Genesis: The Scientific Quest for Life's Origin

For book club this month we chose a book titled Genesis: The scientific Quest for Life's Origin by Dr. Robert Hazen

The topic of the book is a discussion of the current theories of how life may have emerged from the non-living chemical rich primordial earth. The word for this transitional event is autogenesis.

I've read a lot about evolution, but I was really interested to learn more about the beginning of life, specifically its creation. What does it even mean to be alive? It's easy to clarify in terms of humans, and mammals, but when you get down to smaller, simpler things, the answer becomes fuzzy. How did the first life form on earth organize itself? And how do scientists even begin to answer that question a few billion years later?

These were all questions I had going into this book, and I have to say that for the most part my curiosity concerning them has been satisfied. That's not to say the book had complete and definitive answers to my questions, but rather that it addressed them, and gave the best possible answer (as it is understood by scientists today), or answers if there were more than one possibility. It was both an overview and a history of the subject, and for the most part an easy read. The only difficulty was when the author explained certain chemical reactions, and used names like isoprene and phenathrene etc. But they were necessary to document in that they supply the "proof" to the claims the scientists are making concerning the origins of life and ultimately ourselves.

I wrote in the previous blog about emergent systems. Well, this seems to be the prevailing theory on how life on Earth came about. Through an unique combination of chemicals and the right influx of energy, life was able to emerge. I find that utterly fascinating. It was also really interesting to me how large a role geologists are playing attempting to answers to the origin of life questions. By examining rocks and the chemical signatures entombed within them they are helping biologists and chemist find clues to how life evolved. If I ever go for my PhD, I think this is where I'd focus.

The book begins by exploring a few of the many ways that life can be defined. From philosophical, religious, and scientific views come all kinds of answers. But the one that was used as a “working definition” by the author came from Dr. Gerald Joyce a member of a NASA exobiology panel. He said; “Life is a self-sustained chemical system capable of undergoing Darwinian evolution”.  And that works for me. It’s not very romantic sounding, but it gets the job done.

The book also recounts the history of some of the earliest origin-of-life experiments, back in the 1950’s. Among them the most famous Urey-Miller experiments where an early Earth atmosphere was simulated using ammonia, methane and hydrogen. When they sparked the mixture (as a proxy for lightning strikes) they were able to produce many amino acids, which are the building blocks of life! Those experiments, while inaccurate (the composition of the early atmosphere has been refined in recent years) created a lot of interest and basically began modern hunt for the origin of life.

The book also discusses the possibility of life elsewhere in the universe, spending a lot of time to examine the evidences for and against life on Mars through the inspection of the famous Allen Hill’s meteorite, or ALH84001.

The book discusses the methods of teasing out information from rocks millions of years old, and explains in pretty extensive detail the current experiments that are being conducted and what they hope to tell us about the origin of organic life.

There were really interesting chapters on chemosynthetic life (i.e. life that gets its energy from chemical reactions rather than the sun) and discusses microbes living miles beneath the Earth’s crust in in tiny pockets of otherwise dense rock.

There was a chapter about the possible mechanisms that evolved RNA (the precursor to DNA) that led to more complex life.

There was a discussion about how clay particles might have been the template for DNA, and how minerals could have substituted for membranes before primitive cells knew how to make their own!

There was so much unique information that I feel bad not covering it all in this review, but to go into any more depth would require a lot more explaining on my part, and I think in that case you’d probably be best off just reading the book yourself.

Anyway, in closing, I give this book four out of 5 stars. It was well written, easy to read (for the most part), extremely interesting, and I think it covered the subject thoroughly and in depth enough to be educational without being too technical. It also provided a history of how we got to where we are now, and a window into the future research on this mind boggling subject.

ATTENTION: If you are super lazy or don't like reading, but want to learn more about this I found a talk on the book given by the author on YouTube! You can check it out HERE.

Farewell to Manzanar

I read Farewell to Manzanar by  Jeanne Houston this past week. It was one of those books that just caught my eye at the library, and so I checked it out. It's a true story written by a woman who's family was put into, and lived in, one of the Japanese interment camps (here in the U.S.) during World War II.
I've actually driven by the remnants of the camp that they lived in. It's in the Owens Valley ironically located near a town called Independence, and I remember passing it by on a geology field trip. It's a hot, dry, dusty valley.
Anyway, the book was really good. You always think of the "bad guys" having camps, and placing people there on a racial bias, but we did it too to Japanese-Americans. Granted there was no intention of killing anyone, or hurting them even, but still. People, American families (many of which did not speak Japanese, nor had ever even been there), were plucked from their homes and their jobs and forced into barracks in the middle of the desert. And most of what they had "on the outside" was gone by the time they were allowed to go back home. Loans had been defaulted on, cars, boats, etc repossessed or stolen, storage lockers raided or burglarized. I can't imagine how devastating that must have been for them.
It's interesting though, because in a way the story is not entirely sad. It's told by the author, but based on memories from when she was a little girl. And like most kids, it didn't seem as bad to her as it probably did to the adults. She talks about attending school inside the camp, and joining a baton-twirling class. The people living in Manzanar transformed it into a town, with parks and parades and all the normal things that Americans value. She recalls lots of things that she understands now in a different, more serious way , but she also includes those few glimmering memories all kids have, no matter what the circumstances, that even adulthood can't erase.
Anyway, this was a short read, but a really interesting one as well. It's part of our history as a country, and we shouldn't forget about it. Otherwise we will inevitably make the same mistake all over again.

Dick Mackey: Chance Meeting on the Haul Road

Jason and the infamous Dick Mackey!

If you've ever driven the Dalton Highway, you have a pretty good understanding of what the word remote means. It's about as remote as a person can get in a car. There are only a couple small stops north of Coldfoot Camp. There is the turnoff to Wiseman, A port-o-potty near Sukapack, and one at the base of the Chandalar Shelf, and a DOT station near Atigun Pass. That's it. So it's all the more amazing that we ran into one of the most famous mushers in all of Alaska along the way.
Our Arctic Safari Tour left Coldfoot at around 11:00 am, and as we headed up the first few miles Jason (our tour guide, and my little brother) gave us a brief history of Coldfoot. The latest chapter of that story involved the founding of the truck stop back in the 80's by a guy named Dick Mackey. As I understand it he convinced a friend to join him for the summer selling hamburgers and coffee to truckers out of a converted school bus. They set up in Coldfoot, and Mackey spent the next 9 years growing the camp and his business.
We continued on the tour, and after travelling all the way to the edge of the North Slope, we turned around and headed home.
We pulled off at the viewing are for the Chandalar Shelf, and noticed a tent, a dog sled, and pickup truck with dog box that hadn't been there earlier when we were driving up. There were two men standing beside their gear talking. They were both older, with a slightly wrinkled "Alaskan" quality about them. The Alaskan quality I am referring to is the strange way in which residents of the far north tend to look like they are comfortably chatting at a tiki bar in Hawaii when standing on the side of the road in windy -20 degree weather having a conversation. But I digress. Anyway we hopped back on the road, but only got a few feet when one of the men, the one in the circa 1990 teal, purple and pink jacket covered in patches, hailed us down.
Jason recognized him immediately, and quickly informed the rest of us that before our very eyes, was the famous, No!, the infamous, Dick Mackey!
Four hours earlier none of us would have had any idea who Dick Mackey was, but after our history lesson about Coldfoot, and learning that he'd run (and helped found) the Iditerod, we were all appropriately in awe. I mean what are the chances? We were literally out in the middle of nowhere!
We got out and talked with him and his buddy. He was about the friendliest guy you ever met. And despite his being...somewhere around 70 I think, there was a youthfulness about him and the way he talked and gestured that made him seem like a much younger man. He had a great sense of humor, and a smile to match it. His friend had a similar air.
He explained that he was up there with some friends and they were going caribou hunting on the Shelf. He told us a couple stories about being in -85 degree weather, and was a sport about having his photo taken with everyone. He was really a neat guy.
On my way home from Alaska I found a memoir of his in the gift shop at the Fairbanks airport. It was called One Second to Glory. I started reading it in the store. The Mackey legacy in Alaska is an impressive one (he has several sons who are also mushers, and his granddaughter is too), but his origins are humble. Dick went to Alaska a penniless young man with a sense of adventure, and no idea what he was doing. His start in dog-sledding occurred in much the same way. Very much like my brother actually. And his tenure in Coldfoot also began as a wild and crazy idea.
I decided I needed to buy the book, and I read the whole thing on my 3 flights back home. His story is interesting, and funny in parts, but more than that it was inspirational. It's like the theme from the Pixar movie Ratatouille where they say "Anyone can cook.", except the phrase here is "Anybody can mush."

We are our Synapses

One of the many books I have read lately is Synaptic Self by Joseph LeDoux. It's one of the most interesting books I've ever read about the subject of who we are. For those of us who don't believe in things like souls or spirits, the questions surrounding who we are have been difficult to answer. Of course the solution lies somewhere within the mushy folds of the brain, but where and how does it all come together to make me feel like myself?
Well, this book answers that question. And in my opinion the author does it clearly and methodically. It was simply a fascinating read. He begins simply, and sort of teaches you as you go about the different functions of brain regions, the interaction of chemicals and the processes that influence them. He interweaves the history of neuroscience with our modern understanding of how the brain works. His discussion on depression and anxiety were really interesting, as well as his explanations of how medications are taken up and used by the body.
It took me forever to read (on and off for a couple months), but I never lost interest, and I enjoyed it every step of the way. It was definitely not an easy read. In fact thinking back on it, it was more like the summary of a textbook and less like pop-science.

Stem cell neurons.

It is truly amazing how brains work. It seems nothing short of a miracle, yet it is made up of normal things, it functions using the laws and relationships that nature has provided everything else, and it was created by a universe that can't even know itself like the thing it created. Truly one of the most awesome things I have ever thought about. And to think I have a whole brain (at least I think it's a whole one), right up in my head, to keep all for myself, and use for all of my life! Sweet.

I recommend this book to anyone interested in a biological understanding of who we are. 5 out of 5 stars on this one.

The Voyage of the Beagle

A young Charles Darwin

I just finished reading Darwin's The Voyage of the Beagle. It was an excellent book, and I am more convinced than ever that I should have been born what Victorian England termed a "gentleman scholar". Darwin spent five years exploring, observing, noting, recording, pondering and contemplating everything from weather patterns, to mating rituals of insects. His job was basically to "check out" South America, and learn as much as he could about as much as possible. Awesome!
The book seemed a little daunting at first, both because of the small text and large stature, and because of some of the Latin names of things that seemed to jump off the pages as I flipped through it. But neither proved to be a detriment. The book was pleasant enough that I actually enjoyed the length of it, and it was divided into chapters that were easily readable in a sitting. Secondly, most of the Latin names were either accompanied by the more familiar one, or it turned out not to be that important. For example if he was talking about a certain kind of beetle or coral I found that most of the time it was more of an inventory and thus not important what genus or species it was. The same went for most of the birds. I could look things up when I found them particularly interesting, but most of the time it wasn't necessary.
I also got to "know" Darwin a little through his own voice. I guess because of my religious background I'd grown up with the vague impression that he was a trouble maker, subversive and sneaky, and somehow a bad person. Even after I became an adult and came to understand the truth about evolution and natural selection, and read about Darwin, I still thought of him as a rebel, an outspoken "go-against-the-grain" kind of guy. But boy-oh-boy was I wrong! He (and I mean the "he" that I can know through his writings) was the opposite of pretty much every thought I've ever had about him. He was quiet, kind, polite, sensitive and humble. He was thoughtful, observant, and ultra-sympathetic to all animals (except maybe fleas) both human and non. He loved nature, and life, and the mysteries of the earth. He was adventurous, and inquisitive, and at the time he wrote The Voyage of the Beagle, clearly religious to a certain degree. The last part was especially surprising since I kind of assumed he was sort of anti-religious. But not so.
Anyway, he just seems like a really decent human being. And I think it's unfortunate that such an admirable man has acquired such a bad rap from some religious circles.
My next book by him (since I am trying to go through them in more or less chronological order) will be On the Origin of Species. I am already sensing the difficulty with which he wrote it, on account of his nature, and his sensitivity to those around him. I know from other accounts that his wife was very religious, and I know that he (Darwin) seemed always to take great care in not offending anyone. It should be interesting!
As a naturalist and scientist he is clearly admirable, and his contribution to science is almost unfathomable. Only now I am starting to think that the human being he simply was is also worthy of our admiration and respect.

Richard Feynman

In between the books for book club I have been reading The Pleasure of Finding Things Out by the late Richard Feynman. He was a theoretical physicist who did great things (that neither you or I would probably understand) in quantum mechanics and electrodynamics. He was also on the Manhattan Project, which you will recall was a group of scientists commissioned by the Army to build the first atomic bomb.

But the thing that I like about him, and about reading about him is that he seems like he was a cool (but quirky) guy. Sure he could do calculus in his head, but he was also really funny, and almost...like a kid. He wasn't arrogant, nor did he act super intellectual. He was just a big curious kid that happened to be good at math!

The part of the book I am reading now is about his time in Los Alamos when he was working on the bomb. And the story I just read was so funny I just have to share it with you!

So the way things were back then was that all the scientists were in Los Alamos, but the location of the plant where the Uranium was to be processed was elsewhere, and the people handling the stuff had no idea what they were doing. At the time the Army didn't want the two groups to mix, because they were afraid it would become easier for secrets to get out. They wanted the plant people to be in the dark. But it became apparent that they had to learn at least a little bit about what was going on in order to design the plant properly and not blow themselves to smithereens accidentally. So they sent Feynman up there to explain it all to them. Apparently they were amazed by him. In his own words "So I sat down and told them how it works...yak yak-all stuff which was elementary primer stuff back at Los Alamos, but they'd never heard any of it, so I turned out to be a tremendous genius to them. So from being rather primitive back there in Los Alamos, I was a super genius on the other end."

After he explained everything and everyone was amazed, the contractors etc. said they understood and asked him to come back in a month so they could show him their plans. So a month later he goes back and they take him into a giant room with a huge table covered in tons of blueprints (which he, Feynman, doesn't know how to read). They started explaining their strategy to him how all these valves and ventilators work but  because he is such a "genius" they didn't bother to explain to him how to read the plans assuming he already knew. Of course he did not. Feynman tried to follow, but he had no idea what the little boxes with crosses that were all over the plans were. Clearly they were important. At first he thought they were windows but that didn't work because some were not on walls, then he thought they might be some sort of valves. But he'd waited too long to ask! In his words "I want to ask them what it is. You must have been in this situation like this- you didn't ask them right away, right away would have been OK. But they have been talking a little bit too long. You hesitated too long. If you ask them now they'll say what are you wasting my time for?"

He looks at all the plans spread out everywhere. What was he going to do?! So he came up with a plan. He decided to point to one of the little boxes and ask "What happens if this valve gets stuck?" That way they would say either "nothing" which confirmed it was a valve, or they would say "That's not a valve that's a...whatever" and then he would know what it was. 

So he chose a random box and cross and pointed to it. In his words "What happens if this valve gets stuck? figuring they're going to say "That's not a valve sir, that's a window." So one looks at the other guy and says "Well, if that valve gets stuck," and they go up and down on the blueprint, up and down, the other guy up and down, back and forth, and they both look at each other and they turn around to me and say "You're absolutely right sir." So they rolled up the blueprints and away they went and we walked out."

Isn't that hilarious? He found the one mistake on the entire plan set by accident!

As he was leaving the Lieutenant that he was with said "You're a genius. I want to know how, how you do something like that." And Feynamn responded " You try to find out whether it's a valve or not."

The book is filled with stories like that! There is another one about how he stole top secret papers to prove that the security was less than stellar, or he used his wife's lingerie to secure a room for himself instead of sharing like everyone else did. He really just seems like a fun-loving likable brilliant guy.

The book before this one is called Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman! and also has some great stories in it.  His books have very little to do with describing physics. They are more a memoir of his life while he was doing physics. If you are looking for some light and fun reading, I highly recommend either of these books!

The Origin of AIDS

As a change from the physics kick my book club has been on the last few months we read a book about virology, biology, and the history of disease. The Origin of AIDS by Jacques Pepin, was an...I don't want to say "awesome" (because it is truly tragic)...but a brilliant book. I love a book that has more references than it does text!
Pepin chronicles the history, not only of the disease but of the research, the forensic investigation into the origin, and propagation of the deadliest disease to touch the modern world. He sleuthed out the truth buried in mounds of reports and papers published in the early to mid-20th century, and in long forgotten blood specimens hidden in freezers in central Africa. He presented data, clearly and fairly, and he warned against interpreting data that you don't understand (which was an excellent point!).
I thought the book was not only insightful in terms of the obvious topic, but also a fantastic example of the use of the scientific method, and an informative history of Africa during the era of colonialism.
Contrary to what many Americans might think, HIV and AIDS didn't originate within the homosexual community, but rather it was a disease acquired from chimpanzees, and initially transmitted through the unsterilized needles of colonial doctors trying to control (then) known diseases like African sleeping sickness, yaws, syphilis, malaria and leprosy. Only then did it spread to prostitutes and then later to Haiti where it finally encountered the US homosexual community. The story is a sad one, and tragic in the true sense of the word, but it was also encouraging in that science has been able to understand HIV and AIDS to the extent that has, and in such a short time. Only 20 years ago AIDS was considered an un-curable death sentence. But (and unfortunately this only applied to non-3rd world countries) now it is something that can be controlled and people can live long relatively healthy lives. Just look at Magic Johnson. He was diagnosed in 1991 I think.
Technically the book was profound too. It got scientific, but not in a gratingly boring kind of way. I'll admit that there was much more information than I really needed, but at the same time, in some cases I really appreciated it. For example I didn't know that the primate version of HIV is called SIV, and there are many variations within the chimp/gorilla/monkey populations around the world. I didn't know that because SIV has been around in primates for a couple thousand years, most of them are immune to it now (the ones that weren't died off long ago and never reproduced). Hopefully the story of HIV and humans will eventually play out in the same manner. I didn't know there was an HIV-1 and HIV-2. I didn't know that HIV-1 had subtypes, the most common being HIV-1 M, but additionally there is an N, O, and P each indicating a different cross-species transmission from ape (or monkey) to human. That fact was especially amazing to me for some reason. There was just tons and tons of fascinating information like that throughout the book.
Like I said before, at the same time that the story was tragic, it was also inspiring. The contrast between the devastating topic, and the medical genius that finally discovered it's MO, was a little difficult to navigate emotionally at times, but it was absolutely worthwhile read.
I definitely recommend it, not only as an interesting scientific topic, but also as a wonderful example of the use of the scientific method, and a piece of recent history. It's a piece of history we still are a part of, and I think it is worth while to try to understand it.

Book Review: Turing's Cathedral

Last month for book club we read Turing's Cathedral by George Dyson. It's basically a history of the invention of the digital computer. To be honest I thought the book (not the subject) was pretty awful. It was tough to read and there were a lot of tangents, and unrelated information. It was sort of all over the place, and for no reason. One of the members in my book club (after watching an interview) even thought the author George Dyson, might even have a learning impediment. But I did still manage to take away a few interesting points. The first is that I didn't realize how much of our technology came about because of military projects. Computers and then the Internet etc, all of that came from military programs and research. The digital computer was invented to help calculate blast radius of hypothetical nuclear explosions, and to decode encrypted German messages. Crazy hu? It's interesting to note too that when the military "declassified" information the technology it became available to everyone, whereas if the Internet,or computers would have been invented by a private company, they would have had a monopoly and control,and things would be very different (much more expensive) now I think. So that's one cool thing about it all coming from where it did.

The other thing I thought that was interesting albeit sad, was the tragic end of Alan Turing himself. Apparently despite his genius, and his contributions as a mathematician and scientist the thing that most people of his day remembered him for was the fact that he was gay. In the 1950's in Britain, being gay was actually illegal. So he was stripped of his security clearance, kicked off his job and humiliated, and given the choice between the spending the rest of his life in prison or being chemically castrated. He chose the latter. Two years later he committed suicide. 

It makes me angry that his sexual orientation was allowed to overshadow everything else in his life including his professional and scientific accomplishments. It's so ridiculous. Look at all the progress he made, who cares if he's gay? In a way I feel like we've come a long way form those times, but then just last week, I saw all this stuff about the CEO of Chick-fil-A being anti-gay marriage, and I think to myself WTF? Why is this still an issue? Sigh...

Anyway, like I said, the book itself wasn't great, and I wouldn't recommend it really, but at the same time, it was a good starting point to learn something interesting about how our good old PC's came about.

John Muir

As is my wont to do, I was aimlessly perusing the bookshelves at the library the other day and came across a compilation of nature essays by the naturalist, and early conservationist John Muir.
This past winter while visiting the Visitors Center in Yosemite Valley I had a chance to look at an exhibit about him, and thought to myself that I should look up some of his writing...it only took me six months!
Anyway, he is a wonderful writer. I especially loved his essays on Yosemite. His writing style is a mix between textbook accuracy and a romance novel (the old-fashioned kind, not the seedy modern ones), and you can really sense the love he had for all things natural and wild, and the gentile, quiet, no-frills kind man that he was. His  flowery way of describing the wilderness is sort of peaceful to read, and is such that I can picture it easily in my mind. The sharp blue of the sky, the specific degree of fluffiness of a squirrels tale, the sound of a  stream as it flowed, all clearly imaginable and at my mental fingertips!
He was a great nature writer, a precursor to the likes of Barry Lopez, and Edward Abbey, and a true lover of the wild. (If you are interested I am sure you could find examples of his essays on the Internet.)
Here are a couple quotes that I jotted down while I was reading two essays about Yosemite. One was about the High Sierra, and the other about the kinds of animals in the Park. Enjoy!

"Former experience had given good reason to know that passionate storms, invisible yet, might be brooding in the calm sungold."


What a fine traveling companion [the creek] it proved to be, what songs it sang, and how passionately it told the mountains own joy!"


"In so wild and so beautiful a region was spent my first day, every sight and sound inspiring, leading one far out of himself, yet feeding and building up his individuality."


"But the darkest scriptures of the mountains are illuminated with bright passages of love that never fail to make themselves felt when one is alone."


"How glorious a greeting the sun gives the mountains. To behold this alone is worth the pain of any excursion a thousand times over!"

A Primate's Memoir

I just finished reading A Primate's Memoir by Robert Sapolsky. I've read some of his other stuff, and even purchase a neuroscience lecture series he did for the Teaching Company. But this was by far the most entertaining. Some of his other books are more informative, but this one was..pure pleasure to read. I got a happy feeling every time I flipped it opened and started the next chapter.
The book is generally about his years working in Africa studying baboons. But it's so much more than that as well. It's about him personally, the transition from starry-eyed grad student to Stanford professor. It's about the recent history of the African nations, it's about the native and indigenous people he met and befriended.  It's about triumph and tragedy, human nature, and animal nature. It was both super funny and incredibly sad.
Sapolsky is a scientist, but he's also hilarious. And he has a no nonsense, no embarrassment sort of approach to everything whether he is talking about injustice, death, race, sex or feces. Sometimes it's sort of shocking, other times it's really funny. I found the paragraph where he describes getting horrible diarrhea in the middle of the night while his camp was being overrun by curious elephants to be particularly entertaining.
It was a wonderful book, and I 100%....no, 200% (if that were possible)  recommend this book to anyone who likes travel writing, science writing, or just a darn good read. You will not be disappointed!!!

A Walk in the Woods

I just read A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson (he also wrote a Brief History of Everything), and it was awesome. It was pretty hilarious, especially the beginning and I appreciated his novice take on hiking and the wilderness in general.
The book is non-fiction and about his attempt to hike the entirety of the Appalachian Trail. His hiking companion is a recovering alcoholic/drug addict high school buddy he hadn't seen in years. Katz (as his friend is called) was the last person in the world you'd want to go hiking with, but that made for a funny story.
He goes expounds upon the many dangers associated with leaving the suburbs and heading off into the wilderness, and contemplates all the ways he could die, from bears to serial killers, to exposure. I totally reccommend this book to anyone who has a sense of humor, and enjoys the irony of humans trying to adapt back into the wild.

Evolutionary Psychology

One of the many books I have been concurrently reading is called The Moral Animal by Robert Wright. And I have to say that out of all the books I've read recently, this one is by far the best. And by the best I mean that my mind is blown every few pages. I've spent a couple hours actually reading it, and several days contemplating the implications the author asserts. I'm only half way done, but it's so compelling that I thought I'd write about the subject now, and maybe post some thoughts about the content again later.
The book is a summary of the history of, and current research being conducted, in the rather adolescent field of evolutionary psychology.
This new branch of science is, in and of itself, a fascinating concept. Where psychology is the study of human thought and emotion, evolutionary psychology is the inquiry into why we have thoughts and feelings in the first place, and how hundreds of thousands of years of evolution has shaped our interpretation of a moral self.
The biggest insight to me has been the kinds of questions that evolutionary psychology asks. It addresses questions that most of us have probably never even considered. For example. Pornography (I just finished reading the section on this so I'll use it as an example since it's freshest in my mind). Everyone knows it's more of a "guy" thing than a girl thing. (I'm not stereotyping, it's been documented.)  But evolutionary psychology asks why don't women feel the same way about it? It asks why does it take an entire romance novel to convince a woman of the same feelings that a Playboy centerfold can produce in a guy in two seconds? The end result is the same (sex) but the road to get there is totally different. It goes further to ask the question why do men  become physically...agitated by a two dimensional image of a naked woman, but not compelled into fatherhood by a similar image of a baby? Likewise a woman can see a naked man on paper and not be impressed at all, but will resort to making kissy faces at an ad for diapers with a cute baby smiling on the page (again, not stereotyping, it's documented).
Aren't those interesting questions?  I mean there has to be something to it, because you don't see pubescent boys locking themselves in their bedrooms and fantasizing about being dad's, or teenage girls aspiring to be porn stars.
It's amazing to me to realize that I've overlooked so many weird things we humans to because they are "normal" for us. But when you step back, and approach our humanity with a more critical eye, you begin to notice disparities in our actions that our own intellect can detect once properly focused. Like I said before, mind blowing!
OK, that's all for now but stay tuned for more!

"Thoreau" the Forest and Off the Grid...

I know someone who has decided to give up everything (i.e. career, house, etc.) and live off the land in a trailer in Oregon somewhere. And I don't know what I think about that. On the one hand the thought of getting away from the stress, and (what I consider) ridiculous obligations that most of have seems like a great idea. Living off the land, whittling wood, picking my nose(and doing other things that people who have nothing to do find to occupy themselves) seems just great.
But then I don't know. I mean what if I break my leg and need to have it set? What if I have a hankering for Taco Bell that I just can't get past? What if I want to watch the Super Bowl, or go shopping? What if I want a steak for dinner?
I like the idea of going off the grid, but I think I like the convenience of urban life more.
You know who had the right idea? H.D. Thoreau. His Walden Pond for all it inspired his work on nature and ecology was only about two miles away from downtown Concord . Apparently he could see the train go by from his little cabin! (For some reason I always imagined it being out in the middle of nowhere.) Anyway...maybe that would be my style. Solidude in the middle of everything?