Meteorite in the garden

I think it's so utterly cool that this married couple discovered that the big rock decorating their garden was a meteorite that started its journey to Earth half a billion years ago. I write this post full well knowing that meteorites commonly strike our planet: there have been 1,086 meteorite "falls" (witnessed impacts) and 38,660 meteorite "finds" in the history of our planet. I once had the privilege to view the Barringer Crater in Arizona, a crater extending .73 miles in diameter caused by a meteorite impact only 40,000 years ago. I tend to think of the Earth as stable and the meteorites are striking us. The truth is that all of us are streaking through space on a huge rock we call Earth. It's equally amazing that the solar system once did not exist and that it will one day cease to exist. We are privileged to be cognizant of this amazing tour of space, passengers who are lucky to be alive and lucky to be conscious of this experience, all of us touring on the skin of our planet. All of this constitutes the most amazing and true story ever, but I've never yet read any of this in any newspaper headline.

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We’re letting our children down.

Look what advertising has so often come to: img_2567The advantage of going with this company is that they won't hit you with "hidden fees." They won't cheat you. Much food packaging and advertising is comparable. We won't poison you with strange chemicals! Zero grams of trans fats! All natural!

America... just a nation of two hundred million used car salesmen with all the money we need to buy guns and no qualms about killing anybody else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable.

- Hunter S. Thompson

But it gets worse. In our schools we work hard to teach our children civility and kindness. For instance, take a look at this wonderful set of "Rules to Live By" displayed at New City School, in St. Louis Missouri. Who could possibly dispute the importance of any of these rules? These characteristics precisely describe the kinds of children we want to raise, right?

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Now consider the accusations that we commonly hear as the centerpiece of media stories, especially political media stories. They are full of untruths, untrustworthy characters, refusal to listen and tons of vicious put-downs. Our conflict-pornography obsessed news media works hard every day to undo the lessons we so carefully teach our children. There is something terribly wrong with us. Fixing this lack of truth and civility should be one of our highest priorities. One easy suggestion is to turn off the television or radio whenever they report fake news that is really conflict pornography. Label it as not-news and just shut it off. Or, better yet, switch over to real news like Democracy Now with Amy Goodman, where you'll hear truth from a trustworthy reporter, who will actively listen to her guests and offer absolutely no put downs.

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So tempting to anthropomorphize . . .

This National Geographic video on cockroaches is fascinating by its own rights, but the quote at the 30 second mark sounded like information that might apply to more than a few of the annoying people in the news: "The cockroach doesn't really have a brain per se, but it has instinct and a ferocious desire to survive and reproduce."

Continue ReadingSo tempting to anthropomorphize . . .

The human edge: our ideas have sex

In the Wall Street Journal, Matt Ridley argues that human beings haven't flourished because of anything we do individually. Rather, it is our ability to share and to building upon previous ideas of others--it is our "collective intelligence":

The notion that exchange stimulated innovation by bringing together different ideas has a close parallel in biological evolution. The Darwinian process by which creatures change depends crucially on sexual reproduction, which brings together mutations from different lineages. Without sex, the best mutations defeat the second best, which then get lost to posterity. With sex, they come together and join the same team. So sex makes evolution a collective and cumulative process in which any individual can draw on the gene pool of the whole species. And when it comes to gene pools, the species with gene lakes generally do better than the ones with gene ponds—hence the vulnerability of island species to competition with continental ones.

It is precisely the same in cultural evolution. Trade is to culture as sex is to biology. Exchange makes cultural change collective and cumulative. It becomes possible to draw upon inventions made throughout society, not just in your neighborhood. The rate of cultural and economic progress depends on the rate at which ideas are having sex. . . . So here is the answer to the puzzle of human takeoff. It was caused by the invention of a collective brain itself made possible by the invention of exchange. . . . Prosperity consists of getting more and more narrow in what you make and more and more diverse in what you buy. Self-sufficiency—subsistence—is poverty.

Ridley concludes that this inexorable building upon prior ideas by sharing them is ultimately a "cheery" one (he points to reduced child mortality and increased per capita income worldwide), despite the occasional setbacks.

Continue ReadingThe human edge: our ideas have sex