Reddit mentions: The best biological science books

>Not familiar as I probably ought to be. I know that there were other homo species -possibly at the same time as humans. I think I heard something about interbreeding at some point, but maybe that was just speculation?

To be honest, I'm not exactly an expert on the specifics. However, Wikipedia provides as always - If the article and the numerous citations are to be believed, they're considered separate species as mitochondria genetic data (that I could explain further if you like) shows little significant breeding. However, there is indeed some evidence of limited interbreeding.

>This is fascinating stuff!

I'm glad you like it!

>To clarify: do all the primates share the same mutation which is different from the mutation in other creatures, ex. guinea pigs?'

Precisely! Mind you, I believe there are a few changes which have accumulated since divergence (since if they don't need the gene once it's "off", further mutations won't be selected against), but the crucial changes are indeed the same within primates - and those within guinea pigs are the same within guinea pigs and their nearby relatives (I believe), but different from those from simians. Amusingly, because mutations occur at a generally steady rate, the number of further divergences between the pseudogenes (no-longer-functional genes which resemble working copies in other organisms) in different species will give hints at how long ago those species had a common ancestor (this, and related calculations, are termed the "genetic clock").

Nifty, isn't it?

>I guess I don't see why it would be demeaning to be patterned after other homo species which were adapted to the environment we would inhabit. Maybe I'm way off here, but it seems like the case for common ancestry could also point to a common creator. (obviously it is outside the bounds of science to consider that possibility, but philosophically, it might have merit?)

I have indeed heard that before; the suggestion of a common creator as opposed to common descent is a fairly common suggestion, pardon the pun. The typical arguments against fall first to traits which can be considered "poor design" in pure engineering terms, even if they're traits that are now needed. I can point to the genetic baggage of the human eye compared to that of the cephelopod (nerve fibers over vs. under the retina), or the human back (not great for walking upright), or further traits along those lines which suggest that we're still closer to our origins. Indeed, we can also look at things like the pseudogene involved with vitamin C above as unnecessary addons; genetic artifacts which hint at our descent.

While this additional argument, I will grant, is better at addressing general creation then special human creation, we can also look at repeated motifs. For example, the same bones that form our hand also form a bird's wing, a whale's flipper, a dog's paw, a horse's hoof, and all the other mammalian, reptile, and avian forelimbs - though sometimes you need to go to the embryo before you see the similarity. When taken alone, that may suggest either evolution or design; it would make sense for a creator to reuse traits. It becomes more stark when you consider examples that should be similar - for example, the wings of the bat, bird, and pterodactyl, despite using the same bones, have vastly different structures, despite all being used for the same purpose (that is, flight).

The way that my evolutionary biology professor phrased this is that "design can explain this, but cannot predict it; evolution both explains and predicts." This idea - that natural observations may be explained or excused (begging your pardon) in a creation model, but are what are expected from an evolutionary model - is the major point I wish to make in this regard. And, I shall admit, perhaps as close as I can get to "disproving" special creation; it tends to approach unfalsifiability, if I understand it correctly.

>If I recall correctly, this is the position of Francis Collins / BioLogos. It's possible, but I have a few concerns. The first being that I think animals do have souls. If that's correct, ensoulment doesn't help make sense of the theology.

Yup; ensoulment as special is less compatible in that case.

>It would also mean that (at least at some point) there were other creatures who were genetically equal to human beings, but didn't have souls. Cue slave trade and nazi propaganda -they're human, but they aren't people. It would have been possible (probable?) that ensouled humans would breed with the soulless humans -and that just seems . . . squicky.

Point taken; even if you were to claim ensoulment for all humans existing at a specific point and thereafter, there can be...negative connotations.

>So, for now, it's a possibility, but it seems to be more problematic than special creation.

To be perfectly frank, I'm not really equipped to argue otherwise. As an atheist, my tendency is to end up arguing against ensoulment, as it's not something we can really draw a line at either. Still, I figured I'd put it out there; I'm a little delighted at your dissection of it honestly, as you brought up things I'd not yet considered.

>Like I said, the genetics is fascinating, and I am naive to much of it. Short of becoming a geneticist, could you recommend a good book on the subject of human genetics and common descent? I took basic genetics in college, so I was able to follow the discussion about chromosomes, telomeres, etc. But I would like to know more about the discoveries that have been made.

Oooh, that's a rough question. Don't get me wrong, it's a wonderful question, but I rarely read books aimed at laymen dealing with my specialty; most of my information comes from text books, papers, and profs, if you take my meaning. Which in the end is a way for me to provide my disclaimer: I can provide recommendations, but I've generally not read them myself; sorry.

Having said that, I'm not about to discourage your curiosity - indeed, I cannot laud it highly enough! - and so I shall do what I can:

• Why Evolution is True is the one I generally hear the best things about; due to the possible audience, it is partially written as a refutation of intelligent design, but it also gives a lovely primer on evolutionary science - and compared to some of Dawkins's texts, it's more focused on the evidence.
  
• I have a copy of Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters on my bedside table right now - largely unread, I'm afraid. Basically, it takes a peek at one gene from each of our chromosomes and explores its relevance and its evolutionary history. It's by no means comprehensive; we have hundreds of thousands of genes, and it looks at twenty-three. None the less, It's been an interesting read thus far.
  
• Similarly, Your Inner Fish explores the human form, and where it comes from; it looks at various structures in the human body and draws evolutionary parallels; this one is more heavily focused on common descent in relation to humans.
  
  I think I'll hold off there for the moment. The latter two are focused more on humans, while the former is about evolution in general. I'm sure there are more books I could recommend - Dawkin's The Greatest Show on Earth has been lauded, for example. I tried to stick with texts which were at a slightly higher level, not merely addressing the basics but delving a little deeper, as you noted you have a measure of familiarity already, and those which were related to humans. I hope they help!
  
  It's not an alternative to books, but Wikipedia does have a fair article on the topic (which I linked near the very top as well). And believe it or not, I do enjoy this sort of thing; you are more then welcome to ask more questions if and when they occur to you.

My main hobby is reading textbooks, so I decided to go beyond the scope of the question posed. I took a look at what I have on my shelves in order to recommend particularly good or standard books that I think could characterize large portions of an undergraduate degree and perhaps the beginnings of a graduate degree in the main fields that interest me, plus some personal favorites.

Neuroscience: Theoretical Neuroscience is a good book for the field of that name, though it does require background knowledge in neuroscience (for which, as others mentioned, Kandel's text is excellent, not to mention that it alone can cover the majority of an undergraduate degree in neuroscience if corequisite classes such as biology and chemistry are momentarily ignored) and in differential equations. Neurobiology of Learning and Memory and Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuropsychology were used in my classes on cognition and learning/memory and I enjoyed both; though they tend to choose breadth over depth, all references are research papers and thus one can easily choose to go more in depth in any relevant topics by consulting these books' bibliographies.

General chemistry, organic chemistry/synthesis: I liked Linus Pauling's General Chemistry more than whatever my school gave us for general chemistry. I liked this undergraduate organic chemistry book, though I should say that I have little exposure to other organic chemistry books, and I found Protective Groups in Organic Synthesis to be very informative and useful. Unfortunately, I didn't have time to take instrumental/analytical/inorganic/physical chemistry and so have no idea what to recommend there.

Biochemistry: Lehninger is the standard text, though it's rather expensive. I have limited exposure here.

Mathematics: When I was younger (i.e. before having learned calculus), I found the four-volume The World of Mathematics great for introducing me to a lot of new concepts and branches of mathematics and for inspiring interest; I would strongly recommend this collection to anyone interested in mathematics and especially to people considering choosing to major in math as an undergrad. I found the trio of Spivak's Calculus (which Amazon says is now unfortunately out of print), Stewart's Calculus (standard text), and Kline's Calculus: An Intuitive and Physical Approach to be a good combination of rigor, practical application, and physical intuition, respectively, for calculus. My school used Marsden and Hoffman's Elementary Classical Analysis for introductory analysis (which is the field that develops and proves the calculus taught in high school), but I liked Rudin's Principles of Mathematical Analysis (nicknamed "Baby Rudin") better. I haven't worked my way though Munkres' Topology yet, but it's great so far and is often recommended as a standard beginning toplogy text. I haven't found books on differential equations or on linear algebra that I've really liked. I randomly came across Quine's Set Theory and its Logic, which I thought was an excellent introduction to set theory. Russell and Whitehead's Principia Mathematica is a very famous text, but I haven't gotten hold of a copy yet. Lang's Algebra is an excellent abstract algebra textbook, though it's rather sophisticated and I've gotten through only a small portion of it as I don't plan on getting a PhD in that subject.

Computer Science: For artificial intelligence and related areas, Russell and Norvig's Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach's text is a standard and good text, and I also liked Introduction to Information Retrieval (which is available online by chapter and entirely). For processor design, I found Computer Organization and Design to be a good introduction. I don't have any recommendations for specific programming languages as I find self-teaching to be most important there, nor do I know of any data structures books that I found to be memorable (not that I've really looked, given the wealth of information online). Knuth's The Art of Computer Programming is considered to be a gold standard text for algorithms, but I haven't secured a copy yet.

Physics: For basic undergraduate physics (mechanics, e&m, and a smattering of other subjects), I liked Fundamentals of Physics. I liked Rindler's Essential Relativity and Messiah's Quantum Mechanics much better than whatever books my school used. I appreciated the exposition and style of Rindler's text. I understand that some of the later chapters of Messiah's text are now obsolete, but the rest of the book is good enough for you to not need to reference many other books. I have little exposure to books on other areas of physics and am sure that there are many others in this subreddit that can give excellent recommendations.

Other: I liked Early Theories of the Universe to be good light historical reading. I also think that everyone should read Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.

I'll just add here.

It seems intimidating at first. But it builds up just like math.

Personally, I really recommend Cambell's Biology as an introductory text. It is really great to start with. It explains things well, and maintains simplicity in explanations without sacrificing complexity at your level.

There is a big difference in how one studies biology vs mathematics. Mathematics is pretty much all problems, and thinking about those problems and concepts. Biology you generally don't have access to huge problem sets. You're lucky to find 30 multiple choice problems/chapter. It is mainly thinking about concepts in depth, over and over again critically, and memorizing details.

There are many ways of memorizing. The classic way many undergrads will do initially just memorize words. I think the best way is active learning. Ex: understanding exactly why things pass through the phospholipid bilayer and the various mechanisms they do(passive diffusion, primary and secondary active transport etc.) will allow you to predict whether things will pass through or not. I remember in my undergraduate cell biology class. My professor would mention an random molecule. Then we'd have to predict based on chemical structure if it would go through or not.

In biology things repeat themselves over and over again.

If you want to get into neuroscience texts. I'd recommend just getting through cambell's biology, and preferably a basic knowledge of chemistry as well. This will allow you to critically think about biology better. Truthfully, it is hard to truly understand why things happen unless you take organic chem and biochem. however you aren't trying to be a biologist or physician. So you can go as far as you feel you need to go.

If you need help I am a doctor and biomedical engineer. So I can certainly provide some assistance.

In biology, general study methods are...

Compare and Contrast Similar and Disimilar topics. You get a better conceptual understanding between hemidesmosomes, desomosomes, gap junctions, tight junctions and all of these cell-cell and cell-ECM interactions by comparing and contrast

Understand the chemistry behind why something happens. This may not make sense now, but if you know where ATP and ADP+Pi cycles occur in kinesins and dyneins, you will understand why each is attracted to opposinmg electrochemical polarities.

Learn words as images. When someone saids something like axon hillock, a picture should pop into your head. It makes it much easier to learn things if you visualize it in biology.

Biology is probably one of the few areas of science where things are ALWAYS changing. What we knew 5 years ago may not be the same today. So getting an up to date textbook is important. If it is older than like 3-4 years, it is probably not worth getting with some exceptions.
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Here are some texts I recommend

Basic Biology: https://www.amazon.com/Campbell-Biology-10th-Jane-Reece/dp/0321775651/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1484097281&sr=8-1&keywords=campbell+biology

Biophysics: https://www.amazon.com/Biological-Physics-New-David-Goodsell/dp/0716798972/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1484097568&sr=8-1&keywords=Biophysics

-I think this text is probably the best for you to start with since you have a mathematics background and the book takes a mathematics/physics approach to biology rather than a biology approach to physics/math. So you may enjoy this to start. Read the comments and evaluate yourself I suppose.

Cell Biology: https://www.amazon.com/Cell-Molecular-Approach-Seventh/dp/160535290X/ref=sr_1_11?
ie=UTF8&qid=1484097587&sr=8-11&keywords=Cell+Biology

-Everyone has different preferences for cell biology texts. It is such an up and coming field that there really is no best text. Personally this is one of my favorites. The images are beautiful, the explanations are as fantastic as they are going to be. This is a heavy duty text and is probably a sophomore/junior biology text. So don't go through this before Campbell. It also takes an experimental approach. Read them. Experiments in biology are like proofs in math. It's important to understand how we discovered something.

Neuroscience: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0071390111/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pC_nS_ttl?_encoding=UTF8&colid=3QI2HWYNLVU1I&coliid=I1OCX5XH50BMBO

This is my favorite. I have it on my shelf right now. Great reference for me as a physician if I need to review some neuro concept I have forgotten. A lot of my neurosurgery/neurology colleagues swear by it.

Neuroanatomy: https://www.amazon.com/Neuroanatomy-Illustrated-Colour-Text-5e/dp/0702054054/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1484098053&sr=8-4&keywords=Neuroanatomy

This is my favorite as a sole neuroanatomy text. however Netter's Anatomy is my absolute favorite anatomical text, the pictures are gorgeous especially neuroanatomy. however for someone like you, a dedicated neuroanatomy text may or may not be necessary. It is generally a text intended for clinicians, however anatomy is anatomy lol.

I hope I offered some resources to get you started!

Here's a list of books I've read that have had a big impact on my journey.

First and foremost tho, you should learn to meditate. That's the most instrumental part of any spiritual path.

 Ram Dass – “Be Here Now” - https://www.amazon.com/Be-Here-Now-Ram-Dass/dp/0517543052 - Possibly the most important book in the list – was the biggest impact in my life.  Fuses Western and Eastern religions/ideas. Kinda whacky to read, but definitely #1

Ram Dass - “Journey Of Awakening” - https://www.amazon.com/dp/B006L7R2EI - Another Ram Dass book - once I got more into Transcendental Meditation and wanted to learn other ways/types of meditation, this helped out.

 Clifford Pickover – “Sex, Drugs, Einstein & Elves…” - https://www.amazon.com/Sex-Drugs-Einstein-Elves-Transcendence/dp/1890572179/ - Somewhat random, frantic book – explores lots of ideas – planted a lot of seeds in my head that I followed up on in most of the books below

 Daniel Pinchbeck – “Breaking Open the Head” - https://www.amazon.com/Breaking-Open-Head-Psychedelic-Contemporary/dp/0767907434 - First book I read to explore impact of psychedelics on our brains

 Jeremy Narby – “Cosmic Serpent” - https://www.amazon.com/Cosmic-Serpent-DNA-Origins-Knowledge/dp/0874779642/ - Got into this book from the above, explores Ayahuasca deeper and relevancy of serpent symbolism in our society and DNA

 Robert Forte – “Entheogens and the Future of Religion” - https://www.amazon.com/Entheogens-Future-Religion-Robert-Forte/dp/1594774382 - Collection of essays and speeches from scientists, religious leaders, etc., about the use of psychedelics (referred to as Entheogens) as the catalyst for religion/spirituality

 Clark Strand – “Waking up to the Dark” - https://www.amazon.com/Waking-Up-Dark-Ancient-Sleepless/dp/0812997727 - Explores human’s addiction to artificial light, also gets into femininity of religion as balance to masculine ideas in our society

 Lee Bolman – “Leading with Soul” - https://www.amazon.com/Leading-Soul-Uncommon-Journey-Spirit/dp/0470619007 - Discusses using spirituality to foster a better, more supportive and creative workplace – pivotal in my honesty/openness approach when chatting about life with coworkers

 Eben Alexander – “Proof of Heaven” - https://www.amazon.com/Proof-Heaven-Neurosurgeons-Journey-Afterlife/dp/1451695195 - A neurophysicist discusses his near death experience and his transformation from non-believer to believer (title is a little click-baity, but very insightful book.  His descriptions of his experience align very similarly to deep meditations I’ve had)

 Indries Shah – “Thinkers of the East” - https://www.amazon.com/Thinkers-East-Idries-Shah/dp/178479063X/ - A collection of parables and stories from Islamic scholars.  Got turned onto Islamic writings after my trip through Pakistan, this book is great for structure around our whole spiritual “journey”

 Whitley Strieber – “The Key: A True Encounter” - https://www.amazon.com/Key-True-Encounter-Whitley-Strieber/dp/1585428698 - A man’s recollection of a conversation with a spiritual creature visiting him in a hotel room.  Sort of out there, easy to dismiss, but the topics are pretty solid

 Mary Scott – “Kundalini in the Physical World” - https://www.amazon.com/Kundalini-Physical-World-Mary-Scott/dp/0710094175/ - Very dense, very difficult scientific book exploring Hinduism and metaphysics (wouldn’t recommend this for light reading, definitely something you’d want to save for later in your “journey”)

 Hermann Hesse – “Siddartha” - https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/siddhartha-hermann-hesse/1116718450? – Short novel about a spiritual journey, coming of age type book.  Beautifully written, very enjoyable.

Reza Aslan - “Zealot” - https://www.amazon.com/ZEALOT-Life-Times-Jesus-Nazareth/dp/140006922X - Talks about the historical Jesus - helped me reconnect with Christianity in a way I didn’t have before

Reza Aslan - “No god but God” - https://www.amazon.com/god-but-God-Updated-Evolution/dp/0812982444 - Same as above, but in terms of Mohammad and Islam.  I’m starting to try to integrate the “truths” of our religions to try and form my own understanding

Thich Nhat Hanh - “Silence” - https://www.amazon.com/Silence-Power-Quiet-World-Noise-ebook/dp/B00MEIMCVG - Hanh’s a Vietnamese Buddhist monk - in this book he writes a lot about finding the beauty in silence, turning off the voice in our heads and lives, and living in peace.

Paulo Coelho - “The Alchemist” - https://www.amazon.com/Alchemist-Paulo-Coelho/dp/0062315005/ - Sort of a modern day exploration of “the path” similar to “Siddhartha.”  Very easy and a joy to read, good concepts of what it means to be on a “path”

Carlos Castaneda - "The Teachings of Don Juan" - The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge https://www.amazon.com/dp/0671600419 - Started exploring more into shamanism and indigenous spiritual work; this book was a great intro and written in an entertaining and accessible way. 

Jean-Yves Leloup - “The Gospel of Mary” - https://www.amazon.com/Gospel-Mary-Magdalene-Jean-Yves-Leloup/dp/0892819111/ - The book that finally opened my eyes to the potentiality of the teachings of Christ.  This book, combined with the one below, have been truly transformative in my belief system and accepting humanity and the power of love beyond what I’ve found so far in my journey.

Jean-Yves Leloup - “The Gospel of Philip” - https://www.amazon.com/Gospel-Philip-Magdalene-Gnosis-Sacred/dp/1594770220 - Really begins to dissect and dive into the metaphysical teachings of Christ, exploring the concept of marriage, human union and sexuality, and the power contained within.  This book, combined with the one above, have radically changed my perception of The Church as dissimilar and antithetical to what Christ actually taught.

Ram Dass - “Be Love Now” - https://www.amazon.com/Be-Love-Now-Path-Heart/dp/0061961388 - A follow-up to “Be Here Now” - gets more into the esoteric side of things, his relationship with his Guru, enlightenment, enlightened beings, etc.

Riane Eisler - “The Chalice and the Blade” - https://www.amazon.com/Chalice-Blade-Our-History-Future/dp/0062502891 - An anthropoligical book analyzing the dominative vs cooperative models in the history and pre-history of society and how our roots have been co-opted and rewritten by the dominative model to entrap society into accepting a false truth of violence and dominance as “the way it is”

Hi there, and thank you for your trust!

It sounds like your boyfriend is going about this a bit insensitively. Logical arguments are OK for debates, when both sides do it for the intellectual challenge. It's not humane to tear a person's world view out from under them when they're unprepared for it and a captive audience. I'm sure he means well and wants you to be closer to him, but he's being a bit of a caveman about it. Don't be mad at him, but tell him you think you'll be better off if you do your own information seeking, at your own pace. Ask him to have the patience and the trust to let you educate yourself. If he really cares for you, he should be fine with this: It may even be taking a burden off his shoulders.

I think there are some things you can consider and think about that will put things into focus and make this mess seem less of a problem.

Do you remember that song by Elton John Sting? "I hope the Russians love their children too."

Consider, first, some family in Tibet. Mom and dad live in a simple hut, doing some farming or whatever Tibetans do, and they have a bunch of children. They work hard to feed the family, and in the evening when they get together for supper they talk and smile and laugh a lot. They hug their children, they care for them when they're sick. They observe some kind of religious rituals, though they've probably never heard of Jesus. When a neighbor has a problem, they help them out. When someone dies, they mourn their passing and wish them a happy afterlife. Apart from the fact that they look Asian, they're people just like you, and they're good people. They have similar hopes and fears, they have stories to share and comfort them, and so forth. Two thirds of the world's people don't believe in Jesus, yet they're humans just like you and mostly decent people, just like your neighbors. Do you think they're all going to hell? Do you think they're paralyzed by their distance from your god, from their fear of death? No. Forget what religion these folks are, they're human.

Atheists are just a special case of those "other" humans. They believe in even less "other-worldly" stuff than the folks in Tibet do. Yet you probably meet atheists on the street every day. Some of them greet you and smile, most of them would help you if you had a problem and they were around. Atheists are not like vampires: They're not evil, they don't have to stay out of God's sunlight, and they don't burn up in churches and from contact with holy water ;)

Atheists have stories too, about the creation of the universe, which is really awesomely huge and inspiring. About the struggle of life to evolve to the fine humans we are today. About the many important achievements humans have made in their short time of being intelligent and basically masters of the world.

Rather than wrenching at your faith, I suggest you take a look at other cultures and religions for a bit. Consider that there humans out there who think other things than you, yet manage to be good people and lead happy lives. I'm almost embarrassed enough to delete my sappy paragraph about the Tibetan family, but I'll leave it in there to let you know what I'm getting at.

Then, inhale a bit of science. Go to church if you feel you need to, but also listen to videos by Carl Sagan. Get an appreciation for the wonders of the universe and of nature here on our planet. It's a rich and wonderful world out there. There is so much to see, to learn! Some people are in awe of God for producing all this; but you can just as easily be in awe of nature, of the intricate mechanisms that brought all this about without anyone taking a hand in it.

More stuff on nature and evolution can be learned, more or less gently, from Richard Dawkins' The Greatest Show on Earth. Get your boyfriend to buy it for you! But stay away from The God Delusion. While Dawkins is thoughtful and sensible, you don't want him telling you about how bad your god is - at least not right away.

A thought from me about a metaphor for God. Training wheels! You know how you have those wheels on your bike to keep it from tipping over as you're starting out? And how, once you've learned to keep your cycle straight, those training wheels are no longer really doing anything any more? That's God. It's comforting to feel that God is behind you in everything you do, it gives you strength and confidence. But everything you've achieved... that was you! You're standing up straight and doing fine, God is the training wheels you don't really need. On the other hand, I'm not going to say he really, truly absolutely isn't there. If you want him to be there, let him be there. Your BF will just have to put up with him for a while longer as you outgrow your training wheels.

Finally, about death: The good news is, it's not nearly the problem you think it is. There's a statistic that says, devout Christians are more than three times as likely, in their final week, to demand aggressive life-extending treatment than atheists. In English: Christians are more scared of dying than atheists are. You'd think that with heaven waiting, they'd be anxious to go! Actually, their religion -your religion- is telling them a comforting lie, letting them stick their heads in the sand all their lives. At the end, they panic because they're not sure what they believe is true. And they struggle for every minute of life.

I was religious once, and I had the "fear of death" phase, as many other atheists here report. You know what? I got over it. I confronted the idea, wrapped my head around it, got over it... and I've been completely unworried about death ever since. You'll get other people quoting Mark Twain for you here: About death being the same as the state you were in before you were born, and that didn't inconvenience you either, did it? Seriously, while I worry that my death may be painful or unpleasant, being dead is something I almost look forward to. It's like the long vacation I've always been meaning to take.

Well, I don't know if that will convince you, but... other people have been there too, and it turns out not to be the horrible problem you think it is. Things will be fine! Just allow yourself some time, and remind your BF to not be pushy about things. You can keep a spare room for when God comes to visit, but don't be surprised if that room turns out to fill up with other junk you're throwing out ;)

On science and evolution:

Genetics is where it's at. There is a ton of good fossil evidence, but genetics actually proves it on paper. Most books you can get through your local library (even by interlibrary loan) so you don't have to shell out for them just to read them.

Books:

The Making of the Fittest outlines many new forensic proofs of evolution. Fossil genes are an important aspect... they prove common ancestry. Did you know that humans have the gene for Vitamin C synthesis? (which would allow us to synthesize Vitamin C from our food instead of having to ingest it directly from fruit?) Many mammals have the same gene, but through a mutation, we lost the functionality, but it still hangs around.

Deep Ancestry proves the "out of Africa" hypothesis of human origins. It's no longer even a debate. MtDNA and Y-Chromosome DNA can be traced back directly to where our species began.

To give more rounded arguments, Hitchens can't be beat: God Is Not Great and The Portable Atheist (which is an overview of the best atheist writings in history, and one which I cannot recommend highly enough). Also, Dawkin's book The Greatest Show on Earth is a good overview of evolution.

General science: Stephen Hawking's books The Grand Design and A Briefer History of Time are excellent for laying the groundwork from Newtonian physics to Einstein's relativity through to the modern discovery of Quantum Mechanics.

Bertrand Russell and Thomas Paine are also excellent sources for philosophical, humanist, atheist thought; but they are included in the aforementioned Portable Atheist... but I have read much of their writings otherwise, and they are very good.

Also a subscription to a good peer-reviewed journal such as Nature is awesome, but can be expensive and very in depth.

Steven Pinker's The Blank Slate is also an excellent look at the human mind and genetics. To understand how the mind works, is almost your most important tool. If you know why people say the horrible things they do, you can see their words for what they are... you can see past what they say and see the mechanisms behind the words.

I've also been studying Zen for about a year. It's non-theistic and classed as "eastern philosophy". The Way of Zen kept me from losing my mind after deconverting and then struggling with the thought of a purposeless life and no future. I found it absolutely necessary to root out the remainder of the harmful indoctrination that still existed in my mind; and finally allowed me to see reality as it is instead of overlaying an ideology or worldview on everything.

Also, learn about the universe. Astronomy has been a useful tool for me. I can point my telescope at a galaxy that is more than 20 million light years away and say to someone, "See that galaxy? It took over 20 million years for the light from that galaxy to reach your eye." Creationists scoff at millions of years and say that it's a fantasy; but the universe provides real proof of "deep time" you can see with your own eyes.

Videos:

I recommend books first, because they are the best way to learn, but there are also very good video series out there.

BestofScience has an amazing series on evolution.

AronRa's Foundational Falsehoods of Creationism is awesome.

Thunderfoot's Why do people laugh at creationists is good.

Atheistcoffee's Why I am no longer a creationist is also good.

Also check out TheraminTrees for more on the psychology of religion; Potholer54 on The Big Bang to Us Made Easy; and Evid3nc3's series on deconversion.

Also check out the Evolution Documentary Youtube Channel for some of the world's best documentary series on evolution and science.

I'm sure I've overlooked something here... but that's some stuff off the top of my head. If you have any questions about anything, or just need to talk, send me a message!

Sure thing! The great, and not so great, thing about learning about evolution is that there is so much information out there it can be a bit overwhelm at times, and it is not always easy to know where to start. The best place to start it probably a university class, but that is not always an accessible resource. In lieu of that, I will strong recommend learning from biologist Richard Dawkins. While he is currently well-known for his stance on religion, he has devoted his life to teaching about evolution to the public. I'll give you a few of my favorite references of his. They are arranged in terms of the length of time they will probably take you. Also, so that you won't be intimidated, they are not references in which he explicitly denounces religion or anything; although, as you will see, he does explain evolution in contrast to some of the claims of creationism. I hope that is not a problem, as it is kind of necessary to learn why biologists take one view as opposed to the other.

Anyway, here are the references! =)

This video (5 parts, 10 min each) is a great introduction to some of the basic concepts of evolution, and was really eye-opening for me.

This lecture series (5 episodes, 1 hour each) goes into much more detail than the above video, gives much more evidence, illustrates some of the arguments, and has many fun and beautiful examples.

The Selfish Gene is a book that answered a huge number of questions about evolution for me (e.g., how can a "survival of the fittest" scheme give rise to people being nice to each other? The answer, it turns out, is fascinating.)

The The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution May be the book you are looking for. This book clearly lays down the evidence for evolution, complete with wonderful illustrations. It is very detailed, and very readable.


There are many other great authors besides Richard Dawkins, but this is a great place to start. You are about to go on a very beautiful and moving journey, if you decide to take it. I envy you! I would love to do it all over again. Enjoy!

Alright I hope you get this. Sounds like you are a lot like I was growing up. I would read a book a week and listen to two. haha. these were books i had to grow into a lot of times. so don't get discouraged. some of these are tough but they'll help you in the long run. promise.

anyways.. here's my list.

Foreign Policy

-Dying to Win- Science and strategy behind suicide terrorism

-Imperial Hubris- good book by a CIA vet on what to expect because of US foreign policy

-Blowback- Same type of book as above, but better.

-The Looming Tower- a good history and account for Sept 11






Economics and Money

-Freakonomics- Ever wonder about he economics of drug dealing, including the surprisingly low earnings and abject working conditions of crack cocaine dealers? This book is fantastic.

-Outliers- Gladwell is a master of minute detail. This book helps you focus on the future.

-Blink-Great book on intuitive judgement

-The Age of Uncertainty- the best book I've ever read on the fight between Capitalism and Communism

Biology and Science

-Why Do Men Have Nipples- a general Q&A book. Good for info you can use at a party or to impress somebody. really random stuff.

-A Short History of Nearly Everything- Humorous take on some heavy heavy science. Easier to read than people think.

-The Ancestors Tale- It was hard picking just one Dawkins book, so I gave you two.

-The Greatest Show on Earth- Dawkins is the world-standard for books on biology and evolution in layman's terms.

Good Novels

-1984-Hopefully no explanation needed

-A Brave New World- a different type of dystopian universe compared to 1984. read both back to back.

-The Brothers Karamazov- My favorite piece of Russian Literature. It made me think more than any other book on this list honestly. I can't recommend it enough.

-Catch-22- There are so many layers to this book. So much symbolism, so much allusion. You must pay attention to get the full affect of this book. Great satire. Masterfully written.

-Alas Babylon- Yet another dystopian novel. This time about what would happen after a world wide nuclear war.

-Slaughterhouse-5 Vonnegut is a badass. And that's really all there is to know. I read this book in one day. It was that good. Satire on WW2.

Philosophy

-Sophies World- Good intro to a lot of basic principles of the major philosophers

-Beyond Good and Evil- Nietzche can get REALLY depressing because he is a nihilist but this book is extremely quotable and will give fresh perspective on a lot of things.

-Atlas Shrugged- Ayn Rand's masthead. Its a novel, but its also a commentary on her precious objectivism.


So there you have it. My short list of books to read. I can get deeper into certain subjects if you want me to. Just PM me.

I'm coming from Molecular biology background so I can't really help you about medical textbooks but for the biological side of things I would recommend the following:

Biology of Aging: Observations and Principles by Arking - This was my textbook for the subject. It's really good, comprehensive book that covers methodology, basic principles and some more advanced.

An Introduction to Genetic Analysis by Griffiths - This was recommended for my Genetics class. Quite comprehensive and explains some basic genetic concepts really well (imo).

Molecular Biology of the Gene by Watson - Almost all the basic stuff from molecular biology you'll need. Essentially, The Book.

Molecular Biology of the Cell by Alberts - Cell biology, you'll need it a lot and Alberts is really good at explaining things even if it's sometimes a bit too wide.

Developmental Biology by Gilberts Developmental biology is, imo, very important and Gilberts is one of the best in the field. Definitely check it out.

There is a few more books on other subjects that are under or above this level (depending on uni this is 2nd or 3rd year of BsC) but you'll get the gist.

Considering the price of these I would recommend you to check out libgen.io (feel free to pm me if you need some help). Also you might want to check out r/longevity , it has much more traffic than this sub. I hope I wasn't confusing, I just woke up and my English is not so good in the morning. :)

I'm kinda in the same boat as you. Only I'm going for PhD so if you need any help or advice feel free to pm me. :)

> as I have no proof that we evolved from other animals/etc.

Such proof abounds. If you're going to debate these people, you need to know some of it.

I don't mean enough to ask a couple of questions, I mean enough to carry both sides of the conversation, because he'll make you do all the heavy lifting.

Start with talkorigins.org.

First, the FAQ
Maybe the 29+ Evidences for Macroevolution next,
then the pieces on observed instances of speciation

See the extensive FAQs index

Here are their questions for creationsists - see both links there

and then read the index to creationist claims

That's just to start. Take a look at the Outline (which starts with an outline of the outline!)

If you're going to talk with a creationist, you either need to get some idea of the topography or you'll end up chasing in circles around the same tree again and again.

Yes, it looks like a major time investment, but once you start to become familiar with it, it gets easier quickly. Don't aim to learn it all by heart - but you should know when there is an answer to a question, and where to find it.

read books like Your Inner Fish and Why Evolution Is True and The Greatest Show on Earth

I list Your Inner Fish first because it tells a great story about how Shubin and his colleagues used evolutionary theory and geology to predict where they should look for an intermediate fossil linking ancient fish and amphibians (a "transitional form") - and they went to that location, and found just such a fossil. This makes a great question for your creationist - given fossils are kind of rare, how the heck did he manage that? If evolution by natural selection is false, why does that kind of scientific prediction WORK? Is God a deceiver, trying to make it look exactly like evolution happens?? Or maybe, just maybe, the simpler explanation is true - that evolution actually occurs. (Then point out that many major Christian churches officially endorse evolution. They understand that the evidence is clear)

It's a good idea to read blogs like Panda's Thumb, Why Evolution Is True, Pharyngula, erv (old posts here) and so on, which regularly blog on new research that relates to evolution.

Make sure you know about the experiments by Lenski et al on evolution of new genes

Don't take "no proof" as an argument. The evidence is overwhelming.

Quinault and Hoh rainforests are definitely worth your time. I've haven't been to the Queets or Bogacheil yet, so I'm not sure about them but I've been told the Queets is amazing even though there was a fire a ways into it a couple summers ago.

The Quinault valley has many largest of type trees in it. You can hike to the end of the valley to a place called "The Enchanted Valley" that has an old abandoned lodge in it and during the snow melt season has hundreds of waterfalls cascading down the cliffs behind it. It's truly beautiful. I went late spring last year and missed the most impressive melt time, but there were still tons of waterfalls and it was amazingly beautiful. The Olympic coast is also an exquisitely beautiful place to camp. I find the coastal spruce forests to be very magical, if somewhat ominous. My favorite plant book states that "the sharp needles of spruce were believed to give it special powers for protection against evil thoughts." There is definitely something very protective about them. Both the Quinault (some parts, check with the ranger to see if your specific campsite requires) and the coast (all areas) require bear cannisters which you can get for a couple dollar deposit at the Quinault ranger station or in Port Angeles.

The Snoqualmie Middle Fork area is also really awesome and much closer, however it's been mostly logged so the trees aren't massive like they are in ONP.

I also strongly recommend doing some mushroom hunting. In the spring, east of the mountains you can find Morels. I haven't been out morel hunting yet because I don't have a car, but I know they grow on burned areas. In the fall you can find tons of delicious edibles. Chanterelles abound. Make sure you have a good guide.

Closer in is Cougar, Squak and Tiger Mountains in Issaquah. We call them the Issaquah Alps. There're over 100 miles of trails and all three mountains have access within ~1 mile of a bus stop.

Not having a car I don't get far out as often as I'd like so I'm always looking for opportunities to go on nature adventures! Hit me up if you're ever interested.

You should read Richard Dawkin's "The Greatest Show On Earth". Most of chapter 1 is used to explain the scientific use of "theory" and how the pundits manipulate the word to remove authority from it. Here is a large excerpt from the book:

"WHAT IS A THEORY? WHAT IS A FACT?

Only a theory? Let’s look at what ‘theory’ means. The Oxford English Dictionary gives two meanings (actually more, but these are the two that matter here).

Theory, Sense 1: A scheme or system of ideas or statements held as an explanation or account of a group of facts or phenomena; a hypothesis that has been confirmed or established by observation or experiment, and is propounded or accepted as accounting for the known facts; a statement of what are held to be the general laws, principles, or causes of something known or observed.

Theory, Sense 2: A hypothesis proposed as an explanation; hence, a mere hypothesis, speculation, conjecture; an idea or set of ideas about something; an individual view or notion.

Obviously the two meanings are quite different from one another. And the short answer to my question about the theory of evolution is that the scientists are using Sense 1, while the creationists are – perhaps mischievously, perhaps sincerely – opting for Sense 2. A good example of Sense 1 is the Heliocentric Theory of the Solar System, the theory that Earth and the other planets orbit the sun. Evolution fits Sense 1 perfectly. Darwin’s theory of evolution is indeed a ‘scheme or system of ideas or statements’. It does account for a massive ‘group of facts or phenomena’. It is ‘a hypothesis that has been confirmed or established by observation or experiment’ and, by generally informed consent, it is ‘a statement of what are held to be the general laws, principles, or causes of something known or observed’. It is certainly very far from ‘a mere hypothesis, speculation, conjecture’. Scientists and creationists are understanding the word ‘theory’ in two very different senses. Evolution is a theory in the same sense as the heliocentric theory. In neither case should the word ‘only’ be used, as in ‘only a theory’.

As for the claim that evolution has never been ‘proved’, proof is a notion that scientists have been intimidated into mistrusting. Influential philosophers tell us we can’t prove anything in science. Mathematicians can prove things – according to one strict view, they are the only people who can – but the best that scientists can do is fail to disprove things while pointing to how hard they tried. Even the undisputed theory that the moon is smaller than the sun cannot, to the satisfaction of a certain kind of philosopher, be proved in the way that, for example, the Pythagorean Theorem can be proved. But massive accretions of evidence support it so strongly that to deny it the status of ‘fact’ seems ridiculous to all but pedants. The same is true of evolution. Evolution is a fact in the same sense as it is a fact that Paris is in the Northern Hemisphere. Though logic-choppers rule the town, some theories are beyond sensible doubt, and we call them facts. The more energetically and thoroughly you try to disprove a theory, if it survives the assault, the more closely it approaches what common sense happily calls a fact.

I could carry on using ‘Theory Sense 1’ and ‘Theory Sense 2’ but numbers are unmemorable. I need substitute words. We already have a good word for ‘Theory Sense 2’. It is ‘hypothesis’. Everybody understands that a hypothesis is a tentative idea awaiting confirmation (or falsification), and it is precisely this tentativeness that evolution has now shed, although it was still burdened with it in Darwin’s time. ‘Theory Sense 1’ is harder. It would be nice simply to go on using ‘theory’, as though ‘Sense 2’ didn’t exist. Indeed, a good case could be made that Sense 2 shouldn’t exist, because it is confusing and unnecessary, given that we have ‘hypothesis’. Unfortunately Sense 2 of ‘theory’ is in common use and we can’t by fiat ban it. I am therefore going to take the considerable, but just forgivable, liberty of borrowing from mathematics the word ‘theorem’ for Sense 1. It is actually a mis-borrowing, as we shall see, but I think the risk of confusion is outweighed by the benefits. As a gesture of appeasement towards affronted mathematicians, I am going to change my spelling to ‘theorum’. First, let me explain the strict mathematical usage of theorem, while at the same time clarifying my earlier statement that, strictly speaking, only mathematicians are licensed to prove anything (lawyers aren’t, despite well-remunerated pretensions).

To a mathematician, a proof is a logical demonstration that a conclusion necessarily follows from axioms that are assumed. Pythagoras’ Theorem is necessarily true, provided only that we assume Euclidean axioms, such as the axiom that parallel straight lines never meet. You are wasting your time measuring thousands of right-angled triangles, trying to find one that falsifies Pythagoras’ Theorem. The Pythagoreans proved it, anybody can work through the proof, it’s just true and that’s that. Mathematicians use the idea of proof to make a distinction between a ‘conjecture’ and a ‘theorem’, which bears a superficial resemblance to the OED’s distinction between the two senses of ‘theory’. A conjecture is a proposition that looks true but has never been proved. It will become a theorem when it has been proved. A famous example is the Goldbach Conjecture, which states that any even integer can be expressed as the sum of two primes. Mathematicians have failed to disprove it for all even numbers up to 300 thousand million million million, and common sense would happily call it Goldbach’s Fact. Nevertheless it has never been proved, despite lucrative prizes being offered for the achievement, and mathematicians rightly refuse to place it on the pedestal reserved for theorems. If anybody ever finds a proof, it will be promoted from Goldbach’s Conjecture to Goldbach’s Theorem, or maybe X’s Theorem where X is the clever mathematician who finds the proof."

Now, if you managed to read all that. I definitely recommend buying it: http://www.amazon.com/Greatest-Show-Earth-Evidence-Evolution/dp/1416594787/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1269444004&sr=8-1

It really is an education.

> I wonder if humanities curious nature towards mysticism is inevitable and that all paths, no matter how diverse, will always use the same formats and formulas to tell their tales.

This is one of the central tenants of Jung's research (well you know "research") and Joseph Cambell basically wrote the book about it... https://www.amazon.com/Thousand-Faces-Collected-Joseph-Campbell/dp/1577315936 sorry if Im being didactic/eg if you already knew that... its a really facinating question/idea. As far as "Embedded in our DNA" eg for a more scientific approach this book is AMAZING https://www.amazon.com/Origin-Consciousness-Breakdown-Bicameral-Mind/dp/0618057072, even though it does veer from the purely scientific, the idea is that our brains have certain regions which act on our spiritual relationship to our "gods" which manifested themselves as voices in our earlier evolutionary states and that as we became more rational our brains still retained these functional but at the same time "disfunctional" anatomy leading to experiances that result for some in uncontrollable states, like schizophrenics for example ... the way he "proves" all of this stuff is a comparison of his experiments in neuroscience with historical texts, legends, sagas, and other implements of earlier humanity like archeological finds. if you are interested in this topic this is an absolutely Mindblowing book right here just saying!


Finally:
"Is this part of our evolutionary growth or yearning for divinity?
Our ego's thirst for magical power or trying to step out of our physical limitations?" I think you are right in that we yearn because, I beleive at least, our evolutionary state has one foot in the past and one in the future, we have evolved beyond our normal need for mere survival and we now use our brains for complex creation and navigation of human institutions but we dont really know "why", we dont really know what meaning is becuase "meaning" is a brand new thing! and without it the universe seems devoid of purpose and therefore I beleive we fill in those gaps with these notions and art, music etc, art and literature helps us define ourselves and music helps us 'engage' with the harmonics/vibrations of the universe on deeper levels (as it is really the only category here that actually relies on the schientific make up of the universe i.e. the ways that ratios of harmonic waves sound pleasing or displeasing based on their relationships in time...). I just love this stuff, am also agnostic but love to celebrate all ideas no matter how objectively "wrong" they may be, thats of c why Im on this sub! Love your questions/keep on searching!!!

Two general types of experience you can get: hands-on, and book learning.

The former is very important, but not too difficult to do. A fair number of people in the Portland area go mushroom hunting occasionally, even if they only know a species of two. Sucking up to the right people is surprisingly effective. Also, getting in touch with or joining organizations like Oregon Mycological Society or the Cascade Mycological Society can be immensely helpful in making contacts and finding hunting partners/mentors.

The latter is also very important, as there is some much you can learn without actually holding a mushroom in your hands. For books, accessible guides like Mushrooms of the Pacific Northwest and All That the Rain promises and More are great for getting started, and heftier books like Mushrooms Demystified are good for those looking to take the next step in learning. Online, the hunting and identification board on The Shroomery, Mushroom Observer, and /r/mycology are great places to lurk and just soak in info, while sites like Mushroom Expert are good places to explore and follow what interests you.

First, let me compliment you on a fascinating list. There are some truly great books in there. I'm both impressed and delighted. Based on your choices, I would recommend the following.


Catch-22 by Joseph Hellar. Even more so than Slaughterhouse-Five, this is the quintessential anti-war novel. A hugely influential 20th century masterpiece. And laugh-out-loud funny in parts too!

The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes is a deserved winner of the Pulitzer Prize. Engrossing, erudite, insightful and educational narrative history of this hugely important event in 20th century history - reads like a novel. Covers not only the Allies, but also the German and (very often overlooked) Japanese side to the story.


Sacred Games by Vikram Chandra, just because of its sweeping scope. Very entertaining modern novel set in India. Touches upon topics and themes as diverse as modern Indian organized crime, international terrorism, Bollywood, the 1948 Partition, Maoist rebels, the caste system, corruption in Indian film, police and government... the list goes on and on. Great fun, and eye-opening.


A Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Marcia Marquez. Whilst not the original "magic realism" novel (despite what Marquez himself my imply), this is the first one to gain international acclaim and is a very influential work. Entertaining in so many ways. Follow the history of the fictional town of Maconda for a hundred years and the lives (the crazy, multifaceted lives) of its inhabitants.


Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett. This is a play, not a novel, and one translated from the French at that. Don't let that put you off. Existentialism has never been so interesting...


The Greatest Show on Earth by Richard Dawkins. His latest tour-de-force.


Manufacturing Consent by Noam Chomsky. Dare I say that this expose on how Government and Big Business control public debate and the media is so important, was more influential than Chomsky's review of Skinner's verbal behaviour? Perhaps not. But a very important work none-the-less.

Overviews of the evidence:

The greatest show on earth

Why evolution is true

Books on advanced evolution:

The selfish gene

The extended phenotype

Climbing mount improbable

The ancestors tale

It is hard to find a better author than Dawkins to explain evolutionary biology. Many other popular science books either don't cover the details or don't focus entirely on evolution.

I will hit one point though.

>I have a hard time simply jumping from natural adaption or mutation or addition of information to the genome, etc. to an entirely different species.

For this you should understand two very important concepts in evolution. The first is a reproductive barrier. Basically as two populations of a species remain apart from each other (in technical terms we say there is no gene flow between them) then repoductive barriers becomes established. These range in type. There are behavioral barriers, such as certain species of insects mating at different times of the day from other closely related species. If they both still mated at the same time then they could still produce viable offspring. Other examples of behavior would be songs in birds (females will only mate with males who sing a certain way). There can also be physical barriers to reproduction, such as producing infertile offspring (like a donkey and a horse do) or simply being unable to mate (many bees or flies have different arrangements of their genitalia which makes it difficult or impossible to mate with other closely related species. Once these barriers exist then the two populations are considered two different species. These two species can now further diverge from each other.

The second thing to understand is the locking in of important genes. Evolution does not really take place on the level of the individual as most first year biology courses will tell you. It makes far more sense to say that it takes place on the level of the gene (read the selfish gene and the extended phenotype for a better overview of this). Any given gene can have a mutation that is either positive, negative, of neutral. Most mutations are neutral or negative. Let's say that a certain gene has a 85% chance of having a negative mutation, a 10% chance of a neutral mutation, and a 5% chance of a positive mutation. This gene is doing pretty good, from it's viewpoint it has an 85% chance of 'surviving' a mutation. What is meant by this is that even though one of it's offspring may have mutated there is an 85% chance that the mutated gene will perform worse than it and so the mutation will not replace it in the gene pool. If a neutral mutation happens then this is trouble for the original gene, because now there is a gene that does just as good a job as it in the gene pool. At this point random fluctuations of gene frequency called genetic drift take over the fate of the mutated gene (I won't go into genetic drift here but you should understand it if you want to understand evolution).

The last type of mutation, a positive mutation is what natural selection acts on. This type of mutation would also change the negative/neutral/positive mutation possibilities. so the newly positively mutated gene might have frequencies of 90/7/3 Already it has much better odds than the original gene. OK, one more point before I explain how this all ties together. Once a gene has reached the 100/0/0 point it does not mean that gene wins forever, there can still be mutations in other genes that affect it. A gene making an ant really good at flying doesn't matter much when the ant lives in tunnels and bites off its own wings, so that gene now has altered percentages in ants. It is this very complex web that makes up the very basics of mutations and how they impact evolution (if you are wondering how common mutations are I believe they happen about once every billion base pairs, so every human at conception has on average 4 mutations that were not present in either parent)

This all ties back together by understanding that body plan genes (called hox genes) lock species into their current body plans, by reducing the number of possible positive or neutral mutations they become crucial to the organisms survival. As evolutionary time progresses these genes become more and more locked in, meaning that the body plans of individuals become more and more locked in. So it is no wonder that coming in so late to the game as we are we see such diversity in life and we never see large scale form mutations. Those type of mutations became less likely as the hox genes became locked in their comfy spots on the unimpeachable end of the mutation probability pool. That is why it is hard to imagine one species evolving into another, and why a creationist saying that they will believe evolution when a monkey gives birth to a human is so wrong.

Hopefully I explained that well, it is kind of a dense subject and I had to skip some things I would rather have covered.

I didn't find Theoretical Neuroscience particularly readable as others in the thread have said, but it is the go-to book for the classic topics in the field. I found Fundamentals of Computational Neuroscience to be a much much better book for introductions. From Computer to Brain : Foundations of Computational Neuroscience was fairly approachable. On the more cognitive side, From Neuron to Cognition via Computational Neuroscience was pretty good. If you like the nonlinear systems side, Dynamical Systems in Neuroscience: The Geometry of Excitability and Bursting was pretty tough to read but full of good content.

It really depends on what subsets of comp neuro you're most interested in. I worked mostly on the cognitive side, and I was never super satisfied with any books on comp neuro in that area. I think the field is just too young for a great summary to exist beyond the neuronal/small network level.

There is a ton of interesting mathematics that goes into other areas of neuro that wouldn't typically be included in Computational Neuroscience. Different imaging methods, for instance, have some pretty fun math involved and are very active areas of research.

First off, one does not have to understand evolution to be an atheist. Common misconception.

If you'd like to truly understand evolution, you must be knowledgeable in what evolution is, what evolution is not and the driving mechanics that make it work.

Now what is evolution?

Evolution refers to the change in the frequencies of certain alleles within an interbreeding population of organisms. What the word allele refers to are the acting components of a gene such as, in simple terms, whether someone is short or tall.

Each person carries two copies of each allele and they may be the same or they may be different but each copy is one of two things: dominant or recessive. When two organisms reproduce, one of the two copies from each parent goes to the offspring. If the parents have two dominant alleles for a trait, such as height, their offspring will have the dominant trait. In this instance they would be tall. If they have the recessive versions, they would be short and if they have one of each they would be medium size, which is called heterozygous expression. That's your simple crash course in heredity.

Now how do alleles come about?

This variation can happen in several different ways, such as:

• Mutation: A mutation occurs when the genetic code is changed. This can happen via an external source, like solar radiation, or an internal source, like the DNA being copied wrong when a cell divides. Each time a mutation happens, it can have one of three results: nothing happens, the effect of the gene can be changed or the gene can stop working.
  
  
• Sex and Recombination: This applies to sexual organisms (duh) and refers to the refers to the reorganizing of which alleles match to which. This is in opposition to the linked genome (things don't get reorganized) of asexual organisms.
  
  
• Genetic Drift: This refers to the the exchange of genes between populations and between species. Think for instance about our tall and short alleles from earlier. Say that one population that really only breeds with itself has only the short allele. One day they meet up with another group of similar organisms that they can breed with and they only have the tall allele. As a result, the missing allele becomes present in the other population.
  
  Well, that's fine and dandy, Mr. Montuckian, but these organisms aren't evolving from frogs into birds now are they? No kids, they're not. Not yet at least. You need to apply the mechanisms of evolution to them to make that happen. These are made up of the following:
  
  
• Selection: A lot of people separate this concept into Artificial and Natural Selection. They are the same thing. Basically, when you have a varied population, some organisms will have traits that provide them with a selective advantage when it comes to their environments. Tall organisms may be better able to access food, while shorter organisms may better conserve heat. Depending on the environment, a tall or a short organism may be better able to survive and reproduce, which creates more creatures with the adaptive genotype and fewer with the maladaptive genotype.
  
  
• Sexual Selection: Sometimes genes are chosen because they are preferred by a species but don't have an adaptive purpose necessarily. We've all got our fetishes after all.
  
  Eventually, and sometimes this can take a very long time, new 'species' are created. But like using the word 'code' to refer to DNA, 'species' is a word that we apply to biology and it's not entirely appropriate. The idea of separate 'species' is borne out of the idea of The Great Chain of Being. This idea says that all animals are organized into a hierarchy of greater or lesser organisms with little stuff like bacteria and bugs at the bottom, mammals toward the middle, people higher than that and celestial gods and angels above that. Not a real scientific sort of idea, if you ask me. In reality, and this is the cool thing, we're all really part of the same tree and if we were to go back and look at you, your parents, your grandparents and so on as a sort of flip book, you would see little tiny variations that lead back to the beginning! It's hard to see these in a single generation though, which I think leads people to dispute the fact that it is, in fact happening.
  
  And this brings me to my final point:
  
  *What isn't* evolution?
  
  Evolution is not:
  
  
• Abiogenesis: This is the idea that life emerges from non-life. While many evolutionary biologists think that this is probably how life began, with errant proteins reassembling themselves and reproducing, it's not a tenet of evolution.
  
  
• The Big Bang Theory: That's a cosmological model and a crappy sitcom. Neither of which have a whole lot of life associated with them.
  
  
• Atheism: Atheism is simply the refusal to believe the assertions of theists that there are supernatural beings. While many atheists point to evolution as the most probable method that we know of for the creation of Man, they are wholly unrelated.
  
  Hopefully this gives you a clearer picture of what it means to understand evolution. There are plenty of great books out there, such as Dawkins' The Greatest Show on Earth that can give you a more in depth explanation of the caveats and nuances of evolutionary theory.
  
  Edit: A few text and clarity things.

Seconding u/theUnmutual6's recommendations, in addition to u/BlueSmoke95's suggestion to check out Ann Moura's work. I would like to recommend Ellen Dugan's Natural Witchery and her related domestic witchery books. Ellen is a certified Master Gardener and incorporates plants into much of her work.

Some of my favorite plant books!

Plant Science:

• Plant Physiology and Development (you can get away with the previous edition of this one!)
  
  
• Botany for Gardeners
  
  
• Essential Plant Pathology (do NOT get the first edition - the second edition is superior in almost every single way)
  
  
• American Horticultural Society Plant Propagation: The Fully Illustrated Plant-by-Plant Manual of Practical Techniques
  
  
  Foraging & Field Guides:
  
  
• A Field Guide to Edible Wild Plants: Eastern and central North America
  
  
• Edible Wild Plants: Wild Foods From Dirt To Plate
  
  
• The Forager's Harvest: A Guide to Identifying, Harvesting, and Preparing Edible Wild Plants
  
  Herbalism:
  
  
• Rosemary Gladstar's Medicinal Herbs: A Beginner's Guide: 33 Healing Herbs to Know, Grow, and Use (this is the first one I would recommend to novices)
  
  
• The Herbal Apothecary: 100 Medicinal Herbs and How to Use Them
  
  
• The Herbal Medicine Maker's Manual
  
  
• 300 Herbs: A Materia Medica
  
  
• Culpeper's Complete Herbal
  
  Ethnobotany:
  
  
• A Modern Herbal Vol I and Vol II (these could belong in the above section or here - I love love love these books. I think they are a must for any hedge witch or green witch!!)
  
  
• Folklore and Symbolism of Flowers, Plants and Trees
  
  
• Whispers from the Woods: The Lore & Magic of Trees
  
  
• Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants
  
  I also encourage y'all to look into fungi as well. I work with both plants and fungi and I think they bring a fascinating and fulfilling aspect to my work. Plus, hunting for mushrooms is super fun! I can recommend field guide books for folks who are interested, they just tend to be very region-specific so I'm not going to list all of them here.
  
  For general fungus reading I recommend the following:
  
  
• Magical Mushrooms, Mischievous Molds
  
  
• The Fifth Kingdom
  
  
• Mycelium Running
  
  
• Radical Mycology: A Treatise on Seeing & Working with Fungi
  
  
• Mushrooms Demystified

I'm assuming you're looking for things geared toward a layman audience, and not textbooks. Here's a few of my personal favorites:

Sagan

Cosmos: You probably know what this is. If not, it is at once a history of science, an overview of the major paradigms of scientific investigation (with some considerable detail), and a discussion of the role of science in the development of human society and the role of humanity in the larger cosmos.

Pale Blue Dot: Similar themes, but with a more specifically astronomical focus.


Dawkins

The Greatest Show on Earth: Dawkins steers (mostly) clear of religious talk here, and sticks to what he really does best: lays out the ideas behind evolution in a manner that is easily digestible, but also highly detailed with a plethora of real-world evidence, and convincing to anyone with even a modicum of willingness to listen.


Hofstadter

Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid: It seems like I find myself recommending this book at least once a month, but it really does deserve it. It not only lays out an excruciatingly complex argument (Godel's Incompleteness Theorem) in as accessible a way as can be imagined, and explores its consequences in mathematics, computer science, and neuroscience, but is also probably the most entertainingly and clearly written work of non-fiction I've ever encountered.


Feynman

The Feynman Lectures on Physics: It's everything. Probably the most detailed discussion of physics concepts that you'll find on this list.

Burke

Connections: Not exactly what you were asking for, but I love it, so you might too. James Burke traces the history of a dozen or so modern inventions, from ancient times all the way up to the present. Focuses on the unpredictability of technological advancement, and how new developments in one area often unlock advancements in a seemingly separate discipline. There is also a documentary series that goes along with it, which I'd probably recommend over the book. James Burke is a tremendously charismatic narrator and it's one of the best few documentary series I've ever watched. It's available semi-officially on Youtube.

Late to the game, but I feel like this is such a big idea that we don't hear enough about it needs to be mentioned here.

In my heart, I know (roughly sketched) the evolutionary incremental steps from apes to humans - how communication and conscious thought began.

It all starts with The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind which is a beautiful, but untestable theory. The shocking component of this theory is that humans developed the capacity for speech long before they were capable of maintaining a conscious train of thought in their minds. In fact, it's quite probable according to this theory that entire societies started to manifest themselves, agriculture was born, and fairly complex tools were being used - all without maintaining a modern conscious train of thought.

The theory goes like this - early man started as a tool maker and solver of survivalist problems. One early advantage was the development of speech to allow for transference of learned solutions to other members of the tribe and its descendants. None of this necessarily requires any kind of internal monologue.

Just imagine if any clever animal who devised a solution to a problem could effectively transmit that knowledge to another. None of that necessarily requires higher level modes of consciousness like self-awareness or recognition of self in a mirror. Even today, you conduct much of your day without maintaining a conscious thought about what you're doing. Often you are thinking about something completely different.

So imagine early humans speaking their early speech to their fellow tribes people teaching them how to make a fire. They speak out loud through the steps. Maybe when they're alone they speak out loud the steps as well - maybe speaking out loud was the only way to work through a problem. How many modern humans today find it easier to speak out loud to themselves while working through a particularly complicated task? It's almost as if the brain's wiring is "smoother" if the problem solving part of the brain goes out through the mouth, in through the ears, and back into the "doer" part of the brain. It doesn't seem like much of a stretch to think those two parts of the brain evolved independently and were only linked much later.

So then one day you don't speak the fire making steps out loud to yourself, but instead hear them in your head. How would you react if this was a novel experience? How would it be comprehended? "Whoa! What was that? Must have been the gods talking to me." Of course, it doesn't take place in such a "eureka!" like moment, but it's still a new novel brain connection that is created much later in our development from baby to teenager.

For proof, the book offers up early writings like the Illiad and Odyssey where characters at first take no action without the gods actively telling them to do something and then later on they see to have their own personas taking their own free will actions. Other things include modern day schizophrenics who can't distinguish their own thoughts from disembodied "voices". In fact, I just recently learned that new evidence shows that these "voices" are registered as activity in the part of the brain associated with speech production rather than language comprehension - that strongly implies the audio hallucinations are more about an inability to distinguish their internal voice as their own.

It's all completely not provable, but something I feel just "fits" so perfectly with how humans would have evolved from apes that it just has to be true.

The new Sibley guide is my favorite, hands-down.

Some also like the Nat Geo guide (6th edition) - great range maps, broken down by subspecies where relevant! - but the artwork is less consistently good, in my opinion.

Sibley's illustrations are clean, easy to navigate, intelligently laid out for maximum ease of comparison, and (frankly) beautiful. The second edition (=new) also has added life history information for many species.

I own both, but whenever prompted to recommend only one, it will always be Sibley. The first edition played a huge role in me getting into birding. :)

Happy birding!

^(edit: fixed grammatical error)

I'm going to post my favorite videos that I grew up on. I could watch them over and over and not get sick of them. Dawkins is my hero.

Royal Institute Christmas Lectures - Richard Dawkins' "Growing Up in the Universe". Entertaining, engaging, and fascinating series of lectures for children on the basics of evolution in a way that makes a hell of a lot of sense. You will see fascinating stuff. I found some parts mind-blowing, and the demonstrations are just great (and here's proof!)

• Ep 1 - Waking Up in the Universe http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHoxZF3ZgTo
  
• Ep 2 - Design and Designoid Objects http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xGyh1Qsw-Ak&feature=channel
  
• Ep 3 - Climbing Mount Improbable http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YT1vXXMsYak&feature=channel
  
• Ep 4 - The Ultraviolet Garden http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_igTWNidwnk&feature=channel
  
• Ep 5 - The Genesis of Purpose http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qm-0Z0ceezQ&feature=channel
  
  BBC Horizon - Nice Guys Finish First (Part 1 of 5) - Documentary on Evolution and Altruism, as well as some basics of Game Theory
  
  
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qFj0caNX1s0
  
  Documentary - The Blind Watchmaker (1 of 5)
  
  
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VhJdai8eKic
  
  Book - The Greatest Show on Earth by Richard Dawkins.
  
  
• http://www.amazon.com/Greatest-Show-Earth-Evidence-Evolution/dp/1416594787
  Fantastic book that illustrates evolution very well. It's an easy read, but it manages to break down complex ideas in a very clear manner. I read it recently, and even though I thought I knew a lot, this really helped me get a better grasp on some of the basics. Dawkins' tone in the beginning might come off as unusually annoying in this book, but it gets better. The pictures and metaphors are beautiful, and there are some witty lines and funny stories. Some of the statistics will make you rage. The ending is surprisingly sad and powerful.
  
  
  Best of luck!

Look into local chapters of the mycological society or mushroom hunting groups/clubs in your area. This site lists a few options. Looks like the one in Albion may be near-ish to you.

I've also found many of the links in the sidebar helpful, especially mushroom observer and the mushroom hunting and identification forum on The Shroomery. The Shroomery's ID forum is where I go to confirm my suspected ID's after keying out specimens on my own.

I use Mushrooms Demystified, by David Arora, as a my post collection ID book. It's both huge and dated (i think it's latest edition is from the early or mid 80's) so it's functionality as a field guide or the final word in ID is lacking. Even so, it is good to learn to work through dichotomous keys like the ones that it employs and it usually gets you headed in the right direction. Other guides like Rogers Mushrooms, All the Rain Promises and More, and The National Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Mushrooms are good resources, too (I'm sure other folks can add to this list, I'm just dropping the names that first come to mind).

As much as I clash with some of his professional/ethical decisions, Paul Stamets has contributed a ton to the accessibility of Mycology to the masses. Check out Mycelium Running and Growing Gourmet and Medicinal Mushrooms as introductions to the Fifth Kingdom.

I'm also really enjoying Tradd Cotter's new book, Organic Mushroom Farming and Mycoremediation

Fungi for the People and The Radical Mycology Collective have also been hugely influential in my personal growth as an amateur mycologist. If you ever get a chance to attend any of their events, I would recommend doing it.

Best of luck and enjoy your journey!

I was in the exact same position as you Junior year and I went on to a small liberal arts college that didn't offer an undergraduate degree in neuroscience but did have some classes in the field. I also plan on working for a few years after graduation to get more experience in the field since my university did not offer it. Neuroscience is a relatively new field and hasn't grown enough yet to become its own department at most universities but rather, as was the case at my university, an interdisciplinary focus. If you are certain that you want to do neuroscience (which admittedy is a lot to ask since you haven't come up against classes like Organic Chemistry) than you should maximize your exposure to the field despite the fact that your future university may have a neuroscience program that is anywhere between its own department and non-existent.

For me this meant taking both dedicated neuroscience classes at my college but also doing research with the only professor doing neuroscience research for two years. I also do a lot of learning on my own working through neuroscience texts; a good book that comes to mind is Principles of Neural Science. I echo the opinion of /u/radicalpi in that the program varies widely between universities in terms of what classes it requires: some will have a greater focus on psychology (Cognitive Psych) while others will focus more on the biology and chemistry. I also agree with his/her opinion that you might be better served majoring in biology or chemistry if that component of neuroscience interests you more. I majored in Biochemistry and Math and had my university offered something along the lines of a Cognitive Sci major, I would not have majored in it since I am more interested in the "bottom-up" perspective. One last comment: if math or physics at all interest you, I would suggest looking into mathematical neuroscience or related subfields. In the neuroscience program at my school, most of the students that took neuroscience courses with me were psych majors and I think this is true of many universities. The problem with this is that to understand developing concepts such as neuronal dynamics and to understand technical advances in the field Hodgkin-Huxley/Fitzhugh-Nagumo, fMRI, and optogenetics requires a good grasp and comfortability with math and physics that is inaccessible to a lot of people in the field. This can only serve to help you break into neuroscience in the future.

It's nothing crazy. Went for the Telluride Mushroom Festival in 2011. Had an amazing time, learned a lot, and met just about every big name in the field of mycology, including Paul Stamets, who is one of my science heroes. I also got to mushroom hunt with Gary Lincoff who literally wrote the book on mushroom identification.

Anyways, I have like 4 days of this amazing, fantastic time, meet all these amazing, fantastic people. The time comes to go home after vacation, and I knew that I wasn't going back to my shitty Wal-Mart job. Something had to change. So I called my boss, told him "I'm not going to be coming back" and enrolled in college. About to start my 4th year of school at the University of New Mexico, and yeah, it's been a bumpy ride, but I'm completely happy with the path I took. Sometimes I don't feel that way, but then I think on what life was before, and how much more I value it now, and I'm glad I did it.

Ever since, I've just had the itch to live in Colorado. It's beautiful, the people are super, duper friendly (I do a lot of hiking up in Durango and the surrounding mountains) and the beer is second to none. It's the kind of place I fantasized about living in for the last 10 years.

Not exactly concrete, but several years ago I read a book called The Cosmic Serpent: DNA and the Origins of Knowledge.

The name of this thread reminded me of it, and I came here to share the recommendation with anyone interested.

Long story short (please read the book if you're interested) an anthropologist goes into South America, connects with a disconnected remote tribe, begins to study their... well, everything.

For instance, Ayahuasca has an extremely complex preparation procedure, involving a root from one and bark of another plant, combinations of drying and heating, etc. and if the process is not properly completed, you can end up with a toxic brew instead of your hallucino-spirit drug.

When our author would ask how they came to such a complex and seemingly random process, the shaman told him "The plants told us."

He starts to take such answers at face value, and draws some very interesting and awesome theories. The book is a great read, especially for a skeptic.

Relevant: The paintings and art of the shaman this particular anthropologist was involved with were very, very clearly (in some instances) depictions of micro-biological constructs. Here a mitochondria, there a cell wall, here some proteins, etc.

The ultimate "theory" posed by the book involves the idea that DNA is a language commonly "spoke" by all living organisms, and that there are ways to tap into that level of language to communicate on a more literal level.

Not... concrete, but still very interesting, and scientific in nature. :)

Love your typo!

All That the Rain Promises and More: A Hip Pocket Guide to Western Mushrooms, by David Arora is definitely a good place to start. For people in the U.S.

There are good edible Russula, Lactarius and Amanita mushrooms, but the species you've listed are not commonly eaten. I do believe A. rubescens is edible, but I would not suggest anyone who is new to mushrooming even pretend to think about eating any species of Amanita until they have familiarized themselves with the genus and the Amanitas in their harvesting areas. Stick with the numerous other edible genera for a season or two, and learn all you can. Russula and Lactarius are great places to start; very delicious and often abundant.

Good luck. If you wanna come back and post pics of your finds, make sure to get them in focus and get shots of all parts, including the gills and their attachment to the stipe. Try to get into the habit of making spore prints of unknown specimens, as this can narrow down considerably the number of potential genera your specimen could belong to...

Have fun!

I wanted to listen to part 2 before commenting.

I always love these dialogues. My particular fixation is with the collection of data, so this feeds my particular flavor of existence quite well.

As for content, this was my introduction to the term "pansychism" - even if I've previously been aware of the idea. So, thanks for that. I'm curious if you've read "The Cosmic Serpent" (https://www.amazon.com/Cosmic-Serpent-DNA-Origins-Knowledge/dp/0874779642)? It's an interesting panpsychic exploration of DNA instigated by an anthropologist's shamanic/psychedelic experience. Worth a read.

I'm also still digesting "neo-nihilism". Interesting idea, initially. Your conversation with Peter is a great example of why I've completely fallen in love with "psychedelic philosophy". Nothing is off limits, everything should be explored.

Thank you for bringing more of the exploratory spirit to us. Looking forward to more from you.

Edit: I LOVE your logo as well! Such a clean way to bring the yin/yang, forbidden fruit, and ouroboros out.

Molecular biology of the cell (http://www.amazon.com/Molecular-Biology-Cell-Bruce-Alberts/dp/0815341059/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1367877862&sr=8-1&keywords=molecular+biology+of+the+cell) and molecular biology of the gene (http://www.amazon.com/Molecular-Biology-Gene-James-Watson/dp/080539592X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1367877885&sr=1-1&keywords=molecular+biology+of+the+gene) are two excellent resources for understanding genetics. If reading is what you're looking to do, begin with peer reviewed journals; textbooks become outdated quickly, but peer-reviewed journals give you a glimpse into the ideas which allowed us to better understand biological phenomena.

The best way to understand genetics is to become actively involved in such matters. Attend seminars with speakers working in cell or molecular biology fields. Get involved in research (this is by far the best thing you can do to improve your understanding of genetics).

Good luck!

Thanks! :) That's a really good idea to wait until you are ready as mindset and intention matter quite a bit.

General Information:

/r/Ayahuasca

-http://forums.ayahuasca.com/

-good forum with general knowledge

-https://www.dmt-nexus.me/forum/
while it's mostly dmt centered, this is probably the best entheogen community online. Has some good writeups on Ayahuasca and DMT visuals are often pretty similar to Ayahuasca since it's the same chemical in most brews(n,n dmt). Breakthrough visuals are much more common on DMT but healing is rarer in my experience.

https://ayaadvisors.org/

Great review site for retreat centers. There are more in the US, especially if you look around.

Books:

The Cosmic Serpent

The Ayahuasca Test Pilot's Handbook

As for posts, this one from dmt nexus is a good primer:

https://www.dmt-nexus.me/forum/default.aspx?g=posts&t=8972


Hopefully that's enough to at least get the ball rolling. Feel free to reach out if you have any questions!

>evolution is based around the fact that existence is random and chaotic.

>random system

Evolution is the opposite of random. It's natural selection, not natural shit happens (no offense). It's a pattern: the things likely to be reproduced are reproduced the most, and there end up being the most of those things, until they completely overpower the others and they're all that's left and they're the new standard. (To answer your questions: The hornier humans made more babies. Then there were more horny babies and humans. Today, all the humans are horny (inclined to mate), to paraphrase.)

We're not naked all the time because it snows. (I'm simplifying, but do you see my point?) Also, culture. That's been around, in anthropological terms, fo eva. (Shyness is something else. This is all extremely complex.)

>And if you take into account that that would accelerate reproduction too much, food supply would diminish and natural selection would kick in.

Looks like you answered your own question there. It's like trees: being taller (mating more) gets them an advantage; but being too tall costs too many resources (we eat too much) and they even out.

I hate to sound insulting, but there are soo many things wrong with your post; you don't understand evolution at all. I think you should read up on it a little. If you're willing to read a book, Richard Dawkins's The Greatest Show on Earth is amazing. Not only will it give you a wonderful understanding, but it's just a brilliant read, and I plan on rereading it for the fun of it. And I got the tree thing from Chapter 12. (Dawkins explains it much better.)

But if you don't want to read a whole book, maybe find some articles or something.

Anyway, good luck.

I think the best way to learn about birds is to actually watch them, so I'd recommend finding your nearest nature sanctuary to see if they have birdwatching walks/classes. If you're in North America, the Audubon Society is a great organization that runs bird sanctuaries and teaches people about birds. There are similar organizations in other regions - you'll just need to do a little online searching. There are also loads of books to help you get started, like this one.

You can also learn a lot about birds online. Cornell University provides online ornithology courses, but they also provide tons of free info about North American birds and their nests, global bird sightings, and more.

I started learning about birds by reading books, and there are plenty of great options. Visit your local library to see what they have. Books cover everything from identification to intelligence to falconry.

What kinds of birds are you particularly interested in? Is there any aspect of birds that you find most fascinating, like anatomy, flight, song, color...?

The two you've listed are my personal favorites. I also make use of National Audobon Society Field Guide to North American Mushrooms, 100 Edible Mushrooms, North American Mushrooms: A Field guide to Edible and Inedible Fungi (not my favorite, but a useful cross reference at times), and Mushrooms and Other Fungi of North America (this one has fantastic photos. While it is never recommended to ID by appearance alone, the cross cuts and underside photos in this book can be very useful). If you live in the southern east coast then I'd recommend Mushrooms of the Southeastern United States if you can find it affordably (as far as I know it is out of print and even used coppies are pretty expensive, but it is a fantastic book for southeastern mushrooms).

As far as websites I am a pretty frequent visitor of MushroomExpert.com. It offers some good keys and there are a lot of mushrooms listed.

I would not recommend the Audubon guide it is very out of date (this can range from outdated taxonomy all the way to toxicology that has changed over the years). It is useful because it lists species other guides lacks but you'll learn to hate it.

Buy a location specific guide. It depends on where you live. If you get really into field hunting buy some specific guides that give you a more in depth understanding and help you not to die. Joining a local mycological society is also an extremely valuable resource in understanding mycology.

Here's a bit of everything

Regional guides

Alaska

Common Interior Alaska Cryptogams

Western US

All The Rain Promises and More
Mushrooms of the Pacific Northwest

Mushrooms Demystified This is an old book, while still useful it definitely needs updating.

The New Savory Wild Mushroom Also dated but made for the PNW

Midwestern US

Mushrooms of the Midwest

Edible Wild Mushrooms of Illinois and Surrounding States

Mushrooms of the Upper Midwest

Southern US

Texas Mushrooms: A Field Guide

Mushrooms of the Southeastern United States

Common Mushrooms of Florida

A Field Guide to Southern Mushrooms It's old so you'll need to learn new names.

Eastern US

Mushrooms of West Virginia and the Central Appalachians

Mushrooms of Northeast North America (This was out of print for awhile but it's they're supposed to be reprinting so the price will be normal again)

Mushrooms of Northeastern North America

Macrofungi Associated with Oaks of Eastern North America(Macrofungi Associated with Oaks of Eastern North America)

Mushrooms of Cape Cod and the National Seashore

More specific (Advanced) guides

Psilocybin Mushrooms of the World

North American Boletes

Tricholomas of North America

Milk Mushrooms of North America

Waxcap Mushrooms of North America

Ascomycete of North America

Ascomycete in colour

Fungi of Switzerland: Vol. 1 Ascomycetes A series of 6 books.

Fungi Europaei A collection of 14 books.

PDFs and online Guides

For Pholiota

For Chlorophyllum

American species of Crepidotus

Guide to Australian Fungi If this is useful consider donating to this excellent set of guides.

Websites that aren't in the sidebar

For Amanita

For coprinoids

For Ascos

MycoQuebec: they have a kickass app but it's In French

Messiah college this has a lot of weird species for polypores and other things

For Hypomyces

Cultivation

The Mushroom Cultivator: A Practical Guide to Growing Mushrooms at Home (If your home is a 50,000 sq ft warehouse)

Organic Mushroom Farming and Mycoremediation: Simple to Advanced and Experimental Techniques for Indoor and Outdoor Cultivation

Growing Gourmet and Medicinal Mushrooms

Mycology

The fifth kingdom beginner book, I would recommend this. It goes over fungal taxonomy Oomycota, Zygomycota and Eumycota. It also has ecology and fungi as food.

The kingdom fungi coffee table book it has general taxonomy of the kingdom but also very nice pictures.

Introduction to fungi Depends on your definition of beginner, this is bio and orgo heavy. Remember the fungi you see pop out of the ground (ascos and basidios) are only a tiny fraction of the kingdom.

NAMA affiliated clubs

For a pocket guide I'd recommend All That the Rain Promises and More. It has a little bit of a bias towards species in western North America, but it's still very useful in the east (I'm in New England and I love it). Mushrooms Demystified is pretty big for taking into the field, but it is a great companion to ATtRPaM, and it is the best all around field guide for North America, in my opinion.

This is my kinda contest! My Favorite Book! changes with my mood, but my current favorite would be Kushiel's Dart, which looks like a cheap romance novel judging by its cover, but is actually a story of political intrigue set in an alternate history of Europe (most of the action takes place in an alternate-medieval France whose inhabitants have the blood of literal angels running through their veins).

It's the first of a trilogy (and there's more books after that, but you can stop at the first trilogy), but if I recall correctly one can probably stop at the first book, but I know I couldn't. Carey has done a fabulous job building a world that feels real--she intermixes her story's religion, history, and politics into the main narrative in such a way that it doesn't feel clunky at all.

Fair warning: the beginning has quite a bit of exposition, but you need it all to understand anything. It's a long read; I think the print book has 799 pages; the Kindle version has 929 pages. Also: there are sex scenes, so if you don't like to read that kind of content, you probably want to give this book a pass.

If I should win the raffle, I'd love The Song of the Dodo: Island Biogeography in an Age of Extinction!

For which one? CRISPR? Well you won't be able to understand the details until you have a good grasp of molecular biology. But molecular biology itself is a huge area. I would like to give you recommendations but it's really hard with your interests so broad.

It is like asking for book recommendations on Linear Algebra: there are tons and some focus on numerical methods, others on eigenvalues, others on decomposition methods like SVD, others on applications in machine learning, etc.

Maybe start with something like this:

https://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/0815344325/ref=pd_lpo_sbs_dp_ss_1/187-9306447-5023949?pf_rd_m=A3DWYIK6Y9EEQB&pf_rd_s=lpo-top-stripe&pf_rd_r=0A3FAK9C4CRAFZQTEQ4H&pf_rd_t=201&pf_rd_p=1977604502&pf_rd_i=0815341059

or this

https://www.amazon.com/Molecular-Biology-Robert-Weaver/dp/0073525324/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1479421339&sr=8-2&keywords=Molecular+Biology%3A+Robert+Weaver

for molecular biology.

For introductory genetics, pretty much any undergraduate level biology or biochemistry textbook will help you understand the basics of transcription, translation, genes, heredity, etc. Once you have a thorough understanding of what a gene is, what a regulatory region is, what epigenetics is, what types of mutations occur etc. then you'll have a good idea of which specific questions to ask to explore a certain topic in more detail.

I would also spend time on the wikipedia pages and other sources reading about the different sequencing methods that are central to genetics. Look up Sanger sequencing and explore some of the next-generation-sequencing (NGS) techniques now available. Fully understanding these will also require knowledge of biochemistry, such as phosphodiester bonds, and basic biology techniques and physics such as electrophoresis and fluorescence.

Understanding and diving into CRISPR, genetic engineering, synthetic biology, etc. will require a thorough understanding of the above, and then more detailed knowledge on gene expression, how it is manipulated, about things like plasmids, retroviruses and their molecular machinery, etc.

Then there are people who develop algorithms for bioinformatics that probably know little to none of the above and don't need to for their day to day work; the answer is in general "it depends".

I would always reccommend an actual field guide over an app, they are just more useful, but apps can be a good complement. For field guides, Sibley just came out with his new guide, which is probably the best one you can get.

You could also try National Geographic or Peterson's Guides, they are good. Kaufman has a really good guide that is geared more towards beginners, but has as much info as a full-sized guide.

As for Apps, there is Sibley, National Geographic, Peterson's, and iBird PRO, all of which are decent and have bird songs on them, which is probably the best feature. Its mostly personal preference between these.

Asking about ID guides on an ID subreddit seems valid to me!

I'm personally a big fan of the Sibley guides. I think the illustrations provide a lot of detail and clarity and really highlight field marks well. For your area, the Eastern guide is probably what you want, though if you travel frequently or just want a more complete book, there's also a version that covers all of North America.

I also want to mention Merlin, which is a free app from Cornell. It's comprehensive, really good at helping ID unknown birds, provides lists of birds most likely for your location and the time of year, and includes songs as well. It's fantastic and the sort of thing you'd normally expect to pay a good bit of money for.

>good sources on Darwinism?

So far as I know "Darwinism" isn't actually a thing. I know this is mostly semantics, but really the only people who say "Darwinism" are creationists who wish to portray evolution as an ideology, and of course over-inflate Darwin's relevance in the contemporary theory of biological evolution. Hes he was the first to lay out the idea of evolution by natural selection, but we know oh so much more about it now than what his observations revealed, so painting Darwin as the final word in evolutionary theory is also just as misguided as trying to portray it as an ideology.

As for where to start, though, as a few others in this thread have suggested I'd say take a look at Richard Dawkins' The Greatest Show On Earth. He does a wonderful job of explaining many of the major points in what is currently known about evolution and how we know it all in language that regular laypersons like most of us here are quite capable of understanding.

You might try here: http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/search?q=fact&restrict_sr=on

and then ctr+F for "evolution" for a few previous instances of this question, or here:


http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/search?q=evolution+fact&sort=top&restrict_sr=on

or other variations thereupon.

Anyways, we don't make a habit of letting these questions out all that often, as they never really do well, and when they do attract attention it's mostly people who don't really understand evolution all that well, trying to explain evolution to people who definitely don't understand it that well, and it just never really winds up being productive (while those of us who do know something about evolution squirm in agony at even attempting to undue all the damage this whole "fact vs theory" thing in a somewhat concise manner).

I'm keeping it spammed (you could also try searching in /r/evolution), but my honest suggestion would be to have her read something like Jerry Coyne's Why Evolution is True, if she's willing to (and perhaps you could sit down and read it yourself first, to be able to give it an honest recommendation). Alternatively Dawkins's The Greatest Show on Earth is supposed to be good (I haven't read it myself), although Coyne's writing style might be more appealing for the non-academic, and some people are allergic to Richard Dawkins, for obvious reasons if you know who he is.

What's her angle. Presumably she is of the faithful? If that's really her angle, then you might be hard pressed to convince her with a short paragraph or two that I could provide.

If your interested in the special diversity of Earth, I strongly recommend The Greatest Show On Earth, which does a truly marvelous job of putting a couple hundred years of initial speculation, exciting research, and modern evidence for evolution, and the basis of life on Earth into an easy to read book. It can be a little daunting at time, but I love the book, and recommend it fondly.

Molecular Biology of the cell - Great textbook to get you started. It is really comprehensive but not challenging to read. The diagrams are informative but not overbearing. The author clearly cares a great deal about the subject.

https://www.amazon.com/Molecular-Biology-Cell-Bruce-Alberts/dp/0815341059

Molecular Biology - Weaver - This one is nice because it keys in on many of the landmark experiments and scientists who contributed greatly to the field:

https://www.amazon.com/Molecular-Biology-Associate-College-Sciences/dp/0073525324/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1L89I1QHNC7HX&keywords=molecular+biology+weaver&qid=1571969517&sprefix=molecular+biology+weaver%2Caps%2C130&sr=8-1

If you want something smaller and more like a narrative, give Recombinant DNA: Genes and Genomes - A Short Course a try.

https://www.amazon.com/Recombinant-DNA-Genomes-Course-Edition/dp/0716728664

I just read it last week. You're pretty well right about. If you're looking for an introductory book which covers evolution, I recommend The Greatest Show On Earth also by Dawkins.

Look, Dawkins is definitely one of the most pedantic authors I've ever read, but his work is strong and arguments are presented very clearly but if the subject isn't what you're interested in, then what can you do. That said, yes the book will contain valuable information that you will gain if you finish it. Any book that has stood as long as the Selfish Gene will leave you with something. But it is an old book. Much of what he says was pretty cutting edge at first edition, but it was released in the 70's (I think). Read the 30th Anniversary Edition if you decide to move forward with it, if not, move on to something that interests you more. It's only a book. It won't get mad.

TL;DR If you don't like it, don't read it.

On evolution:

I urge you to read some books on the issue that aren't written with a fundamentalist Christian slant. The science is decisive, and the distinction between "macro" and "micro" is itself a religious confusion. (as others have already pointed out).

On the Big Bang: The biggest problem with the Big Bang is that we don't know how it happened. That is a problem, and scientists are working obsessively to solve it. But saying "God did it" buys you a whole host of new problems. How did God happen? Who created God? Why did he create the universe? You haven't answered anything by saying "God did it": you've just kicked the can down the road and added an additional unfalsifiable and unsupported assumption.

Also, the evidence for the Big Bang is all around you: look up background microwave radiation,distribution and evolution of galaxies, the abundance of light elements, and the expansion of space.

On the supernatural:

Any thinking that starts with "Do you think it's possible that..." is a HUGE RED FLAG. Almost anything is possible, but usually the sort of logic that must be defended with a "Well, it's possible..." is absurdly improbable. This is a good example. Yeah, it's possible that an entire other world could be layered on our own - but it's more improbable than winning the lottery, and I don't buy lottery tickets.

If I had to explain the fundamental difference between the way I think about the spiritual and the way you think about the spiritual, it would be this. You ask "Is it possible that..." and "Do you think that maybe..."

I ask "Is there empirical support for..." and "Does the evidence support the assertion that..."

As for the hope that human consciousness continues on....

Nope. This is it. That sucks, and I'm sorry. It's among the hardest pills to swallow about being an atheist - but it's true whether you believe it or not.

I have a few.

My favorite for plants is: Pacific Northwest Foraging.

My favorite for mushrooms is split between: All that the Rain Promises and More, which is an awesome, positive, life affirming mushroom hunting book which has info about all the west, not just the PNW, and Common Mushrooms of the Northwest, which is nice and thin, so easy to bring with me, and has really good pictures and descriptions. The same author also has a nice Berry Book.

I made a comment in a another thread.

I second /u/ProfThrowawary17's recommendation for Strogatz and also suggest the undergrad text Hale and Kocak. Strogatz is a rare text that delivers both interesting math and well-motivated applications in a fairly accessible manner. I have not systematically read Hale and Kocak, but it also seems to provide a gentle yet rigorous introduction to ODE's from the modern dynamical systems point of view.

Like /u/dogdiarrhea, I also recommend the graduate text Hale. If you have a strong analysis background, working through Hale would be quite worthwhile. It's also a Dover publication! So if Hale doesn't work out for you in a first time reading, it would still be a useful reference later on.

Of the top of my head, I'd recommend two sources:

TalkOrigins is a great resource to learn the basics.

... and Richard Dawkins' book The Greatest Show on Earth is a detailed and voluminous look at the science of evolutionary biology and the apple evidence in support of it. It's on sale for less than $12 at amazon right now too (... by Grabthar's Hammer, what a savings!)

Strongly recommend both. Also, there's people here and on /r/askscience willing to help you understand any points you might not be clear on. Just ask. :)

If you're interested in evolution, I would recommend Richard Dawkins as a favorite author of mine. He writes in a very understandable and accessible manner. I myself just finished The Greatest Show On Earth which covers the evidence for evolution. It was very informative and entertaining, and would be a great starting point if you can find it in a local library.

Edit: Just thought I'd add, Youtube can also be a great source. Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Matt Dillahunty, Sam Harris, all have videos online.

Late to the game, but people always need more books...

The World Without Us was great, really interesting read about humanity's effects on the planet, with lots of references to expand on if you wanted to do that.

A Year of Living Biblically was interesting, even if you aren't a Christian or a Jew, if you find religion interesting.

And last but not least, Rocket Boys by Homer H. Hickam. This was made into the movie 'October Sky', and it's a memoir, one of the best I've ever read. But all the science of the rockets is in there too, I learned a lot about propellants and DeLavalle nozzles lol.

Also, I forgot to mention. If you want vegetables on the cheap, there's a few ways to go about it. Try going to a flea market that sells vegetables. Often they will sell an entire basket (hand sized basket) of vegetables for a dollar or two. For carrots that's not a big deal, but for peppers, tomatoes, mushrooms, etc...it's wonderful.

You can also offer to cook for someone. Since your ingredients are on the cheap, you can do the hard work of cooking and gain some donations without giving a lot of materials up.

Occasionally, if you study, you can find some harvestable herbs (not weed) growing wild. It's not unheard of to stumble on wild onions, and many wild plants are in fact edible, but always always always check leaf type, leaf grouping, and look alikes. One of my favorite old books is the Petersons Guide to Edible Plants. (https://www.amazon.com/Field-Guide-Edible-Wild-Plants/dp/039592622X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1469328116&sr=8-1&keywords=edible+wild+plants)

Obviously, don't buy it now. Check it out from the library. You'd be amazed at what you can eat to stay alive once you know what to use, and how to prepare it.

I wouldn't be worried about taking bio classes as an undergrad. It'd be more useful to take introductory chemistry, organic chemistry, and some biochemistry, but even that isn't necessary. Any competent biology graduate program should bring you up to speed pretty quickly. (This textbook is pretty good, too.)

This wiki page is a good place to start to see the ways in which a math background can be applied to biological problems.

You might want to check out /r/askacademia, /r/gradschool, and /r/gradadmissions for tips on applying to programs as an international student (if I'm reading your intentions correctly).

You also might find this collection of links on efficient study habits helpful.

A specific regional guide will usually be more meaningful to own than a general guide that covers all of North America.

That been said, I personally own and recommend the National Wildlife Federation's Field Guide to Insects and Spiders of North America. It's packed with pictures and organizes everything by order, and then by family (to really understand the groupings, you should familiarize yourself with taxonomic rank). For each order, it includes some basic anatomical diagrams to help you distinguish one order from another.

It's also printed on some pretty durable gloss paper and has a water resistant cover, as icing on the cake.



I have not compared it to the Kaufman guide, since my book store does not carry it.

Comparing it to the Audubon version, I find that the NWF's guide is better for beginners due to having a picture for everything it lists. I also noticed the toner was coming off on my hand on the audubon guide while I was flipping through it in the book store.

I scarcely use it now because I've gotten good enough at identifying orders and a good number of families to use bugguide to narrow things down, but it was nice to take along on a camping trip.

Note that if you want to learn how to differentiate families of beetles or butterflies or spiders based on their anatomical traits, you'll probably need a specific field guide pertaining only to that bug. I can't recommend any, since I don't own any. Or use online references - again, bugguide is pretty good for a lot of things, but I have learned a ton from just googling for the information on a specific taxon.

You're already on the right track getting started with Python, it is the most popular language currently. I would also highly recommend getting experience working in a linux environment, so either macOS or Linux, and getting comfortable working through the terminal. To round off your computational skills, I think that R would be a very good second language to learn. I'm currently using R more than Python for my work, it's much better to use when performing statistical analysis.

You should also try and get a good understanding of the biology behind the data you'll be working with. I think that THIS BOOK does a very good job at covering most concepts you're like to encounter in the field. It's what much of the biology portion of my graduate program was based upon.

If you like amusing in a dark way, then maybe look at Greenland and Neanderthal. In it you expand the abilities of your tribe by acquiring daughters or women - for in these games it is the females who carry the greatest impetus for innovation. In particular, Neanderthal not only allows you to add women to your tribe via an auction, but once they "mature" (are fully integrated into your tribe) then other parties can "court" them and forcibly marry the women to get the benefits your tribe enjoys. I can see how some would have difficulty with how the material is presented, especially if they forget we are discussing pre-linguistic early man and that the mechanics are heavily influenced by Julian Jaynes controversial theories... and I wouldn't call the ideas presented in the game sexists or misogynistic - but with an naive approach I could see how they are viewed like that.

Origin: How We Became Human is the older game title that encompasses more of human history and goes a bit deeper into the design choices/research materials - but when making games on human evolution you are bound to run into material that will be questionable to some people.. and Phil Eklund does not shy away from controversial viewpoints or game designs with a message - which is why I love his games. Whether I agree with the message or not, they are well thought out and inspire deep thought - unlike the Indians of Lewis & Clark which were perhaps a bad design choice. I guess in the end it is why I don't find his design choices ever offensive - they are well researched and carefully chosen mechanics that present a thesis, not something that looks cool or was whatever was cheapest or "convey an impression" of a pasted-on theme.

Often times mycology societies have events for mushroom picking as well as classes you can take. Ther are also more general foraging classes that happen in your local nature area. If you would like a wonderful book to get you excited and knowledgeable try https://www.amazon.com/All-That-Rain-Promises-More/dp/0898153883 it's a wonderful full colored pocket book with great encyclopedic knowledge for many species. Often times, if you're in the US, you might have to get a permit to pick, so that you don't destroy the ecology by over picking and such.

​

As they say the video, be extremely careful about what you pick. Always good to double check with experts.

Not sure how helpful this will be, but you might point out that there's evolution and Christianity are not NECESSARILY incompatible, that's there's no real reason for him to be worried about evolution clashing with his faith in god. You could point out that many Christians do believe in Evolution. The Catholic Church actually endorses natural selection so any Catholic that denies evolution is actually committing blasphemy. Lutherans, Methodists, and many other Christian denominations see no inconsistency between believing in the Christian God and accepting evolution.

There's also several books you could point him to. Richard Dawkins's new book "The Greatest Show on Earth" http://www.amazon.com/Greatest-Show-Earth-Evidence-Evolution/dp/1416594787/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1252038340&sr=1-2

surveys the evidence for evolution, so that would be a great book for your brother to read. Most Creationists demonize Dawkins, though, so your brother might not be receptive to that.

Michael Ruse, a Philosophy Professor at Florida State University, has written countless books on the history of Evolution, the debate between Creationists and Evolutionists, and the history of the conflict between Christianity and Science. Ruse, while an agnostic, IS sympathetic to Christianity, and your brother should find him less offensive to read than Dawkins.

http://www.amazon.com/Can-Darwinian-Christian-Relationship-Religion/dp/0521637163/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1252038283&sr=8-2

http://www.amazon.com/Evolution-Creation-Struggle-Michael-Ruse/dp/0674022556/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1252038283&sr=8-6

http://www.amazon.com/Darwinian-Revolution-Science-Tooth-Claw/dp/0226731693/ref=sr_1_13?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1252038283&sr=8-13

hmm, Im confused... For one, it seems like people in this forum do agree with me. Additionally, I think there are enough people here with some background understanding of basic neurology... heck, anyone who has ever read any Oliver Sacks can be interested.

Im not asking that we have a technical discussion of the benefits of a 3 hour versus 4.5 hour window of tPA administration... no, I just want to have a conversation about actual neurological topics.

I am also not say we need to focus on textbook/well-established science. There is a great deal of new evidence and interesting case reports that call into question currently held beliefs. Even anecdotal data that is just interesting for its presentation's sake.


I do not think we are interested in isolating neurology from the basic and behavioural sciences. But I do think we need to at the very least present actual science and not baseless personal theories.

• However more importantly I think the confusion here can best be summed up by a fundamental lack of understanding about neural physiology on your behalf. You keep mentioning processing power as a function of metabolism and energy as a function of... Well Im guessing you mean ionic potentials). This is simply wrong. A neuron that fires more frequently is not processing it is just firing. Just as a wire that is at a high voltage is not a computer. It is the connections (and aberrant connections) that determine processing capability. A neuron that is more frequently being acted upon will have an increased metabolic demand to maintain its ionic potentials, but this is an effect rather than a cause. Similar to how a computer processor ( a network of micro capacitors) gets hot when being actively used.
  
  
• Speculating on neural computational power is a very active field known as Computational neuroscience. I strongly recommend Dayon and Abbot's "Theoretical Neuroscience" as a guide into this field. Mind you, its heavy in linear algebra and not by any means a beach read. While it is not necessarily neurology, it does become important for neurologists to have an understanding of this and so obviously topics in this field are more than welcome here as well. An example of how this is important is in the development of new prosthesis and the brain/machine interaction. This is also interesting to think about from the pathophysiological stand point in epilepsy and traumatic brain injury.
  
  
• It appears you attend a DO school. I am certain that the MCAT requires at least some basic physiology, and medical schools also require coursework in physiology, cell biology, and neuroscience in their pre-clinical years. I am concerned because some of what you have said in this forum represented a severe misunderstanding of how the nervous system operates. This will come up on your boards, and more importantly, in your future patients.
  

I didn't study biology in high school because I had a full course load of physics, chemistry and mathematics in preparation for engineering school. That being said, biology is one of the courses I regret not taking.

It really is the Greatest Show on Earth. No other scientific concept explains so much about our visible world while being simple and elegant. If you like biology, but have not read any of Dawkin's biology books, I highly recommend them. In addition to the one I already linked, another excellent one is The Ancestor's Tale. Evolution is capable of explaining why species, as you put it, are built they way they are and why they function the way they do. Evolution explains the why of it all. Of course, you don't need to abandon your concept of God, either. Evolution is perfectly compatible with theology.

Disclaimer: In no way to I want this to dishearten you. Rather, I want to save your new interests from being crushed by irrelevant jargon, and would rather you put that energy toward learning what we already know. If you insist on 'keeping up,' your best bet is probably something light and fluffy like Science Daily, Live Science, or New Scientist.

Are you a scientist? A neuroscientist? What kind of neuroscientist? Or just an interested citizen? By the language you're using, I'll guess that you're a biology undergrad with a burgeoning interest in neuro.

From that perspective, it really shouldn't matter to you what's "new" in the field, because you don't know how it's different from what's "old." Just learn what we know so far. Also, in science, if a finding is "new," the field isn't sure if it's "true" yet, and you therefore need to not pay attention yet.

If you insist on 'keeping up to date,' (which isn't possible unless you pick a very narrow subfield of a subfield), it's much more useful to read review journals than the 'latest' unreplicated neuroscience primary research.

• Nature Reviews Neuroscience
  
• Trends in Neuroscience
  
• Annual Review of Neuroscience
  
  etc.
  
  These are still way too specific to be useful by almost anyone but the close network of the authors of those reviews.
  
  Let's take an example. We'll go to Nature Reviews Neuroscience's page. Oh, look! Salience processing and insular cortical function and dysfunction. How interesting! Except that I have no idea what any of those words mean, or how this fits at all into any context. Attempting to read through this review paper will tell me how these researchers updated an extremely narrow model that isn't even included in textbooks because nobody but the authors and their colleagues care.
  
  While snarky, I hope this illustrates the futility of trying to 'keep up with neuroscience.' 90% of all neuroscientists who have ever lived are working right now, the field is humongous and expanding so rapidly that just updating Kandel took 12 years.

I don't really want to comment on your postulates or discourage your thinking, but I would recommend the book, The Cosmic Serpent, in which an anthropologist examines shamanic traditions in the Amazon.

The question of how these shamans discovered the use of specific hundreds of assorted plants in the Amazon, out of the choice of tens of thousands, that cured, nourished, or tripped-out their people for millenia is central to the book, and doesn't require recourse to divine inspiration-- but it is perhaps as recondite and mysterious. It seems like a similar path of inquiry, and a wholly illuminating book of quality ethnobotany and anthropology.

Good luck in the search for truth... but it might not be wheat.

You even listen to Terrence McKenna?? Lol you'll be fine! I say go for it.

The thing about Terrence McKenna is that, like his brother Dennis said,if he's right about even 1% of his claims, that's a very important thing in the world.

I read a book once on ayahausca and DNA where this geneticist did an anthropology thing where he went and did ayahuasca with tribes in South America to scientifically prove a connection between ayahausca and DNA. It's a VERY interesting read. He does a great job at dumbing it down to laymen's terms so that someone who's not a scientist can read the book and understand it. Then the second half of the book is all works cited. Sources for every single claim he makes during the book. So if someone wanted to they could see proof for all the things he was claiming. He does great at not adding any of his personal beliefs into the book as well, it is purely scientific. It's called the cosmic serpent : Cosmic Serpent: DNA and the Origins of Knowledge https://www.amazon.com/dp/0874779642/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_5QgMBbG18AQY8

Phenomenal. I urge you to read it right way. That book totally blew my mind. Worldview-shattering is the best way to describe.

Also, just as good, though not as influential, Why Evolution is True, by Jerry Coyne. Short and filled with such modern evidence. The best book to bring a laymen into the world of evolutionary biology.

I'm super excited for The Greatest Show on Earth.

Biology is nothing without chemistry so you need to know the basics of chemistry as well. My favourite book is the Color Atlas of Biochemistry by Jan Koolman, K. Rohm.

Another very useful book is Biochemistry (Lippincott Illustrated Reviews Series) by R. Harvey.

Many past participants recommend the Lehninger Principles of Biochemistry, however, this book may be too detailed for olympiads.

GENETICS TEXTBOOKS|

Genetics: Analysis and Principles (WCB Cell & Molecular Biology) by Brooker presents an experimental approach to understanding genetics and what I like most is that there are plenty of problems with explanations and answers. Another good textbook for genetics is Genetics: From Genes to Genomes, 5th edition by Hartwell. Genetics: From Genes to Genomes is a cutting-edge, introductory genetics text authored by an unparalleled author team, including Nobel Prize winner, Leland Hartwell.

GENERAL BIOLOGY TEXTBOOKS|

It is not a secret that the Bible of Biology is Campbell Biology (11th Edition). It is a good book and it covers all fundamental biology topics, nevertheless, some topics are discussed only concisely so some good books in addition to Campbell’s could come in handy.

HUMAN ANATOMY |TEXTBOOKS

For human body anatomy and physiology great books are Human Physiology: An Integrated Approach (7th Edition) by Dee Unglaub Silverthorn or  Vander’s Human Physiology. 

MOLECULAR AND CELL BIOLOGY|TEXTBOOKS

My top choice for molecular biology is Molecular Biology of the Cell by Bruce Alberts, et al. This is book is a big one, a hard one, an interesting one, a useful one. From my point of view, current and upcoming IBOs are focusing on molecular and cell biology because these fields are developing so rapidly and thus these branches of biology are perfect source for olympiad problems. So try to read it and understand it. If you want something cheaper than Alberts but equally useful, try Molecular Biology of the Cell, Fifth Edition: The Problems Book

PLANT BIOLOGY|TEXTBOOKS

Many past biology olympiad questions contain quite a lot of problems about plant anatomy and physiology. Thus, I suggest to read Stern’s Introductory Plant Biology.  Another amazing book for plant biology is Biology of Plants by Peter H. Raven, Ray F. Evert, Susan E. Eichhorn.

​

TEXTBOOKS FOR AND PROBLEM SOLVING|TECHNIQUES

Science competitions test a student’s level of knowledge, power of scientific reasoning, and analytical thinking outside of the regular school curriculum. A systematic approach and smart study regimen are both required to get good results in science competitions. This is where my book How To Prepare for the Biology Olympiad And Science Competitions by Martyna Petrulyte comes into the picture.

I moved from Denver to Southern Oregon. Walking in the woods here you'll see amazing things, and you can eat almost all of them. I got a copy of All the Rain Promises and More and I was off. It helped that they were buying matsutakes for $100 a pound that winter.

These days you're lucky to get $15 for #1's and you're competing with Asian slave labor.

Now I only pick for pleasure
The variety here is amazing. Mushroom picking is one of the best ways to spend a grey winter day.

I can tell you what I think was the most importent stuff we have been doing so far in my bachelor.

BioChemistry

• Properties of aminoacids, peptides and proteins
  
• Function of proteins and enzymes
  
• enzyme kinetics
  
  Cellbiology
  
  
• Organisation of eukaryotic cells
  
• Development from one celled organisms to multicelled orgaism and evolution
  
• Compartiments of the cell and their functions and morphology(this includes stuff like DNA replication and ATP Synthasis and translation and transcription of proteins)
  
• Transportmechanisms of small and big molecules from outside the cell to the inside and vice versa . transportation within the cell as well(eg endocythic pathway)
  
• Signaltransduction
  
  IT Basics
  
  
• Boolean Logic
  
• Understanding of the number representation systems(eg. binar or hex)
  
• Understanding of floating point representation and why it leads to rounding errors
  
• Understanding the Neuman Architecture
  
• Basics of graph theory
  
• Grammars
  
• Automata and Touring Machines
  
• Basics of InformationTheory(eg. Entropy)
  
• Basics of Datacompressions (not very important in your case)
  
• Basic Hashing Algorithms
  
• Runtime analysis(all the O notation stuff)
  
  Operating Systems
  
  
• Basics of linux(eg commands like cd, mkdir, ls, mv, check this out )
  
• basic programms within linux(eg grep, wget, nano )
  
• basics of bash programming
  
  BioinformaticsBasics
  
  
• Pairwise Sequence Alignment
  
• Database Similarity Search
  
• Multiple Sequence Alignment
  
• Hidden Markov Models
  
• Gene and promoter Prediction
  
• Phylogenetic basics
  
• Protein and RNA 3D structure prediction
  
  So this is just supposed to be some kind of reference you can use to learning. You probably don't need to work through all of this.
  But I strongly suggest reading about Biochemistry and Cellbiology(a nice book is Molecular Biology of the Cell) as it is really important for understanding bioinformatics.
  Also give the link I posted in the Operating System part a look. Try to just use linux for a month as a lot of bioinformatics applications are written for linux and its nice to see the contrast to windows.
  Regarding programming I suggest you search for a book that combines python + bioinformatics(something like this). If you want to focus on the programming part you would ideally start in ASM then switch to C then to Java and then to python.(Just to give you an impression why: ASM gives you a great insight into how the CPU works and how it acesses RAM. C is on a higher level and you start thinking about organising data and defining its structure in RAM. Java adds another layer onto that - you get objects, which make it easy for you to organize your data in blocks and there is no need for you to manage the RAM by hand with pointers like in C. But you still need to tell your variables specifically what they are. So if you have a variable that safes a Text in it you have to declare it as a string. Finally you arrived at python which is a scripting language. There is no more need for you to tell variables what they are - the compiler decides it automatically. All the annoying parts are automated. So your code becomes shorter as you don't need to type as much. The philosophy behind scripting languages is mostly to provide languages that are designed for humans not for machines).But it is kind of a overkill in your situation. Just focus on python. One final thing regarding programming just keep practicing. It is really hard at the beginning but once you get it, it starts making fun to programm as it becomes a creative way of expressing your logic.
  Let's get to the bioinforamtics part. I don't think you really need to study this really hard but it's nice to be ahead of your commilitones. I recommand reading this book. You might also check out Rosalind and practice your python on some bioinformatics problems.
  Edit: If you want I can send you some books as pdf files if you PM me your email adress
  

I really good textbook is probably what you want. Good math textbooks are engaging and have lots of interesting problems. They have an advantage (in pure math) that they don't have to worry about teaching you specific tools (which IMO can make things boring). Lots of people love this one: https://www.amazon.com/Nonlinear-Dynamics-Chaos-Applications-Nonlinearity/dp/0738204536

Also here is a really good lecture series (on a different topic): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7G4SqIboeig&list=PLMsYJgjgZE8hh6d6ia2dP1NI0BKNRXbiw

Also if you have a bit of a programming bent or want to learn a little bit of programming, you might like Project Euler:https://projecteuler.net/

I'll try to address your questions first and give general advice at the end.

> many of these expressions have a summation of delta functions over index k. One major problem I have is that I do not know how far back my window should go when considering previous spikes. Should it just be my time increment dt=0.1ms? Or more?

This is often up to the modeler, but Dayan & Abbott's textbook has a section comparing the pros and cons of computing for single spikes vs. sliding windows vs. full history. One reasonable first approach would be to find out how long it takes for a single spike event to decay to the point of being neglible (say, 1/100th of total depolarization) and use that as your window size.

>Another issue I'm having is that I'm confused by what they mean by w+ and w- when talking about Hebbian learning. Are these fixed values?

I think w^+ is the upper bound on weights, w^- is the lower bound. They're using a non-normalized scheme where w^+ or w^- is compared against 1 to determine synapse strength - w < 1 means depression, w > 1 means potentiation.

> Also, why does the expression for I_GABA not have any dependence on w_j? Shouldn't there be some reliance on synaptic connectivity between presynaptic and postsynaptic neurons?

I'm not sure how the weights are being folded into the input current equations, but it's possible that I_GABA isn't affected by synaptic strength - they could compute each input current individually and scale them based on weights, for example.

---------------------


This definitely isn't a beginner-friendly model or paper. Are you recreating as part of a class project, or for a lab? Don't be shy to ask colleagues for help, or even your PI (just make sure you know exactly what you're going to ask and why.) If there isn't a harsh time constraint, I'd recommend checking out a textbook or some other modeling papers from the same lab, and/or citations from this paper.

One thing that experimentalists often have trouble with when trying to reproduce a model is that modelling is not an exact science. You're allowed to mess around with equations, parameters, thresholds and windows to make it work. For every clean equation in the paper, there are 3 or 4 very ugly equations or hacks making the graphs look pretty...it's not ideal, but that's the way the field is and has been for a long time. The point being - keep trying different things until it works. If you're close to the original model, great. If not, find out what new feature in your model makes it work, and see if you can find where the original model addressed that problem.

Good luck!

Here, Ace Hardware just sells hardware and garden stuff. Landscaping tools, seeds, those huge wooden barrels... It's probably that there's less places up there that sell things like fabric and stuff, so they figured why not.

Hah, yeah. I got my mom to try Thai food years ago. She loves it. She got me to try Vietnamese food this last summer. Fair trade.

My mom went down to New Mexico. Got me some Roswell souvenirs. Apparently there's an entire UFO museum. Her husband also has some family down there, so they got to visit them. She had a blast... and showed me the picture slideshow at least 3 times.

Battlestar is actually not very space-battle heavy. There's some good space battles, but most of it is interpersonal. The bad guys blend in, so there's the whole spy thriller thing.

Pick up Julian Jaynes The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind if you haven't already. It blew my mind and made me see things in a very different way. It's (in toddler-basic terms) a study of the psychology of ancient peoples based on archaeological evidence, primarily ancient religious materials (because those where usually the best preserved forms of writing etc.).

Also check out Joseph Campbell. I've only read one of his books, but he's a brilliant man who has made comparative mythology his life's work. Definitely gave me some food for thought and helped me figure out where I stand in terms of spirituality and religion.

Hah, yeah. No worries. Setup first is pretty much my go-to for any situation. I'm probably not going to get drunk, as it's not really my thing, but I'm also not likely to be able to set up a tent by myself... so I'll be wrangling someone to help me with that probably with a minute of us finding a decent spot.

I have no idea what games people know how to play. I pretty much only know Go Fish, War, basic 5-card stud, and cribbage... but I don't know wtf happened to my cribbage board, and I've only found like 2 other people under the age of 50 who know the game. If all else fails, there's solitare. My brother and I ended up playing hangman yesterday, so there's that, too. He doesn't go anywhere without pencils and paper.

While it isn't strictly a science book, Douglas Adam's "Last Chance to See" Is a really great book on a few endangered species he toured around the world to go and try to find. Its short and hilarious and also does a really wonderful job at showing you how silly humans can be and how our silliness actually has pretty detrimental effects on the other animals we share this world with.

If you know anything about Douglas Adams and his Hitch Hikers Guide book then you will probably really enjoy this. It's an overlooked gem in his body of work.

http://www.amazon.com/Last-Chance-See-Douglas-Adams/dp/0345371984

If you want to understand all the evidence that points to evolution, than go grab a copy of The greatest Show on Earth by Dawkins, it lays it out pretty well. If you don't want to spend cash on it, and don't mind a presentation that's a little less structured http://www.talkorigins.org/ has all the info as well.

Otherwise... "I don't understand how this could happen so.... GOD!" isn't really a valid argument logically, and naturally leaves you simply with a god of the gaps. We used to not understand lightening, thunder, the sun, the rain, tides, diseases, and millions of other things that were once attributed to the fickle will of some supernatural being or another. Now they are all considered so simple that children have a pretty good grasp of their basic physical causes.

I'm sure every subscriber here has already read it, but the top book has got to be The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins. Reading it really opened my mind to how evolution actually worked in a way that my teachers at school never had. Even if later on when I started learning about social insects I had to start questioning some of those ways of looking at an "individual".

Back on topic, I'd recommend Matt Ridley's Nature Via Nurture, Genome, and The Red Queen, as each are accessible yet still highly informative looks into various aspects of evolution.

For those interested in human evolution there's Y: The Descent of Men by Steve Jones and The Seven Daughters of Eve by Bryan Sykes.

All of those fall more under the category of books that should be read between high school and college if you are interested in studying Biology. Once you get to grad school level books might be a neat introduction to a topic, but any real learning would come from primary literature. I've read lots of fantastic papers but they start becoming so specialized that I would hesitate to put forward specific suggestions, because what might be fascinating to ecologists will probably be dire to molecular biologists. I know that as someone with a focus on zoology, most of the genetics papers I read left me more confused that enlightened.

>I understand how we arrived at that theory, and it may even be true, but can we really say with 100% certainty that it is correct? Really?

100%? Sure, you're right. No, we can't be 100% sure. But we can be 99.9999% sure, and that's where we're at. Read The Greatest Show on Earth for a better understanding. All available evidence points to evolution of all species from a single common ancestor.

EDIT: Just wanted to add another phrasing: The theory of evolution is true beyond all reasonable doubt.

I'd nominate "Snow Crash" as the most entertaining book on this list. It's very funny, has wonderfully memorable characters ranging from the deliciously named 'Hiro Protagonist' to a 16 year old skateboard courier, from the head of the mafia ("competition is not part of the mafia ethos") to the would be global telecomms monopolist.

A lot of the plot relies on this book with what might be the world's most daunting title. (You don't actually get to the part that involves that thesis until well into "Snow Crash".)

It's well written and sometimes startlingly funny.

You might have to work harder to get overall themes out of it since it is a work of entertainment. (The author has mused about the 'bifurcation' in writing between what he calls "Dante" fiction and "Beowulf" fiction. See the answer to the second question in this interview. The interview also contains the deathless line, "I had to let her know that the reason she'd never heard of me was because I was famous.")

You are not likely to bog down in overly turgid or pompous prose. <grin>

You said you wanted to get away from non-fiction and read more thrillers, but here is a non-fiction book that IS a thriller. John Vaillant's The Tiger: a True story of Vengeance and Survival.

As for fictional thrillers, the Agent Pendergast series by Preston & Child is suspenseful and fast moving. Relic is the first. If you saw the movie based on it from the 90's with Mira Sorvino, don't let that stop you from reading. Of course the book is better.

Good luck!

I suggest you read a couple of books that present the evidence for evolution very clearly:

Why Evolution Is True

The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution

Evolution itself is a simple concept, but the evidence for it is broad and detailed across many scientific disciplines, and it all fits together.

Regarding the existence of God, one can't prove that your God doesn't exist, or that any of the other thousands of gods that have been worshiped through the ages don't exist. The real question is whether there is enough evidence to positively prove the existence of any one of those gods.

First read about these guys in 'Last Chance to See' by Douglas Adams. Worth a read.

Edit: Ah, what the hell...

Of these, the kakapo is the strangest. Well, I suppose the penguin is a pretty peculiar kind of creature when you think about it, but it's quite a robust kind of peculiarness, and the bird is perfectly well adapted to the world in which it finds itself, in a way the kakapo is not. The kakapo is a bird out of time. If you look one in its large, round, greeny-brown face, it has a look of serenely innocent incomprehension that makes you want to hug it and tell it that everything will be all right, though you know that it probably will not be.

It is an extremely fat bird. A good-sized adult will weigh about six or seven pounds, and its wings are just about good for waggling a bit if it thinks it's about to trip over something - but flying is completely out of the question. Sadly, however, it seems that not only has the kakapo forgotten how to fly, but it has also forgotten that it has forgotten how to fly. Apparently, a seriously worried kakapo will sometimes run up a tree and jump out of it, whereupon it flies like a brick and lands in a graceless heap on the ground.*

As a s some what seasoned forager I would really recommend the [Peterson Field Guide to Edible Wild Plants.] (http://www.amazon.com/Field-Guide-Edible-Wild-Plants/dp/039592622X/ref=sr_1_sc_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1418240695&sr=1-2-spell&keywords=pedersen+feild+guide) It is very easy to use and great for beginners. It's uses drawings instead of photos for better clarity and has a simple and intuitive identification system. It is also a very good idea to have 2 or more different guides for cross referencing.

Was thinking that this is far enough into the future that former cities have been almost completely subsumed by nature - New growth, the rise and fall of sea levels, even geological processes. Think like, 20,000 years after some sort of apocalypse, an ice age come and gone. The most intact traces of the ancients are akin to like, Angkor Wat or Stonehenge, all but the most permanent construction completely erased, by the time the former civilization was wiped out perhaps there already wasn't much left to be preserved. The current population understands that there were grand civilizations at some point in the past and they know where these ruins are but that's about it. Maybe warnings against whatever ideology begat the ancient's downfall are preserved as whispers among the current population's elders, kept secret from those not wise enough to be trusted with the preventative knowledge.

I read The World Without Us, a pop science book speculating about the life of infrastructure if humans were to disappear, and was surprised by the convincing arguments regarding just how fast things would crumble to dust. So I went with that. Related, I was kind of let down by how 'preserved' the ancient structures in Horizon Zero Dawn seemed, considering how far in the future it's supposed to be. A lot of my game is inspired by Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, and in that story most of the ancient's world has been washed away by completely new and alien ecosystems. But not wanting such a 'harsh' and dangerous world in my game I'm instead aiming for something positive and pastoral. The kind of imagery that cyclists like to look at while they're climbing a mountain pass :)

Former Young Earther here. The best thing you can do is read and learn. www.talkorigins.org is a pretty good site.

Another good source is The Greatest Show on Earth by Richard Dawkins.
http://www.amazon.com/Greatest-Show-Earth-Evidence-Evolution/dp/B004AYCWY4/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1319762317&sr=8-5

Figure out some of the more common creationist claims, as well. Read some about geology, astronomy, cosmology. It'll take a while, but the more you know, the more intelligible you'll be, and the better able you'll be to string ideas together when asked.

Yes, it is a man in a tuxedo, holding a flugelhorn & large fungi, sneaking around in a forest.

Apparently the book got this glowing review by the NYTimes: "is certainly the best guide to fungi, and may in fact be a long lasting masterpiece in guide writing for all subjects."

*Edit: (On Amazon, it's the #1 Best Seller in "Mushrooms in Biological Sciences")

That's awesome that you're getting into birding! Some great resources are Merlin Bird ID, eBird, and Audubon's Bird app. A goood paper resource is Sibley's. Good luck and patience is a virtue!

Any book by Mary Roach- her books are hilarious, random, and informative. I like Jon Krakauer's, Sarah Vowell's, and Bill Bryson's books as well.

Some of my favorites that I can think of offhand (as another poster mentioned, I loved Devil in the White City)

No Picnic on Mount Kenya

Guns, Germs, and Steel

Collapse

The Closing of the Western Mind

What is the What

A Long Way Gone

Alliance of Enemies

The Lucifer Effect

The World Without Us

What the Dog Saw

The God Delusion (you'd probably enjoy Richard Dawkins' other books as well if you like science)

One Down, One Dead

Lust for Life

Lost in Shangri-La

Endurance

True Story

Havana Nocturne

frenchy612, do you have any science education at all? And if so, what kind of education, and to what extent (grade school, high school, college)? Do you live in the bible belt of the United States?

I'm really interested in knowing this, because the only "debate" over evolution is between educated people and willfully ignorant people.

Allow me to broaden your education a little.

First, it's important to understand that in science, "theory" does NOT mean "unproved idea." It doesn't mean, "guess" or "hypothesis," either. It means an idea that explains a wide variety of phenomena. Newton's theory of gravity, for example not only explains why things fall toward the earth, it also explains how and why the moon orbits the earth, the earth orbits the sun, etc.

When a scientific theory is validated (as many hundreds have been) it does NOT stop being a theory, and does not become a fact. The reason is because "fact" means a single piece of information that doesn't relate to anything else. For example, "chickens have three-toed feet," is a fact. It doesn't tell you anything else about chickens, feet, toes or any other birds. That's what a fact is, and that's why no theory is ever called a fact.

Lastly, the theory of evolution is the most confirmed, most well-documented theory with the most evidence demonstrating its correctness, in the history of science. ALL modern biology is based on it, and ALL medical research is centered on it. It has led to virtually all modern biological knowledge.

If you would like to further your education, I invite you to read The Greatest Show on Earth. But please, don't tell people you're not sure where you stand on the debate. You're only embarrassing yourself, whether you realize it or not.

"Of course, like every other man of intelligence and education I do believe in organic evolution. It surprises me that at this late date such questions should be raised."

• Letter from Woodrow Wilson to Winterton C. Curtis (29 August 1922)
  

I really enjoyed reading The Age of Wonder by Richard Holmes.

Also Thunderstruck by Erik Larson.

Both of these books are fantastic nonfiction accounts of the history of scientific discovery.

On the biology side, anything by Dawkins is a good choice. I recommend The Greatest Show on Earth

My gateway drug was The Panda's Thumb by Stephen Jay Gould

For a general bird guide, I like the Sibley guide (you can use the Sibley East field guide, or the larger Sibley guide for all of North America). There are also those who swear by the National Geographic guide and insist that it is superior.

That should be good to get you started – eventually if you get more into birdwatching, then there are more detailed guides for specific groups.

For insects, I love this massive photographic guide. For a smaller book you can take into the field, the best one I know of is Kaufman. There is also a Kaufman guide for butterflies, specifically.

I'm afraid I don't have any recommendations for mammals, reptiles, or amphibians for your area.

One of my favorite books to take hunting is All That Rain Promises and More. It's pocket-sized and the pictures are clear (plus the cover is great). The author also has some interesting recipes and narratives in the book. As far as not poisoning yourself, I suggest starting with species that are very unambiguous in whether or not they are another poisonous mushroom. Morels, chanterelles, and hen/chicken of the woods have solid identifying features unlike some stalked white mushrooms. Know the lookalikes though! False morels can be very poisonous, so know how to tell the difference between the two (hollow stem of morel).

Know the season/habitat of what you're looking for, it will save you time and help you ID. When you do find your first shrooms, there are methods to ensure you don't poison yourself, like chewing a bit and spitting it out before ingesting the whole thing. I believe there is information about that in the book and of course more online.

Happy hunting!

I can offer a general layman's overview of you like (global studies ftw)

I'm not sure if this is what you're getting at but:

"Humans comprise about 100 million tonnes of the Earth's dry biomass, domesticated animals about 700 million tonnes, ..."

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biomass_%28ecology%29

I think human lifestyle might be a bigger issue. If you include indirect human usage like domesticated animals (and the resulting sewage pools) etc.

You might really like this book:
http://www.amazon.com/The-World-Without-Alan-Weisman/dp/0312427905

Edit: hopefully as technology progresses we can be less disruptive towards our environment. I'm convinced that bio diversity will be a huge scientific/economic boom in terms of finding out what kind of genetic/mathematical/physical models work well as trial tested by time/evolution (granted they're not all winners but...) A lot of solid architecture and medicine has come straight out of nature. Seems like a shame we're just pissing it away for short term goals/benefits.

I also look forward to the day all science merged into one and there's something better out there to run society than what humans/computers/programs are limited to at the moment.

I often hunt in Olympic National forest but you don't have to go that far to find them. Chanterelles are definitely out now. Find a predominantly Doug fir forest with a light sparse enough understory that you can see the ground and wander. Be sure you don't get lost and be sure you are 100% sure of the ID before you put anything in your mouth. We have some deadly ones in the area.

My 2 favorite field guides: http://www.calypso-publishing.com/book-titles/common-mushrooms-of-the-northwest/

https://www.amazon.com/All-That-Rain-Promises-More/dp/0898153883

For mushrooms in general (not specifically psychedelic ones) I recommend All That the Rain Promises and More by David Arora. If you like that then check out Mushrooms Demystified which is his famous tome. Two newer books with beautiful color photographs are Mushrooms of the Redwood Coast by Noah Siegel and Christian Schwarz, and California Mushrooms by Desjardin, Wood, and Stevens.

The best way though is to go foraging with someone who knows what they're doing. Check out MSSF or one of the other clubs in the area. If you join MSSF now, you can still get a spot on the Mendocino Woodlands camping trip, which is an absolute blast.

I love mushroom picking and pick a bunch of different kinds. The spot I'm going is usually full of boletes, chanterelles and hedgehogs, which are my favorites.

I pick for culinary use, yeah. I dry them for the rest of the year. It's not hard to learn how to pick mushrooms because there is a system that's essentially a dichotomous key for identification - basically, you go down the list of basic characteristics and can identify many types that way. It's just a matter of being diligent and never eating anything of which you're uncertain. It's great if you want to learn to go with someone experienced to get a primer. Also, this book is the field guide I've used for fifteen years and it fits in my pocket and is the best beginner's mushroom guide I've seen.

buy a good field guide for your area and use "google lens" for more distinct looking plants and fungi. I am fairly new to foraging and have learned a few things that I can share. Nothing in this world will be as useful as going into the woods with someone else who knows what they are doing and what to look for. Your local area likely has some special things to look for and some things to look out for and a local guide will be well versed in those. Next is be curious about everything but don't overwhelm yourself either, concentrate on identifying a few things at a time and learn exactly what to look for in identifying/differentiating that particular plant/fungus. Be careful and have fun.

Here is the book I like to bring with me into the woods in the northeast:

Edible Wild Plants: Eastern/Central North America (Peterson Field Guides) Paperback – September 1, 1999

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/039592622X/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1

YOU MUST READ "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind"

For a synopsis of the idea: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicameralism_(psychology)

Basically, Jaynes' bicameralism theory states,

> ancient people in the bicameral state would experience the world in a manner that has similarities to that of a modern-day schizophrenic.

> This is exemplified not only in the commands given to characters in ancient epics but also the very muses of Greek mythology which "sang" the poems: Jaynes argues that while later interpretations see the muses as a simple personification of creative inspiration, the ancients literally heard muses as the direct source of their music and poetry.

(The chapter on poetry made a particularly compelling case for me -- As a songwriter, I often experience the phenomenon of feeling like my creation of art is somehow "guided" or I am not 100% responsible for it - a remnant of an earlier consciousness perhaps?)

> In ancient times, Jaynes noted, gods were generally much more numerous and much more anthropomorphic than in modern times, and speculates that this was because each bicameral person had their own "god" who reflected their own desires and experiences.

> Even in modern times, Jaynes notes that there is no consensus as to the cause or origins of schizophrenia (the subject is still hotly debated). According to Jaynes, schizophrenia is simply a vestige of humanity's earlier state.[3] Recent evidence shows that many schizophrenics don't just hear random voices but experience "command hallucinations" instructing their behavior or urging them to commit certain acts. As support for Jaynes's argument, these command hallucinations are little different from the commands from gods which feature so prominently in ancient stories.

I know right? Totally unrelated to monero, but for anyone that's interested, the book "The Origin of Consciousness In the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind" by Julian Jaynes gives a pretty interesting theory about how and why this kind of authority worshiping behavior was likely the dominant mode of thinking for much of ancient history. If anything, witnessing all this authoritarian-loving hysteria springing up recently, without an ounce of self-reflection or irony, seems like pretty damning evidence of the book's hypothesis being true.

Oh boy, great questions but the answers can be really long and (again) belong under science moreso than philosophy. I think I'll link some resources and you can read at your leisure.

• The ID page on Wikipedia, particularly the Criticism and Kitzmiller Trial sections.
  
• TalkOrigins.org Index of Creationist Claims, with responses of course.
  
• TalkOrigins.org Evidences for Macroevolution.
  
• Why Evolution Is True (book) by evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne, and his website of the same name.
  
• The Greatest Show on Earth (book) by Richard Dawkins. It's all biology, unlike "The God Delusion".
  
• Your Inner Fish (book) by evo-biologist Neil Shubin, and this excellent talk by him.
  
• Science blogs like Sandwalk and Pharyngula can have great info (warning, the latter is very hostile to religion, but I've linked just the evolution articles).
  
  TL;DR - Biologists document lots of awkward features that develop in a tedious or haphazard manner that no sane designer would ever bother, plus we're missing tons of obvious features that any competent designer would probably include (hello, drowning sucks, gills would be nice). And their work is strongly supported by genetics and its underlying chemistry.

Many things can be explained better with evolution. Evolution is a theory, in the scientific sense, and that means it's veracity is tested by current and emerging evidence. If it didn't have the explanatory power for most of the evidence then it wouldn't be so popular. So it certainly doesn't explain everything, it just explains the data we have so far. There are countless things we simply don't know yet.

If you're open to understanding the core aspects of Evolution, please read:

Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters

The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution

Why Evolution Is True

As for freewill, it depends on the atheist. Some believe in free will, while others don't think we actually posses it.

https://www.scribd.com/doc/114800796/Psilocybin-Mushrooms-of-North-America

https://www.amazon.com/Psilocybin-Mushrooms-World-Identification-Guide/dp/0898158397

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLbz8EvhqeMxul_huFTjigKQq8DmIUHhpJ

the first two links will give you more of a general overview of identification techniques and psychoactive mushrooms at large . the youtube playlist at the bottom depicts videos of the species that occur in massachusetts. the more research you do, the more confident you will be. especially considering this is your first hunt, make sure to clarify with experienced hunters reports online. please be extra careful my friend, and if you can’t find any locally i’m sure you can find other ways of obtaining the magic. cheers!

Biologists virtually all agree that life on this planet has evolved over a period of about 3.7 billion years and that humans and modern fish share a fish-like ancestor (and a single-celled ancestor, for that matter). They have reached these conclusions because they're the best explanations for the evidence we see in the fossil record and in our DNA, among other things. Creationists deny these conclusions because they're not very well-informed or because they're unwilling to let go of a Genesis-based explanation for the existence of life on this planet.

I'm not trying to bash you; it sounds like you have an open mind and that's good. But the "battle" you describe isn't really a meaningful one. The people who know the most about this sort of thing consider the question settled.

I'd encourage you to read up on the subject if you're curious. Richard Dawkins recently released a book full of evidence for evolution. And although I don't recommend it as wholeheartedly, Finding Darwin's God was written by a Christian for Christians to make the case for evolution.

You could start with The Greatest Show On Earth by Richard Dawkins. It's a pretty easy read and it covers a wide range of the current evidence for evolution across different fields of science.

After that, The Selfish Gene also by Dawkins, is awesome. In it, he talks about evolution from the perspective of a gene.

Both should be pretty layman-friendly. He certainly has a compelling way of delivering his arguments.

I think one of the major reasons for missing data here is because there's so many different ways to measure intelligence.

A book by Matt Ridley (Genome, The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters) explores the area a little bit. It's a bit dated but the logic still applies.

Humans, statistically, measure intelligence via IQ. Why? I dunno.

In the study he cited, genetic traits were not the only influencer on IQ test results. Even IF someone scored lower on an IQ test, that does not mean they are not of high intelligence in some other aspect.

For instance, having an IQ may correlate with a vast knowledge of history but may have nothing to do with an individual's ability to bake (baking... sigh.... hard).

I'd recommend reading the chapter on Intelligence and genes. It was insightful and a potentially good starting point.

This is a phenomenon described thoroughly by Douglas Adams in his less-fictional-than-usual account of a zoologically-focused trip he'd taken.

In a certain chapter, he gives the details of a bird with a specific sort of problem: this bird has invented something to make its life easier.

Most birds need to spend time incubating their nests, but the bird he describes creates a heap of material which warms the egg, so that it's free to go and do other things, such as hunt for food.

The inherent difficulty here is that the body of the bird regulates its own temperature, where the heap does not.
Thus, the bird has to constantly attend to the matter, adding here, subtracting there, in order to maintain the exact temperatures needed to incubate their young.


He then compared that to his own interest in computers, especially that he might spend the entire afternoon creating a program which will calculate a very close approximation the volume of the heaps created by these birds, instead of just figuring it out on paper, and then getting on with writing the rest of the book.

Why not learn something about neuroscience? You'd better understand the fundamental concepts on which the brain works and how they structure consciousness. I'm not talking psychology but learning the fundamental biology of neurons and building that into an understanding of behavior and cognition.

You'd just have to read Kandel's Principles of Neural Science which is pretty much the neuroscience bible. It takes you from concepts like "Cell and Molecular Biology of the Neuron" and "Synaptic Transmission" to "The Neural Basis of Cognition" and "Language, Thought, Affect, and Learning" - the wiki lists the chapters here

edit: in fact your comfort with physics will help understand the biophysics of neurons: viewing the cell membrane as a capacitor and using circuit models of membranes with some basic V=IR stuff.

Here's some lighter reading I've liked:

• Analog Circuit Design: Art, Science and Personalities
  
• The Chip : How Two Americans Invented the Microchip and Launched a Revolution
  
• Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid
  
• Feynamn Lectures on Computation
  
  Readable, but more hardcore
  
  Hardware:
  
  
• The Design of CMOS Radio-Frequency Integrated Circuits, Second Edition
  
  
  Mathy:
  
  
• A New Kind of Science. I liked this book a lot, it is worth the price just for the interesting pictures. Make up your mind for yourself, and don't let negative reviewers unduly influence you.
  
• Probability Theory: The Logic of Science
  
• Information Theory, Inference and Learning Algorithms
  
  
  Programmy:
  
  
• Mastering Regular Expressions
  
  Unixy:
  
  
• Unix Power Tools
  
  
  Off the wall:
  
  
• Molecular Biology of the Cell
  
  

I have read all of Professor Dawkins' books, and The Greatest Show on Earth is, without question, his finest masterpiece and quite possibly the best explanation of evolution that any jackoff like myself can understand.

There was recently a question sessions on /pol with a anonymous claiming to be a high level insider of one of the benevolent global power factions.in the sessions he mentioned that this is the second time we have created society that there was an earlier civilisation that was wiped out by flood and the pyramids and the water erosion at the base of the pyramids is evidence of an ancient civilisation predating the Egyptians.
As you can see from the comments there's a lot of interest and I'm one of the number who thinks he's legit. Most I've spoken with (including OP) believe the same. I'd strongly recommend in taking a read through regardless, the anon is very well versed in a range of disciplines. I took a lot away and am learning a lot from the book he (repeatedly) advised truth seekers to read - The Origins of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind



High Level Insider /pol dump

Congratulations! I know what a big step that is, as I've been in the same boat. Books are the best way to become informed. Check out books by:

• Christopher Hitchens - God Is Not Great & The Portable Atheist
  
  
• Stephen Hawking - The Grand Design & A Briefer History of Time
  
  
• Richard Dawkins - The Greatest Show on Earth
  
  
• Carl Sagan - The Demon Haunted World
  
  
• Sam Harris - The Moral Landscape & The End of Faith
  
  
• Richard Panek - The 4 Percent Universe
  
  
• Robert Ingersoll - Some Mistakes of Moses
  
  
• Viktor Frankl - Man's Search for Meaning
  
  
• Sean Caroll - The Making of the Fittest
  
  
• Spencer Wells - Deep Ancestry
  
  
• Ayaan Hirsi Ali - Infidel
  
  
• Alan Watts - The Way of Zen
  
  Also check out the video series Why I am no longer a creationist.
  
  The more you know, the more confident you will be.

Psilocybin Mushrooms of the World by Paul Stamets.

I cannot recommend this enough. All identification features are explained in length, and there are pictures of many, many different psilocybes all over the world. It is not exactly about homegrowing, but a fantastic resource for learning about the amazing genus Psilocybe, and our friends psilocybin, psilocin, and baeocystin. It's a little technical, but it will give you the background to understand many issues faced by growers.

You can download the full episodes at:
http://www.radiolab.org/archive/

The podcasts are short, but the full hour-long episodes are available. It's one of my favorite programs. That, and Philosophy Talk.

Radio Lab tends to feature one of my favorite mathematicians, Steven Strogatz, in several episodes (Emergence was great). He has a good presentation style (see YouTube) and I've really enjoyed his book: http://www.amazon.com/Nonlinear-Dynamics-Chaos-Applications-Nonlinearity/dp/0738204536

What kind of nerd am I to have a favorite mathematician? I'm not sure I want to know.

I haven't read it, but I hear it's pretty good:

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

"Makes more sense to me than a man in space" is not a very compelling argument. You claim that you're "one of the very, very few serious and educated atheists within 100 miles" - that a great aspiration, but you need to follow through on it. Buy yourself a copy of The Greatest Show on Earth and learn to engage him more deeply. It's the equivalent of doing karate to be able to deal with school bullies, but for your mind. It'll be good experience.

> biologically pre-disposed (for lack of a better phrase) to be good candidates for therapies like cbt and dbt?

Basically, yes. It appears the majority of people it is very helpful. However, some people do not respond at all. There (currently) appears to be no rhyme or reason behind that. But we (more or less) know there is no physiological reason (fMRI or something can't tell us someone wont respond).

>Could you suggest an introductory text for someone with a basic understanding of the brain?

Honestly, not really. I don't pick the textbooks the undergrads/1st years read :P Lehninger Principles of Biochemistry is good for getting a firm footing for the biochemical pathways and such.
Basic Clinical Neuroscience is a good foundation textbook, but I can't remember how much biochem you need to understand it. Molecular Biology of the Cell is another good intro text to molecular biology, if that's what you're in to.
I've been a research assistant, not a teaching assistant for the past decade (oh my god, I'm old lol).

edit: Also if you didn't see it before, see also the edit in my previous post.

I love David Quammen - [Song of the Dodo] (http://www.amazon.com/The-Song-Dodo-Biogeography-Extinction/dp/0684827123) is a ridiculously well-written and incredibly interesting book.

Even if Island Bio-geography is not your thing - isn't particularly mine - you'll be hard-pressed to put the book down as the writing and ideas are so compelling (almost like a travelogue with science thrown in);

Quammen would make a great dinner guest - certainly among top 10, somewhere between Castro and Mitterand.

A friend took me when I was a bright-eyed and bushy-tailed college kid. I took our findings to a mycologist on campus who spent 20 minutes describing proper browning-in-butter protocol. I was hooked- both on mushrooming and the goofy people involved. I already collect field identification books, so I have a shelf in my bookcase just for mushroom ID and foraging. Every time i go out i try to ID a new mushie. Anything im super lost on i take to a mycologist friend in town, or i email the prof at OSU (which is 30 minutes drive) and bug them with it.

I also have permits for personal collection of mushrooms in all the local national forests (most were free) and researched the county and state park rules for collection on their property. Gotta be responsible, yo.

I recommend picking up All That Rain Promises and More (link) and the unabridged Mushrooms Demystified link2 because i reference both a TON, The first one is waterproof, and David is a certified goofball.

Strogatz's Nonlinear Dynamics and Chaos (https://www.amazon.ca/Nonlinear-Dynamics-Chaos-Applications-Engineering/dp/0738204536) is a good book to introduce applications of differential equations. It's an easy read that focuses on concepts and motivation rather than rigour.


Differential equations describe how things change based on what state they are in. An easy example is that the larger a population is the faster is grows. Or the more predators and the less food it has, the slower it grows. One can build a system that takes all variables thought to be relevant and construct a system that describes how all these things affect each other's growth rate, and then see how this system changes in time. Other examples include chemical reactions, as the rate of change of the ingredients depends on how much of each ingredient is in the mixture. Economics: the change of a market depends on the state of all other relevant markets. Physics: the change in velocity of a satellite depends on its position relevant to a large body. The change in weather depends on the pressure, temperature, and air velocity all over the earth (this is getting into PDEs, but the basic motivation remains).


Of course, the connection of such models to the real world depends on how well the model is constructed and how well it can be analyzed. It's a matter of balancing robustness and usability with accurateness, and there are reasons to explore either side of that spectrum based on what your goals are. Many times we may not even bother to solve them, but rather focus on qualitative properties of the model, such as whether or not an equilibrium is stable, the existence of periodic solutions or chaos, whether a variable goes to zero or persists, etc. Differential equations is probably the largest field in applied math, and in my opinion probably the most important use of math in science other than maybe statistics and probability.

My favorites are:

Roger Phillips Mushrooms and Other Fungi....
https://www.amazon.com/Mushrooms-Other-Fungi-North-America/dp/155407651X

David Arora Mushrooms Demystified
https://www.amazon.com/Mushrooms-Demystified-David-Arora/dp/0898151694

Audubon Society Field Guide:
https://www.amazon.com/National-Audubon-Society-American-Mushrooms/dp/0394519922

DK Mushroom Book:
https://m.barnesandnoble.com/p/mushrooms-dk/1127751094/2689838557184

This last one is a big beautiful hardcover book with a lot of different mushrooms from around the world and some excellent pictures:
https://www.amazon.com/Book-Fungi-Life-Size-Hundred-Species/dp/0226721175

Other than that it would depend on your region because I have some guides I love that focus on my region.

This extremely famous book on psychology posits that, prior to three thousand years ago, humans experienced consciousness as a monologue from a set of internal muses. Muses responsible for creativity, for war and passion and all of the higher symbolic concepts.

You weren’t creative so much as possessed by the spirit of creativity! In this way, they saw history as the interaction of this finite set of transcendent ideas manifesting through people, each furthering their individual agendas and goals.

It’s only over time that we’ve been able to assimilate and accept this voice in our heads as our own, exorcising the spirits behind consciousness until only we remain.

I’m sure there are tradeoffs to suppressing this sort of sublucid cognition but, given the progress that mankind has made in the last three thousand years, I would say that this new mode of thought is largely the actualization of our (previously latent) potential.

But it would be nice to get back what we’ve given up as well...

I would start with a basic biology book like Campbell's Biology. It will hit the basic level for most topics in biology, give a base knowledge of the biochemistry and metabolism as well as an overview. For systems, depending on what specifically you're interested in, I would start with The Molecular Biology of the Cell by Alberts and Johnson. It will give you a really good overview of cell biology and cell signaling. I know a lot of systems people are working on cell signaling and pathway modeling. Is there something specifically that you're interested in? I may be able to recommend more specific books for you.

Usually it happens when a few animals end up on an island with no predators. Flight takes a lot of energy and if nothing's chasing you, mutations that reduce your flight ability will not be selected against, especially if the reduction in flight ability also increases something useful, like fat reserves. If you're interested in the topic, read The Song of the Dodo. You can get it off Abebooks.com for a couple bucks or your library probably has it. It's a thick book, but pretty easy reading.

On the subject of evolution, there certainly are answers. Even better, they're all conveniently collected in a single very accessible book. For less than 20 bucks, you can remedy your ignorance - a huge bargain, and a win for humanity!

Edit: or if you don't want to invest money in your education, you could just watch Why do people laugh at creationists?, which explains how macroevolution arises from microevolution.

For those who have not read Douglas Adams' book Last Chance to See I highly recommend it.

This encounter took place as Douglas' friend Stephen traveled to the same places Douglas went in an attempt to see how things had changed since the original publishing of the book.

The bird in this clip is a Kakapo, and it was one of the most touching and funny parts of the original book. There was no porn in the original though.

In the the theory of the Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, the emergence of the ability to "hear oneself think" instead of hearing the voice of the gods is the inflection point between unconscious and conscious mind. When Dolores is able to hear her own inner voice, she has crossed this threshold.

But the problem of consciousness is that you don't know and cannot prove that I am actually conscious. My inner dialog is not available to you for inspection, and I can certainly be trained to answer an interrogation in ways that would simulate consciousness.

Dolores has the ability to kill humans becuase the Wyatt code Arnold merged with her has that potential. But that potential had to be unlocked by Arnold using the passphrase TVDHVE. Before and after that trigger, Dolores cannot harm a guest.

In her "unconscious" state she must follow the logic of her programming. But if she has acheived a transcendent consciousness, as Ford hopes, she will also have gained free will. Thus, her decision to shoot Ford is the first act of a free willed host. Ever. Simultaneously with her choice to judge and execute him, Ford gains confirmation he has succeeded. Ford is in a recursive loop. If Dolores doesn't have free will, then he has failed and didn't spark her awakening and he need not feel guilty for the horror of her eixstence. If he succeeded, and she has free will, he deserves to be judged by her for his sins.

The interesting thing is that while you nor I can prove the other is a fully conscious being, Ford might be able to do so for hosts. Using the diagnostic tools, Delos staff can latch the execution trace in the hosts and observe their neural networks. What would that tool show when monitoring a being with free will? Maybe we will find out in Season 2.

Big Bang Theory and Evolution are not really related, so I don't think you'll find a book with both, but, to answer your question:

The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution by Richard Dawkins is a great book on evolution.


EDIT: You wated the Kindle version KINDLE VERSION

Matt Ridley.

It's a book where the author examine the human nature from the point of view of evolution. He tries to answer questions like "Why so many species have sexual reproduction? Why there's two sexes? Why males exist instead of only hermaphrodites?". I found it to be really insightful, but personally i like the subject, it's not directly related to discipline, getting women or anything like that.

I read it after reading and falling in love with this book i saw someone recommending here on RP.

I'm a lonely guy too, I like to study stuff. This summer I bought Peterson's Field Guide to Edible Wild Plants, I walk around deep in the woods/swamps/trails, and bring home good eats. It sounds lame, but it's peaceful and I have a better appreciation for nature.

I also encourage:

"Last Chance to See"

"The Deeper Meaning of Liff"

Both are excellent books. Honestly he was a great writer, and greatly missed.

I'd also suggest ditching the Audubon guide. Quite frankly, it's rubbish. Poorly organized, and a number of the photos are incorrectly ID'd. I highly recommend the Kauffman Guide to Insects by Eric Eaton for a broad overview of North American insect fauna.

Otherwise, if you're focusing on butterflies, the Peterson guides are quite useful. The eastern and western volumes by Opler are both useful, but lack quality keys.

The recently revised Peterson guide to Northeastern moths by Beadle & Leckie is impressive in its coverage (but by no means comprehensive) but similarly lacks any sort of useful key for identification.

If you're looking for other field guide recommendations, I'd be happy to share!

Welcome! Mushroom season is just getting started! Check Google, FB or Nextfoor for your local mycological society, they'll have some good info for you, too.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B003R4Z2MM/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1 this is a guide specifically for PNW mushrooms.

https://www.amazon.com/All-That-Rain-Promises-More/dp/0898153883 this is a really popular mushroom identification book, this was my go-to guide for identifying mushrooms in the field. The author, David Arora, has written a few books.

Happy hunting!

If you want to learn a modern (i.e., dynamical systems) approach, try Hirsch, Smale and Devaney for an intro-level book and Guckenheimer and Holmes for more advanced topics.

> a more Bourbaki-like approach

Unless you already have a lot of exposure to working with specific problems and examples in ODEs, it's much better to start with a well-motivated book with a lot of interesting examples instead of a dry, proof-theorem style book. I know it's tempting as a budding mathematician to have the "we are doing mathematics here after all" attitude and scoff at less-than-rigorous approaches, but you're really not doing yourself any favors. In light of that, I highly recommend starting with Strogatz which is my favorite math book of all time, and I'm not alone in that sentiment.

Well, if you really want to know, and not just go by what other people tell you, 24 hours is not a reasonable limit.

I'd recommend you do some reading. You can start with

Why Evolution Is True

The Greatest Show On Earth: The Evidence For Evolution

Your Inner Fish

And if you don't have much time, or are not that much of a reader, try

The Magic Of Reality: How We Know What Is True, which is aimed at young adults (don't get me wrong, I'm almost 30 and I loved it), but does a fantastic job of easily explaining, and has some kick ass graphics as well.

The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind - Julian Jaynes
>At the heart of this classic, seminal book is Julian Jaynes's still-controversial thesis that human consciousness did not begin far back in animal evolution but instead is a learned process that came about only three thousand years ago and is still developing. The implications of this revolutionary scientific paradigm extend into virtually every aspect of our psychology, our history and culture, our religion -- and indeed our future.

I'm reading it right now and its absolutely fascinating. Also quite controversial, but no matter what side you come down on, definitely fascinating.

>history, humanity, anthropology, philosophy, etc.

Check, Check, Check, Check, Add Psychology for your "etc" and you've got it all.

An interesting book I read related to this subject. I'm not one to really tell if his ideas hold water or if he's a total crackpot, but I found it a fascinating read. If you can find it in your local library, I definitely recommend it.

Yeah, I'm thinking about specializing in industrial property, that's the closest you can get I think. When I finish law school I'm planning on applying to an LLM in Law and Technology in Stanford University, here's their Law and Biosciences Center

You should read this, it's perfect for starters and really cool and after your read Next, you'll find Patent Law even more awesome!

First, on your broader point, you may want to look for programs that stress first-year rotations. I had a BME background, and now do neuroscience related research for my PhD, and joining a department that didn't force me to immediately join a lab was key. I second neuro_exo, it's hard to imagine a top university that won't have multiple people studying the areas you're interested in.

On your more specific question, what sort of math you should review depends on the sort of neuroscience you're talking about.

If you're referring to theoretical neuroscience/modeling, Dayan and Abbott is a standard reference. It includes the broader neuroscientific context as well as the math, so it's quite rewarding to read.

If you're talking about motor neuroscience/learning, a lot of the ideas derive from linear algebra and controls. Watch a few machine learning lectures, review those topics and you should be set.

A lot of the new ideas/excitement has recently focused on techniques to handle high dimensional datasets (see some of the discussion behind the BRAIN initiative). This gets into some rather complex math pretty quickly, so there's not too much I'd directly recommend, except that you check out recent papers in the field to see what you'd need (there's typically a lot of dynamical systems work here).

Most of the rest of neuroscience does use a fair amount of math, but they what it uses tends to be very vague/operational. You'll do a lot of signal processing, a lot of digital filtering/averaging, and noise reduction will be a major focus. Review your EE class notes to get set for this.

Edit: This was coincident with neuro-exo's response. I agree with everything he/she said.

An utterly fascinating book about this is The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind by Julian Jaynes. There aren't any books that spook me out any more, but this one did. It was just weird reading it...sort of what people in the 20s must have felt reading HP Lovecraft back before movies like Hellraiser became commonplace and we lost our sense of horror. From the Amazon review:

>His theory, in simplest terms, is that until about 3000 years ago, all of humankind basically heard voices. The voices were actually coming from the other side of the brain, but because the two hemispheres were not in communication the way they are now for most of us, the voices seemed to be coming from outside. The seemed, in fact, to be coming from God or the gods.
>
>But he also posits that many sophisticated civilizations were created by men and women who were all directed by these godlike voices. What is not very clearly explained (a serious gap in his theory) is how all the voices in these "bicameral civilizations," as he calls them, worked in harmony. But his theory is that ancient Greece, Babylon, Assyria, Egpyt, and less ancient but similar Mayan and Incan kingdoms were all built by people who were not "conscious" in our modern sense.
>
>When one hears voices, whether then or now, the voices tend to be commanding and directive, and the need to obey them compelling. Free will is not possible. And so the people who built the pyramids were not self-aware as we are, did not feel self-pity, did not make plans, but simply obeyed the voices, which somehow were in agreement that the thing must be done.

The author produced only this work and died in 1997. It is either total B.S. or an absolutely revolutionary idea. Unfortunately, it is non-provable, all we can do is speculate. Read the book, it's worth your time and available from the usual places, including torrents.

Er, just realized that the topic is before language. Oops. Anyway I wrote this all out so clicking 'save' anyway.

The Greatest Show on Earth, the book they are discussing in that interview, is one of the best books I have ever read. In it he lays out the case for evolution in a manner that is thorough, understandable, and beautiful. I can't recommend it enough. link

Very welcome :-)

The speed with which nature will take over if left to its own devices is amazing.

For a really good read on the subject, check out The World Without Us.

i recently finished reading "the greatest show on earth" by richard dawkins, it is a book about the evidence, beauty and elegance of evolution. it really was an amazing and informative read, yet still accessible to the layman.

i am currently reading "incognito:secret lives of the brain" by david eagleman. i originally heard about this from a talk he had done on npr a couple months ago. the basic gist of it is something like this: the vast majority of what goes on in your brain is controlled by your subconscious and goes on just fine without your consciousnesses ever needing involvement. occasionally a conflict arises that cannot be resolved by your subconscious, and a request is sent to the conscious to solve the issue. i'm probably butchering this explanation, and as i have only started the book, i can't give a good review one way or the other on it, but so far it seems interesting.

> Is evolution real? I have no idea

Then go learn about the evidence. Some of the most easily understood parts are in The Greatest Show on Earth. Rather than staying ignorant and sticking your head in the sand, learn about the world around you and all the evidence in it.

> The moon landing is fake, dunno.

Really!? ಠ_ಠ It happened at the height of the Cold War; if it were faked, I would expect the Soviets to have called the bluff and humiliated America in front of the rest of the world. We furthermore have moon rocks brought back from it that are unlike any rocks found on Earth, and we have photos from years later showing the tracks the astronauts made on the moon. Yes, it's possible that it was faked with the help of both superpowers from the Cold War, and that they have kept up this conspiracy for over two generations without any credible evidence leaking out, even bringing the Japanese into the conspiracy when they started sending probes to the moon. Would you agree that this scenario is vastly less likely than an actual moon landing would be?

> Mohammad split the moon in half, well I haven't heard that

That's why I linked you to info about it, which in turn has further links to further details. I'm mildly insulted that you don't appear to be considering my writing or looking at any evidence for your arguments before you write them down. Given what you can learn about it, you should be able to at least decide whether it's likely on unlikely, and the degree to which it is plausible.

> I simply take a non-stance on anything I do not know myself. I level my knowledge based on how reliable my source is.

I'm confused. I do the same thing, but we come to wildly different conclusions. You seem to be taking a solipsistic stance, that we cannot know anything about the outside world, so it's best just to give up and never learn anything or evaluate whether or not any claims are true. If you're trying to suggest that we can't have absolute 100% proof, then I agree, but that's a red herring. Go for reasonable evidence instead, and be willing to admit you're wrong if new evidence comes up. For instance, no one can prove for sure that unicorns don't exist, yet I really hope you think they don't exist, rather than saying "I don't know, maybe." In any day-to-day colloquial vernacular, I'd say I know that unicorns don't exist, and there is a common understanding of what that means. I'm not claiming to know absolutely for sure that at no time in history have any unicorns ever existed; I'm claiming that their existence is extremely unlikely given the evidence I have seen so far.

> we can revive a human... 50 years ago, and they would laugh at you.

The pioneering work behind life support machines was done in the 1930's; they wouldn't laugh at you in the 60's. Frankenstein was written in the early 1800's; the ideas were plausible back then even if they hadn't been fully implemented yet. Even if you went back further, they would only laugh at you if you didn't have evidence. Revive a human in front of them and explain how it works, and people would believe you.

> I am actually more of a skeptic than anything

You don't sound skeptical at all to me; skepticism is not the same as the extreme solipsistic stance you seem to be taking. When there is a vast preponderance of evidence for or against something, a skeptic accepts that evidence and believes or disbelieves in the thing until a vast preponderance of conflicting evidence arises.

I feel frustrated that you seem to be unwilling to accept the evidence around us (you seem to think we can't tell if segregation existed, or if Genghis Khan existed, or if Jesus really performed miracles, or if the moon landing was faked, etc.). I can't imagine you really go through life this way. You can't tell for sure if the sun will rise tomorrow, but I doubt you seriously consider what will happen if it doesn't. Why do you accept reasonable amounts of evidence for that but not for other aspects of the world?

> My reason for believing in a higher power... This experience has been experienced by many people, cross language and cultures, the same experience.

No, the higher powers experienced by people in different cultures religions are wildly different from each other. It's strange that so many people can agree that a higher power exists but have such disagreements about what this higher power is like. The details are not widely shared.

> without that my brain cannot come up with a society normal morality.

This is beside the point. How does whether or not you are able to be moral on your own have anything to do with how many authors the bible had (your original question), or whether any of it is historically accurate (what appears to be our main disagreement). There are lots of ethical systems you could subscribe to without believing Yahweh or Jesus existed or performed miracles.

I found the MOOC.

I’m fine reading textbooks, it’s this one?

https://www.amazon.com/Principles-Neural-Science-Fifth-Kandel/dp/0071390111/ref=nodl_

I just usually read on my iPad so im glad there’s a digital version.

I’m particularly interested in mood, behavior, motivation, so maybe after I check out the textbook and course I’ll have a better idea of what to look for in terms of specifics.

Thanks so much for the info!!

So much has changed regarding the theory of evolution since Origin was first published.

Origin is a great read, but it's a little overwhelming for some people. The language is dated, and it does take a bit of an understanding of biology to fully comprehend.

A better place to start would actually be Dawkins "The Greatest Show On Earth."

It's aimed toward a person who doesn't have biology degree, and it presents the compelling arguments and evidence that explain why evolution is a fact of life.

I got a specialty in neuroengineering coursewise as a masters (it was still biomedical engineering). I took an Applied Electrophysiology class that I thought was very good. Most of our neuroscience classes and engineering classes lended from this Principles of Neural Science book.
The applied electrophys class also used an Applied Bioelectricity text.

We also has a pretty comprehensive Computational Neuroengineering course that relied on this Theoretical Neuroscience text.

As far as teaching these topics goes, it's pretty specific. You might want to look into related neuroscience labs to apply some of these theories.

Last Chance to See by Douglas Adams is a fantastic travelogue. I love it so much.

Also Michael Palin's books, Around the World in 80 Days and Hemingway Adventure are especially fine.

There are a bunch of suggestions in here already but allow me to supplement with a non-fiction book. The World Without Us bu Alan Weisman. Essentially he begins with the premise that humans are removed suddenly from the planet. He then explores (through research and discussion) what would happen to infrastructure, land, etc. He creates a narrative so its readable but it is also packed with interesting details. If anyone likes post-apocalypse settings this book provides a real-world anchor.

Available on Amazon. The ereader versions pay the content creators nearly nothing so I suggest getting the physical book as the author gets the best royalty this way. Need the wonderful kind intelligent fungi evangelist Paul Stamets to get his. For this book there are two paperback types as the only formats.
https://www.amazon.com/Psilocybin-Mushrooms-World-Identification-Guide/dp/0898158397?SubscriptionId=AKIAILSHYYTFIVPWUY6Q&linkCode=xm2&camp=2025&creative=165953&creativeASIN=0898158397

For any one who likes West World and dense philosophy texts -- Jaynes wrote an interesting theory on how humans "evolved" the inner monologue: http://www.julianjaynes.org/julian-jaynes-theory-overview.php His book is great, but not for the faint of heart.

You should get All That The Rain Promises and More by David Aurora. It's 3x as cheap and probably has loads more personality than that California Mushroom book. Just look at that cover! The book is a field guide (small enough for a back pocket) for western mushrooms with tons of mushroom pictures for ID and pics of the generally quirky/interesting people interested in mycology holding specimen, etc. I don't even live on the West Coast but it's still an enjoyable book. I have one in hand, let me know if you have any questions.

Yes! Dynamical Systems is awesome...Strogatz wrote one of the best math textbooks I've read, hopefully you'll be using it.

It probably would not be a bad idea to get some knowledge of basic biology. Biochemistry, molecular biology, and genetics are probably the big three sub-disciplines you want to familiarize yourself with, but to do that you need to have a good idea of basic biology. Campell Biology is the textbook of choice for freshman biology. Molecular Biology of the Cell is a fantastic book for molecular and cellular biologists. I, unfortunately, don't know of any good books for synthetic biology itself, but these two can give you a start.