Breathing fire.

Today concludes my weeklong review of books I've read. 

To be clear, and due to my ongoing attempts to get back on LinkedIn, I have not read the Carl Sagan book. To be even clearer, I have read Dragons of Eden, just not recently. It was a book my former college roommate, a science-y guy with an interest in civil engineering, chess and weed, suggested I read.

At one point, this roomie impressively combined all three of his passions and spent a week at the Syracuse University Industrial Design Shop and using his imagination and some carefully selected pieces of green see-thru PVC pipe, fashioned his own two foot high bong. It had a very clever 4 hit rotating head made from a repurposed garden hose nozzle. And because of its unique shape, it was appropriately named The Check.

We put it to good use during many late night round robin chess tournaments. Ah, wasted youth, literally and figuratively.

While I don't remember much from those days, I do recall devouring Sagan's primer on the evolution of human intelligence. It will be interesting to re-read the book. 

Not through the lens of a pretentious and inordinately naive college freshman but with the Lenscrafter-assisted eyes of an old man who probably shouldn't have been lifting inordinately-heavy weights and now needs some outpatient repair surgery in the upcoming months  -- and that's all I say about that.

As I mentioned, I haven't read the book yet, but I did skim thru it. 

And if I have any hope that you will purchase this fascinating journey through humanity's short existence (relatively) I feel I should give you a bit of taste. Especially if I claim the book had a formative influence on my life, which it has.

In skimming through the chapters, I can see why. 

Sagan touches on all the keystones that have shaped my thinking -- my abandonment of religion and my curiosity about the human condition. In no particular order they include: language, biology, Greek mythology, and the fascinating and unusual cerebellum connection between sex and smell.

Oh, now you're interested?

Here is sample. It's from the introduction, which oddly begins with a conclusion. One, not written by the author, but by a gentleman named Charles Darwin, maybe you've heard of him:

The main conclusion arrived at this work, namely, that man is descended from some lowly-organized life form, will, I regret to think, be highly distasteful to many persons. But there can hardly be a doubt that we are descended from barbarians. 

The astonishment which I felt on first seeing a party of Fuegians on a wild and broken shore will never be forgotten by me, for the reflection at once rushed into my mind --such were our ancestors. These men were absolutely naked and bedaubed with paint, their long hair was tangled, their mouths frothed in excitement, and their expression was wild, startled and distrustful. They possessed hardly anyarts, and, like wild animals, lived on what they could catch; they had no government, and were merciless to everyone not of their own small tribe.

Oh, like Trump Rally.

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