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aefc599
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The ability to have sex gives leishmania a tremendous evolutionary advantage. It is the main reason it has thrived and spread for a hundred million years, infecting dinosaurs and people, becoming one of the most successful diseases (from its own point of view) in the world.
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Douglas Preston |
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fce2c81
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EXCLUSIVE: LOST CITY DISCOVERED IN THE HONDURAN RAIN FOREST In search for legendary "City of the Monkey God," explorers find the untouched ruins of a vanished culture."
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Douglas Preston |
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c1889da
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Incidents of Travel
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Douglas Preston |
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407d6d2
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We took canoes into the heart of darkness.
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Douglas Preston |
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902be11
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Vivir causa danos cerebrales.
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Douglas Preston |
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70832b9
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There may be no better use of taxpayer dollars than in funding the NIH; it is a shining example of something our government does extremely well,
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Douglas Preston |
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e9b6c75
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tape
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Douglas Preston |
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f4496f9
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Europeans killed many native people directly without the assistance of disease. In some instances, they intentionally used disease as a biological weapon by, for example, giving Indians smallpox-infected blankets. And millions more Indians died of disease who might have survived, had European brutality not left them weakened and susceptible.
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Douglas Preston |
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2f4050a
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Sometimes, a society can see its end approaching from afar and still not be able to adapt, like the Maya; at other times, the curtain drops without warning and the show is over. No civilization has survived forever. All move toward dissolution, one after the other, like waves of the sea falling upon the shore. None, including ours, is exempt from the universal fate.
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Douglas Preston |
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9c75534
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The museum park used to be surrounded by a great wrought-iron fence with spikes. They took it down when someone jumped off the roof and landed on it. They had to cut out a piece of fence, you see. The spikes had gone clear through the fellow's gut. It was one of those A.B.D.s finally giving up. A.B.D.? It means "All But Dissertation." The museum is full of them, graduate students who are incapable of finishing their dissertations. They stay..
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Douglas Preston |
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e457e06
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You see, what we observe is not nature itself, but nature exposed to our questioning. And what we are, of course, is a response to what we observe.
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Douglas Preston |
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75198ee
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I remember shaking her hand while her eyes wandered about the room, looking over my head, at my feet--like a rude guest at a party.
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Douglas Preston |
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8a857af
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I pointed out that in no way could this be called an experiment. What were the objectives? Where was the control? What was the hypothesis? And I said he was naive to think there might not be any harm in it. This was not like raising a puppy.
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Douglas Preston |
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86cbe6c
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She learned her first two signs five weeks later, on--let's see here--June 4, 1967. They were hug and me. On June 6, she spontaneously signed Hug me Jennie to Mrs. Archibald, her surrogate mother.
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Douglas Preston |
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f6db459
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We didn't use food as a reward. As some previous ASL researchers did. Jennie's reward was making herself understood. That is, she was rewarded like a human child would be rewarded. We wanted to replicate the way a human child acquires language. You don't cram food into an infant every time she says something, now, do you? Of course not.
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Douglas Preston |
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a834e38
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She was like the boy who held his breath until he turned blue. Chimps are just as silly and absurd as human beings. Thank goodness we're not the only ridiculous species in the world!
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Douglas Preston |
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9e057e3
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one day she started making this gesture. It wasn't an ASL sign at all, and I realized with a shock--I'm sorry, but you won't believe this--that she was crossing herself. I can hardly believe it now when I look back, that this . . . this man was attempting to make Jennie into a Christian. Why the Archibalds put up with it is entirely beyond my comprehension.
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Douglas Preston |
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5fa2daf
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Our methodology was to pretend not to understand Jennie's requests unless they were signed. She didn't know the sign for play, but she slapped the floor. It was a deliberate movement that to me looked uncannily like a sign. As an experiment, I slapped the floor. She slapped it and rattled the doorknob. I signed, Jennie want to go outside and play? But I used her sign for play, slapping the floor. She slapped the floor three or four times in..
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Douglas Preston |
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ad7fb71
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When Jennie was given that kitten, she often signed play to it insistently before picking it up and playing with it.
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Douglas Preston |
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f377240
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Jennie quickly began to use language to mislead us. Or to manage a situation more to her liking.
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Douglas Preston |
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08a0a81
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Instead she violently signed Bite, angry, angry, bite! with both hands right in my face. It was an astonishing and very intimidating performance.
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Douglas Preston |
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7037410
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What? This cleric wants to give Jennie religious instruction? How peverse!" I explained that he was really a harmless old man who Jennie was quite fond of. Dr. Prentiss found the whole idea diabolical. It would ruin her experiment! Well, I thought about that for all of two seconds and decided that what was right for Jennie was not necessarily right for Dr. Prentiss and her experiments. There are times, you know, when a mother simply has to ..
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Douglas Preston |
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411b58e
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No!" was a constant refrain in our house after Jennie arrived. Hugo told me I used to shout it in my sleep!"
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Douglas Preston |
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4c51473
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Zero-sum games deal with resources that neither increase nor decrease in amount--they only shift from one player to the other.
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Douglas Preston |
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6cc9474
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man and ape are separated more by ego than anatomy
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Douglas Preston |
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e647f58
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Jennie is very like a human child in challenging and testing her elders. I feel that R. wants to love Jennie, and wants Jennie to love her. She does not, I fear, have the right touch with Jennie. She is too cross and nervous, and she is overly attached to material objects. Jennie is very sensitive and has a mischievous streak in her. The combination is not good.
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Douglas Preston |
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0233637
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They use the label "anthropomorphization" as a cover, because they're scared that maybe we're all just animals after all!"
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Douglas Preston |
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d2d1736
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He said we didn't merit a family all by ourselves. I'm not sure I would go that far, but it's an interesting thought. And an idea influenced, no doubt, by the existence of Jennie. In the end, you see, because of Jennie, he lost his objectivity.
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Douglas Preston |
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f8bd878
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she spent many hours whirling around trying to catch the monarch butterflies that floated among the milkweed and chokecherries. When she caught them, she cupped them in her hands and smelled them, as if they were flowers. When she released them, some would drop to earth traumatized or crushed, while others flew off in a spiraling panic while she watched, her hands and nose dusted with the orange powder from their wings.
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Douglas Preston |
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c593238
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The poison in the arrow that had struck her was, in chemical structure, like curare; it paralyzed first, killed second. It is not a merciful death: one dies fully conscious and aware of one's surroundings.
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Douglas Preston |
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bdfcd9c
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Most detection is simple.
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Douglas Preston |
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8f49c78
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What was Hugo like? Physically, you mean? During the Jennie years he was a lean, bony man. His hair was black and unfashionably long. He had dark eye sockets in which lived two restless black eyes. My, that sounds good. Maybe I should be writing this book. He looked like a British schoolboy, with his hair flopping down over his forehead. He had shifty eyes, not out of guilt, but out of curiosity. His mind was always clicking away while his ..
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Douglas Preston |
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f02aed5
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What was it Voltaire said? "To the living we owe respect, but to the dead only truth." I honor Hugo's memory by telling the truth about him."
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Douglas Preston |
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ae58fe0
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Jennie understands love. Yes, murmured Mrs. Archibald, she knows what love is. I said: then she can understand religion, because religion starts with love. Religion is love. Without first loving God and feeling God's love for us, there can be no religion.
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Douglas Preston |
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03c03a1
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Forgive my skepticism. All the journalists I've dealt with have been so poorly informed. They don't make the slightest effort to understand the science. Journalists are lazy and stupid. I won't mention any names. But take that young man from Esquire magazine. Did you know his journalism background was in celebrity profiles? He wrote about movie stars, so that gave him the authority to write about Jennie. Why, you see, Jennie was a celebrity..
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Douglas Preston |
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9b583a3
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Finally, you'll tell the truth. I've read so many lies about the project I can hardly stand it. If this book can set the record straight--well, you'll be doing us a service. And I hope you won't mind if I turn on my own tape recorder while we talk. It isn't that I don't trust you. . .
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Douglas Preston |
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234eea4
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All the great pillars of my life are crumbling. I must constantly remind myself that I am not the only grieving person in the world. And yet, the loss of Reba is a terrible cross to bear and I do not think I have the strength for it.
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Douglas Preston |
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9e18ead
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Kibbencook was not a hotbed of radicalism, and even antiwar marches were organized with a certain decorum. It was a thoroughly suburban protest.
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Douglas Preston |
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421ae7f
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I felt that I was witnessing the beginnings of a great sea change in America. I was deeply moved. Through this terrible ordeal of Vietnam, I believed, we might finally see America becoming what the founding fathers had envisioned, a nation with a moral purpose in the world and a nation that cared about all its citizens. We might see the end of the cynical Nixon-Kissinger version of realpolitik. It hasn't turned out that way, but then we are..
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Douglas Preston |
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502e6dd
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Animal behaviorists have noted again and again that predatory species often kill when they have no desire to eat. They are killing because the instinct to kill is very strong.
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Douglas Preston |
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f35d610
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Our capacity for violence is greater, but not necessarily our desire.
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Douglas Preston |
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ee6bbb6
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This was a big divergence from the way human children learn language, and that itself was interesting.
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Douglas Preston |
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519505a
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Did you know that research on gorillas has shown that they communicate using gestures? Now listen to this. An ASL-like language may very well have preceded spoken language in human development. A kind of language with gestures and vocalizations. Gradually the vocalizations took over from the gestures, because it's so much more convenient to speak than gesture.
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Douglas Preston |
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59b9385
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While the utterances remained mostly one to three words, the facial expressions and body language became more and more sophisticated. You see, the problem is that this result was very difficult to quantify. It was mind-to-mind, in a way. But of course, none of that is scientific or quantifiable.
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Douglas Preston |