The Rating Game by Reba Toney

Leave it to a woman to figure out a workable dating method. But it seems surprisingly sensible. Boiled down: what usually works is if both people bring -- not necessarily the same thing -- but something equivalent to the table. First off, if a person is a real loser in every way, that person would never rate a winner in any way. Since people value different things, perhaps the author's innovation is not to focus on just the obvious aspects: face and body. There's also personality and money (latter is euphemistically termed "life situation"). As she says, this seems key to the success of hetero: supermodel/rock star couplings. I.e. the man's ugliness is canceled out by his attractive personality, status, friends and money through a simple averaging function. One key of course is to be honest on one's own rating so one doesn't date outside of one's rating class. The author even tosses in some semi-helpful hints on improving one's various categories. Perhaps this is a more detailed look at what it means when people say: "he's way out of your league".

The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution, by Richard Dawkins

My favorite (warning: spoiler) passage:

Shooting the messenger is one of humanity's sillier foibles, and it underlies a good slice of the opposition to evolution that I mentioned... 'Teach children that they are animals, and they'll behave like animals.' Even if it were true that evolution, or the teaching of evolution, encouraged immorality, that would not imply that the theory of evolution was false. It is quite astonishing how many people cannot grasp this simple point of logic. The fallacy is so common it even has a name, the argumentum ad consequentiam - X is true (or false) because of how much I like (or dislike) its consequences.

I would add in the case of the hypothesis of God (a name for religion), the life after death or 'Heaven' is the consequence that people so want to be true that they ignore all other contrary information including evidence for evolution.

I've learned a few things from this book despite having some knowledge about evolution already:

1. Evolution has been observed to happen in experiments conducted on bacteria and animals. That bacteria has been observed to evolve should be expected. Bacteria grow very quickly and have new generations over a short period of time. But animals generally reproduce more slowly. In experiments, lizards were brought from one island to another, and guppies from one stream to another. Both animals were observed to evolve to better adapt to the environment even over the relatively few generations compared to those observed in bacteria.
   
2. In embryology, how do cells which are dividing specialize into different parts of the body? The answer is simple, they don't divide evenly. One daughter cell gets certain parts of the mother cell and the other daughter cells gets other parts. How does this relate to evolution? It shows how the DNA recipe is used to determine ultimate shape and function of an animal's body. I.e. relating to genetics and passing of characteristics from one generation to another.
3. How continental drift works is by creation of rock generally in the middle of oceans and consumption of rocks usually at the other side of the continent. (Actually, I knew this, but forgot some details.) This relates to evolution by explaining why South America and Africa have similar fossils because they were once attached.
   
4. Using radioactive decay of several different isotopes, scientists determined the Earth is 4.6 billion years old. (I knew that scientists had determined this, but didn't remember how.) This relates to refuting creationist belief that the Earth is only 6000 years old.
5. There is substantial fossil evidence linking humans to apes, but fossils are not required to prove that evolution happens (see item #1).
   

But while this book is written to preach to the choir, I would like to think that a relatively open minded non-dogmatic moderate religious person could open this book and be somewhat persuaded. I could be wrong about that, but to my religious friends I propose my usual experiment, read the book and see if you found the needle moved in any way towards belief of evolution.

Henry's 12th Street Tavern, Portland

Portland is the US beer capital. This place has got a gazillion different ones. If you're confused when confronted by the menu, it's worth trying the chocolate beers.