Peter Macinnis
goodreads author profile
born
April 25, 1944
gender
male
place of birth
Australia
website
genre
Science, History, Nonfiction
influences
Peter Mason, Peter Medawar, J B S Haldane, Rudyard Kipling, Walter Murdoch, Charles Dickens, Douglas Hofstadter, Primo Levi, Oliver Sacks, James Burke, Jared Diamond, T. H. Huxley
member since
March 2008
about this author
Peter Macinnis is an Australian writer for for both adults and younger readers. He writes mainly about history or science, but monsters and more science are on his 2009 agenda. He also broadcasts about science on ABC Radio National, and has been translated into Russian, Slovak, Polish and American. He is about to be translated into Chinese.
He is a happy grandfather who travels assiduously, completes an average of 1500 words of polished and researched text each day. He says "I am in no danger of being typecast, downcast, cast away or cast on the scrap heap. No scrap heap would have me".
He uses the handle McManly on a number of social utilities such as Twitter.
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avg rating: 3.46
| 37 ratings
| 22 reviews
| 35 distinct works
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4 fans
More books by Peter Macinnis…
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Poisons: From Hemlock to Botox to the Killer Bean of Calabar by Peter Macinnis (Goodreads author) avg rating 3.45 — 20 ratings — published 2004 4 editions |
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Bittersweet: The Story of Sugar by Peter Macinnis (Goodreads author) avg rating 4.00 — 8 ratings — published 2003 |
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The Killer Bean of Calabar and Other Stories by Peter Macinnis (Goodreads author) avg rating 5.00 — 1 rating — published 2004 |
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Rockets: Sulfur, Sputnik and Scramjets by Peter Macinnis (Goodreads author) avg rating 4.00 — 1 rating — published 2004 |
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The Lawn by Peter Macinnis (Goodreads author) avg rating 0.0 — 0 ratings — published 2009 |
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Readability and Science Testing by Peter Macinnis (Goodreads author) avg rating 0.0 — 0 ratings — published 1979 |
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Science in Action Book 2: Teachers Guide by Peter Macinnis (Goodreads author), Tom Bray avg rating 0.0 — 0 ratings — published 1985 |
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Science in Action Book 1: Teachers Guide by Peter Macinnis (Goodreads author), Tom Bray avg rating 0.0 — 0 ratings — published 1983 |
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Science Library of Test Items vol. 2 by Peter Macinnis (Goodreads author) avg rating 0.0 — 0 ratings — published 1978 |
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Science Library of Test Items vol. 1 by Peter Macinnis (Goodreads author) avg rating 0.0 — 0 ratings — published 1978 |
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upcoming events
Launch of 'Australian Backyard Explorer' in Australia
Author appearance, August 01, 2009 09:00AM
Australia
http://members.ozemail.com.au/~macinnis/writing/backyard.htm
Australian release of this book.
Author appearance, August 01, 2009 09:00AM
Australia
http://members.ozemail.com.au/~macinnis/writing/backyard.htm
Australian release of this book.
Descants (Nonfiction)
1 chapters
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updated 09/06/2008 12:39AM
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.
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06/17
Peter
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Mister Pip (Hardcover) by Lloyd Jones bookshelves: currently-reading |
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06/17
Peter
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The Camargue Brotherhood (A Tim Lacy Artworld Mystery) by Derek Wilson bookshelves: currently-reading |
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06/17
Peter
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Blind Faith (Paperback) by Ben Elton bookshelves: currently-reading |
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More of Peter's books…
"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 Perutz
— Max 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."
— Charles Percy Snow
— Charles Percy 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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