{"id":2856,"date":"2010-06-12T22:24:04","date_gmt":"2010-06-13T05:24:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/?p=2856"},"modified":"2010-06-12T22:24:04","modified_gmt":"2010-06-13T05:24:04","slug":"we-might-be-giants-or-not","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/2010\/06\/12\/we-might-be-giants-or-not\/","title":{"rendered":"We might be giants (or not)."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Humans. We&#8217;re so big. Totally huge. What do we really know about all the little guys out there?<\/p>\n<p>Pathogens? Bacteria?<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" style=\"border: 4px solid white\" title=\"Bacteria\" src=\"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/discoblog\/files\/2008\/04\/bacteria.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"420\" height=\"315\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\">.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\">Viruses? Toxoplasma?<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" style=\"border: 6px solid white\" title=\"Toxoplasma\" src=\"http:\/\/www.musee-afrappier.qc.ca\/images\/site\/large\/toxoplasma-gondii-kunkel-20659ag-wm.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"403\" height=\"503\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\">.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\">Check out the fascinating article in <em><span style=\"text-decoration: underline\">The Economist<\/span><\/em>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.economist.com\/node\/16271339?story_id=16271339&amp;fsrc=tw\/te\/mr\/catandmouse\">A game of cat and mouse<\/a>, which explains the intriguing theory that pathogens may account for schizophrenia in humans &#8211; or, to put it more subtly, &#8220;There is tantalising evidence that a common parasite may affect human behaviour.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\">I&#8217;m reminded of &#8220;crazy&#8221; theories put forward by <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Thomas_Gold\">Thomas Gold<\/a>, who suggested that anaerobic bacteria deep in the earth&#8217;s mantle <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Thomas_Gold#Origins_of_petroleum\">produce petroleum<\/a>. See his <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Deep-Hot-Biosphere-Fossil-Fuels\/dp\/0387985468\">Deep Hot Biosphere<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Thomas_Gold#The_Deep_Hot_Biosphere\">hypothesis<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\">Sure, if you&#8217;re really big (as we are), the really small seem &#8230;well, really small.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\">But by now we know it&#8217;s really a matter of scale, right?<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\">\ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\">\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Humans. We&#8217;re so big. Totally huge. What do we really know about all the little guys out there? Pathogens? Bacteria? . Viruses? Toxoplasma? . Check out the fascinating article in The Economist, A game of cat and mouse, which explains the intriguing theory that pathogens may account for schizophrenia in humans &#8211; or, to put [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":311,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[678],"tags":[16106,16105,16107,16104,16108],"class_list":["post-2856","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ideas","tag-bacteria","tag-deep_hot_biosphere","tag-pathogens","tag-thomas_gold","tag-toxoplasma"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2856","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/311"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2856"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2856\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2862,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2856\/revisions\/2862"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2856"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2856"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2856"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}