Science can ruin your life

That is a true statement.  Just ask George Robert Price (but you had better call either the Ghostbusters or Beetle-breakfast).  He was a Renaissance Man of Science... Manhattan Project, Biological Chemistry and a professor at Harvard...  How weird.

It was his own science that did him in... and, as I am still working my way through his biography, I will say this about him: He seems like someone who had it all together, but carved his own throat out with scissors while in a great depressed state.

Nice, right?  And to think of all the ladies he could have had...

So this Price fella... he worked for sometime at Harvard, about two years or so.  He worked with a lab that was linked to the Manhattan project.  Other scientists wrote papers with him.  But fuck all that... it can be found on Wikipedia (as well as that sweet ass photo).

What I'm reading right now, or attempting to as it was written by a bunch of chimps it seems... is a book titled The Price of Altruism: George Price and the Search for the Origins of Kindness by Oren Harman. See, what this book details, and what Price found out, is that we are all programmed.

Here is an analogy: I am more genetically disposition to help save my brother's life (Patrick) in a hairy situation than to save a perfect stranger's life.  Price came up with a mathematical equation that represents the reasoning behind this.  And because of this genetic predisposition to put my genes on the line to save my brother (whom, by genetic certainty, has genes very similar to my own) I am subconsciously making a choice to make a sacrifice but also carry on my genes.

Seems legit, right?

Again, it would be time to ask Price...  Oh, wait.  We can't.  He's dead, you see.  It really fucked him up... ruined his life.  He left his wife, left his kids, no longer working with IBM or Argonne Labs (the Manhattan Project folks...) he moved to Britain.  

Price felt bad after all... he came up with this equation that proved there was no reason people were actually nice.  It all comes down to this... when you are farther away genetically from another person you are less likely to help due to this.  Want to donate a quarter to that man playing the saxophone on the street? Sure, go ahead...  Now, picture yours truly... an unshaven, un-showered Daniel out there... on the corner. I'm pretty sure it isn't a quarter in the case.

See?  His OWN science ruined him.

I might post more if I can get through this damn book... I'm fifty pages in and the main person was finally mentioned.  Really hard to get into a book about a guy when he isn't really in it.

But, here is a really cool quote from it:

"This was quite an idea, for the very essence of Darwin's theory, as he declared in The Origin of Species was that 'every complex structure and instinct' should be 'useful to the possessor.'  Natural selection could 'never produce in a being anything injurious to itself, for natural selection acts solely by and for the good of each'  And yet it did."

It's funny... that was mostly quotes from Darwin, with the writer filling in the gaps... but the equation and theory that our man Price came up with proved Darwin had only HALF of the picture.

Pretty sweet.

And now, I must go... 

More research is needed on next post.  I also might try and get through this book.  When I get to the equation, Pat, I will let you know.

Sherwood (the youngest)

Another Roadside Distraction

With as much stuff as I have going on right now, because of my South Central commute, I'm able to keep up some kind of reading schedule. Most of the time on the train I'm reading sports coverage on my phone, the trashy New York coverage that I liked so much while living there.

But the occasional book catches my attention, and right now is one of those times.

A few notes:

• This is another Douwntown Long Beach Dollar Bookstore discovery.
• This turned out to be Tom Robbins' first novel, and was published in 1971(!!!). I had no idea that Robbins was publishing that early--I always figured him for later that at least Gravity's Rainbow.
• This is, maybe unlike Trout Fishing in America, an actual Sixties touchstone/icon.
• It it pretty good; obviously from Robbins (if you know his work, like Murakami, you can tell who's writing it is); and it is nearly distracting me from my studies.
• I painstakingly wrote this post during a break in the action on a loaned iPad.

I say "nearly" because I'm not spending time at the house reading. 

Good stuff.

I'll report back later on this summer when I finally get a chance to finish it (I know you're both waiting with baited breath).

Dan, go for it! I haven't read the draft, but I'd love to read the post!

My Kind of "Pulp" Reading

What does it say about me that I choose the following book as my own kind of personal pulpy, trashy, cotton-candy like reads?:

The Night Lives On is the 1987 follow-up to Walter Lord's own 1955 A Night To Remember.

That's right: for me, quick "trashy"reads are non-fiction sequels to other non-fiction work.

In my defense, Walter Lord is an awesome writer and the two books are as fascinating and exciting as they are quick to devour.

When I was laid up on the couch I bought a copy of A Night to Remember for a penny plus shipping, it being the century anniversary for the Titanic disaster and I'd read an article about it.

Here they are together:

Walter Lord was born in 1917 in Baltimore. As a kid he rode on the Olympic, the Titanic's sister ship, and became nearly obsessed: how could something that immense sink? What would it look like and sound like and feel like? He majored in history, got a job writing copy in New York and wrote in his spare time. He interviewed as many survivors as he could convince to talk to him in the early 50s, while also pouring over transcripts of both the American and British hearings on the wreck

The result, published in 1955, is A Night To Remember. One thing that Lord introduced to the general discourse about the Titanic event was that he didn't paint the storyline through a prism of class. He described each person's reaction to the striking of the berg and the ensuing two hours through the prism of their own cultural understanding of their status.

That sounds wordy and doesn't convey how novel the idea was at the time, but in essence, the book reads like a newspaper article. And it comes in at just under 200 pages. And it's gripping as hell.

The book is still considered one of the most important accounts and resources on the sinking, and we're going on 60 years. There was the movie of the same name produced in 1958 with Lord's assistance, and even James Cameron had Lord hired on as an expert during the filming of his monster from 1997.

So, why would Walter Lord be inclined to write a follow-up?

The Night Lives On was conceived in the months after the discovery of the wreck in 1985. Lord wrote in the opening chapter of the book that he didn't think interest was that high on the Titanic wreck, that was until he got six calls for interviews in the first few weeks of the discovery.

A Night To Remember has some before and after material, but is mostly a minute-by-minute retelling of the night from every angle available.

The Night Lives On has more epilogue type stuff; more of the night of the "rescue" ships that would be on the scene the next morning; addresses the discrepancies in the different accounts; attempts to objectively look at every facet through its own context of the time; and still is an exciting book.

Taken together, they're just over 400 pages of doomed excitement.

At our downtown Dollar Bookstore I've found copies of both regularly in the chaotic paperback section. I've been thinking about buying them all up and sending out sets as gifts.

The Cabin needs a set for sure.

Happy 2014!

I haven't been posting to really anything for a while...Holly had the baby, and now Simon is a member of the clan. Corrie and I went out and did our own special brand of crazy shit, and lived to tell the tale.

I have a few ideas I want to put here, but now is not the time. I only have two things at the moment--besides wanting to make show off that we had 36 posts in both 2012 and 2013 (an average of one post a month for each of us!):

Here's a WTF? picture from Cambodia:

And here's an awesome poster; if the language is nearly too coarse, the messages resonates with me:

Some Things Don't Change

I mentioned in my last post about not using a car for everyday activities like "getting to work". I use a combination of the LA Metro and my bicycle. Some days, when I don't use my bike, I ride two separate trains and walk from the Vermont/Athens stop on the Green Line (look it up on Google Maps for an example of "in the 'hood").

But, yesterday as I was talking with Corrie, I realized that when I don't have a book to be reading, like:

(finished too quickly)

I find myself using a specific app on my smart phone: the New York Daily News Sports Page.

The News is one of the two trashy tabloids, along with the Rupert Murdock owned NY Post, that sell more in City than the revered Times. I enjoyed their sports writing...what can I say?

So, I find myself riding the train to work and reading the News' sports page.

Dispatch from Endor

I don't use a car for everyday life. "Anachronistic" isn't the correct word I'm thinking of, but that could be part of it. My personal circles of existence are small and, besides the cushy downtown neighborhood I roam around in on weekends, quite desolate and ugly.

South LA, while shedding the connotations that come with the "Central" part of the area's identity, retains a general malaise that floats in the air like the smell of dog fart and asphalt, a malaise that's still angry with police brutality and social injustice, but tired now and worn down and mostly devoid of hope. The threat of violence is mostly gone.

The work I'm doing makes up for the visceral day to day experience of biking or walking through the 'hood, but still...sometimes you need a break.

So that leads us to a few weekends ago, and a camping trip to an ancient grove nestled between two canyon walls, and old-school fern and redwood forest relatively close to us.

By "relatively close" I mean a hundred miles north...of San Luis Obispo.

Limekiln State Park is the name of the campground we went to, and it is unique in that it combines the rocky coast of Big Sur:

...With the fern and redwood forests of the forest moon of Endor:

And they're, like, maybe a thousand feet apart. Maybe less. A quick walk from the sand and boulders to our tent site. "Would you like the beach or the redwoods?" the lady at the camp's entrance asked about in which campsite region we'd like to be. We answered correctly, it turned out: redwoods.

The beaches sites were so windy and miserable at night that the cover the redwoods provided were well appreciated.

Since this is the late autumn, the day ends and the night begins, and you better be done with heavy lifting work of the evening by that time; no matter what time-pieces tell you the "time" is, your day is quickly coming to a close. You find yourself tired and ready for bed at quarter after seven.

So, as dusk approaches, we'd make dinner, get the fire going for warmth and desert s'mores and a connection to the most advanced technology from ten thousand years ago.

After dinner and liquid warmth, we'd head back over to the beach for sunset:

And be set for the next day's walk:

The reprieve from the everyday ugliness of my little circles was great, and I invite everyone to our little slice of Endor.

The even have giant kilns, like the name suggests:

Touching base...

I've been posting little things to many of my blogs today, and sometimes nothing but a sentence or picture. So, here, today, I'll be sharing a picture I captured from a video, and maybe I'll find a better one in the coming days as I do my analysis and reflection, but here's a taste.

(Triangles, Mr. Sherwood, & Malcolm X)

I'll be posting an explanation on some of my new nicknames or monikers in a bit, along with an idea about the kids and the neighborhood, but I've just been so crunched for time. It took a canceled grad class for me to get some time to throw some stuff up on these guys.

Dad, not that you're too concerned, but I have been scribbling out notes for my novel as they come to me while I'm in the school, so that project isn't being as adversely effected as the blogging by my time constraints.