Sign in with Facebook
“The deepest solace lies in understanding,
This ancient unseen stream,
A shudder before the beautiful”
―
This ancient unseen stream,
A shudder before the beautiful”
―
“Death is not the opposite of life, but a part of it.”
― Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman: 24 Stories
― Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman: 24 Stories
“And once the storm is over, you won’t remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won’t even be sure, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm, you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what this storm’s all about.”
― Kafka on the Shore
― Kafka on the Shore
“Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot.
Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.
The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.
It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.”
― Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot.
Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.
The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.
It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.”
― Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
“The transmission of SARS, Dwyer said, seems to depend much on super spreaders—and their behavior, not to mention the behavior of people around them, can be various. The mathematical ecologist’s term for variousness of behavior is “heterogeneity,” and Dwyer’s models have shown that heterogeneity of behavior, even among forest insects, let alone among humans, can be very important in damping the spread of infectious disease.
“If you hold mean transmission rate constant,” he told me, “just adding heterogeneity by itself will tend to reduce the overall infection rate.” That sounds dry. What it means is that individual effort, individual discernment, individual choice can have huge effects in averting the catastrophes that might otherwise sweep through a herd. An individual gypsy moth may inherit a slightly superior ability to avoid smears of NPV as it grazes on a leaf.
An individual human may choose not to drink the palm sap, not to eat the chimpanzee, not to pen the pig beneath mango trees, not to clear the horse’s windpipe with his bare hand, not to have unprotected sex with the prostitute, not to share the needle in a shooting gallery, not to cough without covering her mouth, not to board a plane while feeling ill, or not to coop his chickens along with his ducks. “Any tiny little thing that people do,” Dwyer said, if it makes them different from one another, from the idealized standard of herd behavior, “is going to reduce infection rates.”
― Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic
“If you hold mean transmission rate constant,” he told me, “just adding heterogeneity by itself will tend to reduce the overall infection rate.” That sounds dry. What it means is that individual effort, individual discernment, individual choice can have huge effects in averting the catastrophes that might otherwise sweep through a herd. An individual gypsy moth may inherit a slightly superior ability to avoid smears of NPV as it grazes on a leaf.
An individual human may choose not to drink the palm sap, not to eat the chimpanzee, not to pen the pig beneath mango trees, not to clear the horse’s windpipe with his bare hand, not to have unprotected sex with the prostitute, not to share the needle in a shooting gallery, not to cough without covering her mouth, not to board a plane while feeling ill, or not to coop his chickens along with his ducks. “Any tiny little thing that people do,” Dwyer said, if it makes them different from one another, from the idealized standard of herd behavior, “is going to reduce infection rates.”
― Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic
Dárius’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Dárius’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
2,139 books
|
104 friends
898 books
|
12 friends
154 books
|
14 friends
233 books
|
30 friends
139 books
|
8 friends
397 books
|
47 friends
68 books
|
9 friends
180 books
|
37 friends
More friends…
Favorite Genres
Polls voted on by Dárius
Lists liked by Dárius
