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Human Errors
Human Errors: A Panorama of Our Glitches, From Pointless Bones to Broken Genes | Nathan H. Lents
7 posts | 7 read | 1 reading | 5 to read
An illuminating, entertaining tour of the physical imperfectionsfrom faulty knees to junk DNAthat make us human We humans like to think of ourselves as highly evolved creatures. But if we are supposedly evolutions greatest creation, why do we have such bad knees? Why do we catch head colds so oftentwo hundred times more often than a dog? How come our wrists have so many useless bones? Why is the vast majority of our genetic code pointless? And are we really supposed to swallow and breathe through the same narrow tube? Surely theres been some kind of mistake. As professor of biology Nathan H. Lents explains in Human Errors, our evolutionary history is nothing if not a litany of mistakes, each more entertaining and enlightening than the last. The human body, perhaps evolutions greatest creation, is one big pile of compromises. But that is also a testament to our greatness: as Lents shows, humans have so many design flaws precisely because we are very, very good at getting around them. A rollicking, deeply informative tour of humans four-billion-year-long evolutionary saga, Human Errors both celebrates our imperfections and offers an unconventional accounting of the cost of our success.
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keithmalek
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keithmalek

Around 6% of males have some form of color blindness. It's not nearly as common in females because the screwed-up genes that lead to colorblindness are almost always recessive and on the X chromosone. Because females have 2 X chromosones, they have a backup if they inherit one bum copy. With 7 billion people on earth, that means at least a quarter of a billion people can't appreciate the same pallet of colors That's almost the entire US population

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JoeMo
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Pickpick

I always thought of the human body as a “beautiful machine.” Oh wow was I ever wrong between all of our junk DNA and useless parts among other things. At least I had a lot of fun while listening to how imperfect we humans really are!

#bookspinbingo
@TheAromaofBooks

TheAromaofBooks Woohoo!! 2y
18 likes1 comment
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Smyers96
Pickpick

Loving it!

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LauraJ
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My book club chose this for February. I‘m kinda bored by it, however I did just learn that human sperm can‘t make left turns.
#uselesstrivia

Tonton 😆 6y
julesG Now that bit of trivia makes me want to ask follow up questions. 6y
ravenlee I an suddenly torn between NASCAR jokes and can‘t choose one! 6y
46 likes1 stack add3 comments
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Aimeesue
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On sale today - Science writing in the US Kindle store.
#kindledeals

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rabbitprincess
Pickpick

A Pick with reservations. The part about the weird physical aspects of the human body worked much better than the part that talked about the weirdness of the brain. If you want a weird brain book, read The Idiot Brain, by Dean Burnett, instead.