In July Wiley published the book Visualize This – The Flowing Data Guide to Design, Visualization and Statistics . The book is written by Nathan Yau , and he is of course also behind the popular FlowingData blog about the same topic. This is a short review of the book. Please keep in mind that I’m no expert in data visualization.

Although we like to stay sauropod-o-centric on SV-POW!, I just want to take a moment to acknowledge the most astounding publication I have ever seen, Sterling Nesbitt’s new basal archosaur phylogeny (Nesbitt 2011).  Thanks to the wonder of open access publishing, it is freely available, and I urge everyone to check it out, if only to gaze in open-mouthed astonishment at the scale of the thing.

In his new book Cognitive Surplus Clay Shirky argues that in the last 50 years many of those living in industrialized countries have seen a dramatic increase in free time, paired with better education and a higher standard of living. But a very large part of that free time or cognitive surplus is now routinely used to watch television, a passive activity that makes us a consumer rather than a participant.

Happy Xenoposeidon day!  Today, November 15, 2008, is the one-year anniversary of the publication of Xenoposeidon Taylor and Naish 2007. By happy coincidence, I’ve just been sent a courtesy copy of Kids Only , a new guide-book for the Natural History Museum … and there is Xenoposeidon on page 5, exemplifying dinosaur diversity.  Rock!

Ben Goldacre: Bad Science. Published September 2008 by Fourth Estate Ltd. Paperback, 352 pages, ISBN 0007240198 Ben Goldacre, blogger of the Bad Science [1] column in the Guardian newspaper, in September published a book based on material from his blog. Just like the newspaper column, the book is primarily intended for a general audience rather than the trained scientist or medical doctor.

I’m going to exploit this site to post a (very rare) off-topic book recommendation. So here it is: The Variety of Life — a survey and a celebration of all the creatures that have ever lived , by Colin Tudge. I’ve just finished reading this hefty book — 684 pages in the paperback edition — and I’ve found it fantastically invigorating.

Today is World Book Day, at least in the United Kingdom. So I wanted to join my fellow NN Bloggers in our newest SynchroBlogging effort and wrote this post about science and books. I decided to write about the last book I bought – which was yesterday.

Last weekend I visited my brother-in-law in Cambridge (UK). In the Cambridge University Press bookstore I found the wonderful little book How to Write and Illustrate a Scientific Paper by Björn Gustavii (Cambridge University Press 2003). On less than 150 pages B. Gustavii gives a good summary of the typical problems and their solutions.