Osaka University has some really great stuff on the bacterial flagellum:
I also found a book online called Origins and Destiny: A Scientist Examines God's Handiwork. It's not fantastic, but it is decent. I was actually searching for some of his other work and had no idea that he had this book, nor that it was online for free. Anway, take a look at it if you're interested.
Some new research has given us another possible reason for Galileo's trial - basically that the Tuscan Duke of Medici refused to aid Rome in its war efforts against France, and so Pope Urban VIII punished the Duke by arresting Galileo, who was the Duke's personal friend. So why is this theory plausible? It is the reason given in the first biography of Galileo - only 20 years after his death.
What's really good to know is that the science-vs-religion aspect is no longer in vogue among scholars:
Not that modern scholars give much credence to the traditional science-vs.-religion interpretation of the trial. Most Galilean researchers today agree that politics played a much bigger role than religious closed-mindedness, but there is spirited disagreement about the specifics. Some think the pope was angry at being parodied by Galileo's character Simplicius in Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems. Other scholars have suggested that church leaders felt Galileo had tricked them into granting him a license to write the book by not revealing its Copernican leanings. But "Salusbury's explanation is kind of refreshingly new," Wilding says.
So now, at the very least, we have agreement that even Galileo's own contemporaries did not view the trial as being science-vs-religion, but rather more of a political problem.
I also found another book for free online that I will never have time to read - The Computational Beauty of Nature.
Note to self - need to read The Onset of Selection (sorry - this blog is better-catalogued than my bookmarks on my browser)
Random questions for my readers: