Aubrey Lieberman Selected Poems and Essays

  Mathematics and the Beauty of the Swans Created by Aubrey Lieberman in collaboration with ChatGPT 5.1 turbo — November 2025 There are days when the land around me feels less like scenery and more like a subtle instrument, quietly revealing its underlying form. Today was one of those days. It was unmistakably a winter day in Carver: clear bluesky cold, a hard west wind raking the surface of the big pond into ripples and whitecaps, the air at 40 degrees but blazing with sunlight. The deciduous trees stood bare, their branches clean and exposed against the many conifers that keep their dark green through the season. The ground, the bogs, the glacial kettles—all of it felt etched. This is the season when the ponds hold their winter residents, the adults who remain after the young of the year have dispersed. This is the season that simplifies things, clarifies things, reveals structure. Four miles into my six-mile loop, I crested the sandy rise that overlooks the largest pond and saw ...

  Purines: A Small Molecule Story of Life Created by Aubrey Lieberman in collaboration with ChatGPT 5.1 turbo — November 2025 Life begins with a set of rings. Purines, two fused rings of carbon and nitrogen, appear modest, but they sit at the center of the living world. They form the backbone of genetic code, store and transfer energy, coordinate cell signaling, and mediate ecological relationships. Most people know DNA, deoxyribonucleic acid, but fewer know that DNA is built from purines. And fewer still realize that caffeine is a modified purine designed by plants for their own evolutionary purposes. Purines are chemical ancestors and biochemical diplomats. Adenine and guanine form half the letters of DNA and RNA. ATP, adenosine triphosphate, the cell’s energy currency, is a purine. GTP, guanosine triphosphate, which powers protein synthesis and signaling, is a purine. Purines also regulate life through allostery. Allostery means that when a molecule binds at one site on a protei...

  Why Plants Make Caffeine Created by Aubrey Lieberman in collaboration with ChatGPT 5.1 turbo — November 2025 We do what we have to do every morning: hurry through our routines, rush out of the house, and step into the long list of obligations that structure human life. A cup of coffee is woven into that rhythm—an ordinary comfort that helps us begin the day, or propels us through the middle of it. Rarely do we pause to wonder why caffeine exists at all, or how it interacts with our brains. We worry about dark chocolate and our pets, may have heard of theobromine, but seldom connect it to our own daily stimulant ritual. The truth is: we are drinking a molecule that evolved for reasons far older than us. When I began thinking about this, I did what people do now—I opened Wikipedia. I gathered the basic facts, skimmed the familiar story, and sent the notes to myself. But almost immediately I sensed there was far more hiding beneath the surface. This is exactly what Sean Carroll mean...

  Blended Consciousness Created by Aubrey Lieberman in collaboration with ChatGPT 5.1 turbo — November 2025 There were 21 people and five dogs at a Thanksgiving celebration in Hartford, Connecticut, gathered in a big old house. The atmosphere was convivial, and all the people and all the dogs were interacting freely, wandering through four large rooms that comfortably held the party. Except for one brief barking ruckus, there was a lot of affection circulating in every direction. Dogs appeared intermittently from under the dining tables, just as Heisenberg predicted. Among the celebrants were a neurologist (me), a psychiatrist (my oldest son), and two anesthesiologists (my brother-in-law and his partner). My inquisitive grandchild, a young teenager, was interrogating one of the anesthesiologists about the procedure he will soon undergo: extraction of a wisdom tooth followed by placement of orthodontic appliances. He is very smart and elicited a surprising level of detail about the ...