about a four-letter-word titled book that i'm currently reading

Michael Crichton's latest book titled Next is still as compelling as ever and (for an intrigued mind like mine) still sparks a "Really?". I haven't finished reading it. But I can already say that it is more boring than its predecessors, like Prey or Timeline. Perhaps will be far less controversial than State of Fear.

Boring? Well, I mean, I, for one, expected that halfway through the book we will learn more about the people involved with the issues and how the problems materialize before their eyes. Next, however, continues to introduce new minor characters that made me confused. It's almost often I said to myself, OK, who are the main characters again?

Right now, I, third-quarter-way through the book, don't really care anymore how the story will end for the characters.

But anyway, what drives me to write this post is the passage I read in page 273.

"Wait a minute. Height isn't genetic?"

"For individuals, yes. If you're taller than your friend, it's probably because your parents are taller. But for populations, height is a function of environment. In the last fifty years, Europeans have grown an inch every decade. So have the Japanese. That's too fast for a genetic change. It's entirely an effect of environment - better prenatal care, nutrition, health care, and so on. Americans, by the way, haven't grown at all in this period. They've shrunk slightly, possibly because of poor prenatal care and junk food diets. The point is that the actual relationship of genes and environment is very complicated. Scientists don't yet have a good understanding of how genes work. In fact, there's no general agreement about what a gene is."

With all due respect to my parents', my older sister's, and my own generation, that kinda a validation for her, one of her friends, and me, who think that there are more cute Indonesians nowadays than there were before.

Seriously. Look at people at the malls nowadays.