different work setting. Los Angeles Zoo medical team were struggling with one of their animals, Spitzbuben the emperor tamarin. As the UCLA is the leading heart-transplant hospital and their cardiologists have ... seen, diagnosed and treated just about every heart problem seen in the human species staff from the hospital are sometimes called to help with more complex animal illnesses. So, when little Spitzbuben was battling with heart failure, Horowitz was called in.
During treating Spitzbuben, Horowitz found herself being told to stop making eye contact with the tamarin as this would give her capture myopathy. The gaze Horowitz so often gave the humans she were treating which acted as a reassuring and comforting look had the exact opposite effect on some animals, including this primate. The 'don't be scared, I'm here and everything will be okay look' could have been translated to 'I'm going to kill you and eat you' to Spitzbuben causing her to be quite literally scared to death. When Horowitz looked this up she immediately recognised these symptoms. Humans suffer from capture myopathy too, it goes by a different name though, takotsubo cardiomyopathy. Takosubo cardiomyopathy causes heart contractions to become 'inefficient spasms' due to a bulge in the left ventricle, it is caused by emotional stress, the death of a loved one or unmanageable amounts of debt, for example.
On learning this Horowitz starts to research other illnesses and diseases which both human and non-human share. Her journey leads her to finding that, at least some of the time, the best way for find a cure for a human illness is simply to talk to vets and vice versa. Zoobiquity takes us on this journey with her and reveals some powerful, interesting and quite inspirational stories.
The book is written entirely from the perspective of Barbara Horowitz however journalist Kathryn Bowers contributed to the writing and interviews needed to create this book which is detailed in the Authors' note at the beginning of the book. The way the book has been written does allow everything to flow in a much simpler way however does mean Bowers is unforgivably easy to overlook.
Zoobiquity is split into twelve chapters, each one dealing with a different illness. The writing style in each is easy to follow and understand despite the amount of medical jargon contained. Everything is fully and sufficiently explained meaning that even someone like me, with a GCSE in biology being the closest thing I have to any medical expertise, can understand everything which is mentioned. The writing style does, however, start to get a little boring after a while. More often than not, a new illness is introduced by the explanation of all too familiar circumstance we can probably all relate to, it is then revealed that the animal dealing with this circumstance isn't human. At first this was quite powerful and thought-provoking but after a couple of times it did leave a sarcastic 'surprise, surprise' thought in my head.
Despite that, the content never gets boring. Between them, Horowitz and Bowers have put in a lot of research and uncovered some very interesting and unusual cases in the animal/human illness crossover. On the journey which is this book we learn about fainting in dogs, monkeys, chipmunks and even unborn babies all caused by the same emotion - fear. We meet dinosaurs with cancer, we learn of a vet in America who's research breakthrough on the treatment of melanoma in dogs has gone on to influence how melanoma is now treated in humans. We even learn of the few species which have evolved in a way which makes them immune from cancer.
But the book doesn't just look at life threatening illness such as cancer. Chapter four, entitled 'Roar-gasm', divulges deep into the sexuality and sexual drive in animals and humans too. We meet Lancelot, the horse suffering with erectile dysfunction. We discover that it's not just humans and dolphins who have sex for pleasure after all as there are heaps of cases in a vast variety of species which show mating routines when a female is not fertile or receptive. STD's in non-human animals are explored with some quite shocking findings!
We come across non-human animals addicted to drugs (and not because some idiot has decided a smoking chimp is a crowd pleaser), we learn of self-harm in birds and postnatal depression in apes. We discover wild animals who overindulge and become overweight, even obese, just for the pleasure of food and, on the opposite end of the spectrum, animals who simply refuse food when available and starve themselves to death.
Zoobiquity is a thoroughly interesting and intriguing book. If you're the type of person who likes to finish a book feeling as though you've learnt something and gained something from the experience then this is absolutely a book for you. It's clearly written and uses to easy to understand language whilst uncovering truths you'd never had believed. I really struggled to put this one down and I'd completely recommend it.
Published by Virgin Books, 2012.
ISBN - 9780753539835
Pages - 320
Price - £9.09 on Amazon (from £5.66 used and £5.70 new). Kindle edition £8.64
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Shares Made Simple: A Beginner's Guide to the Stock Market - Rodney Hobson
by Seven17
This was the first ever book I had read about starting out in the stock market, I bought it because it specifically said "Beginner's guide" so obviously it would cover the basics. In some places it does but at the start of the book it immediately gets heavy going. You don't even get to the jargon busting pages until page 130 so ... there is a real issue with understanding if you don't have some very basic knowledge of the market. A dictionary would suffice to overcome this jargon nonsense.
In the first few pages there is lots of information about what the stock market is, but you don't receive any information about strategy, stockbrokers, whether you should enter or not, the processes of buying and selling or anything like that so its all very closed off until about chapter 11. I personally find that the writing style of the book and the many ways in which things can be explained makes it easy to understand once you get going, but having that basic knowledge will get you a head start. This book is only aimed at long term investors for "share dealing" or buying from brokers. This is not for the day traders and Hobson actually says in this book, "leave that to the day traders."
You might have to look at a few things yourself like what is shorting shares, strategy and maybe read a few technical analysis books to get you trading at an intermediate or advanced level but that's up to you if you want to take your trading a step further. Rodney also provides a lot of graphs to illustrate what he is talking about and there are numerous case studies backing up what he is saying with proof of events and technical analysis graphs. No candlestick graphs though, only the line graphs that illustrate simply. This is a book for beginners so candlestick graphing would be the next level content.
Rodney does have a knack at explaining this very simply though, he explains that stocks go up and down based on popularity of buying and selling, why you should manage your own portfolio to avoid the fees and hassle of a broker over dealing you till you owe him a deficit, things like that. At the very start of the book he explains how a girl once denied buying shares in a Spanish bank. (This was waaaay before the crisis!) And despite the shares being very good at the time she said "No, I don't want some Spaniard taking my money!" But this is the kind of wrong information that catches the new entrepreneur out. Your money doesn't go to the Spanish bank it goes to the seller of the shares who could be Eritrean for all you know. So without this basic knowledge of the stock market how are newcomers supposed to survive and make a healthy profit form the markets.
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Envelopes: A Puzzling Journey Through the Royal Mail- Harriet Russell
by katyj10
This is a review of the book Envelopes: A Puzzling Journey Through the Royal Mail which was published in hardback in 2008. It's a really unusual book which shows how much imagination the author Harriet Russell has. She is also an artist which helps as the illustrations are really good too.
What is it?
Since being a ... child, Harriet and her family were fascinated how some of the badly addressed mail reached their house through Royal Mail - the address was Shulbrede Priory, Linchmere, Haslemere, Surrey although they received many attempts and variations on this from would-be correspondents. The family collected over 270 examples where the address was incorrectly written. An introductory and explanatory page at the front of the book reads: "Challenging the postal system (Particularly the postman who delivers to my flat)."
The project
Harriet sent herself 130 unusually addressed letters starting in 1998, using her Glasgow address and it seems the local sorting office rose to the increasing challenge of her decorated envelopes. Of the 130 she sent, 120 arrived and 75 are featured in the book. She also used her parents' address and friends addresses too when she felt that her Glasgow address was becoming too familiar at the postal sorting office.
Foreword
The book has a foreword by Lynne Truss, the author of Eats, shoots and leaves which is quite humorous and gives you a good introduction to the book before you come to the illustrated pages.
Why it appealed to me
I do a lot of posting in my life, from ebay to swapping books and other things like posting surprises to my friends. I always like to make my parcels look a bit special and often get a raised eyebrow from the post office person when sending them! I like to use wallpaper, my beloved sticky back plastic, candy striped bags and even pages from the national geographic or books that have become tatty that have lovely illustrations in them. You'd be surprised what you can get away with (although I learned that string around parcels is strictly forbidden as it tangles the sorting machines!). I just reinforce any flimsy bits with wide clear sticky tape. Hence you can imagine why I loved this book.
Examples
Some of the envelopes are quite straight forward and decorated and some are cryptic. Here are a few examples:
- A crossword with the clues spelling out the address
- A shopping list containing the key words for the address
- A piece of text with letters and words circled in red that spelt out the address
- Poems
- Paint by numbers
- Black pen on a black envelope
- Mirror writing with the stamp on the left
- A street map of the area with the house circled
All in all a bit of a crazy collection but after a while the local sorting office in Glasgow began writing 'Solved by Glasgow City sorting office' so they were obviously joining in with the spirit of Harriet's project.
My thoughts
The key here appears to be the postcode which in most cases is clearly printed on the envelope. Without that I doubt many would have made it. I think if everyone tried this, the RM would get annoyed and probably just put all the letters in a pile marked as undeliverable. I am actually amazed that nearly all the letters she posted to herself arrived. When the postie asked her flatmate who was sending the letters, her flatmate just said Harriet was an art student so it must be something to do with it and Harriet deliberately made sure she never spoke to her postman - I guess she didn't want to give the game away!
Price and availability
The book is priced £7.07 from The Book Depository website. It is only available in hardback. You can get used and new from Amazon too but it is currently more expensive than TBD. I got my copy from the swapping website Readitswapit.
Final word
It didn't take me long to read this book but I enjoyed flicking through it and taking a second look you are bound to find something you missed the first time round. I think it is an amusing and unique idea to post letters to yourself as a test of the Royal Mail and I'm sure some senior executives were impressed at the determination of their staff to deliver these missives despite their cryptic nature. Some even made it from abroad which was even more amazing. The book will not enthral for hours but if you know someone with a similar love of posting things (!) then this book may appeal to them.
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