evolution – A Book & A Beer

First Impression Friday | The Ape That Understood the Universe

Posted on December 14, 2018by J.W. Martin

Welcome to another First Impression Friday. In case this is your first time, here’s the rundown:

• Based on this sampling of your current read, give a few impressions
and predict what you’ll think by the end.
• Did you think you’d love and ended up hating it? Or did you think
you’d hate it and wound up loving it? Or were you exactly right?
• Link back to Storeys of Stories so I can enjoy reading all the
First Impression Fridays out there!

It has been A WHILE since I did one of these. So pumped for this!

Let’s talk about The Ape That Understood the Universe by Steve Stewart-Williams.

“The Ape that Understood the Universe is the story of the strangest animal in the world: the human animal. It opens with a question: How would an alien scientist view our species? What would it make of our sex differences, our sexual behavior, our child-rearing patterns, our moral codes, our religions, languages, and science? The book tackles these issues by drawing on ideas from two major schools of thought: evolutionary psychology and cultural evolutionary theory. The guiding assumption is that humans are animals, and that like all animals, we evolved to pass on our genes. At some point, however, we also evolved the capacity for culture – and from that moment, culture began evolving in its own right. This transformed us from a mere ape into an ape capable of reshaping the planet, travelling to other worlds, and understanding the vast universe of which we’re but a tiny, fleeting fragment.”

I find evolution fascinating. Because though we’re all pretty familiar with the basic concept of evolution, I have no idea how it really and truly happens. And this book deals with a lot of evolution of our minds. Culture.

A single human’s capability for intelligence hasn’t really changed, but as a species we take every man and woman’s experiences with us going forward. Each child is given a cumulative education of everyone that came before us.

Plato and Socrates were two of the greatest minds that have ever existed, but if you were to pluck them out of their element and put them face-to-face with a 5-year-old from 2018 that kid is going to run circles around those geezers (figuratively AND literally.)

I can’t wait to dig further into this book, but since it is a non-fiction (although one I’m really interested in) I’m guessing I’m going to run into some really slow parts. I hope I’m wrong on that, but still, I’m going to guess…

3.5 to 4 stars.

Fun fact about this post: Cover looks like the book is called “The Ape That How the Mind Understood and Culture Evolve the Universe.”

All Writing

The End of My Hiatus & NaNoWriMo

Posted on December 5, 2018by J.W. Martin

I’m BACK!

A few weeks ago I was trying to complete the NaNoWriMo challenge. I was desperately falling behind and decided to put aside blogging (as well as reading and just about everything else besides working and breathing!)

I’m pleased to tell you all that all the extra time allowed me to catch up, get back on target, and I did it! 30 days. 50,000 words. My story is nowhere near complete. There’s about 30,000 words written previously, and I’m guessing there’s another 10,000 in the story. So we’re maybe looking at 90K total.

Here’s a small sample from one of my favourite scenes:

The whole experience made Micah understand why the town got together every so often to beat the hell out of each other. With all the work he had been doing he felt so damn tough. Like he could take on the world.

And though it had taken longer than with Kai and Coak, the people of the community grew to accept and even like Micah. It was surprising to admit to himself, but he liked them too. Which was good since Kai spent nearly every spare moment with Sarina and Coak still wasn’t really talking to him. Even though she was a grounder, she held a grudge with the same intensity that a flier woman did.

Micah head seen her around town a few times with the giant Elias. He didn’t think he was capable of jealousy, but when he saw her with the huge man, he felt it. Probably for the first time ever.

Others in town claimed that Elias had been asking for a commitment. Some said he just wanted something exclusive, others said he asked her to live with him at his house, and a select few claimed that he tried to give her a ring.

It was a lot of rumour but whether or not any of them were true, or if all of them were true, she hadn’t accepted anything.

Micah joined in on the applause for the two latest fighters, who were leaving the circle with arms around each other. Then, as if Micah’s own thoughts had summoned the man, Elias entered the circle. Cheers erupted from the already applauding crowd. Micah didn’t cheer. In fact, he stopped clapping all together.

As Elias walked around the circle, basking in the praise from nearly everyone around the circle. It quickly became obvious that no one was going to step in to challenge him. A few people looked to Sarina, but she and Kai were snuggled up in that lovesick way that made people avoid them. Unless 2-on-1 became an option, they weren’t moving.

Micah sneered. He was big, but he didn’t look that tough. He spent his days cutting meat, the blade doing all the work. Micah spent his days working the land. With the brain Micah was born with, and his recently acquired brawn, Elias didn’t stand a chance.

He made his way through the crowd, people around him recognizing him and then giving him a pat on the back as he took another step closer.

Then the familiar gasp of the crowd as a new fighter entered the circle. He raised an eyebrow and looked down. He was still a step away from entering the circle.

Fun fact about this post: I’M BAAAAAAAAAACK!!

All Writing

NaNoWriMonday 2018 | Week 3 | The New Is Not Good…

Posted on November 19, 2018by J.W. Martin

The struggle is real, and it continues.

I’m still more than 5,000 words behind. However, I’m also still determined to keep going until the end of November, whether 50,000 looks achievable or not. That being said, I may put myself on hiatus from blogging for the rest of the month. Not sure about that yet. We’ll see.

However, I wanted to post another snippet this week:

“Hello?”

No answer. Like everyone else, Nannie had work to do during the day. He could find plenty of things to do right there in the house without ever having to pick up a shovel.

He grabbed his jetpack and the meagre tools he had access to and sat down at the kitchen table. Quickly popping off the case, he examined the components underneath. He didn’t really know what he was doing, but he had looked inside the cases of jetpacks hundreds of times. If something was missing, or damaged, odds were good that he’d recognize that. Whether or not he could fix that problem would be another questions all together.

While he worked, he re-considered Coak’s question from the previous night. Could Micah make this little community his new home? Anything was possible, but the place had a lot going against it.

The physical labour, first and foremost. When Micah woke that morning, he felt just like the dirt he had spent an entire day working out. Everything hurt. He didn’t feel like a person anymore. It was more like a bunch of pieces that were barely holding together.

Behind that would be the lack of luxuries. In times of hunger, everything tasted rich. But if he had to eat the same thing night after night, he would grow very bored, very quickly.

Coak had mentioned the acceptance of the people. That was probably the least important thing to him, but it would be easier to get what he wanted if people knew him and liked him.

The question that was in Micah’s mind was what he would lose if he decided to leave. It wasn’t meat and potatoes, and physical labour. It was Coak. And Kai. Never before did he have people in his life that he wasn’t willing to walk away from. Coak and Kai were getting dangerously close to becoming the first two. That in itself might have been the strongest reason to leave.

“Hiding from the fields?”

Micah’s head snapped around to look at the hallway, leading to more rooms, and the woman who stood there watching him. Nannie.

“I… I…,” Micah put on his best smile as his mind reached for an acceptable reason.

“It’s fine,” she said. “I won’t tell.”

Nannie was different. Obviously, her age didn’t change, but she didn’t act the same. She seemed less doting. Less innocent somehow.

She walked into the kitchen, past Micah and grabbed a bottle of dark red and a pair of glasses. She put the glasses down on the table and poured some of the dark red liquid into each.

Micah took a glass and put it up to his nose, taking in a deep sniff. The strong mark of scotch, mixed with the scents of cherry, and chocolate, and…

“Leather?”

Nannie smiled. “You’ve got a good nose. Figured you for a man who liked the finer things.”

“Odd colour.”

“That’s the cherries. I make it myself. Like to experiment with different flavours. This combination is one of my favourites.”

Micah put the glass to his mouth and tipped it just enough to let the liquor touch his lips. He swirled the scotch in his glass while he let his taste buds experience all the flavours Nannie’s scotch had to offer. It wasn’t quite the best he had ever had, but it was close.

While he was still basking in the flavour, Nannie slid the jetpack over to sit in front of her. Micah was about to explain what it was and what each component was responsible for. It was probably the first jetpack she had ever seen.

To his shock, she produced a tool kit, that had a wider range of tools that he had.

“You’ve seen a jetpack before?” Micah asked.

Nannie shook her head as she worked. “I’ve seen many, many jetpacks. Repaired a fair number of them, too. Haven’t seen many as bad off as this one, though.”

Micah took another drink of the scotch and watched Nannie as she worked.

“You’re not from here originally, are you?” he asked.

“Depends how you look at it. I was part of the group that started this little town. But, no, this isn’t where I started out. I was born in a land far from here. A place you’ve never even heard of.”

“But you did spend a little time in the crucible.”

Nannie smiled and nodded. “Very astute. I spent a number of years in the crucible.”

“Doing what?”

“Living. Every race is represented there. That included us. We were looked down on since day one. Hated. I mean, everyone hates everyone in the crucible, but we were hated the most.”

Tag: evolution