Viktor Mayer-Schonberger, author of Delete: The Virtue of Forgetting in the Digital Age, and a host of other guests chime in on memory over at the SETI Institute on the program “Are We Alone?” Happy listening.

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Ian Buruma is on tour for Taming the Gods in California this week. Here are some of the highlights so far:

An interview with the Young Turks.

And here is the run-down from his well-attended event with Zocalo. There will be video of the event available later, but in the meantime they offer a great series of photos.

Next up, San Francisco. Ian will be at the World Affairs Council tomorrow evening.

The birding blog-o-sphere has even more to say about the second edition of the Birds of Europe by Lars Svensson, Killian Mullarney and Dan Zetterström.

Over at The Bluebird’s Laugh, they write, “This excellent new edition meets all of my criteria for usefulness: highly-readable text, excellent layout, fine maps and beautiful, accurate illustrations that help the reader come to grips with the fine points of identification…Highly recommended!”

Bird’s Eye View calls the book “truly a first-rate field guide,” and the Two-Fisted Bird Watcher writes (in perhaps my favorite endorsement for a Princeton book ever), “This book gets two fists, way up.”

Idaho Birding Blog chimes in, saying, “Looking at each page of this Birds of Europe field guide was a blast…My favorite features of this field guide–that I have never seen or noticed before in other field guides–are the at-a-distance views of each species portrayed in their typical habitat and posture.”

Though this is technically a review for the Collins edition for sale in the UK, we’ll borrow the praise at NYC Birding, too — “If you want to see what I consider to be one of the current best field guides, check out the second edition of what’s called in Britain the ‘Collins Field Guide’ aka Svensson and Mullarney.”

And rounding out this cornucopia of reviews is Birdfreak.com where they write, “The update is worth the wait and a great revision from the first edition. The amount of knowledge about birds of Europe has increased greatly and there have been drastic changes in taxonomy as well…With over 3,500 color illustrations and a vault of information on a vast geographic area, Birds of Europe is a perfect addition to your birding library and a great upgrade from the first edition.”

Andrew Read, an entomologist and biologist at Pennsylvania State University, will give a talk on “The Selfish Germ: The Future of Infectious Disease in a Pharmaceutical Age” at 4:30 p.m. Tuesday, March 23, in 101 Friend Center.

Read studies the ecology and evolution of infectious diseases. He is examining whether medical science is spurring the evolution of more virulent germs and what effect a malaria vaccine will have upon the evolution of the parasite causing the disease. He also is studying whether scientists can slow down the evolution of drug-resistant microbes and halt the development of insecticide-resistant mosquitoes.

Read taught at the University of Oxford and the University of Edinburgh before joining the Penn State faculty in 2007.

Read’s talk is part of the 2010 “Frontiers in Biology” lecture series, sponsored by Princeton University Press and the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. He also will present a lecture in the department’s colloquium series on “Malaria and Marek’s Disease: Avoiding Another Century of Evolutionary Mismanagement ” at 12:30 p.m. Thursday, March 25, in 10 Guyot Hall.

William G. Bowen, co-author of Crossing the Finish Line, will lecture on the subject of his book this Wednesday at Columbia University as part of their lecture series on the future of the research university.  Here are the details of the event.

Wednesday, March 24, 2010, 4:00 p.m.

Crossing the Finish Line

Part of the Future of the Research University Speaker Series

A lecture by William G. Bowen

President Emeritus of The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and former President of Princeton University

and co-author of Crossing the Finish Line: Completing College at America’s Public Universities

Social Hall, Union Theological Seminary

3041 Broadway at 121st Street

A reception and book signing will immediately follow the presentation.

What are the three basic principles we can use to determine if someone is guilty of scientific misconduct? According to David Goodstein, interviewed about his new book On Fact and Fraud over at Inside Higher Ed, they are:

Thou shalt not commit fabrication (making up results); thou shalt not commit falsification (changing or omitting data or results); and thou shalt not commit plagiarism (appropriation of ideas without giving credit).

Click over to read the complete interview including advice to universities and professors on how to minimize the likelihood that their graduates will eventually commit scientific misconduct.

In a Book Review Bingo-safe review of Taming the Gods, Karen Long of the Cleveland Plain Dealer picks up on an element of Ian Buruma’s book that has not been mentioned in previous reviews.

“It is striking that he retreats into literature — Sinclair Lewis and Joseph Conrad — to sample piety, instead of investigating it as a journalist,” writes Long. There is indeed a substantial literary element to Ian’s book which may surprise some readers.  But it does seem to work for what Long describes as an “elegant, essay-length book.”

We’re beginning to see a few reviews of the second edition of the Birds of Europe by Lars Svensson, Killian Mullarney and Dan Zetterström. What’s the verdict so far? Well, read for yourself:

Over at DC Birding blog, John Beetham writes, “Birds of Europe: Second Edition is the best field guide I have yet seen and surpasses even David Sibley’s excellent work.” (Well, if you say so, John, we won’t disagree.)

And Ian Paulsen at the Birdbooker Report raves, “The best field guide to the birds of Europe and one of the best field guides worldwide!” (Well, now we’re blushing.)

Still not convinced? The Pittsburgh Bird Watching Examiner Fannie Peczenik advises, “Choosing between it [The Birds of Europe] and, say, an extra pair of shoes when you pack is a nobrainer. Take the field guide; lose the shoes.” (Indeed, I believe it was Aristotle that once said, “A true measure of a book’s worth is whether it a) fits in your backpack and b) is more important than comfortable shoes.” Maybe it wasn’t Aristotle after all, but it is still a good rule of thumb.)

And just because we love to see nice things about our books, here’s one last review over at Bill Schmoker’s brdpics blog.

If I’ve missed a review, let me know.

Running all 64 NCAA basketball teams through 5,000 game simulations, sports statistician and PUP author Wayne Winston predicts the odds of each team through the tournament.  His pick:  Kansas to take it all!  Check out the post on his blog.  Last year his methods picked the Final Four!  To learn how he did this, check out Chapter 43 in his book MATHLETICS: How Gamblers, Managers, and Sports Enthusiasts Use Mathematics in Baseball, Basketball, and Football

Another great clip from the AAUP meeting committee. This video was prepared for a sales conference, so it was intended for internal use. Now available to the public — it brilliantly takes on the Greek chorus of reasons why publishing is dying. Watching it is a great reminder of what publishing does for readers and the world at large.