Bøger af Sidney Harris

Right off the bat, Sidney Harris makes it clear that he's not a scientist. He's a cartoonist who grew up in Brooklyn and drew for Playboy, but somehow he still knows about neutrinos and the big bang. "I get the gist of it," says Harris. "Neutrinos come from outer space. They go through everything, there's a billion of them going through my hand right now... maybe?" He's drawn over 35,000 cartoons during his career for publications including American Scientist, The New Yorker, Discover, National Lampoon, The Wall Street Journal and Science. And he's published several cartoon books covering a wide array of themes: His most recent deals with America's often-dangerous food industry.Cartoonists are basically dilettantes. "We know a little about a lot of things," says Sam Gross, a cartoonist for the New Yorker who's known Harris for 50 years and still meets him for French food on 46th Street in Manhattan frequently. "But with Sidney, as far as the science is concerned, he knows a lot more than a little bit."Harris claims he's never held a real job, except for one bout of semi-employment in his teens with Rapid Messenger Service on 59th Street. "I don't know if you'd call it a job," says Harris. "Of course I didn't know what was in the messages, I just delivered them." He could only stand the position for a couple of weeks before quitting.Nowadays, Harris comments on the periodic table and the principles of physics. His mind retains a collection of essential and quite elegant scientific facts (or rather, "factoids," as he calls them). Factoid number one: An atom is mostly open space. He once read that if not for that space between the particles in an atom, the Empire State Building would be the size of a pin. "This is made of atoms and it certainly seems solid," Harris says, knocking his fist on a wooden table. "But the neutrinos just go right through it!"Harris left the bustle of New York City several years ago and has lived in New Haven, Connecticut ever since. His house here resembles a maze, as if designed for his own entertainment. The upstairs studio where he works is accessible from two different staircases; each lined with a hodgepodge of paintings and framed cartoons. One upstairs room is littered with mail, pens without caps and baseball figurines-his love for the Brooklyn Dodgers was, he says, "sort of a religion."Harris plops into an office chair in front of a table and grabs a fountain pen. This is where he draws most often. A college-ruled notebook sits on the table, about a quarter full of identically spaced cartoon ideas, dated by the month. "This is all I did in two years," he says. "Pretty skimpy." He has piles of these notebooks, dates written across each cover going as far back as when he was in his 20s.Harris's cartoon inspiration comes from reading scientific magazines, newspapers and books, but his wry sense of humor comes directly from daily life. He can't help but see the underlying irony and hilarity of the seemingly mundane-in fact, he even cherishes samples of people's handwriting. A large sheet of paper on a door is covered in signatures he's photo-copied from checks people have paid him. Truly tickled by each autograph, he points out the silly loops, waves and sometimes single lines, questioning if many of them can still qualify as a person's name.Gross says Harris's work is so distinct and easily recognizable that "he doesn't even need to sign it." (Harris says the same about Gross) In fact, his drawings employ minimal line work and are quite simple-in contrast to their scientific humor.Though Harris wouldn't call cartooning a passion, it's not exactly work for him either. He says he just "knows how to do it," so he does it. His favorite part is coming up with the ideas. "But the drawings...it's like... I've got to do the damn drawing now."

Hans Geiger, counting.A string-theory quartet.Cleaning the clean room.A physics haiku in Chinese."Damn Particles", 145 cartoons about physics, is the second book in a limited series of cartoon collections on the individual sciences by S. Harris ("Eureka! Details to Follow", the chemistry collection, was the first) The cartoons of S. Harris have appeared in periodicals for many years and he has had more than twenty collections of his cartoons published. Most of the cartoons in this book have been previously published in magazines including American Scientist, Chronicle of Higher Education, Discover, Physics Today, Science, Scientific American, The New Yorker and Today's Chemist, and many have been reprinted in textbooks and hung on lab doors and bulletin boards around the world.

If you're overwhelmed by the mess we call our environment, then stretch out under a tree (remember them?) with these cartoons and see if a good laugh won't sweep the cobwebs (and asbestos) from your troubled mind and help renew your commitment to making our earth a better place.

Dragged by force from his village in the Bolivian highlands, Carlos Obregon is thrown into the Chaco War with little training and incompetent officers. Fighting in an unforgiving wasteland, Carlos needs all his resources to survive as the Bolivian Army suffers defeat after defeat. At war's end he swears to remedy the injustice done to him and his fellow soldiers.At La Paz, Carlos participates in a secret army lodge which overthrows the civilian government. After a promising start, the military junta falls back into the corruption of the previous regime, and Carlos realizes he must assume power in order to make real progress, even if it means betraying his Commanding Officer. Carlos begins an affair with an attractive blond German, who has traveled to Bolivia seeking news of her husband, reported as missing in action during the war, but who was killed by Carlos. The situation becomes even more complicated when Carlos' best friend falls in love with the same woman. The novel recreates the chaos of the Chaco War, the turmoil in Bolivian politics which followed, the disaster of the Catavi massacre of miners, interwoven with a tragic love triangle, betrayal of friends, and an explosive revolution.

Sidney Harris is America's foremost science cartoonist. He has been praised by luminaries such as Linus Pauling and Isaac Asimov for his ability to find humour in what is traditionally regarded as a somewhat dry subject. This edition has been updated and revised with new cartoons.

Sidney Harris, acclaimed Dean of Scientific Humor, presents his most recent collection of cartoons. "The humor in science that is most widely laughed at comes from nonscientists, like the cartoonist, Sidney Harris."