The Latest and Loudest

Ten years after vowing to never use IM–and keeping the promise–I am trying out Twitter for an online biz I’m considering. And I like it fine.

So I’m looking for some people to “follow”. And to follow me.

I’m chris_robinson there.

Am I the only one that struggles with the idea that Earth is 4 BILLION years old? Because that strikes me as really, really old. Whenever I read about someone worth a billion dollars I always turn to my wife and say, “Do you know how much that is? It’s $999,999,999! Plus a dollar!”

But this…I can’t wrap my head around this. Four billion years? I mean recorded history is, what, six thousand years or so?

I think I’m going to take a detour from Dawkins’ book because I want to get comfortable with “radiometric dating“–the method scientists used to come up with that date.

The New York Times has a fascinating article about the dying tradition of women renouncing their gender to dress as, and take on the role of, men in a society where blood feuds are common:

For centuries, in the closed-off and conservative society of rural northern Albania, swapping genders was considered a practical solution for a family with a shortage of men. Her father was killed in a blood feud, and there was no male heir. By custom, Ms. Keqi, now 78, took a vow of lifetime virginity. She lived as a man, the new patriarch, with all the swagger and trappings of male authority — including the obligation to avenge her father’s death.

The associated pictures are great.

I’m reading Richard Dawkins, “The Selfish Gene“, as my book on evolution. It first went into print in 1976–I was six years old. But the general feeling is that it has held up very well. I intend to read no more than a chapter a day and to really try and think through the concepts.

Apparently, Dawkins overarching idea is that natural selection is all about assuring that genes are passed on at whatever cost. I literally am reading the preface, but Dawkins is taking pains to point out that he isn’t saying that genes are selfishly thinking, “Me, me, me, me, me.”, but rather that they behave in a way that is largely indistinguishable from your freshman year girlfriend. (more…)

So I’ve decided that I may not know as much as I think about what I think I know.

It seems to me that there are too many holes in my knowledge about subjects that many of us take for granted.

For example, I believe in evolution and I believe in democracy.

Or at least I think, I do.

But is evolution really best summed up as “survival of the fittest”?

Is democracy mostly just “one man, one vote”?

Heck, for that matter, what is “freedom”?

And how come it seems that suited cards are always taking pots from me, but so many authors claim that they are only a slight advantage over unsuited?

In the next year, I intend to pick a single book from each area and try to comprehensively understand five subjects: (more…)

So have I mentioned here that I play poker?

Maybe not, because I mostly play badly, but play I do.

And only one game, too: “No Limit Texas Hold ‘Em”.

Not 5-Card Draw.

Not Pot-Limit.

Not Omaha.

It’s No Limit Texas Hold ‘Em or nothing for me.

And the funny thing is, although I’m a serious donkey (that’s a bad player in Pokerese), I still win as often as not when I plunk down my $50 or $100 and sit in a game. This is for a simple reason: beginner’s luck. (more…)

Deepness.  Ever want to throw your hands up in despair at the state of Africa?

This is a TED Talk by Paul Collier, the author of “The Bottom Billion“, a book about the poorest billion people in the world, many of them concentrated in Africa, and how to really help them, as opposed to simply sending them a bunch of short-term money that leads to long-term dependence.

The best line? “…The two forces that changed the world for good: the alliance of compassion and enlightened self-interest.”

He argues (essentially) that, if those countries worse off continue to go backwards economically even as the world becomes smaller and more socially integrated, it will be a disaster for all of us.

The man almost gives me hope. I hope you’ll stick with it, if for no other reason than to hear him mention the “resource curse“, also known as the “paradox of plenty“) and see if it doesn’t make you think of examples closer to home.

I’ve seen a few of these TED Talks by now and this one has led me to finally bookmark their site. They bill them as “inspired talks by the world’s greatest thinkers and doers”.   Check them out.

My wife is seven months pregnant. So naturally, a friend just sent me a fascinating article on more scientific proof that some gays aren’t gay because television tells them that it’s cool, but because they really are born that way.

Slate magazine reports on more studies that suggest that homosexuality isn’t a choice, or even that it is genetic, but rather may be due to exposure to hormones in the womb. (more…)

So I posted yesterday about the male seahorses that give birth.  This led to someone mentioning the curious nature of Australia’s platypus.  Which is to say, the curious unnaturalness of it.  But then I thought, maybe we just don’t understand what natural is.

And THAT made me think of my favorite big new word: Parthenogenesis.

Apparently, a number of species are perfectly capable of simply giving birth to offspring with no fertilization necessary AT ALL. No sperm. No male.

She just kinda has an egg and it just kinda starts to grow and she just kinda gives birth to a child that has NO FATHER. (more…)

I’ve told many people that black folks were as surprised as anyone that a black man, any black man, had a chance at being president anytime soon. And that that lack of faith tempered black support, giving Obama a chance to be seen not as just the “black candidate” (or should I say the, “black’s candidate”?), but as a candidate that is black. And it made all of the difference.

Kevin Levin over at the blog, Civil War Memory, put up a very brief video response from historian John Hope Franklin on the matter.

Listening to the excitement of this 88 year-old black man helps me better understand the frustration of some older women over Hillary Clinton’s loss of the nomination.

Go check it out.