Expletive Deleted

There's a new blog meme going around, and it's about science books (H/T to Jim Lippard). The game's simple, in the list of science books provided, bold the ones you've read, and put an asterisk on those you plan to read.

• Micrographia, Robert Hooke
  
• The Origin of the Species, Charles Darwin (Only read it halfway) *
  
• Never at Rest, Richard Westfall
  
• Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman, Richard Feynman (I've read his other book, The Pleasure of Finding Things Out)
  
• Tesla: Man Out of Time, Margaret Cheney
  
• The Devil's Doctor, Philip Ball (I have his other book, H2O)
  
• The Making of the Atomic Bomb, Richard Rhodes
  
• Lonely Hearts of the Cosmos, Dennis Overbye
  
• Physics for Entertainment, Yakov Perelman
  
• 1-2-3 Infinity, George Gamow
  
• The Elegant Universe, Brian Greene (I have this, just haven't read it)
  
• Warmth Disperses, Time Passes, Hans Christian von Bayer
  
• Alice in Quantumland, Robert Gilmore
  
• Where Does the Weirdness Go? David Lindley
  
• A Short History of Nearly Everything, Bill Bryson
  
• A Force of Nature, Richard Rhodes
  
• Black Holes and Time Warps, Kip Thorne
  
• A Brief History of Time, Stephen Hawking
  
• Universal Foam, Sidney Perkowitz
  
• Vermeer's Camera, Philip Steadman
  
• The Code Book, Simon Singh
  
• The Elements of Murder, John Emsley
  
• Soul Made Flesh, Carl Zimmer
  
• Time's Arrow, Martin Amis
  
• The Ten Most Beautiful Experiments, George Johnson
  
• Einstein's Dreams, Alan Lightman
  
• Godel, Escher, Bach, Douglas Hofstadter (I have this, just haven't read it)
  
• The Curious Life of Robert Hooke, Lisa Jardine
  
• A Matter of Degrees, Gino Segre
  
• The Physics of Star Trek, Lawrence Krauss (I've read his other book, Atom)
  
• E=mc<2>, David Bodanis
  
• Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea, Charles Seife
  
• Absolute Zero: The Conquest of Cold, Tom Shachtman
  
• A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines, Janna Levin
  
• Warped Passages, Lisa Randall
  
• Apollo's Fire, Michael Sims
  
• Flatland, Edward Abbott
  
• Fermat's Last Theorem, Amir Aczel
  
• Stiff, Mary Roach
  
• Astroturf, M.G. Lord
  
• The Periodic Table, Primo Levi
  
• Longitude, Dava Sobel
  
• The First Three Minutes, Steven Weinberg *
  
• The Mummy Congress, Heather Pringle
  
• The Accelerating Universe, Mario Livio
  
• Math and the Mona Lisa, Bulent Atalay
  
• This is Your Brain on Music, Daniel Levitin
  
• The Executioner's Current, Richard Moran
  
• Krakatoa, Simon Winchester
  
• Pythagorus' Trousers, Margaret Wertheim
  
• Neuromancer, William Gibson
  
• The Physics of Superheroes, James Kakalios
  
• The Strange Case of the Broad Street Pump, Sandra Hempel
  
• Another Day in the Frontal Lobe, Katrina Firlik
  
• Einstein's Clocks and Poincare's Maps, Peter Galison
  
• The Demon-Haunted World, Carl Sagan
  
• The Blind Watchmaker, Richard Dawkins
  
• The Language Instinct, Steven Pinker (I have his other book, How the Mind Works)
  
• An Instance of the Fingerpost, Iain Pears
  
• Consilience, E.O. Wilson (I've only read this halfway)
  
• Wonderful Life, Stephen J. Gould
  
• Teaching a Stone to Talk, Annie Dillard
  
• Fire in the Brain, Ronald K. Siegel
  
• The Life of a Cell, Lewis Thomas
  
• Coming of Age in the Milky Way, Timothy Ferris (I've read his other book, The Whole Shebang)
  
• Storm World, Chris Mooney *
  
• The Carbon Age, Eric Roston
  
• The Black Hole Wars, Leonard Susskind
  
• Copenhagen, Michael Frayn
  
• From the Earth to the Moon, Jules Verne
  
• Gut Symmetries, Jeanette Winterson
  
• Chaos, James Gleick *
  
• Innumeracy, John Allen Paulos
  
• The Physics of NASCAR, Diandra Leslie-Pelecky
  
• Subtle is the Lord, Abraham Pais
  

I would've added Beak of the Finch by Jonathan Weiner, Chance in the House of Fate by Jennifer Ackerman, Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science by Martin Gardner, Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond, Just Six Numbers by Martin Rees, Reinventing Darwin by Niles Eldredge, The Dinosaur Heresies by Robert Bakker, and The God Particle by Leon Lederman. Each is a classic of science writing or an important contribution by a scientist. There are other deserving titles but these are the ones I can think of at the moment.

Wow, PZ Myers is posting that someone has followed in my footsteps and "smuggled" a consecrated host from a church. Thankfully, my little act of mischief hasn't caused a similar kind of uproar. And another blogger wants to do it too! I think that's a good idea.

I still have the communion wafer, it's safely stored in an empty Altoids container. If Christians are so desparate to get back consecrated hosts, maybe I could sell it in eBay. Heck, a Christian was willing to pay real money to buy a nonbeliever's (nonexistent) soul!

If you haven't experienced the joys of host desecration, you haven't really earned your EAC decoder ring!

I hold in my hand the very body of Christ Jesus himself! Or, that is, if you believe that the "real presence" of Jesus is somehow contained in a tasteless communion wafer:

So what, you say? One can buy communion wafers by the bagful if you know where to shop for it. But this one is different: it's consecrated! Yep, this poor wafer was blessed by, not one, not two, but three ministers! I attended service with my family this past sunday (still can't fully kick my church habit, I'm afraid). No special occasion, just your normal churchy stuff.

While I don't mind singing crappy religious songs (I was a church choir member myself), I draw the line at receiving communion. Something about ritually devouring the (symbolic) body of a once-living human being rubs me the wrong way. I may be a carnivore, but I'm no cannibal.

But this past sunday, my better judgement got the better of me and I found myself going towards the altar to receive "host". I had consumed communion wafers when I was a Christian (don't worry, you're not missing much). When it was my turn to eat Jesus, I faked eating the wafer but instead "palmed" it (thank you Penn and Teller!).

So now I have a consecrated communion wafer. What do I do with it? Sell it on eBay? Nah, it's just a plain wafer, no curvy lines that could be mistaken for a "virgin". Now that would've fetch me a pretty penny.

Maybe I can do an experiment. According to scriptures, God would not allow the body of the "Holy One to see corruption" (Psa 16:10, Act 2:27, Act 13:35). If this is true, then a consecrated host ought to be immune to molds and the like. Sounds like a Sacrilicious plan!

Heh, I wasn't expecting a high score, but my dumb luck pulled me through.