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we never evolved to exercise. What do I mean by that? Well, exercise today is most commonly defined as voluntary physical activity undertaken for the sake of health and fitness. But as such it is a recent phenomenon. Our not-too-distant
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“An emptiness comes from this combination of over-the-top nonnatural sources of reward and the inevitability of habituation; this is because unnaturally strong explosions of synthetic experience and sensation and pleasure evoke unnaturally strong degrees of habituation.90 This has two consequences. First, soon we barely notice the fleeting whispers of pleasure caused by leaves in autumn, or by the lingering glance of the right person, or by the promise of reward following a difficult, worthy task. And the other consequence is that we eventually habituate to even those artificial deluges of intensity. If we were designed by engineers, as we consumed more, we’d desire less. But our frequent human tragedy is that the more we consume, the hungrier we get. More and faster and stronger. What was an unexpected pleasure yesterday is what we feel entitled to today, and what won’t be enough tomorrow.”
― Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst
― Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst
“I sincerely believe that for the child, and for the parent seeking to guide him, it is not half so important to know as to feel. If facts are the seeds that later produce knowledge and wisdom, then the emotions and the impressions of the senses are the fertile soil in which the seeds must grow. The years of early childhood are the time to prepare the soil.”
― The Sense of Wonder: A Celebration of Nature for Parents and Children
― The Sense of Wonder: A Celebration of Nature for Parents and Children
“A lot of these viruses, a lot of these pathogens that come out of wildlife into domestic animals or people, have existed in wild animals for a very long time,” he said. They don’t necessarily cause any disease. They have coevolved with their natural hosts over millions of years. They have reached some sort of accommodation, replicating slowly but steadily, passing unobtrusively through the host population, enjoying long-term security—and eschewing short-term success in the form of maximal replication within each host individual. It’s a strategy that works. But when we humans disturb the accommodation—when we encroach upon the host populations, hunting them for meat, dragging or pushing them out of their ecosystems, disrupting or destroying those ecosystems—our action increases the level of risk. “It increases the opportunity for these pathogens to jump from their natural host into a new host,” he said. The new host might be any animal (the horse in Australia, the palm civet in China) but often it’s humans, because we are present so intrusively and abundantly. We offer a wealth of opportunity.”
― Spillover: the powerful, prescient book that predicted the Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic.
― Spillover: the powerful, prescient book that predicted the Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic.
“Your preparation for the real world is not in the answers you’ve learned, but in the questions you’ve learned how to ask yourself.”
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“for a language to acquire retroflexion is for it to become South Asian.”
― Wanderers, Kings, Merchants: The Story of India through Its Languages
― Wanderers, Kings, Merchants: The Story of India through Its Languages
Science Book Club for the Curious
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Feeling inquisitive? Looking for good conversation? Love science and books? The Science Book Club for the Curious is just the thing for you. This virt ...more
Bangalore bookworms and bibliophiles (BBB)
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A place for book lovers of Bangalore to meet, connect and have conversations (online and real life!) Just discussion about books! By book lovers! No ...more
Pooja’s 2025 Year in Books
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