Results for “merlin sheldrake” 4 found
Best non-fiction books of 2020
Usually I give this list much later in November, but shopping rhythms are off this year. Furthermore The Strand bookstore in NYC is rather desperately asking for your business, as is Shakespeare & Co. in Paris, and many other independent bookshops. Nor would it hurt Barnes & Noble if you spent your money there, and I hear Amazon is hiring and boosting the macroeconomy. I believe bookstores in England will be closing in a few days, so hurry now. Finally, I hope you will stay home and read these rather than traveling for Thanksgiving!
As usual, these are (roughly) in the order I read them, not ranked by preference or quality.
Anton Howes, Arts & Minds: How the Royal Society of Arts Changed a Nation.
Garett Jones, 10% Less Democracy: Why You Should Trust the Elites a Little More and the Masses a Little Less.
Bruno Macaes, History has Begun: The Birth of a New America.
Thane Gustafson, The Bridge: Natural Gas in a Redivided Europe.
Dietrich Vollrath, Fully Grown: Why a Stagnant Economy is a Sign of Success.
Ronald S. Calinger, Leonhard Euler: Mathematical Genius of the Enlightenment.
Ashley Mears, Very Important People: Status and Beauty in the Global Party Circuit.
Jay Belsky, Avshalom Caspi, Terrie E. Moffitt, and Richie Poulton, The Origins of You: How Childhood Shapes Later Life.
Hollis Robbins, Forms of Contention: Influence and the African-American Sonnet Tradition.
Ross Douthat, The Decadent Society: How We Became the Victims of Our Own Success.
Steven Levy, Facebook: The Inside Story.
Joe Henrich, The WEIRDEST People in the World: How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous.
Oliver Craske, Indian Sun: The Life and Music of Ravi Shankar.
Zachary D. Carter, The Price of Peace: Money, Democracy, and the Life of John Maynard Keynes.
Deirdre Mask, The Address Book: What Street Addresses Reveal About Identity, Race, Wealth, and Power.
Daniel Todman, Britain’s War 1942-1947.
Brent Tarter, Virginians and Their History.
Merlin Sheldrake, Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our World, Change Our Minds, & Shape Our Futures.
Matt Yglesias, One Billion Americans.
Ed Douglas, Himalaya: A Human History.
Michael Wood, The Story of China: A Portrait of a Civilization and its People.
Kevin Davies, Editing Humanity: The CRISPR Revolution and the New Era of Genome Editing.
Nicholas McDowell, Poet of Revolution: The Making of John Milton.
Rebecca Wragg Sykes, Kindred: Neanderthal Life, Love, Death and Art.
This is indeed a fantastic list, really strong, and apologies to those I have forgotten (there are always some). I will be doing a revised, updated, and last two months filled in list much later in December.
And here are the additions:
Darmon Richter, Chernobyl: A Stalker’s Guide.
The economics of fungi
One part of the mycelium had access to a big patch of phosphorus. Another part had access to a small patch. She was interested in how this would affect the fungus’s trading decisions in different parts of the same network. Some recognizable patterns emerged. In parts of a mycelial network where phosphorus was scarce, the plant paid a higher “price,” supplying more carbon to the fungus for every unit of phosphorus it received. Where phosphorus was more readily available, the fungus received a less favorable “exchange rate.” The “price” of phosphorus seemed to be governed by the familiar dynamics of supply and demand.
Most surprising was the way that the fungus coordinated its trading behavior across the network. Kiers identified a strategy of “buy low, sell high.” The fungus actively transported phosphorus — using its dynamic microtubule “motors” — from areas of abundance, where it fetched a low price when exchanged with a plant root, to areas of scarcity, where it was in higher demand and fetched a higher price. By doing so, the fungus was able to transfer a greater proportion of its phosphorus to the plant at the more favorable exchange rate, thus receiving larger quantities of carbon in return.
We still do not understand how those behaviors are controlled. And that is all from the new and excellent Merlin Sheldrake book Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds, & Shape Our Futures.
What are fungi?
I don’t view this as a formal answer, but it is interesting nonetheless:
Mycelium is how fungi feed. Some organisms — such as plants that photosynthesize — make their own food. Some organisms — like most animals — find food in the world and put it inside their bodies, where it is digested and absorbed. Fungi have a different strategy. They digest the world where it is and then absorb it into their bodies…
The difference between animals and fungi is simple: Animals put food in their bodies, whereas fungi put their bodies in the food.
…to embed oneself is an irregular and unpredictable food supply as mycelium does, one must be able to shape-shift. Mycelium is an living, growing, opportunistic investigation — speculation in bodily form.
That is from the new and excellent book by Merlin Sheldrake, Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds, & Shape Our Futures.
Fungus fact of the day
Fungi are prodigious decomposers, but of their many biochemical achievements, one of the most impressive is this ability of white rot fungi to break down the lignin in wood. Based on their ability to release free radicals, the peroxidases produced b white rot fungi perform what is technically known as “radical chemistry.” “Radical” has it right. These enzymes have forever changed the way that carbon journeys through its earthly cycles. Today, fungal decomposition — much of it of woody plant matter — is one of the largest sources of carbon emissions, emitting about eighty-five gigatons of carbon to the atmosphere every year. In 2018, the combustion of fossil fuels by humans emitted around ten gigatons.
That is from the new and excellent book by Merlin Sheldrake, Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds & Shape Our Futures.