Evolutionary biology
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On smell.
Humans actually smell pretty well … and scents affect our emotional wellbeing. Shouldn’t we want places of healing to smell good?
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On animals that speak, including humans.
Tom Wolfe & Noam Chomsky both claim that no other animals are capable of anything like human speech … while scientists are finally learning to listen.
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On Edward Dolnick’s ‘The Seeds of Life’ and artificial wombs.
Among the smooth guardian frogs of Borneo, females croon to the males, attempting to woo a mate. This is abnormal for frogs: usually females are serenaded. But males of this species are the most devoted parents – they guard the fertilized eggs and carry tadpoles from pond to pond after they hatch. Whereas the females…
creator gods, Drona, Edward Dolnick, Egyptian mythology, evolution, feminism, Hindu mythology, Indian mythology, mate choice, mating practices, mythology, myths, parental effort, paterogenesis, pregnancy, semen, smooth guardian frogs, The Seeds of Life, unilateral reproduction, Wendy Doniger, Women Androgynes and Other Mythical Beasts
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On storytelling.
Our myths engulf each other… but some stray remnants live on.
amoeba, animal life, Avigdor Shinan, Baal, Babylonian myths, Bible, biology, cellular biology, Christianity, dragons in bible, Eden, evolution, From Gods to God, Genesis, great whales, Jesus, King James, Marduk, mitochondria, morality, myth, mythology, narrative, Old Testament, origin of Bible, origin stories, paradise, polemic, Quran, reframing, religion, Religion in Human Evolution, Robert Bellah, science, sea dragons, sea monsters, storytelling, teleological misconception, Tiamat, Tower of Babel, Umberto Cassuto, Valerie Zakovitch, Yahweh, Yair Zakovitch
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On naked mole-rats.
Naked mole-rats shrug off pain, & cancer, & even time itself… but can they withstand the curiosity of Homo sapiens?
age-related diseases, age-related mortality, aging, animal cognition, animal research, animal welfare, anoxia, anoxia resistance, apoxia resistance, breeding, caloric restriction, cancer, cancer immunity, cancer resistance, cancer susceptibility, carbon dioxide poisoning, chemotherapy, Christopher Byrd, civil war, compassion, cooperation, cooperative childcare, Creep, cruelty, David Stipp, death curve, Eliot Weinberger, environmentalism, eusocial, eusocial mammals, eusociality, evolution, evolution of eusociality, food insecurity, fructose, Fructose-driven glycolysis, glucose, good stewardship, high-molecular-mass hyaluronan, hit single, hyaluronan, hypoxia, immortality, jail poetry, Jennifer Jarvis, Karmic Traces, lab mice, Laboratory Animal Welfare Act, laboratory animals, laboratory research, lifespan, lifespan elongation, limited senescence, longevity, mating habits, metabolism, mutation, Naked Mole-Rats, naked molerats, New Yorker, Norman Dubie, observation, opiates, Orange and Peanuts for Sale, Oranges and Peanuts for Sale, oxidation, oxidative stress, oxygen deprivation, pain, painkillers, Park et al., poetry, prison poetry, Radiohead, recycling, research animals, Richard Alexander, Selective Inflammatory Pain Insensitivity, Stalin, starvation, stroke, The Biology of Naked Mole-Rats, The Ghosts of Birds, The Marshall Cloud, Thomas Park, Tian et al., tumor, tumor resistance, tumorogenesis, What Happened Here, Xiao Tian
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On elephants.
We humans have treated elephants abysmally — not in spite of their magnificence, but because of it.
animal abuse, animal cognition, Animals Strike Curious Poses, broken families, Ciaran Berry, circus, dance, ecotourism, electricity, electrocuting an elephant, Elena Passarello, elephant brains, elephants, environmental destruction, exploitation, high school, hippocampus, Jumbo II, male role models, memory, post traumatic stress disorder, prom, PTSD, Ringling Brothers, tool use, torture, wayward youth
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On theft and bullying.
Is it fair for the biggest kid on the playground to steal your lunch? What about the cleverest?
Bill Watterson, bullying, Calvin and Hobbes, Cathy O’Neil, civil war, contract theory, Darling I Love You, dumb money, equality, fairness, false belief, financial misconduct, graft, hedge funds, high-frequency traders, human nature, inequality, Leviathan, Ludwig Wittgenstein, might makes right?, Mutts, Patrick McDonnell, Philosophical Investigations, state violence, stealing, Syria, the natural world, theft, Thomas Hobbes, violence, Weapons of Math Destruction, white collar crime
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On romantic failure.
If only those low-status seals –or our low-status president –- calmed their desires with some Auden.
A Naked Singularity, Andrew Bromfield, anemone, BBC Earth, dating, Donald Trump, erotic literature, fur seals, inter-species sex, king penguins, macaque, Matt Walker, monkey having sex with deer, orangutans, President Trump, rape culture, relationships, romance, science, seal sex with penguins, seals having sex with penguins, Sergio De La Pava, sexual assault, sika deer, The Clay Machine Gun, The Platonic Blow, Victor Pelevin, Virginia Morell, W. H. Auden
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On fairness (and how we treat the utility monster).
How do you measure someone’s capacity for joy? And what does that say about our opiate epidemic?
animal welfare, Betham, competetive equilibrium, distribution of resources, distribution of wealth, economics, equality, evolution, fairness, heroin, heroin epidemic, human evolution, mass incarceration, Milton Friedman, moral philosophy, natural selection, negative externalities, opiate abuse, opiate epidemic, opportunity, Pareto optimal, Pareto optimality, political philosophy, survival of the fittest, tax policy, utilitarian, utilitarianism, utility monster, utility theory, War on Drugs
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On post-apocalyptic historical fiction (and Neanderthals).
Neanderthals were human, and now they are gone. How did the last survivor feel?
apocalypse, cannibalism, Collapse, cross-species mating, depression, DNA sequencing, extinction, food taboos, homelessness, Homo sapiens, human evolution, human extinction, Moore’s law, Neandertal, Neandertal DNA, Neandertal genes, Neandertal religion, Neanderthal, Neanderthal DNA, Neanderthal genes, Neanderthal religion, Paul Kingsnorth, post-apocalyptic historical fiction, religion, symbolic behavior, The Wake
Frank Brown Cloud 