Challenging reading

Stephen Jay Gould
An Urchin In the Storm


I wanted to give this 4-1/2 stars because it deserves better than a four; I'm not allowed to use fractions; and  I just can't--honestly--give it a 5.  I just didn't enjoy it as much as the other two of his books I've read. I'm not sure if it's me or the book--could be me--my brain's not as sharp as it used to be and my vocabulary scores are falling.  It was hard.

Halfway through, I was even considering removing this from my bookshelf...and then I read the last three essays--

Keeping it.  I want to read this again some day:

1. Perhaps the asteroids Dyson hopes to colonize are miserable, useless hunks of rock.  Perhaps we will exterminate ourselves before we ever get there.  But Lord help us if we lose interest.

The essay Integrity and Mr. Rifken kind of gave me the creeps. I wouldn't dare to argue with such an esteemed thinker...but then, I don't dare *not* to argue, do I?   I kind of think Mr. Gould would appreciate it.

He writes,

1. If we could, by transplanting a bacterial gene, confer disease or cold resistance on an important crop plant, should we not do so in a world where people suffer so terribly from malnutrition?

Well...we can.  And we have.  We're especially motivated to transplant a gene to make corn plants resistant to the herbicide Round-Up. And when we do,  we learn again and again--

                          we don't know what we're doing

We end up with high levels of glyphosate in the food supply.  We end up with "golden rice"--"super weeds"--an epidemic of gluten intolerance.  (Okay, the high level of gluten in modern wheat isn't the result of genetic engineering but rather of selective breeding for high protein content, but it's still a prime example of science ignoring sense.)

I'm not arguing "don't do it" but I am arguing, "think about the side-effects."  Test the results before dumping them on hungry people.  The cheapest way to feed the hungry would be to send them high fructose corn syrup and hydrolized corn protein.   It's especially cheap when you don't add the cost of the taxpayer-subsidized petroleum.

So, back to the book.  IMHO, it's a book to be savored, not gulped.  Enjoy the occasional crossword puzzle moment.  For example,

1. Long before P. T. Barnum drew the correct equation between the birth of suckers and the passage of minutes...

Huh?  Oh!  There's a sucker born every minute.