Sunday, January 28, 2024

The Upright Ape: A New Origin of the Species by Aaron G. Filler

     The author presents evidence that evolution is not gradual with many steps over many years to make a significant change, but happens quickly in a generation with the assimilation of a single mutation. For example, in insects the nerve chord runs along the front of the animal facing the ground with the digestive track running along the back facing the sun. Vertebrates have the opposite arrangement. Perhaps one mutation flipped the insect version to the vertebrate version.

     The discovery of the Moroto vertebra showed that 21 million years ago a mutation occurred that created a new type of body plan: the hominoid body plan. This allowed hominoids to be bipedal. So our ancestors were bipedal that long ago and some descendants went back to the older way of walking but we didn't. 

    Although written for the general reader the book does give extensive details.

Monday, January 08, 2024

Mind: A Unified Theory of Mind and Intelligence by Frank T.Vertosick

 This is a fascinating book that describes all life as intelligent. Bacteria work as a group using genetics to adapt to threats. Humans takes years to develop an antibiotic but bacteria can defeat it in a year. Our immune system changes its own genes to remember antigens and learns millions over our lifetime. The author compares serial processing to the parallel processing of networks and shows how network processing creates intelligence.


Friday, June 23, 2023

Galapagos by Kurt Vonnegut

 This is the only book you need to read to understand the human condition.  It is brilliant. Humans have big brains, and flexible hands that get us into trouble. The blue-footed booby evolved on the Galapagos to have smaller wings and dive much better for fish. Here humans evolve to better adapt to the environment. A must read.

Sunday, May 14, 2023

The 10,000 Year Explosion by Gregory Cochran and Henry Harpending

 The authors explain that the genes in a population can vary quickly if they are successful. For example blue eyes spread rapidly as humans moved north. It takes larger populations for the effect to propagate rapidly and agriculture allowed population to grow. 

They also explain how the Ashkenazi Jews got their smarts. Jews in other parts of the world were not known for intelligence. They suggest that genetic variants facilitate the nervous system. With only one copy of the gene the nervous system is improved but theat gene causes disease with two copies, such as Tay-Sachs and others prevalent among Ashkenazi Jews. This is similar to the gene causing sickle-cell anemia among Africans. The 3/4 standard-deviation IQ difference means the Ashkenazi population has six times as may highly intelligent members 

Lee and Grant by Gene Smith

 This is a fascinating dual biography. Grant failed in everything he did until 1860. He became a great general in the Civil War. His fame spurred him to the presidency at which he wasn't very good. He was superlative at one thing, winning the war.

Wednesday, February 08, 2023

"Cause Unknown" The Epidemic Of Sudden Deaths in 2021 and 2022 by Edward Dowd.

Every statement is documented. There are many photos of actual cases.

Geons, Black Holes, and Quantum Foam: A Life in Science by John Archibald Wheeler

 Wheeler, a genius who always strived to understand, combines his personal development with the general knowledge of the time in a readable, fascinating story. His student Hugh Everett developed a many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics. "All of the things that might happen (with various probabilities) are in fact happening." This avoids the idea that classical measurements chooses one of these different quantum paths. 

In the chapter It From Bit Wheeler states "When a photon is absorbed, and thereby 'measured'--until its absorption, it had no true reality--an unsplittable bit of information is added to what we know of the world, and, at the same time, that bit of information determines the structure of one part of the world. It creates the reality of the time and place of that photon's interaction."   

In the chapter The End of Time. Time-reversal invariance means that for any motion that does occur or can occur, the motion is reverse is also possible. For large-scale events such as ripping a piece of paper in half, the reversal is possible but extremely unlikely so we won't experience it. Disorder is more probable that order so entropy increases. "The electron pays for its freedom to move forward and backward in time be remembering neither future nor past. We remember the past and are trapped in one-way motion through time." "It is more to be compared with temperature or entropy, concepts that take their meaning only when large numbers of particles are involved. Time, we must conclude, is of statistical origin, valid only when dimensions are large enough and conditions are not too extreme."

 

Thursday, December 01, 2022

Neurogastronomy: How the Brain Creates Flavor by Gordon M. Shepard

      Humans have a good sense of smell but it isn't by sniffing like dogs. Our smell is retronasal which happens when breathing out through the nose while chewing and tasting. Smell receptors are on the inside of the nose connecting to the olfactory bulb near the front of the brain. 

     Knowing that, I chew much more thoroughly and get more enjoyment. In fact the pathways followed are similar to those in addiction which makes sense because being motivated to eat seems like a definite survival skill.

Thursday, November 17, 2022

A Series of Fortunate Events by Sean Carroll

 This book shows the important role of chance. The asteroid that hit earth about 66 million years ago caused the large animals like dinosaurs to become extinct giving the opportunity for small mammals and later primates to thrive. If that asteroid had hit a few minutes earlier or later it would have landed in the ocean.  Continental drift is a slow process but the India plate is much thinner and moves a lot faster. Its crashing into Asia changed the climate to be more favorable to primates and then humans. So our species is lucky to be here. See also Full House by Steven Jay Gould that draws similar conclusions