Reviews for Experiences in interpersonal communication

The average rating for Experiences in interpersonal communication based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2010-01-07 00:00:00 Donald Clark I bought this book back in 1994. It still remains a good introduction to the ever-changing (updating***), ever-challenging field which is Genetics. I got used watching Steve on TV: his circumspect look, his travels the world around; his revolutionary questions and ideas, namely: females as superior to males,...genetically speaking (see his book Y: The Descent of Men). Well, ...back to the Language ...of genes. It's a book full of facts: historical, linguistic, biological ones; ...and from there some speculation, new ideas. The names from the chapters are just tantalizing; take a look at some. 1-A message from our Ancestors 2-The Rules of the game 3-Herodotus Revised ... 8-The Economics of Eden 9-The Kingdoms of Cain ... 14-Evolution Engineered 15-Fear of Frankenstein 16-The Evolution of Utopia At the introduction Steve writes: "Genetics is itself a language, a set of inherited instructions passed from generation to generation". He recalls the work of F. Galton who "introduced the idea that human attributes are coded into the unique inheritance which everyone receives from their ancestors". Then Darwin describing "evolution, the appearance of new forms of life by the ALTERATION of those already present, as 'descent with modification' ". Next: the DNA: the inherited simple "vocabulary"... "its message very long", though. The book offers a well-presented incursion in such matters as the Human Genome Project and the world of Philosophy of Biology; such as in the concepts of "eugeny", "human improvement", the Nazi eugeneticists and the 1936 German "Society for Race Hygiene". "Many of the early eugeneticists shared some highly heritable attributes: wealth, education and social position. Francis Galton gained his considerable affluence from his (rather unusual) family of Quaker gun-makers. Much of the agenda of their movement was the survival of the richest". Bernard Shaw wrote "Men and women select their wives and husbands far less carefully than they select their cashiers and cooks". The book in itself is a good basis for ethical discussion. Like this quote from the 1988 Chinese People's Daily: "Idiots give birth to idiots"; underlying a scheme to prevent marriage of those mentally handicapped...; unless sterilized. Even America does not escape scrutiny. By 1926 there was a society called American Eugenics Society meeting for its "Sesquicentennial Exhibition", in Philadelphia. Some of the curious facts presented: a/ "The famous lip* (of Hapsburg) can be seen in the HOLY EMPEROR of 1450 and was still prominent in the Spanish royal family a century ago" b/ "In Siberia, so many mammoths were killed that the hunters made houses from their bones". c/ "The Pennsylvania Amish, stars of the film Witness, have a unique inheritance. Nearly a hundred babies have been born with 6 fingers and restricted growth, a condition almost unknown elsewhere. Every one of the affected children descends from Samuel king, a founder of the community". d/ The Huntington** disease is relatively common among Afrikaners; most of the cases descend from a Dutch man or his wife who immigrated in the 1650's. e/ "In South Africa there is a people, the Lemba, who have black skin but look different from their neighbours....they long thought themselves as one of the tribes of Israel. Their genes do show more similarities to Modern Easterners than do those other native peoples of South Africa". f/ "Finland has a legacy of 19 different genetic disorders each common in a particular community...a history of marriage within the family; so show the records of the Lutheran Church, to which 98% of every hundred Finns once belonged". [...] The book allows also for terrific insights on language itself, when its evolution is paired up with genes'. "Language, archeology and genes all bear witness to an invasion of Europe from the East". "There are some 5,000 different languages in the world and many more-like Etruscan-which are extinct. Like genes, languages evolve because they accumulate MUTATIONS". July 12th, 2013. *caused by a gene for a "protruding lower jaw" **leads to degeneration of nervous system and death in early middle age". UPDATE, August 3rd 2013 ***Back in December 24th of 2005, the British magazine The Economist published an issue containing a survey on Human Evolution, by Geoffrey Carr. The "paper" was quite extensive, it approached "new theories and techniques" that "have revolutionised our understanding of humanity's past and present"...and referred the analysis of "matritrees" (via mitochondrial-DNA) and "patrilines" (via the Y-chromosome) and concluded: "...the common ancestor of the Y-chromosome is a lot more recent than its mitochondrial equivalent. African Adam was born 60,000-90,000 years ago, and so could not have met Africa Eve". Well, today I've read this article entitled "Our genetic Adam and Eve may have lived more or less at the same time" by Ana Gerschenfeld [*]. The article is based on two studies published in the Science magazine. According to Carlos Bustamante, of Stanford University (USA), "the Y-chromosome Adam may have lived 120,000 to 156,000 years ago and the mitochondrial Eve 99,000-148,000 years ago"-periods of time that overlap. Bustamante et al perfected the calculus of the age of Adam, by using the Y chromosomes of 69 men from 9 distinct geographical regions, including Namibia, Democratic Republic of Congo,Gabon, Algeria, Pakistan, Cambodia, Siberia and Mexico. [*]

Review # 2 was written on 2012-07-31 00:00:00 Joseph Czajkowski كتاب ممتاز للغاية معلومات كثيرة رائعة رغم أن بدايته كانت مملة نوعاً ما، ومكررة. لكن بعد الربع الأول من الكتاب حتى نهايته، تبدأ المادة العلمية الدسمة.