Peter Macinnis
Goodreads author profile
born
in Australia
gender
male
website
twitter username
genre
influences
Peter Mason, Henry Lawson, Peter Medawar, J B S Haldane, Rudyard Kipli...more
member since
March 2008
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Poisons: From Hemlock to Botox to the Killer Bean of Calabar
— published 2004 — 5 editions |
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Bittersweet: The Story of Sugar
— published 2002 — 5 editions |
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Mr Darwin's Incredible Shrinking World: science and technology in 1859
— published 2008 — 2 editions |
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The Killer Bean Of Calabar And Other Stories: Poisons And Poisoners
— published 2004 — 3 editions |
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Kokoda Track: 101 Days
— published 2007 — 2 editions |
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Australian Backyard Explorer
— published 2009 |
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100 Discoveries: The Greatest Breakthroughs In History
— published 2008 — 3 editions |
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Rockets: Sulfur, Sputnik and Scramjets
— published 2003 — 2 editions |
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Australia's Pioneers, Heroes & Fools
— published 2007 |
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The Speed of Nearly Everything: From Tobogganing Penguins to Neutron Stars
— published 2008 |
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Descants (Nonfiction)
1 chapters
—
updated Mar 29, 2010 04:33pm
Description:
Short pieces (I aim at about 700 words a time) on the origins and mutated meanings of certain interesting words. I have about half a book, and I return to fossick around the outlines every now and then.
Peter's Recent Updates
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Peter Macinnis
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| This is another of the precious ones I would lock away. Only very valued and trusted students would be allowed to get their paws on it. Medawar is brilliant. My son, who emailed recently after hearing a seminar to say that "Apparently winning a Nobel...more | |
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Peter Macinnis
rated a book 5 of 5 stars
The Good Companions
by J.B. Priestley
recommended to Peter Macinnis by:
my parents
recommended for: humans
read in January, 1957
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I enjoyed this so much as a teenager (that's half a century ago, near enough for government work) that I have just bought it for Kindle so I can read it again on my travels. A mixed group of English "characters" go on the halls, having adventures of a...more |
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Peter Macinnis
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Peter Macinnis
rated a book 4 of 5 stars
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Peter Macinnis
is currently reading
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Peter Macinnis
is currently reading
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Peter Macinnis
rated a book 2 of 5 stars
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Peter Macinnis
rated a book 4 of 5 stars
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Peter Macinnis
rated a book 5 of 5 stars
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Peter Macinnis
rated a book 4 of 5 stars
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| An elegant read, not your usual murder mystery at all. | |
“The writer found that certain freshwater crustaceans, namely Californian species of Daphnia, copepods, and Gammarus when indifferent to light can be made intensely positively heliotropic by adding some acid to the fresh water, especially the weak acid CO2. When carbonated water (or beer) to the extent of about 5 c.c. or 10 c.c. is slowly and carefully added to 50 c.c. of fresh water containing these Daphnia, the animals will become intensely positive and will collect in a dense cluster on the window side of the dish. Stronger acids act in the same way but the animals are likely to die quickly. . . Alcohols act in the same way. In the case of Gammarus the positive heliotropism lasts only a few seconds, while in Daphnia it lasts from 10 to 50 minutes and can be renewed by the further careful addition of some CO2.”
― Jacques Loeb
― Jacques Loeb
“In the circle where I was raised, I knew of no one knowledgeable in the visual arts, no one who regularly attended musical performances, and only two adults other than my teachers who spoke without embarrassment of poetry and literature — both of these being women. As far as I can recall, I never heard a man refer to a good or a great book. I knew no one who had mastered, or even studied, another language from choice. And our articulate, conscious life proceeded without acknowledgement of the preceding civilisations which had produced it.”
― Shirley Hazzard
― Shirley Hazzard
“Science is part of culture. Culture isn't only art and music and literature, it's also understanding what the world is made of and how it functions. People should know something about stars, matter and chemistry. People often say that they don't like chemistry but we deal with chemistry all the time. People don't know what heat is, they hardly know what water is. I'm always surprised how little people know about anything. I'm puzzled by it.”
― Max F. Perutz
― Max F. Perutz
“The division of our culture is making us more obtuse than we need be: we can repair communications to some extent: but, as I have said before, we are not going to turn out men and women who understand as much of their world as Piero della Francesca did of his, or Pascal, or Goethe. With good fortune, however, we can educate a large proportion of our better minds so that they are not ignorant of the imaginative experience, both in the arts and in science, nor ignorant either of the endowments of applied science, of the remediable suffering of most of their fellow humans, and of the responsibilities which, once seen, cannot be denied.”
― C.P. Snow
― C.P. Snow
“At one time, the state of culture in Czechoslovakia was described, rather poignantly, as a 'Biafra of the spirit'. . . I simply do not believe that we have all lain down and died. I see far more than graves and tombstones around me. I see evidence of this in . . . expensive books on astronomy printed in a hundred thousand copies (they would hardly find that many readers in the USA) . . .”
― Václav Havel
― Václav Havel
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