PDF book: Will We Ever Speak Dolphin? And 130 Other Science Questions Answered (2012)





Ian Fleming, the author of the James Bond spy novels, really didn’t know what he had started when he decided the fictional spy should order his vodka martinis shaken, not stirred.First, it became one of the most famous catch-phrases in movie history. Now it’s become the subject of an entire chapter in this latest edition of science questions and answers from New Scientist. Just why did Bond want that martini stirred? The debates have raged long and hard down the years but now we think we’ve cracked it. Turn to page 88 for the full lowdown on the science of Bond’s iconic tipple.We think there’s very little more to learn now, but the conceit is the downfall of any scientist, so if anybody out there knows better our contact details are below. And not only did James Bond enjoy his martinis, but he also had - according to the screenplay of Thunderball - a double first in Oriental Languages from Oxford University. So if he hadn’t been a fictional character, he’d have been just the person to answer the title question of this book (see p. 85). As an accomplished linguist, if Dolphin could be learned, he’d have learned it - not least because it would have come in handy in The Spy Who Loved Me. It’s surely not improbable that undersea megalomaniac and archetypal Bond villain Karl Sigmund Stromberg had been learning Dolphin as part of his evil plan to relocate the human species underwater, so Bond too would surely have swotted up to ensure he could foil yet another madman.Unlikely, you say? Well, it’s perhaps not as improbable as the fact that in more than twenty movies Bond has been shot at more times than any other fictional hero, yet never taken that final, fatal bullet. Check out just how improbable on p. 102. Of course, there’s more to this book than a fictional spy and his foibles. Do you know why we become hoarse when we shout, whether it’s better for the planet if we all become vegetarians, or why we want to urinate more in cold weather? Well, we didn’t either until somebody bothered to get in touch and ask us and then somebody else gave us the answer. The Last Word column in New Scientist magazine - which gave birth to this book and its bestselling predecessors including Does Anything Eat Wasps? and Why Don’t Penguins’ Feet Freeze?Updated