Was I gaslighting myself?
I was sure I had seen this book review at one of the places I frequent online, and I didn’t write it down or bookmark it, so that meant I’d be able to find it easily when I decided to go back and use it as a springboard for a post.
Except I couldn’t find the damned thing.
Slate? Nope. HuffPo? Nope. I knew it wasn’t Sully (who’s being a real prick about the whole retail servitude thing, by the way), wasn’t TNC. Someplace on the Atlantic site? Books? Health & Medicine? Tech? Nope nope nope. Didn’t think it was ThinkProgess or CrookedTimber, but checked anyway—nada. Christianity Today? Fred Clark? Nuh-uh. Really hoped it wasn’t Brad DeLong or Marginal Revolution or Pharyngula because it would be a total pain in the ass to try to dig it out.
It didn’t help that I didn’t know the title and I didn’t know the authors—although I did know there were two authors.
And I did know the topic: something about genetics and society. So, off to Amazon to try to track down the book. “Human genetics” didn’t get me there; neither did “genes” or “genetics” or these subjects coupled with “2013” (I knew the book was new). Nothin’. Same at Barnes & Noble.
What gives?! Did I NOT see a review of a recent book on genes and society? Was I imagining all of this? Jay-zeus Christie.
So: onward to the Giant Omnivorous Omniscient Grabbing of Life and Everything search, with different terms. At some point I plugged in “genetics ethics” and there on the top of the third page, a piece from the Guardian:
Genetics | Science | The Guardian
Video (5min 28sec), 30 Jan 2013: Hilary Rose, co-author of Genes, Cells and Brains, argues that we should treat the medical claims made for genetic research …
Bingo! Hilary Rose! So back to the aforementioned sites and plug in Hilary Rose and. . . NOTHING! DAMMIT.
And then I thought: What about The Daily Beast? They do books, don’t they? And lo! There it was:
The Selfish Gene: The Broken Promises of the Human Genome Project
Jan 29, 2013 2:39 PM EST
What did the Human Genome Project give us? Better shampoo and billions of dollars’ worth of economic projects, but what happened to improving our lives? By Michael Thomsen.
There is a point to all of this, I promise you, but since it’s really just another way for me to lash myself over the stupid, stupid decisions I’ve made regarding my dissertation and career, I think I’ll save that for another post.
For this one, let’s end on the happy thought that I am not, in fact, crazy. At least on this.
AbsurdBeats 
do you have an e-copy of said dissertation?
http://www.studio360.org/2013/feb/08/making-portraits-out-of-dna/
http://newbooksinscitechsoc.com/2013/02/11/deborah-r-coen-the-earthquake-observers-disaster-science-from-lisbon-to-richter-university-of-chicago-press-2012-2/
I have it in WordPerfect chapters on my computer—I could always send them to you as attachments. You should be able to open them in Word, then adjust the typeface as needed.
Dude, you should’a contacted me! For whatever reason, I’m good and knowing what search engines want. 😉
WordPerfect? Wow, that brings back memories. 🙂