| LONG FOR THIS WORLD The Strange Science of Immortality Jonathan Weiner New York: HarperCollins, June 2010 |
Rating: 5.0 High |
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| ISBN-13 978-0-06-076536-1 | ||||
| ISBN 0-06-076536-4 | 310pp. | HC | $27.99 | |
| Pages 79-80: | Referring to the "astonishing statistic" that every animal burns its own body weight of ATP every day: "If your body weighs two hundred pounds, you will burn two hundred pounds of ATP today, and you will assemble another two hundred pounds of the stuff to burn tomorrow. A single-celled animal like Tokophyra will do the same thing on about one hundred trillionth the scale. So will a camel, and so will a blue whale.." |
| Add a rhyming line: S/B "So will a camel, and so will a blue whale, each on its own appropriate scale." This removes the dimensional illogicality. |
| Page 105: | "(On the other hand, many people think our health is suffering because we are kept too clean while we're young. The rise of asthma in developing countries may be caused by our lack of exposure to pathogens early in life. That's the very opposite of Finch's idea of early exposure and inflammation.)" |
| Word choice: S/B "developed". |
| Page 186: | "The mice on that island will live long and prosper." |
| But will they learn to make the appropriate gesture with their paw? |
| Page 225: | "From the first age to our own, mortality has been the theme of writers, including the writers who loomed like immortals to my generation, the giants whose very names can still make us feel as small and hopeless as epigones, even though they are all going now or gone..." |
| What means "epigones"? Roughly, "rank amateurs." |
| Page 240: | "Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum." |
| Lucretius's furious line: "See what evils are done in the name of religion." (Weiner's translation) |
| Page 251: | "Time to read everything would be one of the consolations of immortality." |
| Indeed. |
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