Status Updates From Primate Change: How the wor...

Pg 357 The knowledge that we have acquired over a few thousand years seems vast. With each generation that knowledge is built on and passed down to the next. But can it ever compare to the complex ingenuity our bodies have developed over many hundreds of millions of years of evolutionary experimentation and adaptation?

Pg 356 In a world in which...genetic code will soon become as editable as HTML..., what will we do about anxiety, depression and low pain thresholds? These were all incredibly useful to the Holocene and Pleistocene human, especially those who needed to be wary of predators.

Pg 355 For Heidegger. The realm of experience that preceded technology had gone, but but we might find glowing embers of it in the activities practised by our earliest ancestors...and in experiencing, accepting and revelling in the limits and pleasures of the human body

Pg 349 The hands of primates have successfully evolved to take advantage of their environment. What happened to human hands is much more revolutionary. We are unique among species because instead of waiting for evolution to provide us with the right tools for the job, our cognition reversed the process. Other apes' hands have adapted to their environment, but humans used their primitive hands to make an environmen...

Pg 331 Once you have knowledge transfer, the possibilities for biological transcendence begin. This is the point at which the limitations of the human body can be treated, enhanced or bypassed because intellect, whether individual or of a group, can work around a particular problem.

Pg 331 ...once knowledge, customs, ideas and ways of living can be transferred at greater than an arm's length (visually or through the written word) the possibilities become endless.

Pg 330 At the core of our difference from other animals is supposedly our imagination, the ability to go beyond the present into the future and past while simultaneously gathering moments and a community into ideas snd a shared system of belief in how a society might or ought to function. With the emergence of art in our species, all these things speak in unity.

The Old Friends hypothesis suggests that the immune system has not been effectively socialized and is as aggressive as a frightened dog retaliating against the slightest stimuli.

For more than 2 million years our species has fought predators and starvation to stay alive; today we mostly die because we eat too much.

The idea that a species can degenerate when its food is too easy to come by is a troubling one.

It makes more sense to have an adjustable desk that will permit you to vary your posture throughout the day: one you can stand at, sit at, raise up to lean on as you read, or that can be low enough for you to sit back in your chair and put your feet up. It is variety that is key. What is much more important, though, is to not have a job that requires you to be in one place for 40-50 hours a week.

"As far as muscle is concerned, do it till it hurts. For bone, if you're young, go weight training and 'grunt'."He goes on to say that more caution is needed in middle age. "as you get into your forties, you don't want to load your spine too severely and relentlessly. Beyond the age of 45, the number one consideration has to be not sporting performance, but the avoidance of injuries, especially to cartilage and discs

hibernation is pretty natural isn't it? Perhaps if you're a skunk or a groundhog, then yes. Hibernation is what animals do to survive when food sources are life-threateningly scarce.

Economists scratched their heads wondering how we in the 21st century would fill all our spare time once much of our work had been offloaded to robots. (At least half of that notion is still true, though now we are substantially less optimistic ... The 20th century forgot to ask an important question: who will own the robots?). Our material environment shapes us, but it will not save us.

Our bodies' highest order of intention is survival, so we don't heal to optimization, just to functionality.

plants Snake plant (sansevieria), Peace lillies, howea forsteriana, fiddle leaf figs, ficus