Books

Summary Dawkins argues that the fundamental unit of natural selection is at a gene level. He then continues to build the world from single genes into what we see today, explaining why many different behaviors that are confusing at first, when examined from the “gene’s eye view” they start to make sense. If you have heard of Darwin, then odds are you’ve heard the phrase “survival of the fittest”, but the question that this statement raises is, survival of what? The fittest claw? The fittest lion? The fittest pride? The fittest species? Dawkins makes the case that what is surviving is the gene and for this to work he defines gene slightly different than a geneticist would. He says a gene is the smallest single or collection of chromosomal material that lasts enough generations to act as a unit of natural selection. An easily understandable example would be the gene for blue eyes. On the face of it this definition seems circular, by definition he can’t be wrong. Genes — segments of chromosomal material — are the smallest trait-carrying units we know of, so if natural selection exists, it must start there. One might be tempted to ask why he didn’t define genes as a group or single quark that exists together long enough to be a unit of natural selection, but he spends a fair bit of time expanding this definition into less of a tautology and more of a theory. One interesting question the comes up is if natural selection is at the gene level and logically therefore all genes are acting selfishly (anthropomorphizing to help us think about the situation), then why would they band together with competing genes to form flesh suits, or elm trees? To answer this he brings in the concepts of replicators and vehicles. Another term he uses throughout the book was survival machines, this was a clever choice as it applies to anything that is alive, plants, animals, etc. Dawkins says that genes are the replicators and survival machines are their vehicles. So since we are already anthropomorphizing, I don’t think it would be too much of a stretch to picture a chromosome behind the wheel of a car on a speeding highway trying not to die, the car in this case would anything from single celled amoeba, to a giraffe. When we come back to reality of course this does not work in this way, as a single gene has next to no control over where a bat is going, or over the next word I type. But Dawkins chooses to zoom in on the “next to nothing” influence, because if you put enough next to nothings together, you just might have something! ...

Summary Follows the back-and-forth progress of “civilization” in the wild west, with an emphasis on the role Comanches played in that drama. Thoughts The strength of this book lies in the larger-than-life characters that this little bit of history provides. You have the tough as nails Mackenzie, who tenaciously chases the Comanches as they manage to outmaneuver every force the US government sends their way. You have Cythia Ann Parker, who was kidnapped by the Comanches and raised as one of their own and of course her son, Quanah, who is depicted as a fearless military genius. These characters will stay with me for a while. I am too illiterate to make comments about the historical voracity of the authors claims, but to a layman it seemed like he was even handed in his treatment of both sides. In our current cultural moment, he might have been too even handed. There are of course many things that struck me while going through this experience. One of the craziest things to me was the apparent mutation of Comanche culture when introduced to the horse. It was as if they had this latent superpower that was waiting around to be unlocked. From what Gwynne describes it sounds like their skills in horsemanship were only rivaled by the renowned riders of the Steppe. This book also made me realize that hidden in the “ugly duckling” troupe is a lie, and a somewhat insidious one at that. So you have a character that is somehow different from the group. Due to these differences that character gets mercilessly mocked and ostracized. A moment of transformation happens, not to the ugly duckling but to the ones viewing the ugly duckling. They realize that the ugly duckling is actually a swan, and as swan, in some senses their superior. The moral of the story of course is that differences are beautiful and should be embraced. Live your truth and others will eventually follow. Everyone has something that makes them special etc. etc. What I never realized is that there is a slight of hand in these stories that undercuts the moral. The real message of these stories is that group values are sacrosanct, immutable. The ugly duckling is now accepted, not because of some group realization, but from a re-categorization, that is to say that he was actually a beautiful swan the whole time. But what of the real ugly duckling? The ugly Betty that can’t take off her glasses. Herein lies the truth, to the group there is no rebirth, no accommodation. This was tragically played out in the life of Cythia Ann Parker; she is the true ugly duckling. Adopted by the same Comanches who orphaned her, she transforms into a Comanche, but when forcibly “rescued” by whites she cannot or will not transition back. As such she continues to her dying day to be a true oddity. Her son on the other hand, makes the transition into the whites’ expected vision of him. He is accepted inasmuch as he can manage to become white. This book was a really interesting read and has my recommendation.

And if it be objected that we belong to a time of crude force our answer is : We stood with our feet in mud and blood, yet our faces were turned to things of exalted worth. And not one of that countless number who fell in our attacks fell for nothing. Summary Storm of Steel is the firsthand account of the German officer Ernst’s Junger’s time in the trenches during WW1. ...

Summary Sally Adee, a well-published science and technology journalist, writes her first book about a major shift she has been witnessing in biology, and it all has to do with electricity. She opens the book with a brief history of what we know about electricity and how we discovered what we do know. Spoiler alert: it includes a lot of frogs. The main thing she wanted to highlight was that during the beginning of research into electrical phenomena, the field quickly branched into two directions. One branch focused on what was called animal electricity, while the other focused more on non-animal electricity. At this early stage of research, neither branch had reliable tools to conduct empirical science. There was a high degree of speculation in both fields, but with the breakthrough of the first battery, this quickly changed, at least for non-animal electricity. Suddenly, there was a reliable way to create, measure, and distribute this mysterious energy. When it came to animal electricity, there were no such tools to reliably create results, yet the claims held an intuitive weight and were picked up by many scientists and many more quacks. Eventually, there were so many scandals involving wild, unsubstantiated claims that the whole field of animal electricity was dismissed as pseudoscience. Technology kept improving, and eventually, measurement tools got precise enough to handle the tiny charges created by biological organisms, vindicating much of the early animal electricity scientists. However, their theories about how electricity actually worked in the body were correct only in the broadest sense. Much of the theories had to be thrown out or reworked in the one step forward, two steps back investigation of science. So what does this promising approach to biology offer us? Quite a bit. Scientists have utilized it for a while to stimulate hearts with pacemakers or calm down brains with epilepsy. Beyond this, being able to manipulate our electrome (as Adee calls it) holds tantalizing promises of faster wound healing, limb regeneration, reversing cancer, and slowing aging. The catch is that the system is much more complicated and interconnected than any of man-made electronics. Adee explains that instead of simple positive-negative wires exchanging electricity in our body, we utilize charge differentials in chemicals themselves. Each cell in your body acts like a little battery with the capacity to become more negatively or positively charged than its surroundings. Each cell also has ion channels that allow specific molecules in or out, depending on the state of the overall system. The takeaway here is we have only relatively recently begun to realize the role that electrical charges play in the nervous system. Now, we are discovering that this same mechanism for communication extends through every cell in your body. At this point, we don’t know enough to manipulate these distributed electrical systems precisely, but being able to do so looks like the biggest hurdle between us and a medical revolution. ...

I’ve been reading this a lot recently, for my own pleasure of course, and I can’t help but picture a dark clear night in the deserted streets of Moscow. A homeless Ivan leans back emptying the contents of a clear glass bottle into his bottomless stomach. He trips over a curb and falls, landing on his back. His head cracks against something sharp and solid. Tasting metal in his mouth, he feels something warm start to trickle down his back. Unable to move he stares into the dark sky. He can only see the brightest of stars, the rest, like so many potential futures left unrealized, are hidden by light pollution. In the distance he can hear a train’s lonely call, the walls of the sleeping city echo back their ghostly replies. While nearby, giant smokestacks exhale their black life into this last night of nights. Completely alone, his voice barely above a whisper he says ...

Long-form notes on Lecky’s moral history—the same piece as under Reviews, listed here as an essay.

Also available as a long essay. Thoughts This book was thoroughly enlightening but quite dry and dense and around 850 pages. This is partially why I have written such an extensive summary hoping to convey some of the themes that I think are important to know without just saying “read the book”. When it comes to topics like morality it is easy to have an axe to grind. Lecky provides what appears to me to have been an even-handed recounting of this slice of history. This book is full of useful information and interesting context that is often lost when trying to understand the events of history. I am sure there are mistakes and misunderstandings, but there is so much else that is of value that what few mistakes there are will be dwarfed by the new perspective given to the reader. I found myself often copying large sections of the text while in other parts leaving surprised questions marks when a new fact that sounded preposterous turned out to be true. If you have the time, this book is worth it. ...

So I listened to this as a dramatic reading while driving to and from Cincinnati, and I think this is how I will consume Shakespeare plays from now on. The actors have had to do all the work of translating the archaic language and sentence structure into universal feeling which made the play much easier to digest. I also mostly listened to this so I could really appreciate the hidden subtleties of this skit. ...

Summary This follows the main character, sixteen-year-old Holden Caulfield, for a couple of days after he is once again kicked out of school for his failing grades. Knowing that he has a couple of days before his parents receive the notice, Holden decides to wander around the town. The story ends up unfolding over a weekend, starting on a Saturday and ending the following Monday afternoon. Thoughts First of all, I can’t write this review without talking about the style. From the start of the first paragraph to the end of the last line, Salinger’s style never stopped annoying me. This is because he decided to write it from the subjective viewpoint of Holden, who, as I said, was a teenager in the ’40s. Thus, the story is written in the lingo of a teenager from the ’40s. This means that all the things that you would typically do to write well are thrown out the window in favor of keeping the narration somewhat similar to how a teenager would actually talk. The overall effect is, as one book critic put it, “like mainlining castor oil.” ...

This book sets out to answer the question that most people have thought about once or twice, but quickly dismiss because they are afraid of where their intuitions take them. The question is, why did certain civilizations advance into “civilized” modern cultures while others seemed to have gotten left behind in the stone age. Why does the UN exist in the same timeline as people who are still hunting with stone weapons? What might intuition say? Probably some form of “manifest destiny”. Well, that sort of thinking is thankfully inappropriate in our current discourse, but this self-censorship kills the question before a reasoned and viable alternative is presented. Therefore, due to the fear of your probably racist intuitions, you don’t spend enough time to see how they could possibly be wrong, you just ignore them like your aunt with the bad breath and close hugs. Well, Jared Diamond wants to give you some reasons you can look at that aunt with bad breath and show her the door. ...