New and forthcoming books that are worthy of attention but that have not yet been fully reviewed.
One hundred fifty. That, according to the Oxford Living Dictionary, is the “theoretical limit to the number of people with whom any individual is able to sustain a stable or meaningful social relationship.” It was first proposed by Robin Dunbar, professor of evolutionary psychology at the University of Oxford, and has now become widely known as Dunbar’s Number.
As one who was raised alongside, and whose family drew our livelihood from, the lower Columbia, I have a special place in my heart for Oregon’s rivers. For me, they are channels through which the ecological, spiritual, and economic life blood of my home state flows.
Despite the fact that the feces of humans is commonly of sufficient firmness to be picked up with one hand (gloved, of course) while that of cows is roughly the consistency of spoiled pudding, both contain – on average – the same percentage of water content. So why the significant difference in texture and consistency?
By most reckonings, winter begins on 21 December – the winter solstice – however in The Well-read Naturalist library, winter arrived on 26 October this year. I speak, of course, not about the season itself, rather about the fourth and completing volume of the quartet of seasonal anthologies edited by Melissa Harrison and published by Elliott & Thompson.