This is a well-organized, clear, short reference work. Well done

Here is the little red bok.
If the big one is too expensive for you, you can always buy this. You'll find inside all the important protocols and data for molecular biology.It's up to date, and clearly presented.
Try it, and then buy the big one!

This book is an essential tool for people in the scientific field such as Molecular Biology (obviously), Biochemistry, and Neuroscience. It is comprehensive and up-to-date as far as the techniques are concerned. It is good value in a sense that you don't have to buy the whole "Current Protocols Series" which costs an arm and a leg if you do. Although nowadays, a lot of "kits" are commercially available, the techniques found in this book explain principles and provide different alternatives suited for your needs. Molecular Cloning by Maniatis et al., although needs updating, is still a helpful reference in my opinion and it complements this book.

I found this entire series of books to be disappointing. The writing was average but what really bothered me most is how the stories lacked the sweet innocence of the original series. On doing some research I discovered that parts of the books were based on Rose's diaries. Unfortunately, she was not a happy soul and these books suffer from her same pessimism. The listed author for this book (MacBride) died before the last few books were published. The books were still published under his name and HarperCollins claimed that he wrote the manuscript before dying yet one of the last books in this series contains several chapters (almost verbatim) from a story that Rose wrote herself for an adult audience. The story is totally out of character with the series. Rose and her friend sneak out for several nights to meet a traveling salesman. He eventually makes a pass at her...

This series is okay as light reading for adolescents but if you are looking for a piece of americana, and/or a wholesome book for your child or self this is not the best choice. It grossly fails to live up to the original series of books. The Caroline series is a better choice.

I love THE LAURA INGALLS YEARS and the ROSE YEARS. In the later ROSE books, Rose is a little more fiesty and romantical...it builds up as the series goes along, so this is more for pre-teens and teens later on. Otherwise it is very wholesome and fun; Rose is interesting, and has many ideas about the world! I have all the LAURA YEARS books except THE FIRST FOUR YEARS and all the ROSE books except ON THE BANKS OF THE BAYOU (my fave) and BACHELOR GIRL (haven't read that yet).
...

The girl was quite a firecracker. Again, just as charming as Little House, but the storytelling is a bit more complex and more reflective of who Rose was. This series truly equals the charm and storytelling of Laura's story. Kudos to those who thought to bring this series to print.

I have to admit, I probably wouldn't have purchased this book in a "physical" bookstore, so I'm greatful for Amazon.com. This book helped me refine my technique, and it taught me a few new tricks, too. I like the humorous approach the authors used in "handling" this subject, and it's quite informative. All-in-all I think I came away with some great ideas and I learned a few interesting tidbits about the male genetalia along the way. My boyfriend gives it two thumbs-up! Not a bad purchase for someone looking to spice things up.

Who could guess that among the annals of self-help books is one to enhance the pleasure of oral sex? Well, here it is and, if you can get beyond the turn-on feeling from the descriptive narrative, there might be a lesson to be learned in giving better sex, man or woman. Approaching oral copulation from an instinctual rather than mechanical perspective, "Going Down" offers reasons why oral sex is usually perfomed with an effort on the conscious "mechanics" that go into making it a pleasureable experience but which can actually make it less so by weakening the spontaneous instincts that accentuate it. For as silly as that might sound, anyone on either end might be surprised by how tantalizing some of the suggestions in the book can be, like deep-throating and massaging pubic hairs. One bit of silliness in this book, though, is the black and white drawings. Real-life models would have been a lot more educational! Still, for those of us whose pleasure comes more from giving rather than receiving, the improved reviews will give you a sense of satisfaction. For those who get off by getting it, you might be surprised by what you might be missing.

Man am I glad I picked up this book! My boyfriend was a bit skeptical about it at first...but when i had him screaming his UNCLES name and shooting a load that could fill up a milk jug, he sure changed his mind!

This book has changed my life, my boyfriend loves me much more, and I love him after he read the book! Btw I play Firearms mod for Half-Life, look me up )1st-Phatace51!!1

I found a lot of valuable information in this book. I have been raising Ball Pythons for years and let me tell you I wish had found this book a long time ago. The information in this book is vital especially because of the "bad advice" and "old wives tales" that have been circulating about this breed the last decade. A must for all serious ball python owners and enthusiasts.

I found that the book is very informative about ball python breeding and husbandry. It also gives information about diseases and how to treat and how to prevent them. I recently bought my first ball python and it helped me a lot. I named her MEDUSA. My mother and father are helping me, but I am doing most of the work. I am 11 years old and I love reptiles. My mother is the one that has the membership here so it is under her name. My name is Mitchel Yorks.

I have owned The Ball Python Manual for a year now, (I got it through Amazon.com) and it is refreshing to find a text that gives an owner IMPORTANT factual information about the care and keeping of these magnificent (and docile) reptiles. My highest recommendation is given to anyone interested in the husbandry of Royal (Ball) Pythons.

I won't doubt the heart-rending task, or major headache, in trans -lating one of the finest poets of this century. And I thank David Rattray, whose translation of Artaud are wonderfully done, for finally introducing such refined spirit as Gilbert-Lecomte to an English-speaking public. The book, as such, is fine: lovely cover-design, explicit introduction, and clever selection of poems. What else is needed? A new translation!

Dark, Surreal Poetry. Written by Roger Gilbert-Lecomte, translated from French. Each page is layed out with the French translation on the left, and the English on the right. The original spacing is kept, which is critical, because the placement of the text adds so much to the flow of the reading. Lecomte was scoffed by surrealists at the time in France. He died from Tetnis, jabbing a opium needle through his dirty trowsers. His close friend gathered what works he could find, and have since come into the collected works remaining of Lecomte.

This is one of the top two must have poetry books of all time hands down. It rests right beside The flowers of evil.

Just when you thought you had read the entire LITTLE HOUSE series, you discover with delight that there are two more books, although not penned by Laura herself. These two Rocky Ridge sequels continue the saga of a grown up Laura Ingalls Wilder--this time focusing on her only duaghter, Rose. This 8-year-old charms us with gentle, homespun tales of their first year in the wilds of the Missouri Ozarks. We have long loved Laura as a spunky prairie girl, so we naturally continue to love her as a maternal figure, still struggling with the harsh realities of farm life.

Written by Laura's adopted grandson, LITTLE FARM can not quite capture the magic of Laura's style, for a biography can never be as vivid as actual memories. Fortunately the family resemblance remains. True, there is less excitement and action in this book, but then, one can not reinvent someone's real life merely to increase the dramatic content of a book. Perhaps the midwest was more tamed by 1895, when Rose won her special prize. We also wonder whose side MacBride champions, when we recall the bitter, posthumous feud between Rose and Laura (advocated by her literary admirers) over authorship of some of the books.

Still loyal LITTLE HOUSE fans will appreciate this latter-day glimpse into Laura's married life. We understand that this is Laura's last move--she yearns to put down roots somewhere, even far from De Smet, Nebraska. Her home at Rocky Ridge still exists and is open to the public as a museum and literary mecca. The simple story unfolds about a young girl meeting the challenges of life on a new farm and in a new, town school. The book appears thick, but it reads quickly. The family values and pioneer virtues are timeless. Read this book to learn why Rose's parents have two reasons to be proud of her. She herself has two reasons to be proud: our beloved Laura (Bess) and Almanzo (Manly), whose own childhood is preserved in my favorite LH book, FARMER BOY. This story will appeal to preteen girls and all LITTLE HOUSE fans. (Will MacBride continue the saga until Laura's death, thus forever dropping the curtain on the Wilders?)

This was another typical little house style book, but not as well written as the originals. Nothing really happened in the book. Even the things that did, like a fire in the cabin and a storm seemed to have no effect on the book. They spent more time talking about Rose looking out the window. It was alright though and people with obsession for Little house will like it.

This is a great story telling of the early struggles that Rose had to face with her family to build up the farm.Anyone who says this story is poorly written,or things like that are freaks!It's just a childrens book!!These people need a life!

This book simplifies clinical neurology. I have read some books that are hard to understand. You will love neurology after reading this book.

This is a fine book for a clinician who is not at the entry level of competence. I recommend it for neurology interns and advanced medical students, mainly because there is not a better one in print. I think it lacks many therapeutic details, is too long for the student looking for a quick read power review, too limited for the advanced clinician.

Aminoff et al have produced a very readable introduction to Neurology. Most chapters are exceedingly well written, for the 'introductory' level. The only criticism that I would make is that therapeutic details are slightly thin...if these areas are muscled out it would be nice.

Way too general. I was looking for more detailed and specific installation & tuning help for Postgresql database on Linux. The book provided a quick overview and the high points, but certainly not enough to get the product installed & optimized. It's coverage of GUI tools provided only an overview, with not enough info to even persue it.

My copy is now really well dogeared because of how much I'm referring to it. I've recommended this book to many of my colleagues as it's a great reference.

This book is very well done- clear and concise. I'm very interested in databases on Linux, especially with Sybase. This book does a really strong job clarifying Sybase, and explaining such things as Testing, Design, Configuration, etc. I do recommend this book to anyone working or planning to work with databses on Linux.

Birders are an odd, if endearing lot, and nowhere is this more apparent (and freely admitted) than in Pete Dunne's Tales of a Low-rent Birder. Since my interest in birding is only casual, the stories that took birding propensities to extremes, such as the hypothetical SVAT team (think SWAT for birds) composed of 4 quirky members who can't agree on anything and spend their lives tracking down bird sightings, and The Legend of Jesse Mew, a play on the guru followed by his adoring disciples thing, were a bit much for me. However, his story of finding, following and eventually pulling on a kit string that wound its way across a bird sanctuary (and thereby causing the entire bird population to take wing when the kite rose into the air) was amusing, as was his story of birding with Roger Tory Peterson. I also enjoyed his attempt to see the world through a peregrine falcon's eyes in "Peregrine Going South for the First Time," and his brief profiles of 4 birders who, though very different people, all share the ability to "see" as told in "A Gift of Vision."

However, none of these stories really hit home for me, meaning I didn't find myself reading eagerly with great interest (as I did with Kingbird Highway by Kenn Kaufman, or The Rites of Autumn by Dano O'Brien), or wishing for more once a story ended. In fact I kept putting the book aside with a feeling of vague dissatisfaction. Avid birders may have another story to tell, but for me this book was a disappointment.

An original writing style and a true love of birds and birdwatching make this one a standout. With sections on eagles, hawks, bluebills and even birdwatchers themselves, this one is a delight for the fellow birdlover.

The simple reason Stove's ideas are often called 'unorthodox' or 'controversial' is obvious: Because most of them are wrong. The reason why they've attracted so much attention is less clear.

Editor Richard Kimball has divided this collection of essays into three thematically related sections:

The first deals with Stove's criticism of postmodern philosophers of science - In particular, Kuhn, Popper, Feyerabend, and Lakatos. He lambastes them collectively for intellectual 'sabotage', like using scare quotes to illegitimize counter-arguments, and Popper in particular for deliberately confusing the concepts of 'unfalsifiable' and 'irrefutable.'

I have to admit, in Stove's favor, much of his criticism here is valid and is enjoyable to read in the same way that it's 'enjoyable' to drive slowly past the site of a car accident. It's more of a morbid fascination with the dissection of another person's life work than the true pleasure of an epiphany. But it would have been easier to handle if Stove wasn't so quick to dismiss entire schools of thought with the wave of a hand, which he does repeatedly.

A much more interesting and better documented paper trail of the follies of postmodern philosophy can be found in Alan Sokal's _Fashionable Nonsense_ (1996), which I'd highly recommend over Stove's book on this topic, in large part because Sokal, being a physicist, is able to take liberties in his condemnation of postmodern philosophy that Stove, a philosopher, is unable to.

The second selection of essays include some of Stove's biggest attention-getters, including "D'Holbach's Dream", where he claims that atheism is the reason totalitarian governments are inclined to repress and murder (Conveniently ignoring the catholic Nazis or the muslim Taliban), "The Intellectual Capacity of Women", where he makes the unsupported evolutionary claim that "a woman does not need to use her brains to have a baby", whereas hunting and defending territory require much greater intelligence (Despite the fact that he spends the last third of the book arguing against the theory of evolution), and "Racial and Other Antagonisms", where he claims that racism is often justified ('nuff said about that). Suffice it to say, Stove makes bald and offensive statements to get attention with a frequency that would make Allan Bloom proud, without offering any support besides a well-worded insult.

The book reaches its low point in the third section, his criticism of Darwinism. As he strays further from the field of philosophy, Stove finds himself on unfamiliar ground, and often relies on the same techniques he was sharply critical of in earlier essays. The misstatements he makes, both errors of fact and errors of logic, are numerous and diverse. For instance, in the first sentence of the first essay of the section he makes both kinds of error by saying: "If Darwin's theory of evolution were true, there would be in every species a constant and ruthless competition to survive..." On the contrary, nothing in Darwin's theory precludes cooperation (Robert Axelrod has written a couple of excellent books on the subject) - in fact, it has been shown to be one of the most successful evolutionary strategies - and further, Stove makes the classical error which he himself criticizes others for making of 'level confusion' - Species don't compete to survive, individuals do.

Probably his most glaringly erroneous argument is his 'refutation' (note scare quotes) of the Malthus Principle, the idea that populations tend to grow until limited by external factors, what Malthus labeled "misery and vice." See how many errors you can spot in his argument: Based on Darwin's admission to having read Malthus' "Essay on the Principle of Population", Stove renames the Malthus Principle the "Malthus-Darwin Principle" (and then uses it interchangeably with "neo-Darwinism" in the same way that Popper did with "irrefutable" and "unfalisifiable") and claims that if it is wrong, then Darwinism is false. He asserts that the Principle implies that all populations always increase as fast as possible (and, subscribing to Goebbel's maxim that a lie repeated often enough becomes accepted as the truth, reiterates this claim as often as possible throughout his argument) and provides a list of specific cases where this is known to not be true, including: domestic pets, animals in captivity, and animals in game reserves. "Since this [population increasing as fast as possible] does not happen always and everywhere," he later asserts, as if the Malthus principle was a metaphysical truth rather than a general principle, "the Malthus-Darwin principle is false." Ergo, Darwinism is false.

And this just touches one the errors of logic he makes - The number and severity of plainly false statements easily rivals these. For example, he claims that no other species besides humans engage in infanticide (though lions have been observed to do this), suicide (which lemmings are famous for, precisely for the purpose of reducing resource shortages), or voluntary sexual abstinence (_Chimpanzee Politics_, Frans de Waals' classic study of a group of chimps living at a zoo in the Netherlands, describes a female named Puist who does exactly this). Kimball backs him up in the introduction by saying that if Darwinism were true, there would be no "abortion, adoption, or [expletive], just to start with the 'A's", even though none of these activities is believed to have a genetic component.

Again, given the transparency of his illogic, the reason why Stove's work has attracted so much attention is a mystery. But then again, I guess, anyone foolish enough to fall for Stove's sleight of hand wouldn't be reading his work in the first place.

During the fifties and sixties the United States government looked around the world for intellectuals who would support their cause in the cold war. Using the surreptitious services of the CIA they funded a number of magazines, the most famous being the journal Encounter. But they also funded magazines in France and Italy, and while the intellectuals in my native Canada were either too mediocre or too reliable to get their own special subsidy, Australia's conservative intellectuals got their own special magazine Quadrant. Now there is something deeply hypocritical in proclaiming your independence and intellectual courage while relying on patrons who, when not enjoying your latest polemic against Jean-Paul Sartre, are engaged in torture, assassination and narcotics trafficking. It is from this disingenuous milieu that the late David Stove, a philosopher of science from New Zealand worked in, and it is his collection of essays that is the subject of this book. But if hypocrisy and disingenuousness were the only problems with Stove's attacks on feminism, Sir Karl Popper, Darwinism and historians of science this would be a much more tolerable book. There is no doubt that Stove is forthright and sincere in the defence of his convictions. But he is also cheaply abusive and deeply incapable of appreciating an opposing argument.

Do we have proof of this? We do indeed. Stove has the very irritating habit of referring to opposing arguments as childishly stupid, easily refutable, patently stupid, and similar terms. It is not just myself who finds this abuse directed at Hobbes, Huxley and D'Holbach very irritating. Even Roger Kimball, the editor, agrees this doesn't really do justice to Plato or Kant. Critics of Karl Popper and Richard Dawkins should easily turn to The New York Review of Books instead of bothering with Stove's own polemics. The essay on D'Holbach is basically a truculent attack on the claim that ignorance is the greatest evil affecting man and that increasing knowledge would help reduce suffering. Stove concedes nothing in this essay, though it should have occurred to him that his not dying of smallpox is a triumph of 18th century science, much as his loved ones not dying in childbirth because of pupereal fever is a triumph of 19th century science.

As for failing to get the point of one's opponents, consider Stove's essays on Darwinism. A basic tenet of Darwin's theory starts from the fact that when living beings reproduce they do more than replace their parents. Anyone who has ever owned a dog or a cat know that litters have more than two children. Human beings do not stop having sex once they have produced two children. Insects can have thousands, possibly millions of offspring. Now if these rates of reproduction were maintained, the world would be overwhelmed not merely with humans, but with roses, eucalyptus trees, octopi, emperor penguins and panda bears. Obviously, this has not happened. There is in fact, a great struggle for existence, and it is this struggle which sets the stage for natural selection. What Stove does, however, is to amend Darwin's theory to say that Darwinism stands for the proposition that everywhere and always populations are filled to the bursting point and that populations seek to reproduce as many of themselves as conceivably possible. Having misstated the theory, Stove easily shows that it is wrong, since often people are celibate, they rarely engage in incest, pets are often neutered (though this is done to prevent them from breeding out of control) and population numbers are often kept low by predation. But Stove has not refuted Darwinism, he has simply engaged in polemical slight of hand. Likewise in arguing about the evolution of humans he argues against the idea that we have mitigated the effects of natural selection by asking why the first original men did not simply eat their mates and children. Well, at the risk of being very obvious, any species which did engage in such behaviour would very likely end up instinct, while those who avoided that would, on impeccably Darwinist grounds, be much more likely to survive.

And then there is Stove's essay on the intelligence of women. Stove's essay argues that since most of the intellectual achievement of the past was by men, it must be because they are in fact really more intelligent than women. The flaws in this argument are many and numerous. It is like arguing that since Russian literature before Pushkin had never produced a poet as great as Dryden or a novelist as fine as Swift it would never in the future. One might point out that 140 years ago there were virtually no female doctors or lawyers or conservative philosophers of science in the English-speaking world because women were excluded from the education that would allow them to hold such a position. As these barriers have dropped the percentage of doctors and lawyers who are female has risen to 5% to 15% to 25% to over 30%. Is there any reason to doubt that they will eventually reach 50%? None that Stove provides. Stove provides an argument for the intellectual inferiority of women by invoking biology. Yet I doubt whether he would invoke a biological argument designed before, say, 1960. If the intellectual inferiority of women is so true and so widely held, why is proving it so difficult? I doubt even Stove thinks Aristotle's arguments on this pass muster. Finally, if women are intellectually inferior, what does this say about their rights? Nothing from Stove on this matter, yet the conservative tradition that he supports and in contrast to the liberal tradition he sneers has from 1800 to 1950 argued that inferior intelligence or morals on the behalf of women, the Irish, African-Americans and Jews means lesser rights for them. It is rather disingenuous of Stove to evade this point.

Stove's book is rather hard to rate. On one hand it allows one to see old ideology that is likely repugnant to anyone who is not chained to some Newtonian universe - trapped much like a fly in amber. But anyone with an iota of intelligence will likely be seriously offended by most of Stove's central themes making it hard to give a "good" rating to the book.

Stove, perhaps best known for his essay on why women are intellectually inferior to men, captures the essence of all that is (after reading the reviews here, one hesitates to use the term 'was'...) wrong with the idols of the age of modernism. Stove attacks the so-called "Jazz Age" of philosophy yet at root it is apparent that not only does he miss the point of the postmodernists but that his arguments are nothing more than blisteringly hot air.

No doubt the writing is amusing but anyone who can dismiss Plato in a sentence and Popper in a paragraph has erected a soap box made of old toilet paper rolls. I believe his essay on the "Jazz Age" should be required reading to demonstrate exactly how 'idols' and anger obviously cloud intelligence.

Stove reveals his ignorance for science in the final paragraph: "No doubt this is partly to be explained by the remoteness of their work from everyday applications." This is Stoves explanation for why theoretical scientists have seen the validity of Kuhn, Popper and Feyeraband's views on the irrational nature of science - not so much an explanation as a cry to those who understand to give up and regress to the safe old world of Newton. One wonders if he actually knew anything about science - without the theoretical scientists we would not have anything beyond Newton and certainly people like Godel, Prigogine, Einstein and Chaitin (to name very few) would not qualify as "pure" scientists under Stove's criteria.

Stove also has some interesting and childlike conceptions of cornerstones such as truth and knowledge. His essay on Idealism is interesting in that he points out the problems of arguing from "the Gem" (starting an argument from a tautology) yet seems to conveniently ignore the fact that the entire concept of truth is built upon tautology. Oh well, or, as Stove frequently wrote, "Ha ha."

Stove makes passing mention of Wittgenstein but one wonders whether he actually read any of it. Certainly he didn't understand but that doesn't seem to stop Stove in any of his work; perhaps this is one of the best points in the collection. It is better to attack (and ad hominem is certainly acceptable) with shadows and pompous gesturing than with any substance when one feels threatened.

The real reason to read Stove is the fact that he was the perfect foil to the other holy grail of his age: Darwinism. If ever one requires a yin to Dawkins' sanctimonious pandering then Stove would be my choice. He slices and, at times, bludgeons Dawkins' idiotic arguments and puffy prose to expose the rotten core. Read these essays and then return the book to the library.