GTGCCAGCAGCCGCGGTAATTCCAGCTCCAATAGCGTATATTAAAGTTGCTGCAGTTAAAAAG

Tuesday and the temperature has dropped below 50!  Fall is here which is wonderful - invigorating - I get to wear boots and sweatery layers and see my breath! Last night - Petterino's and had a blast - sat with Janet and Curt and new friend Adrian who is lots of fun - met her while doing the Welfare Sewing at the Women's Club. She's an older gal - her kids call her eccentric - I call her cool. Loved hearing about her careers, children, loves, interests. She was a professional dancer/performer and had her own TV show! She loved the music last night and we all about lost it over the performance by the lead actor in a new play, A Class Act.  I yawned in boredom as he started what was sure to be a saccharine song about his twin brother that he supposedly wrote when they were eight. Quickly though, the performance deteriorated into a song of abject loathing for the hated twin, complete with lyrics about how their parents hated the boy, how they were plotting his death and how happy the family would be when he was gone. What made it incredibly effective and believable was how he wrote it deliberately sloppily with too many words ill-placed with the melody - just like a kid would compose. It was staggeringly funny and I worship him for having composed and performed such a gem. If I could laugh that hard and well each and every day of my life, I would need little else!!!

Tonight, going to Landmark - final evening of Christ's basic course. Yes, he was so inspired by my experience that he signed up for it. I was, of course, a bit nervous because you tout something as wonderful and then cross your fingers and hope that the people you take on the journey with you get as much from it as you did. He is amazed and grateful - changed and empowered to live a life he can love. Comes at a perfect time for him to feel large and powerful - his job at the casino was eliminated so now he finds himself pounding pavement, looking for a new position. I'm only a bit worried for him because he is credible, accomplished, engaging and inspiring. To be in his presence is to feel good. Someone will scoop him up - just wait and see!

Today, day starting too slowly even though I awoke at 5AM. Time with my men, Shay and Josh, talking about their day's agenda - nice that we three are morning people and love an early chat avec coffee - it's the absolute best time of the day, in my opinion. Now I'm here in my office with another monster list, wishing this blog would have written itself today - I feel a commitment to you to write faithfully and well - each and every workday.

Blown away by two articles I read this morning in New Scientist..  The first: Meet the World's First Transhumanist Politician, and the second, A Brief History of the Human Genome.  We've talked about cyborgs before - I've even joked that we should outsource the left side of our brain to computers - they do a much more efficient job at processing information than our own gray cells. It's the right side where our humanity lies. But really, terrifying, right? -the boundaries between humans and machines blurred in an effort to create a race that is immune from the vagaries of nature.  Here are a few quotes from the first article that grabbed me:

Transhumanism is a philosophical doctrine that aims to continuously improve humanity..aims to free humanity from its biological limitations, overcoming natural evolution to make us more than human.

Being less human is not necessarily a negative thing, because it could mean we are less subject to the whims of nature...we want to retain the positive aspects of nature and reduce the negative ones. 

We are already taking steps in becoming cyborgs...look at Oscar Pistorius (the sprinter with prosthetic limbs who beats natural runners).

Then, from the second article an incredibly humbling discourse on our origins. Did you know there are DNA sequences in your body that have been passed down to you from your "last universal common ancestor" (LUCA) - who first made "his" appearance 3 billion years ago!?  That sequence which can be found in every single living organism is:

GTGCCAGCAGCCGCGGTAATTCCAGCTCCAATAGCGTATATTAAAGTTGCTGCAGTTAAAAAG.


According to the article, "our genomes, then, are not just recipes for making people. They are living historical records. And because our genomes are so vast, consisting of more than 6 billion letters of DNA - enough to make a pile of books tens of metres high - they record our past in extraordinary detail. They allow us to trace our evolution from the dawn of life right up the present."


We are cracking the code - mysteries are being solved!  This LUCA (our ancestor to some billionth mathematical power) "wasn't a discrete, membrane-bound cell at all but rather a mixture of virus-like elements replicating inside some non-living compartment such as the pores of alkaline hydrothermal vents."  

So, why so interested and why did I make a connection between the two articles? Take the time to read the genome article and you'll be stunned that a) they figured out this shit and b) how we got to where we are today was absolutely random and bloody. If you're thinking like I am, you will laugh at the silly attempts of people, like the transhumanists, to prevail over nature. Ain't going to happen. They would have us think it's possible to tame nature so we could enjoy a beautiful sunset but avoid nature's corrections like the black plague, or pandemic flues.  

Our genome is far from a perfectly honed, finished product. Rather, it has been crudely patched together from the detritus of genetic accidents and the remains of ancient parasites. It is the product of the kind of crazy, uncontrolled experimentation that would be rejected out of hand by any ethics board. And this process continues to this day - go to any hospital and you'll probably find children dying of horrible genetic diseases. But not as many are dying as would have happened in the past. Thanks to methods such as embryo screening, we are starting to take control of the evolution of the human genome. A new era is dawning.

I get the hopeful thought of that quote - that we now possess the knowledge to improve the human race and take control of human evolution through better breeding and culling and, maybe there will be a subset of humans who actually take this path and work to create a super-race, harnessing the power of evolution and technology. But, my guess is, if we can't even figure out as a race how to address climate change, what's the likelihood  we will prevail over nature and our ever evolving DNA?  

Peace,
Sarah

PS.  Oh, right - challenge.  Simple. Read and be knowledgeable.