Briefly noted

Some books I’ve read recently. I didn’t take detailed notes, so you don’t get detailed reviews. The Evolution of Imperfection: The Science of Why We Aren’t and Can’t Be Perfect – Laurence D. Hurst – 2025 If you had the idea that humanity is the pinnacle of evolution, or that evolution makes masterful, near-perfect machines… well, this book will make you wonder why we don’t collapse in a pile of pink goo. Evolution is a far worse engineer than you probably thought. Nor are other animals really better. First, some disturbing facts about our DNA, which applies to most animals too: Only 10 to 15% of our DNA is functional… the rest is junk, copied at every cell division for no gain. Only 1.2% of our DNA codes for actual proteins. For bacteria, by contrast, it’s almost all proteins. 90% of our genes are garbage that is transcribed every time a cell needs them, then edited out. The technical term for these bits of garbage are introns. Again, bacteria have few or no introns. Now, evolution…