the words are back .. and how....... so much going on in my head I don't know where to start.. so will start with a much neglected area of this blog...... recently read books...... haven't added to the list in ages and have only mentioned a couple of recent reads (James Frey and Xinran) and as I have been reading books at a rate of knots recently I need to mention a few good ones.... Bill Bryson's 'A short history of nearly everything' is exactly what it says on the cover!! But the really enjoyable thing about this book is it doesn't dumb down anything, unlike most TV documentaries nowadays, this book treats the reader as an intelligent being which is lovely and he certainly covers the history of discoveries and inventions methodically and in his amusingly anecdotal style. There will be something new for anyone who reads this book and some concepts are clearly and delightfully explained. Another romp through the sciences is Nature via Nuture by Matt Ridley.. this time looking at the old battleground of N vs N but showing the inextricable links between the two.. a sort of genetics needs environment needs genetics needs environment arguement... well put but also what amused me about this book was I suddenly found myself siding with some evolutionary psychologists ideas!! An idea previously abhorrant!!! I had always assumed (yes I know I shouldn't !!) that EP was making assumptions from the perspective of the culture we are in... ie that EP explains today's behaviour by the assumed behaviour of prehistoric man you know the idea of Man the Hunter, Woman the Home-maker, without actually having any clue about what relationships between genders was actually like... it could have been made up of female groups with offspring with only transitory visits from male groups perhaps ?? That could explain the phenomenon of group female oestrus... any way I digress....So I ended up following Ridley's argument and generally agreeing with it and then realising it was based around evolutionary pyschology.....and my assumptions about their assumptions were wrong!