Three Days Of The Condor -- June 20, 2024

Locator: 47839B.

Feel free to move on to another website. I'm taking a break. I couldn't possibly be in a better mood. 

I just got back from Portland, OR, with a huge shopping bag full of books: Aristotle, Greek mythology, Robert Graves, JD Salinger. Then The New Yorker, The Atlantic. And now GK-PID. And now, Three Days of the Condor on YouTube. Full movie, free. 

GK-PID: I don't know how I missed this. Where was I in 2016 when this was all over the news, including The New York Times? Richard Dawkins' The Ancestor's Tale: the big mystery ... what makes an animal an animal and are sponges animals? What is the genetic marker that "identifies" an animal as an animal? And how did animals come to be?

• UChicagoMedicine, January 7, 2016. A single, billion-year-old mutation nelped make multicellular animals evolve. Link here.
• eLife, January 7, 2016. Evolution of an ancient protein function involved in organized multicellularity in animals. Link here. 
• NYT, January 7, 2016. Genetic flip helped organisms go from one cell to many. Link here.

Researchers:

• Douglas P Anderson: University of Oregon, Eugene;
• Dustin S Whitney: Medical College of Wisconsin, Milwaukee;
• Victor Hanson-Smith: see Anderson; now, University of California, San Francisco;
• Arielle Woznica: Howard Hughes Medical Institute, UC-Berkeley;
• Williams Campodonico-Burnett: see Anderson;
• Brian F Volkman: see Whitney;
• Nicole King: Howard Huges Medical Institute, UC-Berkeley;
• Joseph W. Thornton: University of Chicago, Chicago;
• Kenneth E Prehoda: see Anderson

So:

• Oregon: team of four
• Milwaukee: two
• UC-Berkeley: two
• Chicago: one

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Greco-Persian War -- 5th Century BC

"War for the West: What if the Persians had defeated the Greeks?" Joseph Epstein, Claremont Review of Books, Spring, 2000, link here.

The Greco-Persian Wars, Peter Green, a re-issue, originally published 1970. Link here. Just ordered a copy from Amazon. Will arrive today / tomorrow.

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Lobbyists

"The Industry That Ate America," Franklin Foer, The Atlantic, July/August, 2024. Link here. The writer missed the mark. Rather: exceptionally poor timing. Most folks will read this article just after seeing the news of "Just Stop Oil" sprayed Stonehenge and Taylor Swift's jet(s) with orange paint. 

"Just Stop Oil" is making congressional lobbyists look like saints.