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COLLAPSE -- How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed --
Jared Diamond
ISBN 4-7492-1464-2 (Japanese translation, book1)
ISBN 4-7492-1465-0(Japanese translation, book2)

Jared Diamond, author of this book has various titles, evolutionary biologist, biogiographer, nonfiction author and so on. In this book, he describes the reasons why various societies failed or succeeded to survive.

I didn't know that now history of Easter Island is well understood, and also secret of its famous giant statues, moai, was revealed. When I was a child, I read that moais were built by ancient Atlantis people. Yes, it was a dreaming story, but actually it was a problem of economy between humans and nature after all.

BTW, Japanese title and subtitle of this book is "文明崩壊 --滅亡と存続の命運を分けるもの--."

The Cognitive Gene

The Cognitive Gene (考える遺伝子)
Yukihiko Makino
ISBN 4-7835-0204-8

Makino, author of the book, is a doctor, not an evolutionary biologist. But, he seems to have been fascinated by wonders of nature especially insects since he was a small child, and he covers wide variety of evolutionary theories. Readers might be a bit confused because he describes wide range topics of evolutionary theory and furthermore mentions his own philosophy repeatedly. But, I think the core message of his book can be summarized like the following:

• There must be some driving principles in origin and evolution of life besides mutations and natural selection.
  

I guess its title, the Cognitive Gene, comes from his perspective above.

I know that not a small number of Neo-Darwinists would attack the viewpoints like Makino's, but still I think the book is worth reading to get a overall perspective of evolutionary biology.

BTW, unfortunately there does not seem to be an English translation.
One more thing is that the book is out of print now. :(
Anyway, we have to look for the book at a library.

Day 442 : A Hat?

Oh, well.
What are you putting on? :o

Actually, the bag is for her toys. :)

Riddle of the Cambrian Explosion

Riddle of the Cambrian Explosion (カンブリア爆発の謎)
Yoshiyuki Usami (宇佐美義之)
ISBN 978-4-7741-3417-8

This book is about Riddle of the Cambrian Explosion which means an explosion of number of species on the earth about 530 million years ago.

Recently, I'm reading various books on evolutionary theory, and at first I expected detailed discussion about the reason why it happened. But, this book describes various creatures of those days and author's work on bionomics of anomalocaris based on numerical simulation.

Basically, I enjoyed the history of strange ancient creatures, but I'm looking for books concentrating on more detailed theories of evolution. :)

Day 440 : A Spoon

Recently, my daughter began to use a spoon when she has a meal, especially desserts like strawberries or apples.

At first, we expected that she would show us some kind of ritual like before. But, she didn't this time, and I'm wondering why... :o

In Memory of Akihisa Yamamura

Today, a friend of mine passed away.
He was only 41 years old.

We were class mates about 20 years ago in our high school days.
In those days, he was the hero of the school.

He played as the center midfielder of soccer football and controlled over the games.
It was like a magic for me when he trapped a soccer ball with a very soft touch, and it was unbelievable that he saw very much wide area of the field and created chances.
Among his team mates, there was Masashi Nakayama who got the first goal of Japanese national team at the FIFA World cup in France later.

Yes, he was really impressive man and stood well apart and above any crowd.

But now, we can't talk with him again anymore.

I pray for the repose of his soul.

Health Screening

Today, I had an annual health screening.

It was weight which was the most impressive among the results.
Last year, my weight was about 84Kg.
But, now it's about 76Kg.
8Kg down! :)

But the doctor said, "Well, it's OK. But, you need to lose 6 more Kilograms." :(

BTW, I didn't do any kind diet things.
One reason could be my daughter. It's really running out of gas taking care of her. :o

Guin Saga 124

The Worshipper's Way
Guin Saga 124
Kaoru Kurimoto
ISBN 978-4-15-030943-5

Google Infrastructure

Google Infrastructure (グーグルを支える技術)
Keisuke Nishida
ISBN 978-4-7741-3432-1

This book seems to be one of best seller IT books in Japan this year.
The English title above is not official one, but my translation.
I'm not sure if the wording has good sense or not, but anyway I think it describes the book enough.

The preface of the book says, "What Google has done is taking future computing in advance."
But, I do not subscribe to this point of view. IMHO, essential points of what Google has done are:

• Make good decisions on various trade-offs
• Concentrate on what they really needed
  

and that's all. It's depends on what kind of goal a company shoots for whether a decision is good or not, or what is needed for a company, I think.
So, I'm wondering if my employer can learn from Google's success now.

Day 419 : Shout!

Hahaha, this snapshot catches an interesting moment.
I'm wondering what she says looking at the above picture when she grew up. :)

Quantum Evolution

Quantum Evolution
Johnjoe MacFadden
ISBN 4 -320-03424-4 (Japanese Transration)

After finishing Dawkins' the Extended Phenotype, I wanted to know more recent results around evolutionary theory and chose the book. Mainly, it's because I studied elementary particle physics when I was a graduate student and felt it's natural taking quantum theory into consideration of origin and evlolution of life.

When I was a high school student, I read Oparin's book which explains an idea that life was created in primodial atomosphere. Here, the first life form must have been a kind of protains with self-reprodusive property.

Here, so far as we know a self-reprodusive protain is composed of at least 20 amino acids, and there are 20 kinds of amino acids. That means there are 20^20 possible combinations, and it's a 26 digits number...
The point is that it's extremely rare for a self-reproducive protain produced by chance.

McFadden tries to solve the problem by using inverse quantum zeno effect, but the idea seems to be very much controversial, and even for me, a bad student of physics, it's unreasonable and Panspermia hypothesis sounds more likely.

Bought on 2008/11/03.

Day 412 : The First 5 Steps

Well, today is a memorial day for our family.
Our daughter finally walked by herself for the first time.
I love her proud look above. :)

This is a small step for her, but a giant leap for the family. :o)

Blue Screen

Oops.
I have not seen the blue screen in a long while.

Today I saw it when I was trying to connect a 17-inch external LCD to my ThinkPad X61 and make it dual-display system at work.

What the problem was that the primary display and the secondary one were exchanged after the crash. That is, I had to keep the external LCD connected to use my ThinkPad. :o
After struggling one hour or so, finally I could work out so that the primary display points to the onboard LCD panel.

But, one hour was a great loss today. :(

Day 408 : Peek-a-Boo

Recently, I play peek-a-boo with my daughter several times a day.
She really loves that. :)

The above is a snapshot when she (not me) did peek-a-boo this morning. :)
BTW, I'm wondering if it's better to say "Hide-and-Seek" this case...

A Strange Object

Today, I saw a strange object when I took a walk with my daughter.
The object was located on top of a fence along a street close to my house.
That thing itself is quite common in our daily life, but it might be better to say that the situation was strange.

Here are pictures of the thing. :o



Yes, it's a punpkin. :o

My wife asked me why I took the pictures, but I'm wondering how can one ignore that.
Almost irresistible. :o

Third Degree

Third Degree
Greg Iles
ISBN 978-0-340-92059-6

The latest paperback of Greg Iles.
I like Iles' books mainly because he has wide range and deep background knowledge and he develops plots nicely quick.

But reading this book, I felt its plot development is a bit slow. Maybe there are two reasons why I felt so. Firstly, the story is set mainly in one house and throughout the book tense atmosphere keeps going a bit monotonically. Secondly, Iles didn't write from a viewpoint of the male leading character at all. Here, I mean a doctor, the husband of another female leading character, by that.

Maybe the doctor is not the leading character, but still I'm feeling it better giving readers to understand the psychology of the tragic doctor.

Anyway, I'm waiting for his next novel, Devil's Punchball, in paperback which is scheduled in this July. Ah, well, it's because I usually read books mainly in trains, not because I want to save money. :o

Bought on 2008/09/22
Finished on 2008/11/07

Day 392 : Stand Up!

In these weeks, my daughter stood up by herself for a minute or so sometimes.

Today, I succeeded to catch the instant finally. :)

Hakodate Ramen Shio-no-Kura

Today's lunch at Hakodate Ramen Shio-no-Kura(函館ラーメン塩の蔵) in Kokubunji station building.



Actually, I don't like it well. :(

Day 390 : Preparation for Winter

Today, we went to Kokubunji and bought a lot of clothes for our daughter at GAP, again. :)



Especially, my wife wanted a down jacket. But above black one seems to be a bit too big, and looked like the down jacket was walking, not our daughter. :o

The Extended Phenotype

The Extended Phenotype --- The Gene as the Unit of Selection ---
Richard Dawkins
ISBN 4-314-00485-1

This is the second book of Richard Dawkins, and it says basically the same thing with his first book: the primary unit of natural selection is the gene. The essential new point of Dawkins in this book is that a phenotype of a gene can appear in other individuals which actually do not carry the gene. In other word, genes can cause effects remotely.

At first, I thought that this could relate genes and memes, but it was a hasty conclusion.
Meme does not follow even the central dogma of biology. Here I mean that in case of Meme acquired characteristic can be inherited against the case of Gene. Thus, there must be different theories from the ones of Gene. Anyway, I need to read some literature on Meme, for example, ones by Susan Blackmore.