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Why Are Humans Different From All Other Apes? It’s the Cooking, Stupid

By Dwight Garner

Published: May 26, 2009

The title of Mr. Wrangham’s new book — “Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human” — sounds a bit touchy-feely. Perhaps, you think, he has written a meditation on hearth and fellow feeling and s’mores. He has not. “Catching Fire” is a plain-spoken and thoroughly gripping scientific essay that presents nothing less than a new theory of human evolution, one he calls “the cooking hypothesis,” one that Darwin (among others) simply missed.

Read the rest of the article at the SOURCE.

Anthropology and Sociology are ever-intriguing fields of study for me. To study what makes us human is to study life and the complex connections and interactions woven throughout its vastness. It makes common observation more amazing and intellectually fruitful and builds a great appreciation for love and compassion and emotion in general. One day I will get a second degree in Anthropology or a closely-related field. For now I am narrowing my focus and my thesis.

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So, i have always been green-minded, but i am really now waking up to all the obvious and easy ways to cut back on pollution and preserve fossil fuels. So I am going to start posting tips on little changes everyone can make to ease into a green lifestyle. I made my first step over the weekend when I realized that there is no way to have a fully solar powered desktop computer without maxing out credit card. My compromise? Turn off my computer when I’m not using it (as opposed to putting into standby). Very simple and obvious step to take…but for some reason it took me this long to make that sacrifice. Next I will be installing those swirly little energy efficient lightbulbs where I can in the apartment.

However… here is my first real tip: Push Mowers!

Everyone has a lawn mower, and most of the time..it’s not working. Traditional gas-powered motors are unecessary! They pollute and guzzle gas and are loud and very tempermental… why not upgrade to a classy eco-friendly and sleek looking push mower? Look at this guy to the left… I bet he gets a good workout using his powered-by-awesome Brill Razorcut Mower. Get a workout, AND cut the grass AND help save the environment? Sounds like a no-brainer to me…

Now… personally, I don’t even have a lawn to cut (I live in an apartment), but one sunny day in the hopefully not-too-distant future you will find me out on my lawn tearing it up treehugger style with a sleek lil push mower.

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So, every Saturday I volunteer with the circulation dept at the local library. Today my mom asked me something along the lines of “do you get anything out of it?” And the answer is yes. While most would probably think re-shelving books is monotanous task.. I find it kind of therapeutic. Everything has it’s place. Coincidentally (actually probably not so much) I like doing puzzles. Every piece has it’s place. The books are the pieces.

Also, I am a people watcher. There are so many characters at the library: stupid kids abusing the free internet and the swarms of old people (I live in heaven’s waiting room), as well as some very creepy people…and this one hot guy who is there every weekend with his backpack…what is that guy doing? I like catching glimpses of the books people have in their arms, and watching what movies they are going for. As I’m putting books back, I have to look at all the covers. One book I put back last week was “Savage Thunder.” It’s a romance novel about a delicate little english socialite who journeys to the wild west after her rich husband dies, and falls in love with a native american. I read a footnote “*contains explicit material” on the back cover. Awesome. Then I began wondering who might have checked this book out…

And lastly but not leastly, I like helping the local library out. I put several carts of material back during the course of three hours. It’s meticulous and time consuming work and the library staff are too busy checking people out and checking books in to step away and do it themselves and they don’t have the funding to pay someone. When I leave there are usually still books to put away, and I think, wow there’d be that much more to do if I wasn’t here. It’s rewarding to know that I’m helping out.

There’s more to work than being paid.

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Sooo, as you should know by now I am in Florida. I have been working hard trying to figure out what I’m gonna do with myself. When I first got down here I looked a lot at what I wanted for myself in the future, and what steps I could take to make these goals more in reach. I know I like being outside, I know I like being active..so both of those criteria pretty much rule out a desk job (where I was previously and very unhappy). I like to feel like I’m making a difference, and manipulating information so it is presented effectively to patrons may feel meaningful to some, but it just wasn’t providing the kind of fullfillment I need. So I quit my job of 2 years and left to Florida so I could clear my head and figure out the next step.
So here I am. I take my first run at the GRE (the test to get into graduate school) next Saturday (the 8th) and I start service in AmeriCorps in January. I will be working for the EPA as a volunteer at the Wekiwa River Basin Parks in Apopka, Fl. It’s 40,000 acres of Floridian wilderness and I will be helping park biologists maintain it.
I’m still not sure what school I’m gonna go to, I’ve got a while before I start applying. I am still leaning towards anthropology as my major and I want my thesis to be in how past civilizations practiced resource management and how they shaped their environments to their benefit. I feel like it’s right inline with the green movement and that it’s definitely something I can use in the future.
So I guess that summarizes everything… I’m thinking of starting a seperate blog just for my AmeriCorps experience.. and I want to encourage everyone to seek out volunteer work, I am currently volunteering at the local library shelving books.. If you feel like something is missing in your life, try helping out the community. It feels good to give without getting anything in return. It’s also good for the community, and when the community is flourishing, people are in a position to do better for themselves, and when people are doing better for themselves, the economy gets a boost.

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I made the move down to Florida. It’s nice and warm and i’m working hard on just pacing myself and de-stressing. Today was good. I rode my bicycle for over an hour and then I went to the beach and laid in the sand and let the waves crash over me. It was like literally sweating all the stress and frustration out and then letting the fresh ocean water and seabreaze wash me of it all. I’m just taking it one day at a time.

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Richard Corliss of TIME gives his review on the latest Batman movie- And so far it looks like it’s living up to the hype. It’s at 100% on Rotten Tomatoes so I’m definitely psyched about it’s release next Friday. This has been a great summer for movies and I’m glad to see the film industry continuing to push the envelope..

The Dark Knight, Christopher Nolan’s second chapter in his revival of the DC Comics franchise, will hit theaters with all the hoopla and fanboy avidity of the summer season’s earlier movies based on comic books.

>>> Read the article on TIME.

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James Dean once said:

“Live fast, die young, have a beautiful looking corpse.”

..i think modern day medical advances warrant a slight deviation of this postulation.

“Live fast, don’t die, face aging, die inside.”

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I live in DC and work in IT. People can’t even slow down enough to spell out whole names… it’s always go go go. Sometimes I just want to slow down. It’s not healthy to let life pass you by.

Some people let life pass them by by not doing anything, others by doing too much.

Life is not a race to do as much as you want as fast as you can. People who live like that end up old and alone quicker than everyone else. Likewise..people who play it safe and follow something planned out without asking themselves “why?” end up feeling dead quicker than everyone else.

I like my job, I have a passion for what I do, but it’s not all I’m going to do. There are other things that define me. I want to be a wife and a mother one day, I want to write a book, I want to unlock mysteries of world history, I want to fly a plane, I want to show people something. I want to show people how beautiful everything can be…

But all in due time.

If i still drive an old honda when all is said and done I won’t be disappointed. I would venture to guess that the most valuable fruits of one’s labor aren’t tangible and have little to do with the perception of others’.

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So.. I have a running stream of philosophical debate (internal and external) in the back of my brain…

Came up with some good declarations today..

You either live or you follow.

*EDIT*

I still stand by this, I just explained it badly.. We should all be leaders of our own paths.

Regarding the notion “Ignorance is Bliss”:

Our surroundings don’t adapt to fit our needs, so if you aren’t adapting, you’re not going anywhere.

In hindsight: There are leaders and there are followers, there are those who live and those who merely survive. The ignorant get left in the dust of the enlightened.

If you don’t understand the above you’re probably missing out on a lot. If you are confused you just need to fine-tune your thinking a bit.

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that’s Tom in the picture

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