I don't think Mitt Romney truly appreciates the wonderful genius that is PBS. I watch a lot of it. And last night, there was this really cool NOVA special about things that make us human, specifically DNA, laughter, language, and tool-making.
It was so cool.
First of all, it was hosted by David Pogue, who is both really smart and pretty funny, which is rarer than you might think. Not that scientists aren't funny, but a lot of documentaries have elder, condescending narrators who tend to make me feel stupid for not knowing what they're talking about. They're also really hard to understand. But this was fun to watch because Pogue is very engaging. He's a columnist for the New York Times and he's hosted a few other science series.
NOVA ScienceNow is usually hosted by Neil degrasse Tyson. You may not know who he is, but you should definitely Google him, because he is awesome, too. He's an astrophycisist, which means he studies planets and aliens, along with knowing pretty much everything. He also writes books.
Scientists are so cool.
The actual program was nice, too. It wasn't just about the hosts.
If you think about it, humans have come so far. Not only have we built vast cities and created a profusion of life-helping technologies, but we've also improved genetics-wise. We have opposable thumbs, no tails, voice boxes, enough mental processing skills to modify our environments and use our surrounding, and cooperation skills that are essential to our survival.
Like laughter. One scientist took recordings of the sounds that different human-related monkey species make when they are being tickled, and they found that as their DNA became more and more similar to humans', their laughter became higher pitched and more vocalized. Our super-vocalized laughter has developed, it seems, primarily to manipulate each other. It helps us form emotional bonds with each other so we can work together to hunt and stuff. It's really interesting, because so many things we do and think are hardwired into our brains for an evolutionary advantage. Standards of beauty, for example. Most societies throughout history have prized healthy or younger looking women above others. Younger and healthier woman can live to have more babies. You know. Evolution.
Another really cool thing we do is language. Well, we don't do language so much as have the ability to form and understand complex sentences. Language, or at least more complex language, is remarkably rare in the animal kingdom, so scientists are trying to figure out where it comes from. They just found another australopithecus africanus (Lucy is a famous example) skull, along with a stone tool. Stone tools are also unique to the human species; so, since the astrolopithecus africanus is one of our ancestors, scientists tried to figure out how long we've been able to do these complex things. But that's not the best part. They used the stone tool to figure out whether or not astrolopithecus africanuses could talk by seeing if both skills use the same part of the brain.
It would never have occurred to me to do that. The two ideas are so unrelated, but scientists connected them and tested them. And it turned out to be true! Tool making and language use the same part of the brain! It makes sense, if you think about it. Grammar is kind of like building things. Sort of.
Wow. Science is so cool. And scientists are really smart. that sounds sort of air headed, but I admire their perseverance and passion for their work. If you watch them talk, they're really enthusiastic about everything they say. Not everyone is lucky enough to really love what they do. I just think it's great that not only do we have these really smart, incredibly talented people, but we also have jobs for them where they can learn more things. I want to be able to study what I love, and these people inspired me to try to do that.
Plus, evolution is really interesting. It explains how people have acted been for millions of years and how they came to where they are today. Just like George Orwell discussed in 1984, it is essential that we know our past to evaluate our present. For me, it's very important to know how people work because people are everywhere and they influence everything, If we understand each other, maybe we can finally manage to understand ourselves.
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