Humans are not good or bad, rather complex and beautiful !! This has been my personal pursuit as well as my learning principle in all my OB classes. I feel as teacher - I need to present this spirit of able "to take perspective" with all my students with whom I get opportunity to share my thoughts. Robert Sapolsky makes the work easy with solid scientific evidences in his new book "Determined". Whatever we think as "free intent" indeed is product of what has happened a second before, a minute before, days before, months before and years before in your biology and in your environment. No one is more entitled, or no one has earned something to be treated in better or worst manner than others. We are just product of biological and environmental luck. Here is summary argument of his book in video scribe video I attempted. Would love to know your opinion..

A book about systems biology without being a book about systems biology. An easy read, with no math and simple examples, bringing a good understanding on the interconnected-ness of things. #systemsbiology #systemsthinking

This book reminded me of the role played by our gurus/mentors/preceptors in introducing a subject/topic and make it interesting. Needless to say, personally I found the subject of biology & with its terrifying names always ennui. But having read this book and one more by the same author, an entirely new interest was piqued in the subject. The ability to explain complex ideas in a simple form and weave a story around it not only serves to increase the knowledge but also engages the attention of the reader and appreciate the subject better. The book lays out brilliantly the concept of the human cell and its development and the function performed by each cell/organisation of cells (tissues/organs) instead of treating it like a subject as its taught in high school. P.S : Each cell can be considered to be a metaphor for an individual.

Why we die Very good new book by Noble Prize winner Venki Ramakrishnan. Best summarized by himself:  “what I've tried to do is give the general reader a real understanding of the biology of aging so that even a complete non-scientist can get an understanding of the processes, which in turn empowers them to take action to do the sort of things that will actually really help. And also it'll guard them against excessive hype . . .” Our own summary of his summary: Stay true to science. Avoid the hype. Read it!

Karl, As the full moon expresses, I have been reflecting on some of the ongoing "bio+region" articulations rippling around too . One Earth has also been a great resource for me these last few months as I work on a comprehensive curation project. Although, I am "way finding" from an entirely different point of reference...more to follow soon! I appreciate you exploring the "literature" with such detail. Is it any wonder there is so much noise and dissonance out there related to starting point? If in essence, the point of all this inquiry, interest and investment, is to focus on being and doing all things life, from a place of presence and reciprocal harmony, why divert our attention, aspirations or intentions with anymore incoherent fields of nonsense and deflection? What is the point?

There is controversy swirling around the term "bioregion" so I just did an extensive literature review of the 65,000 scholarly articles and books published on the topic. What I unearthed is an intriguing case of the same word being used for two quite different praxes. It's a bit in the weeds, but fascinating and worth the trip back in time to discover where the word came from (hint: it's blue and tasty). https://lnkd.in/gw4g-G_p

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What started mid-last year with some podcasts and an audiobook (that I only half-finished) turned into some short Coursera courses in late fall and eventually snowballed into taking a full college-level intro Biology course, which I finally finished tonight. A lot of late nights watching lectures and completing problem sets in January and February got me here and because I don't know how to leave well enough alone, I'm already a few weeks into intro Chemistry and am starting Genetics later this month. Xanthan gum was my gateway drug and now I'm fully hooked on synthetic biology. #syntheticbiology #precisionfermentation

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