Thursday: A book giveaway and real life stuff

Real Life has been demanding my attention this week. Today I am at a cancer diagnostics and therapeutics symposium all day. The organizers of this symposium really should have provided better signage from the parking lot. I wandered around Rutgers for half an hour quizzing the landscapers for directions. Am I hot or cold? Closer or farther away?

In any case, it’s good to know what’s going on in academia and industry. I’ll have a little more to say about that later. Lambert sent me a link to a Reuters article on failures in drug discovery that may trace back to shoddy basic research in academia.

In the meantime, we would like to announce a book give away. We have been given two copies of Rachel Maddow’s new book, Drift, for review. Katiebird has been speeding through one copy and should have a review soon. I have been going through mine more slowly since I seem to have gotten busy just when the book became available to me and I’m going to have to punt and listen to it on audible. So, we would like to give one of these copies away. It’s signed by the author. I’ll write up my review probably by tomorrow.

What I can tell you right now is that the book is well written in a fluid style that is very enjoyable to read. If you are a fan of Rachel’s show, you are familiar with her narrative style. The book is about the alarming drift that the country has taken towards maintaining a standing army and how events have changed our society in ways we hadn’t anticipated. It’s about the rise of the security industry and the how we decide who will fight our wars. Like I said, I haven’t gotten very far into the book yet but I find that her research into why Johnson used the draft in the Vietnam War made me think about how close we may have come to doing the same in the Iraq War.

Katiebird has finished the book and does have some reservations but we will get to them in the review posts. We are considering firing up our Conflucians Say blogtalkradio show to talk about books and sluts other interesting things. Raise your hand if you would find that interesting.

For the signed copy of Rachel’s book, we’re going to give it away like this:

1.) in response to this post, write in the comments thread why you want to read it.

2.) This Sunday, we will use a random number generator to pick a number that will correspond to the comment (numerically) in the thread. The owner of the winning comment will be contacted through email so be sure to use a legitimate one. We promise not to share your email address with anyone.

This way, only people who have an interest in the book are entered and the selection process is fair.

Gotta go. There’s a poster session until 10:30am.

Fire away!