INTRO In Praise of Commercial Fame tyler cowen HL

Notebook per

In Praise of Commercial Fame

tyler cowen

Citation (APA): cowen, t. (2015). In Praise of Commercial Fame [Kindle Android version]. Retrieved from Amazon.com

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Parte introduttiva

Nota - Posizione 2

la celebrità rimpiazza l eroismo e molti lamentano il degrado della cultura ci si concentra solo sui costi: il degrado. Ma i benefici? problemi di filtro: la fama ci orienta almeno all inizio... è una bussola utile anche a chi vuole fuggire certi prodotti problemi di status: le nicchie della celebrità sono molte... il libro dei record è un tomo immenso e anche mia nonna primeggiava... la varietà è incentivata dalla molteplice scala dei valori: se ci fosse un solo record da battere migliaia di recordmen resterebbero a casa se merito e fama nn fossero separati nn avremmo varietà e le frustrazioni si moltiplicherebbero... le forze commerviali incontrano i gusti meglio dei critici la celebrità come rito di coordinamento che instaura relazioni (giù i costi di comunicazione) la celebrità offre opportunità di giudizio estetico anche agl escludi la celebrità offre ampie garanzie ai prodotti che sponsorizza... il suo patrimonio repuazionale è immenso un mondo costruito sulla fama lascia molte vie di fuga ai fan rispetto al mondo costruito sul merito oggettivo... il medium modella il messaggio ma spesso è il messaggiato che sceglie il medium con il metodo della sottoscrizione costruisci la tua cultura

Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 2

In Praise of Commercial Fame By tyler cowen

Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 5

fame has contributed to plenitude and diversity."

Nota - Posizione 5

TESI

Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 6

Our culture is steeped in fame.

Nota - Posizione 6

CULTURA COMMERCIALE

Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 7

celebrities are created and promoted for money.

Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 9

They argue that as celebrities replace heroes, our culture is degraded, and our morals corrupted.

Nota - Posizione 10

x TESI DEI CRITICI

Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 11

The result is often celebrities who provide poor role models.

Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 13

they are claiming that the market for celebrities fails.

Nota - Posizione 13

IL LORO ARG È ECONOMICO

Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 17

critics focus on costs— what we give up— but

Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 18

The Benefits of Fame

Nota - Posizione 18

T

Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 18

How does fame increase diversity?

Nota - Posizione 18

T

Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 19

Fame allows us to have more stars for less money because praise and attention are relatively cheap.

Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 21

That people are motivated by a desire for fame is not a new insight. Many of the classic authors recognized the craving for approval. Thus, Adam Smith viewed the search for approval as "the end of half the labours of human life."

Nota - Posizione 22

x RICERRCA DELLA FAMA E NATURA UMANA

Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 24

These fame incentives have been strengthened and intensified in this century by the development of the technologies of mass communication.

Nota - Posizione 25

x ERA MEDIATICA

Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 27

These technologies themselves are in large part the products of markets;

Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 29

Television personalities, musicians, movie stars, fashion models, athletes, and other entertainers have become shared experiences, which we can use in various ways.

Nota - Posizione 30

x POSSIBILITÀ DI CONDIVIDERE

Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 30

use celebrities, like the weather,

Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 31

break the ice in conversations.

Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 32

celebrities can serve as a point of reference

Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 33

These well-known images serve as what economists call focal points: they lower the costs of trading and communication.

Nota - Posizione 34

x PUNTI FOCALI. nPRIMO VANTAGGIO

Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 35

Stars also contribute directly to the efficient functioning of markets. For example, Tiger Woods is too busy playing golf to learn much about most of the products he endorses. But he (and his agent) have every incentive to maintain his reputation by projecting the right image and not disappointing his fans. Thus, Woods's agent makes sure that he endorses only "the right" products.

Nota - Posizione 37

x GARANZIE E INFO. SECONDO VANTAGGIO

Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 40

The world of fame

Nota - Posizione 40

...

Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 40

It also satisfies the expressive dimension of the human psyche.

Nota - Posizione 41

c REALIZZAZIONE. TERZO VANTAGGIO

Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 41

opinion.

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markets do more than provide us with material goods and services; markets also supply vehicles for emotional and aesthetic expression.

Nota - Posizione 44

x TERZO VANTAGGIOIL MERCATO CI FA ESPRIMEE

Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 44

Finally, a world with fame is likely to be a diverse world, because fame produces many kinds of renown, not just the celebrity of Britney Spears or Eddie Murphy. More than ever before, we have minority niche audiences who know that Antoine Oleyant is the best Haitian voodoo flag maker, that Sergiu Celibadache was the leading Rumanian conductor, and that Pale Fire is the book to read by Nabokov.

Nota - Posizione 47

x QUARTO VANRAGGIO: LA VARIETÀ

Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 48

is not the grim "winner-take-all" world portrayed by its critics.

Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 49

greater freedom of choice.

Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 51

Fame vs. merit

Nota - Posizione 51

T

Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 52

a market economy separates fame from merit.

Nota - Posizione 52

DIVORZIOBPAVENTATO

Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 56

It is easier to make money by promoting Madonna— who produces saleable, reproducible outputs like movies and musical CDs— than by promoting Mother Teresa.

Nota - Posizione 57

x LA COMMERCIALITÀ

Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 59

they overlook the greater quantity and diversity of stars that are only available when we separate fame and merit.

Nota - Posizione 60

x L ERRORE DEI CRITICI

Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 64

commercial producers spend a great deal of time trying to find out what fans want. These commercial forces often do a better job of matching performers and audience than would "objective" critics with no financial interest at stake.

Nota - Posizione 66

X CHI SA COSA VUOLE LA GENTE?

Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 66

fans are not powerless against the biases of commercial culture. They have a variety of ways of escaping the market. Rather than listening to commercial advertisements, or mainstream Top 40, fans can turn to friends. And, in most cities, they can turn to a variety of niche marketers, from college radio stations to Internet chat groups.

Nota - Posizione 68

x LA GRANDEVPROMOZIONE PUÒ FALLIRE

Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 74

Each consumer can choose the level of commercial influence which suits him or her best.

Nota - Posizione 75

x LA COMMERCIALITÀ È SCOPERTA: POISIZIONE DEL CD O DEL LIBRO BIN NEGOZIO

Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 75

fans can pay for the promoters themselves, through direct subscription.

Nota - Posizione 76

AX SOTOSCRIZIONE

Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 77

In almost Marxian fashion, subscription finance allows fans to construct their culture as a conscious project,

Nota - Posizione 77

x ASOTTOSCRIZIONE MARXISTA

Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 81

The point is clear: in a market economy consumers can (and do) reject commercial promotions that do not suit their interests.

Nota - Posizione 82

x TESI RIPETUTA

Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 87

Media guru Marshall McLuhan pointed out that a medium shapes its messages, but he neglected to emphasize the role of consumers in choosing the medium and in choosing which kind of shaping will occur.

Nota - Posizione 88

x L ERRORE DI MC LUHAN

Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 88

Competition does not eliminate the biases of fame-producing media, but it does allow fans to select which biases they will encounter and therefore to minimize the costs of those biases.

Nota - Posizione 88

X COMPETIZIONE: SCEGLI IL TUO BIAS. SI GIOCA A CARTE SCOPERTE

Plastic Bags Are Good for You di Katherine Mangu-Ward

Notebook per

sacchettiReason.com

riccardo-mariani@libero.it

Citation (APA): riccardo-mariani@libero.it. (2016). sacchettiReason.com [Kindle Android version]. Retrieved from Amazon.com

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Parte introduttiva

Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 2

Plastic Bags Are Good for You

Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 3

Katherine Mangu-Ward

Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 3

A strand of hair. A coat of paint. A human cornea.

Nota - Posizione 4

Cose più spesse del sacchetto di plastica

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High-density polyethylene is a miracle of materials science.

Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 4

Despite weighing less than 5 grams, one bag can hold 17 pounds, well over 1,000 times its own weight.

Nota - Posizione 5

miracolo della tecnologia

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At about a penny apiece, the bags are cheap enough for stores to give away and sturdy enough to carry home two gallons of milk

Nota - Posizione 6

x ECONOMICO E FUNZIONALE

Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 7

these modern marvels became a whipping boy for environmentalists,

Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 8

well-intentioned, ill-informed

Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 8

banned or taxed

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coastal areas blame the wispy totes for everything from asphyxiated sea turtles to melting glaciers, while inland banners decry the bags' role in urban landscape pollution and thoughtless consumerism.

Nota - Posizione 11

x ACCUSE

Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 12

the case for a mostly aesthetic, symbolic act

Nota - Posizione 12

OPPOSIZIONE ESTETICA

Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 12

one of the most efficient, resource-saving inventions of the 20th century

Nota - Posizione 13

T

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Research

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you were pretty much on your own to get it home.

Nota - Posizione 14

ACQ PRIMA DELL 800

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baskets for the little stuff and wheeled carts for the bigger

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scraps of canvas or other durable fabric

Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 15

This was back when the germ theory of disease was yet to be broadly accepted, and there were not yet Laundromats on every street corner.

Nota - Posizione 16

xINCONVENIENTI: GERMI E LAVAGIO

Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 16

In the early 19th century, paper became cheap enough

Nota - Posizione 17

CARTA

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The paper bag was invented in the 1850s, but it wasn't until the 1870s that a factory girl named Margaret Knight cobbled together a machine that cut, folded, and glued flat-bottomed paper receptacles.

Nota - Posizione 19

x BORSA CARTA

Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 22

dominating the stuff-schlepping market for the next 100 years.

Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 22

German chemist Hans von Pechmann was messing around with methane and ether in a lab in 1898 when he happened to notice a waxy precipitate called polymethylene.

Nota - Posizione 23

x PECHMAN

Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 24

30 years would pass before DuPont chemists stumbled upon a similar compound, polyethylene. This time, the British figured out they could use it to insulate radar cables, which is where the substance served its war duty.

Nota - Posizione 25

x DU PONT

Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 25

In 1953, Karl Ziegler of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute (later re-christened the Max Planck Institute, for obvious reasons) and Erhard Holzkamp invented high-density polyethylene (HDPE) and soon after figured out how to use it to make pipes.

Nota - Posizione 27

x ZIEGLER

Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 27

But Gustaf Thulin Sten is the real hero (or villain, depending on your point of view) of our tale. An employee of the Swedish company Celloplast, Sten was the person who had the inspiration to punch holes into the side of super-thin tubes of HDPE, thus creating the ubiquitous, filmy "T-shirt bags" we know and love (to ban) today.

Nota - Posizione 29

x THULIN

Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 31

1985

Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 32

plastic bags were 11.5 percent cheaper than paper.

Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 34

"Paper or plastic?"

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After several high-profile suffocation deaths of children, manufacturers worked together to create a public safety campaign,

Nota - Posizione 36

x MORTI

Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 38

environmental movement

Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 38

Forest conservation was a big deal in the '80s, a point in favor of plastic. But fossil fuels were a no-no, so maybe paper was better?

Nota - Posizione 39

x IMBARAZZO AMBIRNTALISTA

Nota - Posizione 40

t

Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 40

Reduce

Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 40

In 2010, Guinness World Records named plastic bags the most ubiquitous consumer item in the world.

Nota - Posizione 41

X CONSUMISMO

Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 41

In 2007, San Francisco became the first U.S. city to prohibit plastic bags,

Nota - Posizione 42

x 2007 SVOLTA

Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 45

South Africans refer to bags snagged in bushes as their "national flower." In Washington, D.C., concern about used plastic bags finding their way down storm drains, through the Anacostia River, and into the Chesapeake Bay was the primary justification for the capital city's 5-cent bag tax in 2010, under the slogan "Skip the Bag, Save the River."

Nota - Posizione 48

x FOLKLORE

Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 48

In 2006, the California Coastal Commission claimed that plastic bags make up 3.8 percent of beach litter, and a few years later the California Ocean Protection Council upped the ante to 8 percent of all coastal trash.

Nota - Posizione 49

x % MONNEZZA NEI FIUMI

Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 50

But the definitive American litter study— yep, such a thing exists— reports much lower figures. The 2009 Keep America Beautiful Survey, run by Steven Stein of Environmental Resources Planning, shows that all plastic bags, of which plastic retail bags are only a subset, are just 0.6 percent of visible litter nationwide.

Nota - Posizione 52

x 0,6

Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 52

And those California data? They come from the International Coastal Commission (ICC), which the California Coastal Commission notes relies on information "collected by volunteers on one day each year, and is not a scientific assessment."

Nota - Posizione 54

x METODOLOGIS PREC STUDI

Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 56

only the third-largest contributor to litter in the river, after food wrappers and bottles and cans.

Nota - Posizione 56

x TERZO

Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 58

the safety of marine wildlife.

Nota - Posizione 59

T

Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 59

The Blue Ocean Society for Marine Conservation is just one organization among many that claim that more than 1 million birds and 100,000 marine mammals and sea turtles die each year from eating or getting entangled in plastic.

Nota - Posizione 60

x ALLARMISMO

Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 61

source this figure back to a study funded by the Canadian government that tracked loss of marine animals in Newfoundland as a result of incidental catch and entanglement in fishing gear from 1981 to 1984. Importantly, this three-decade-old study had nothing to do with plastic bags at all.

Nota - Posizione 63

x LE GONTI RIVOSTTUITE DELLS FICERIA

Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 65

As David Santillo, a senior biologist with Greenpeace, told The Times of London, "It's very unlikely that many animals are killed by plastic bags. The evidence shows just the opposite. We are not going to solve the problem of waste by focusing on plastic bags. With larger mammals it's fishing gear that's the big problem. On a global basis plastic bags aren't an issue."

Nota - Posizione 67

x LA RETROMARCIA DI GREENPESCE

Nota - Posizione 68

t

Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 68

Reuse

Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 68

A 2011 study from the U.K.' s Environmental Agency attempted to quantify the emissions footprint both of plastic bags and of their substitutes.

Nota - Posizione 69

x FOOTPRINT

Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 69

Holding the typical HDPE grocery bag up as the standard, researchers found that the common reusable non-woven polypropylene bag— the ubiquitous crinkly plastic tote, typically made with oil— had to be used at least 11 times to hold its own against an HDPE grocery bag. Cotton bags had to be used an amazing 131 times to do the same.

Nota - Posizione 71

x 11 E 131 RIUTILIZZI

Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 75

U.K. Environmental Agency figures assume the HDPE bag is not being reused. Nor do they account for the energy and materials needed to regularly wash the reusable bags in hot soapy water.

Nota - Posizione 76

x LACUNE DEGLI STUDI

Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 78

About 65 percent of Americans report that they repurpose their grocery bags for garbage. By contrast, a survey by the marketing research firm Edelman Berland found that consumers reported forgetting their reusable bags on 40 percent of grocery trips and opted for plastic or paper instead. Prior to the movement to ban plastic bags, many American homes had a nook, cranny, or drawer that functioned as a kind of grocery-sack clown car. It seemed that whatever the size of the container, an infinite number of bags could be stuffed inside.

Nota - Posizione 81

x RIUTILIZZO COMUNE

Nota - Posizione 87

T

Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 87

Recycle

Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 87

100 billion plastic bags that are thrown away in the U.S. every year."

Nota - Posizione 88

x ACCUSA

Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 88

the origins of the figures are murky

Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 93

In 2010, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Americans threw away 690,000 tons of HDPE bags. Of those, approximately 30,000 tons were recycled. That means a total of 660,000 tons were discarded, mostly into landfills (approximately 82 percent of non-recovered municipal solid waste goes to landfill; 18 percent is incinerated).

Nota - Posizione 96

x NUMERI

Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 96

That same year, Americans also chucked almost exactly the same amount of "reusable" polypropylene bags (680,000 tons), of which zero were recovered.

Nota - Posizione 97

x MA... STESSI NUMERI PER LE RIUTILIZABILI

Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 97

reusable bags actually constituted a slightly higher proportion of all bags going to landfills.

Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 98

In April, NPR's Planet Money reported on the economics of plastic recycling, and noted that while recycled plastic from bags and sacks was once a profitable industry, times have changed. The prices of oil and gas have fallen, which means it is cheaper to just make new bags rather than undertake the laborious process of recycling the old ones. As Tom Outerbridge, who runs a Brooklyn recycling center called Sims, explained, "We can't afford to put a lot of time and money into trying to recycle it" if no one's buying the final product.

Nota - Posizione 101

x RICICLARE NN CONVIENE

Nota - Posizione 101

t

Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 101

Reject

Nota - Posizione 121

t

Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 121

Regurgitate

Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 124

reminiscent of the sub-hygienic reality faced by my great-great-grandmother,

Nota - Posizione 125

IL RITORNO DEL VUNCIUME DELLA NONNA

Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 126

Put a leaky package of chicken in your cloth or plastic tote. Then go home, empty the bag, crumple it up, and toss it in the trunk of your car to fester. A week later, you go shopping again and throw some veggies you're planning to eat raw into the same bag. Cue diarrhea.

Nota - Posizione 127

x BECCARSI UNA DIARREA

Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 128

A 2011 survey published in the journal Food Protection Trends found coliform bacteria in fully half of the reusable shopping bags tested

Nota - Posizione 128

x 50%

Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 129

The same 2014 Edelman Berland study that found consumers frequently forgot their bags also unearthed the fact that only 18 percent of shoppers reported cleaning their bags "once a week or more." An article in the Journal of Infectious Diseases traced a 2010 outbreak of norovirus to nine members of an Oregon soccer team who had touched or eaten food stored in a contaminated reusable bag.

Nota - Posizione 131

x ALTRE RICERCHE

Nota - Posizione 132

T

Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 132

Reconsider

Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 138

technology behind plastic grocery bags is so useful it won a Nobel Prize.

Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 138

Employing an unimaginably small amount of base material,

Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 139

Far from being the environmental threat activists make them out to be, plastic bags are not particularly to blame for clogged sewers, choked rivers, asphyxiated sea animals, or global warming. Instead, they are likely our best bet for carrying all of our junk in a responsible manner.

Nota - Posizione 141

x CONCLUSIONI

Is There a Role for Intelligence in Evolution Kevin N. Laland

Notebook per

Is There a Role for Intelligence in Evolution

riccardo-mariani@libero.it

Citation (APA): riccardo-mariani@libero.it. (2016). Is There a Role for Intelligence in Evolution [Kindle Android version]. Retrieved from Amazon.com

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Parte introduttiva

Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 2

Is There a Role for Intelligence in Evolution?

Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 2

Kevin N. Laland

Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 5

Evolution is portrayed in austere terms as a natural process that hews all the prodigious richness and complexity of life out of chance mutational events and the purposeless forces of nature.

Nota - Posizione 6

x ORTODOSSIA DELL EV CIECA

Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 7

biologists have been deeply skeptical of attempts to attribute any guiding role to intelligent agents.

Nota - Posizione 7

GUIDA INTELLIGENTE

Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 8

Intelligent Design,

Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 9

the impulse to distance themselves from such accounts has led evolutionary biologists to accentuate the role of chance

Nota - Posizione 10

x EFFETTI ESTRANEI ALLA RICERCA

Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 15

natural selection has given rise to savvy agents that behave in smart, flexible ways, deploying a bootstrapped intelligence that has fed back on and upgraded evolution itself.

Nota - Posizione 16

x L IDEA DEL MOMENTO

Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 16

in a manner that allows species to co-direct their evolution.

Nota - Posizione 16

c

Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 17

How Culture Shaped the Human Genome

Nota - Posizione 17

T

Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 18

there is now evidence that our cultural activities have shaped the human genome.

Nota - Posizione 18

TESI

Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 19

the development of statistical methods for identifying genes that have been favored by natural selection over the past 50,000 years or less.

Nota - Posizione 20

x ULTIMI 50000 ANNI

Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 20

distinct regions in the human genome have been identified as subject to recent selection.

Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 21

many of these regions appear to have been favored by human cultural practices.

Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 22

Some compelling examples of how genes and culture have coevolved concern genetic responses to changes in human diet.

Nota - Posizione 22

x DIETE

Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 23

Consider, for instance, the evolution of the human ability to eat starchy foods. Agricultural societies typically consume far more starch in their diets than do hunter-gatherer societies.

Nota - Posizione 24

c AMIDO

Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 26

The enzyme responsible for breaking down starch is called amylase.

Nota - Posizione 26

c

Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 28

their cultural activities and associated diets have generated selection for increased amylase.

Nota - Posizione 28

c

Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 30

Another good example of gene– culture coevolution is the evolution of lactose tolerance in adult humans in response to dairy farming.

Nota - Posizione 31

x LATTOSIO

Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 31

For most humans, the ability to digest lactose disappears in childhood, but in some populations lactase activity, which is necessary for breaking down lactose, persists into adulthood. This adult lactose tolerance is frequent in northern Europeans and in pastoralist populations from Africa and the Middle East, but it is almost completely absent elsewhere. These differences relate to genetic variation near the lactase gene (LCT). There

Nota - Posizione 33

c

Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 35

populations with a long history of consuming milk have high frequencies of tolerance.

Nota - Posizione 35

c

Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 40

The signature of selection around the lactase gene is one of the strongest in the human genome, and the onset of the selection has been dated to 5,000– 10,000 years ago.

Nota - Posizione 41

x RAPIDITÀ 5000 10000

Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 41

Once again, this cultural practice has imposed selection on domesticated animals: milk-protein genes in European cattle breeds correlate to present-day patterns of lactose tolerance in human populations.

Nota - Posizione 42

x CONTAGIO AGLI ANIMALI DOMESTICI

Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 45

There is also emerging evidence of diet-related selection on the thickness of human teeth enamel, and on bitter-taste receptors on the tongue. It seems that a gene– culture coevolutionary process has shaped the biology of human digestion.

Nota - Posizione 46

x SMALTO DENTI

Nota - Posizione 46

x RICETTORI DELLA LINGUA

Nota - Posizione 47

x DIGESTIONE

Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 47

In these and other instances, it is not as if we humans have deliberately imposed selection on ourselves in a conscious effort to enhance our capabilities to metabolize or detoxify the foods we have chosen to consume. But we appear to have imposed a direction on our own evolution nonetheless.

Nota - Posizione 49

x NON VOLONTARIO MA DIREZIONE IMPRESSA

Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 51

Thousands of years ago, humans kept wolves, choosing for company the less aggressive among them without recognizing that this selection, iterated over time, would favor profound changes in the wolf phenotype and lead to mild-mannered canine descendants.

Nota - Posizione 53

x LUPO E CANE. EVOLUZIONE GUIDATA ALTRE SPECIE

Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 54

docility, tameness, reductions in tooth size and number, changes in head, face, and brain morphology, floppy ears

Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 56

A second domestication syndrome has also been found in plants. Here characteristic features include a loss of head shattering— the process by which plants disperse their seeds upon ripening— and increases in seed size.

Nota - Posizione 57

x PIANTE

Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 61

Planting crops and tending animals are examples of human “niche construction”— the process by which organisms change their environment in a way that puts new evolutionary pressures on their species and others, triggering the evolution of new adaptive traits.

Nota - Posizione 63

x NICCHIA

Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 63

Cultivating plants and domesticating animals are not random activities. They are purposeful, goal-directed practices,

Nota - Posizione 63

x SCOPO

Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 66

In the process, we have imposed a direction on some evolutionary episodes

Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 67

Our cultural activities may even affect evolutionary rates. For instance, according to one study, human genetic evolution has accelerated more than a hundredfold over the last 40,000 years.

Nota - Posizione 69

x VULTURA E VELOCITÀ EVOLUTIVA

Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 72

selection explains the capability but not the content of our behavioral practices

Nota - Posizione 73

x ACOMPETENZE E CONTENUTI

Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 73

The fact that natural selection underlies our ability to learn, communicate, and engage in cultural practices does not tell us which populations will engage in agriculture, nor what form these practices will take in a particular population, nor what evolutionary episodes will ensue.

Nota - Posizione 75

c

Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 77

why is niche construction not widely recognized as an evolutionary process?

Nota - Posizione 77

T

Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 81

For example, in nineteenth-century England, gene variants responsible for dark coloration in the peppered moth population became more common than the gene variants for light coloration, in part because industrial pollution had blackened the surfaces on which the moths settled, leaving the darker moths less visible to predators. Eventually, partly as a result of this predation, natural selection eliminated the gene for light coloration, leaving only the dark colored moths in the population. This is a classic example of natural selection directly changing the prevalence of genes in a population over time.

Nota - Posizione 85

x CASO CLASSICO DI MUTAZIONE NEODARWINIANA ORTODOSSA

Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 93

Can the same argument be made for the niche construction of worms, birds, or spiders?

Nota - Posizione 94

T

Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 100

animals control certain aspects of their environment,

Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 103

Changes due to niche construction, as opposed to other natural processes, are recognizable because they are reliable, directional, and orderly,

Nota - Posizione 104

ORDINER

Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 108

Some, more traditionally minded, evolutionists typically treat humans as a special case, arguing that there are special properties pertaining to our species’ niche construction that stem from our unique capacity for culture. This allows them to defend the position that niche construction is not a general evolutionary process, but rather a trait peculiar to humans that has no significant impact on broader evolutionary forces.

Nota - Posizione 111

x L UOMO CASO SPECIALE

Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 114

Indeed, humans have been described as “the world’s greatest evolutionary force,”

Nota - Posizione 115

L BUOMO NLA PIÙCGRANDE FORZA EVO

Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 128

Choice and Intelligence

Nota - Posizione 128

T

Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 128

Organisms can influence the trajectory of evolution through their active choices

Nota - Posizione 129

MODO X DIREZIONARWE L EVOLUZIONE