ends of the world

three or four years ago, i read craig childs's house of rain: tracking a vanished civilization across the american southwest, which was an excellent read and I still think a great introduction to the anasazi, or ancestral pueblo, and the natural world in which they lived --- now he's just published  atlas of a lost world: travels in ice age america ---  he is a little much sometime, but i really like his writing and how he combines what he sees as a naturalist with archaeology and genetics and what not

gave the first plausible explanation that i've heard for why the oldest archaeological site in the americas is in southern chile --- and a wonderful travelogue along the eastern shores of the pacific

kanaan bausler made the entire trip from alaska to monte verde by kayak and bicycle, and did it in a couple of years

We have speculated that the same traits that may be selected for in individuals with a DRD4 7R allele also may predispose behaviors that are deemed inappropriate in the typical classroom setting and hence diagnosed as ADHD. In this environmental-mismatch hypothesis (Hartman 1993; Jensen et al. 1997), the DRD4 7R subset of individuals diagnosed with ADHD is assumed to have a different, evolutionarily successful behavioral strategy, rather than a disorder. It is also possible, however, that DRD4 7R, although selected for in human populations, could have deleterious effects when combined with genetic variants in other genes. (Wang et al. 2004)