Lucy: A Biography–Part III

Who was Lucy?

Finally after ten years, I am close to publishing the heart-rending and fast-paced biography of Lucy. Written in the spirit of Jean Auel, this is the paleo-historic  saga of our earliest ancestors as lived through the eyes of a female Homo habilis. Since Donald Johanson uncovered the tiny three-and-a-half foot clawless, flat-toothed Australopithecine, we have asked, Who is she? And how could she survive in a world of mammoth predators and unrelenting natural disasters she had no understanding about? This book answers those questions as well as more fundamental ones like, Where did God come from? Why did man create his first tool? How did culture start?

Here’s a summary:

Lucy: A Biography follows three species of early man (Australopithecus, Homo habilis and Homo erectus), as they fight for the limited resources of Pleistocene Africa. Lucy, of the species habilis, blames herself for the death of her family and agrees to mate with a stranger (Raza). As they journey to Raza’s homebase, they are tracked by two deadly predators: Xha, of the smarter and more powerful species Homo erectus, and the violent and unforgiving Nature, a sentient being who meddles with fate and Lucy’s future as though it were a chemistry experiment. The story is carefully researched to shared the geography, climate, and biosphere that would have been Lucy’s world 1.8 million years ago, when man was not King and nature ruled with a violence and dispassion we call ‘disaster’ today. 

Every week, I’ll post part of this story.

Here’s Part 3 (A note: While I took Lucy’s name from the infamous Australopithecine skeleton discovered by Donald Johanson, Lucy is a Homo habilis. Her adopted child Boa is an Australopithecine):

Prologue

In the Beginning… 

…it is difficult to avoid personifying the word Nature; but I mean by Nature, only the aggregate action and product of many natural laws, and by laws the sequence of events as ascertained by us.

—Charles Darwin 

 Billions of years whooshed by in such a rush, it made Sun dizzy. Planetary systems formed and life evolved and still Sun couldn’t decide. This Machiavellian monstrosity who called herself ‘Nature’ cared nothing for Earth. She collided vast landmasses with such brutality that the ground buckled into crenulated piles of lofty mountains and deep valleys, or splintered into ragged continents that floated away on infinite oceans. Molten hotspots blew liquid rock through the fragile crust and splattered volcanic archipelagos like multi-layered onions. The erratic climate melted glaciers and rainforests with equal ease.

Sun sighed. Nature’s life forms were no better. They came and went, crushed by Earth’s ever-changing habitat. The survivors, like the desultory horsetail ferns or the annoying chirruping insects, were boring. The first had no flexibility and the second, no mental strength. Sun turned her attention to other planets in her system, until the day a muscular, slope-shouldered hominid named Orrorin appeared. Though his head was no larger than what Nature called a ‘chimpanzee’, a human soul radiated through his eyes. Who was he? He fingered his food as though wondering at its texture. Hostility intrigued rather than frightened him. Had Nature finally done something spectacular?

Google Science Fair–Win a College Scholarship

Enter Google's second annual science fair by April 1, 2012 and win a $50k college scholarship--just for doing what you do best

Lucy: A Biography–Part II

Finally after ten years, I am close to publishing the heart-rending and fast-paced biography of Lucy. Written in the spirit of Jean Auel, this is the paleo-historic  saga of our earliest ancestors as lived through the eyes of a

Lucy is the hominid in the middle. The others--part of her band.

female Homo habilis. Since Donald Johanson uncovered the tiny three-and-a-half foot clawless, flat-toothed Australopithecine, we have asked, Who is she? And how could she survive in a world of mammoth predators and unrelenting natural disasters she had no understanding about? This book answers those questions as well as more fundamental ones like Where did God come from? Why did man create his first tool? How did culture start? Here’s a summary:

Lucy: A Biography follows three species of early man (Australopithecus, Homo habilis and Homo erectus), as they fight for the limited resources of Pleistocene Africa. Lucy, of the species habilis, blames herself for the death of her family and agrees to mate with a stranger (Raza). As they journey to Raza’s homebase, they are tracked by two deadly predators: Xha, of the smarter and more powerful species Homo erectus, and the violent and unforgiving Nature, a sentient being who meddles with fate and Lucy’s future as though it were a chemistry experiment. The story is carefully researched to shared the geography, climate, and biosphere that would have been Lucy’s world 1.8 million years ago, when man was not King and nature ruled with a violence and dispassion we call ‘disaster’ today. 

Every week, I’ll post part of this story.

Here’s Part 2 of the Preface. If you missed Part 1, click here (A note: While I took Lucy’s name from the infamous Australopithecine skeleton discovered by Donald Johanson, Lucy is a Homo habilis. Her adopted child Boa is an Australopithecine):

This is her story. She is a scientist, forever seeking new approaches to problems. She was the first primate to use tools to make tools, to control her environment and select among choices rather than submit to instinct when making decisions about her future. She uses her capacious brain, requiring 20% of her caloric intake to maintain, to survive and multiply in the most dangerous habitat known to mammals. She spends considerable time foraging for anything edible (evolving from a plant-eating herbivore to a decidedly-unchoosey omnivore was a brilliantly adaptive move for early man), sleeping, caring for her young, and avoiding predators. Because she is so much more efficient at these jobs than any other primate, she possesses surplus time and uses it inventing tools to enhance her quality of life and communicating with her band. This is the first time in history a mammal surpassed Maslow’s broadest Hierarchy of Needs.

How to Crack the Google Interview

I came across this Wall Street Journal article discussing Google interview questions. It’s fascinating. They want not only intelligent people, but those who think outside the box and problem-solve as part of their daily experience.

I’ve posted the first part of it and a link to the balance. Enjoy!

How to Ace a Google Interview

By WILLIAM POUNDSTONE

Imagine a man named Jim. He’s applying for a job at Google. Jim knows that the odds are stacked

How do you get out before the blades start churning? Photo illustration photography by F. Martin Ramin for the WSJ

against him. Google receives a million job applications a year. It’s estimated that only about 1 in 130 applications results in a job. By comparison, about 1 in 14 high-school students applying to Harvard gets accepted.

Jim’s first interviewer is late and sweaty: He’s biked to work. He starts with some polite questions about Jim’s work history. Jim eagerly explains his short career. The interviewer doesn’t look at him. He’s tapping away at his laptop, taking notes. “The next question I’m going to ask,” he says, “is a little unusual.”

You are shrunk to the height of a nickel and thrown into a blender. Your mass is reduced so that your density is the same as usual. The blades start moving in 60 seconds. What do you do?

The interviewer looks up from his laptop, grinning like a maniac with a new toy.

“I would take the change in my pocket and throw it into the blender motor to jam it,” Jim says.

The interviewer’s tapping resumes. “The inside of a blender is sealed,” he counters, with the air of someone who’s heard it all before. “If you could throw pocket change into the mechanism, then your smoothie would leak into it.”

“Right… um… I would take off my belt and shirt, then. I’d tear the shirt into strips to make a rope, with the belt, too, maybe. Then I’d tie my shoes to the end of the rope and use it like a lasso.”

Furious key clicks.

“I don’t mean a lasso,” Jim plows on. “What are those things Argentinian cowboys throw? It’s like a weight at the end of a rope.”

No answer. Jim now realizes that his idea is lame, but he feels compelled to complete it. “I’d throw the weights over the top of the blender jar. Then I’d climb out.”

“The ‘weights’ are just your shoes,” the interviewer says. “How would they support your body’s weight? You weigh more than your shoes do.”

Jim doesn’t know. That’s the end of it. The interviewer begins ticking off quibbles one by one. He isn’t sure whether Jim’s shirt—shrunken with the rest of him—could be made into a rope that would be long enough. Once Jim got to the top of the jar—if he got there—how would he get down again? Could he realistically make a rope in 60 seconds?

Read more…

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______________________________________________________________

Jacqui Murray is the editor of a technology curriculum for K-fifth grade and author of two technology training books for middle school. She wrote Building a Midshipman, the story of her daughter’s journey from high school to United States Naval Academy midshipman. She is webmaster for five blogs, an Amazon Vine Voice book reviewer, a tech columnist for Examiner.com, Editorial Review Board member for ISTE’s Journal for Computing Teachers, IMS tech expert, and a weekly contributor to Write Anything. Currently, she’s seeking representation for a techno-thriller Any suggestions? Contact Jacqui at her writing office, WordDreams, or her tech lab, Ask a Tech Teacher.

Lucy: A Biography–Part I

Who was Lucy?

Finally after ten years, I am close to publishing the heart-rending and fast-paced biography of Lucy. Written in the spirit of Jean Auel, this is the paleo-historic  saga of our earliest ancestors as lived through the eyes of a female Homo habilis. Since Donald Johanson uncovered the tiny three-and-a-half foot clawless, flat-toothed Australopithecine, we have asked, Who is she? And how could she survive in a world of mammoth predators and unrelenting natural disasters she had no understanding about? This book answers those questions as well as more fundamental ones like Where did God come from? Why did man create his first tool? How did culture start? Here’s a summary:

Lucy: A Biography follows three species of early man (Australopithecus, Homo habilis and Homo erectus), as they fight over the limited resources of Plio-Pleistocene Africa. Lucy, of the species habilis, blames herself  when her family is trampled by an enraged herd of mammoth and agrees to mate with a stranger (Raza). As they journey to Raza’s homebase, two deadly predators track them: Xha, of the smarter and more powerful species Homo erectus, and the violent and unforgiving Nature, a sentient spirit who meddles with fate and Lucy’s future as though a chemistry experiment. The geography, biosphere and climate are carefully researched to represent what Lucy would have faced in a world 1.8 million years ago, when man was not King and nature ruled with a violence and dispassion unimaginable today. 

Every week, I’ll post part of this story. Here’s Part 1 of the Preface:

PREFACE

“Fossil evidence of human evolutionary history is

fragmentary and open to various interpretations.”

Henry Gee, Nature 2001

Like a favonian breeze, life arrived on Planet Earth about 3.5 billion years ago. Our story begins much later, a brief two million years before present, during the waning days of the Pliocene Epoch, itself part of the 65-million-year-long Cenozoic Era. The primordial continent of Gondwana has splintered into chunks and warm-blooded, furry mammals have replaced the dinosaurs. The climate is cooling and the growing glaciers have locked billions of gallons of Earth’s water into icy prisons. South America has moved to its present position contiguous to North America and the land bridge connecting Asia with Alaska still exists.

If you telescope in, you’ll see we are in Africa.

Happy Holidays!

I’ll be taking a week (or so) off–until after the New Year–to play with my children and work on some writing projects with a deadline. I may add a post here or there, or drop in on you-all as you enjoy your holidays, but mostly I’ll be regenerating.

I wish you a wonderful season, safe and filled with family. See you shortly!

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Jacqui Murray is the editor of a technology curriculum for K-fifth grade and author of two technology training books for middle school. She wrote Building a Midshipman, the story of her daughter’s journey from high school to United States Naval Academy midshipman. She is webmaster for five blogs, an Amazon Vine Voice book reviewer, a tech columnist for Examiner.com, Editorial Review Board member for ISTE’s Journal for Computing Teachers, IMS tech expert, and a weekly contributor to Write Anything. Currently, she’s seeking representation for a techno-thriller Any suggestions? Contact Jacqui at her writing office, WordDreams, or her tech lab, Ask a Tech Teacher.

What About Santa’s Reindeer?

REMEMBER THIS AT CHRISTMAS TIME

According to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, while both male and female reindeer grow antlers in the summer each year, male reindeer drop their antlers at the beginning of winter, usually late

November to mid-December. Female reindeer retain their antlers till after they give birth in the spring. Therefore, according to EVERY historical rendition depicting Santa’s reindeer, EVERY single one of them, from Rudolph to Blitzen, had to be a girl. We should’ve known… ONLY women would be able to drag a fat man in a red velvet suit all around the world in one night and not get lost.

A MERRY CHRISTMAS TO YOU ALL!!!!!!!!!!!!

Photo credit: Zazzle.com

32 Science Websites for Fifth Graders

This list covers all sorts of science from nature to geology. Like with the math websites, for my

Science websites to scintillate students

students, occasionally I put a list on the internet start page and let students go there during sponge time (click the link and see what’s up this month, so close to the end of the school year):

1. Breathing earth–the environment
2. Dynamic Earth–interactive
3. Earth Science Digital Library
4. Electric Circuits Game
5. Forest Life
6. Forests
7. Geologic history
8. Geologic movies–great and fun
9. Human Body Games
10. Moon around
11. Moon—We Choose the Moon
12. Nature—explore it
13. Ocean Currents–video
14. Ocean Videos
15. Ocean Waves–video
16. Ology Sites
17. Periodic Table of Videos
18. Planet in Action via Google Earth
19. Satellite Fly-bys–by zip code
20. Science games
21. Science Games II
22. Science Games—Bitesize
23. Science Stuff
24. Smithsonian Museum
25. Solar System Video
26. Solar System in 3D
27. Stardate Online
28. Virtual tour (with pictures) of a zoo
29. Virtual tours
30. Volcano Adventure
31. Water Cycle
32. Wonderville

Unemployment is Becoming Systemic

82% Know Someone Out of Work and Looking For A Job

New Books by Dead Authors

Did you know Michael Crichton has a new book out, Micro? He’s dead. Shouldn’t the publishers say, by the estate of… or Inspired by… Instead it’s

Michael Crichton

and

Richard Preston

The review even says, This is Crichton in top form. Yes, I understand ‘they’ say Crichton started this before he died and Preston finished it, but–come on.  And the Amazon customer reviews reflect this disparity.

Happens with Robert Ludlum, too. They credited 5-6 books to his name–through 2006–though he died in 2001. Readers who don’t track the Obits in their local enewspaper might think they were getting the original.

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Is Man Inherently Violent?

When I look at our world, I have to wonder: Are we so disagreeable because it’s in our genes or are we bent on our own destruction despite the survival instinct that is part of every species? Nuclear weapons, terrorists arguing

Is violence human nature?

their point with violence, our American Congress no longer compromises–check out the Super Committee if you don’t agree with that, OWS turning to anger when persuasion didn’t work.

Can we compromise? Can we see the other side of an argument? Do we respect each other enough to allow that our opponent might want what’s best–as do we–so maybe we can trust his solutions?

I have no idea anymore. Here’s your chance to vote:

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Jacqui Murray is the editor of a technology curriculum for K-fifth grade and creator of two technology training books for middle school. She is the author of Building a Midshipman, the story of her daughter’s journey from high school to United States Naval Academy midshipman. She is webmaster for five blogs, an Amazon Vine Voice book reviewer, a columnist for Examiner.com, Editorial Review Board member for Journal for Computing Teachers, IMS tech expert, and a weekly contributor to Write Anything and Technology in Education. Currently, she’s working on a techno-thriller that should be ready this summer. Contact Jacqui at her writing office or her tech lab, Ask a Tech Teacher.

Indian Workers On the Rise Internationally

India will account for 20 per cent of the world’s global workforce in 2020

What’s Your Population Number?

With the world’s population expected to hit 7 billion soon, which number are you? BBC can tell you. Here’s mine:

Follow me.

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Jacqui Murray is the editor of a technology curriculum for K-fifth grade and creator of two technology training books for middle school. She is the author of Building a Midshipman, the story of her daughter’s journey from high school to United States Naval Academy midshipman. She is webmaster for five blogs, an Amazon Vine Voice book reviewer, a columnist for Examiner.com, Editorial Review Board member for Journal for Computing Teachers, IMS tech expert, and a weekly contributor to Write Anything and Technology in Education. Currently, she’s working on a techno-thriller that should be ready this summer. Contact Jacqui at her writing office or her tech lab, Ask a Tech Teacher.

Tea Party vs. OWS–the Differences

Those in the population who support these two groups are roughly equal (last I read about 44% believed in the goals of the Tea Party and 38% OWS. That’s pretty close). Both groups want change in America. Both groups are willing to march and protest to achieve their goals, but there are a few areas they are vastly different:

These numbers were drawn from a variety of articles, some of which are:

• http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2047709/Occupy-Wall-Street-protests-cost-NYPD-1-9million-overtime-pay-cops.html
• http://video.foxnews.com/v/1213192087001/arrests-mount-as-occupy-wall-street-protests-continue/
• http://cleveland.cbslocal.com/2011/10/18/occupy-cleveland-protester-alleges-she-was-raped/

I’m willing to speculate whether you agree with these numbers will depend upon which side of the political aisle you travel. If you choose to leave a comment, please don’t insult the messenger.

5 Great Science Blogs You Won’t Want to Miss

Here’s a list of blogs I’ve discovered over the past year. Some are well-known. Some are diamonds in the rough. Check them out. Tell me what you think.

Science blogs you won't want to miss

Babel’s Dawn

This is a blog about the origins of speech, a topic that intrigues me. He has posts on

• Beyond Dictionaries and Rules
• What Shapes Language Besides Genes?
• The Minimum Requirements for an Acceptable Theory
• A New Account of Human Origins?
• A Lifetime of Wondering
• Encephalon #90

Who wouldn’t find those interesting?

 

Confusedious, a Science Blog

An entirely readable take on ‘thoughts, reviews and other tidbits from the world of science’. The blogger is a student with an inquirers approach to scientific topics. There have been few posts I’ve not enjoyed. I’m disappointed that the author doesn’t post more often.

The Loom

The webmaster, Carl Zimmer, writes about science regularly for the New York Times and magazines such as Discover, where he is a contributing editor and columnist. He is the author of ten books, the most recent of which is A Planet of Viruses. His blog covers an eclectic mix of scientific topics which I find appealing. For example, this week he’s collecting scientific tattoos. Who else would do that?

Scientist at Work

This blog is the modern version of a field journal, a place for reports on the daily progress of scientific expeditions — adventures, misadventures, discoveries. As with the expeditions themselves, you never know what you will find.

Sentence First

This blog, also covers language, but with a down-to-earth approach I appreciate–even humor. Nice to find in science blogs. I’ve noticed that my posts on words always receive an inordinate amount of attention from readers (they’re over at my writing blog, WordDreams). This trend is borne out by Stan who got 23 comments on a post about the difference between which and that. Probably no one reading this post is surprised. We’ll leave that to the rest of the world.

Amazon is Now a Publisher

Amazon will publish 122 books this fall in an array of genres, in both physical and e-book form. This moves them beyond retailer and creates a new model for publishers. I wonder what the traditional guys will do? Read more…

Is Too Much Freedom Good for America?

Recently, Beverly Perdue, Democratic governor of North Carolina, said this:

“I think we ought to suspend, perhaps, elections for Congress for two years and just tell them we won’t hold it against them, whatever decisions they make.”

She now says she was joking. Listen and you decide:

Really?

Aborigines Oldest People Outside of Africa

Almost a century ago, British anthropologist Alfred Cort Haddon traveled the world seeking samples of human hair, among other curios, for his ethnographic studies of native people. The samples, which lay in a museum drawer for 90 years, included hair from a young Australian Aboriginal man. Now in a paper published online this week in Science, geneticists report that they have extracted enough DNA from that hair to sequence the first complete genome of an Aboriginal. The genome offers the first good look at the origins of Aboriginals, showing that they are one of the oldest continuous populations outside of Africa, the authors say.

Google + Usage Skyrockets

Google opened G+ to the public–no invitation required anymore–and visit skyrocketed 1300%. That’s around 15 million US visits according to Experion.

Is FB listening yet?

Book Review: Death from a Distance and the Birth of a Humane Universe

I’d like to introduce my guest blogger, Tian You Liang. A  graduate of Stony Brook University with a bachelor’s in Health Science, Mr. Liang now works as instructional support to refine innovative approaches to teaching quality science courses. His passion is providing students with the proper learning assets and critical thinking skills so that they identify good science and make better informed decisions in their future endeavors. Today, he shares his thoughts on a wonderful book Death from a Distance and the Birth of a Humane Universe (Paul M. Bingham and Joanne Souza, 2009).

This manuscript puts forth a new theory on the tantalizing question of how humans evolved to be so profoundly different from other animals. I’ve read many books on the evolution of man, spent a good bit of time trying to uncover the roots of our warlike nature (is it attributable to simple survival or something else?) and how that balances with our almost naive empathy for others and fundamental need to cooperate with others.

Here’s Tian’s take on Bingham and Souza’s book:

Stony Brook University professors Bingham and Souza present a single root cause for human origins and uniqueness. From this one cause springs forth the answers to how all of our human properties came to be, such as:

• Our sexual psychology and behaviors
• Uniquely human brain expansion
• Human speech
• Our human ethical sense
• Our modern anatomies and life history.

What is the root cause? According to Bingham and Souza, humans are the only animal on Earth to manage the conflicts of interest between conspecifics through inexpensive decisive coercive threat resulting in kinship-independent social cooperation. If I had to put it in my own words it would be: Early humans threw rocks with elite skill (originally as a hunting strategy) and then redeployed that skill for social coercion in pursuit of their own self-interests giving rise to the first form of law enforcement, allowing the very first cooperative human coalitions to form.

I doubted that notion heavily at first. As a matter of fact, in the introduction, Bingham and Souza encouraged healthy skepticism and doubt when confronting new ideas and theories and to only keep what survives continuous falsification attempts.

Death from a Distance does not stop at just explaining how we got our primitive start to becoming human. Bingham and Souza give us a new critical lens with which to view our historical revolutions up to the modern state. They argue the cause for each and every one of these adaptive revolutions is clear: A new weapon system that allows for larger human coalitions to manage conflicts of interest at a larger scale. Case after case is presented from history and point to the immediate coercive technology that precedes the growth of human sophistication. Here are some examples:

• It is the bow and arrow that causes Neolithic (agricultural) revolutions multiple times around world.
• Body armor and melee weapons (swords and axes) gave rise to the ancient empires of Rome, China, Aztecs and many other ancient civilizations we learned about in high school.
• Gunpowder rifles and handguns catalyzing the birth of the modern democratic state (i.e. American Revolution)
• Aircraft, nuclear missiles and precision “smart” bombs allow management of conflicts of interest on a global scale.

 While it is neat to know how we got to the present day, Bingham and Souza’s theory predicts the future of humanity will depend on one question. Who holds decisive coercive power? If it is in the hands of the public, we will see a democracy and if it is in the hands of a few, we will see an authoritarian state.

 I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book. Towards the end of the book I had to put the book down every dozen pages or so and not just let the content soak in; but, also see how well all of this information maps onto the real world I have been living in. Death from a Distance is not just for anthropologists or archeologists. It draws upon the natural sciences and social sciences in a unifying nature to explain the human condition in a profound way.

For those who prefer visual, check out this YouTube:

I must say, I’ve never tied the latter into our ability to throw before reading this book.