state of the species – ak dnes len jednu linku, tak túto… pár rokov stará výborná esej
More than 90 percent of the living matter on earth consists of microorganisms and viruses, she liked to point out. Heck, the number of bacterial cells in our body is ten times more than the number of human cells!
Bacteria and protists can do things undreamed of by clumsy mammals like us: form giant supercolonies, reproduce either asexually or by swapping genes with others, routinely incorporate DNA from entirely unrelated species, merge into symbiotic beings—the list is as endless as it is amazing. Microorganisms have changed the face of the earth, crumbling stone and even giving rise to the oxygen we breathe. Compared to this power and diversity, Margulis liked to tell me, pandas and polar bears were biological epiphenomena—interesting and fun, perhaps, but not actually significant.
Does that apply to human beings, too? I once asked her, feeling like someone whining to Copernicus about why he couldn’t move the earth a little closer to the center of the universe. Aren’t we special at all?
This was just chitchat on the street, so I didn’t write anything down. But as I recall it, she answered that Homo sapiens actually might be interesting—for a mammal, anyway. For one thing, she said, we’re unusually successful.
Seeing my face brighten, she added: Of course, the fate of every successful species is to wipe itself out.
cognitive bias cheat sheet (because thinking is hard)
SpaceX to send privately crewed Dragon spacecraft beyond the Moon next year
Prečo testovať lieky aj na tehotných ženách (plus, ak ešte neviete, komu venovať 2% zo zaplatených daní za minulý rok, tak vás prosíme o podporu)
…mnohé budúce matky potrebujú užívať lieky. „Tehotné ženy môžu ochorieť a choré ženy môžu otehotnieť,“ hovorí Brian Cleary, hlavný farmakológ z Rotunda Hospital v írskom Dubline.
a tediously accurate map of the solar system
