Feel pressure to actually blog after reading so many, and talking so much about, other people's blogs...

Before I go on to the next book, just want to go back to 1968 for a mo. Read an interesting comment in Slate/Salon/some blog I was reading that mentions the imagery of current Iraq events on TV. Like we saw bloody images on TV during Vietnam, bloody images of Iraq are being transmitted on TV, but on Al Jazeera. Imagine the effect on the viewers. While we, in the US, really don't see all that much gruesome stuff (or maybe it's just me because I don't have much time to watch TV).

Anyway, am now reading Life's Solution: Inevitable Humans in a Lonely Universe, by Simon Conway Morris., prof of Evolutionary Paleobiology at Cambridge. His main theme is that despite the dizzying variety of possibilities that we think evolution has to choose from, in actuality there are only a few workable paths that it can take. His evidence, from what I gather after 24 pages, is the fact of convergence on the same forms or the same functionalities from diverse beginnings. I find Morris hard to read, his point slipping past me and forcing me to backtrack a few paragraphs and re-read. Is it me or is it the writing style?

It's always interesting to see how "hard" science can lead to different philosophies. More on Morris's rant against what he sees is the materialism inherent in other views of evolution later.