Years of Poems and Spirits

Read this book review in the New Yorker 10/24/2005 issue: “Turned On”

The book reviewed: Endless Forms Most Beautiful

Key terms:
Evo devo: “Evolutionary Developmental Biology”
Embryological development can provide important insights into evolution.
Noncoding DNA
Hox genes
Tool-kit Toolkit Protein
Tool-kit gene

—Used to explain why many animals look a like in embryo stage, e.g. snake embryos shows legs during certain stages, etc.

Different animal designs reflect the use of the same old genes, but expressed at different times and in different places in the organism.

The basis of this selective expression involves that part of the DNA which is noncoding. Most genes, like most light fixtures, have “switches” near them. These switches, which are made of DNA, affect only whether a gene is on in a particular cell at a particular time; they do not change the actual protein coded by a gene.

If a tool-kit protein finds and binds to a switch, it insures, through a complex molecular choreography, that a certain gene is expressed

In the end, the logic of animal development involves a long cascade: tool-kit genes effectively switch other genes on or off, some of which then switch yet other genes on or off, and so it continues throughout the assembly of an adult. If all goes well, each of the possibly trillions of cells in an animal’s body will express just the right genes: insulin in your pancreas, not in your eye.

— What I am wondering is, is there any research on how environment would selectively stimulate evolution? E.g. Could warm environment turns on some genes while cold weather turns on others?

Read a profile on Peter Viereck in the Oct 24 2005 New Yorker “The First Conservative”

He was a poet and writer of some fame (Pulitzer), history scholar on modern Russia.

Father was a German immigrant. Supported German causes during both World Wars and was convicted for being an enemy agent. He learned the death of his younger son fighting the Nazis while in prison.

Viereck was in Pysch-Op unit during WWII and dealt with ideological propaganda all the time.

Stood up as a conservative when the term was not in vogue, in the 50s. But spoke out against Joe McCarthy.

Met Bill Buckley Jr. when he was a rising star. After Buckley gave a speech, he intercepted him on his way out, talked non-stop even after stumbled. The writer of the article, Reiss, observed while Buckley was fiery on the outside but was compromising enough in action to build support. Viereck was the opposite.

While Buckley was almost contemptuous of Viereck, he said of today’s conservatism: “conservatism is, to a considerable extent, the acknowledgment of realities. And this is surreal.”
—George Will certainly agreed with him I suppose. Remember I read a commentary by him at the back of Newsweek or Time several years ago. The first sentence was a quote from the French cardinal (Richelieu?) under Louis XIV: “Gentleman, no zealotry please.”

Viereck is now 89 years old living alone in a nursing home.
—Sadly that is about most appropriate analogy for much of the moderates in today’s America.
—Is this a sustainable development (ever increasing partisanship, division and hatred)?

New Yorker article Oct 24 2005 “What Money Can Buy”

Related news: “The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation announced $258.3 million to fight malaria.”

General impression/summary:
Bill Gates is a passionate, caring person. He is sincerely devoted to the cause.

Some highlights:
B&M Gates foundation’s endowment is $29 Billion, more than the GDP of Tanzania
Currently, it is bit less than half of of his networth.

The malaria story:
After WWII, malaria-control compaigns were initiated in many countries, with the effective help of DDT.
Malaria was eradicated from US in 1951—”completely unknown to childrenand largely forgotten by adults”
In 3rd world countries: S. Africa, Sri Lanka, and Mozambique, after extensive spraying, malaria almost vanished. So were the cases in SE Asia.
Soon DDT was seen as devastating to wildlife and mosquitoes had begun to grow resistant to it.
Six years after Sri Lanka stopped using it, the number of case rose from 17 to half of a million.

Some facts:
IN Ghana, child mortality increased by 7% for every 100 meter that children were away from nets
—How did they measure that?

In 2003, fewer that 5% of children living in sub-Saharan Africa slept under nets.

Gates foundation is run by ex-MS executive Patty Stonesifer (—any relation to the dirty o’man in Boeing?) who is married to Michael Kinsley (—an enlarged version of Martin Short). They lived across Lake Washington and the Gates visited them by power boat.

When discussion how to spend their money, Bill Gates first option was population control and thought “that improving the world’s health might even run counter to the goal”. It was his wife who first suggested concentrating on global health.

On the eve of Bill Gates’ wedding, his mother wrote a letter to Melinda in which she stressed the great opportunities the two would have as a couple to improve the world—and the unique responsibilities that came with immense wealth. “It was really quite beautiful”, Melinda recalled.

Bill Gates approached a former CDC director, Bill Foege, for advise. “The guy came to me and said he wanted to learn about public health and he watned to help… Rich people say that all the time. I gave him a list of 82 books. I saw him a couple of month later and I asked, ‘How are you doing on those books?’ And he said, ‘Well, I have been so damn busy I have read only 19 of them.’ ” When Foege realized Gates was serious, he signed up as an adviser.

One of Gates’ favorite reading from the list was a World Bank report, 329 pages long and full of details. It focussed on the concept of the “disability-adjusted life year” (DALY).

How Bill Gates attracted the attention of other scientists: “If you had more money, what would you do?”

“We gave a small grant at first, like $30million dollars, and everybody said, ‘Wow! That is the greatest increase in nongovernment spending in the history of malaria research!’ And I thought, Oh, you are kidding.”
—Bill Gates