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Chang’s calculations get even weirder if you go back a few more centuries. A thousand years in the past, the numbers say something very clear, and a bit disorienting. One-fifth of people alive a millennium ago in Europe are the ancestors of no one alive today. Their lines of descent petered out at some point, when they or one of their progeny did not leave any of their own. Conversely, the remaining 80 percent are the ancestor of everyone living today. All lines of ancestry coalesce on every individual in the 10th century.

If that's the case after just 1,000 years, it seems quite reasonable that many, many, more lines would have existed and died out in the preceeding 10,000 or so. Especially if you were to start factoring in the more tribal nature of communities and the increased susceptibility to famine, disease, conflict, natural disasters, and so on that results.

I'm bad at Math. I'm pretty good with English... I can understand the context without trouble, but when it comes time to turn the problem into an equation beyond the most basic, I founder...

I'm pretty much the same, which is slightly ironic given my chosen, (and some might say pre-destined), career in electronics. When it comes to math, I'm good at arithmetic, and even mental arithmetic. I can do trig - scored a perfect final exam in Grade 12 - but the knowledge didn't stick, and when I looked at it again several tears later I felt a bit lost. I can barely handle differential calculus with lots of hard work; forget about even basic integral calculus. I've understood and memorised a few basic formulae for things like reactance and impedance, but not much beyond that.

I had always thought I just wasn't wired for mathematics, but a friend sent me a link to an article suggesting that I may have been wrong. I suspect that when I was young I got into the habit of focussing on the things I was inherently and automatically good at, (specifically English), to the detriment of other areas of study that I might have been very good at had I applied effort and discipline.

At this stage of my life it's unlikely that I'll become a math whiz, but at least I now believe that I could become one if I was willing to put in the effort and the hours.

... like how killing city rats may cause diseases to spread faster:

http://nautil.us/issue/38/nois...

Now, it's possible that this technique manages to kill every rat in the colony, so they don't scatter ... but as rats that weren't in the burrow would realize that something is up when they come back, this could be a problem.

I'd think they'd want to use carbon monoxide, not dioxide, at the very least ... assuming that rats have the same problems w/ humans in detecting it.

According to this article neural networks do make mistakes, sometimes very big mistakes, like the ANN that confused a school bus with a football jersey. The root cause is not easy to determine, and hence the fix is not easy. 'Twould appear that the reasons neural networks fail is a hot topic in neural network research.

http://www.theguardian.com/com...

http://www.nature.com/news/why...

http://www.cnn.com/2015/03/18/...

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/a...

http://www.businessinsider.com...

http://www.mysterypollster.com...

http://www.examiner.com/articl...

http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/general...

http://www.outsidethebeltway.c...

http://nautil.us/blog/why-were...

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07...

http://articles.economictimes....

First few links from the search engine typing in "why are election polls often wrong"...

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-pol...

http://time.com/3558932/pollin...

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.u...

http://www.cnn.com/2015/05/08/...

http://www.kansas.com/news/loc...

Shut up. Just close your stupid mouth. Sit down. And don't speak again until addressed. You're an idiot. It has been officially noticed.

This proves you wrong:
http://nautil.us/issue/24/erro...

Anecdotes prove nothing.

This proves you wrong:
http://nautil.us/issue/24/erro...

Your denial of reality is not improving your credibility... and you belief that you can claim accreditation on the internet using an alias is itself pretty presumptuous.

Do you know my background or my qualifications? No. Because I don't name drop them even though they would actually be impressive if I could validate them for you. But that would require doxxing myself and that would be idiotic on my part since I don't want jackasses stalking me.

Let me put this to you just a bit more clearly.

You are speeding at sixty miles an hour at a brick wall of fact. You can either stop, get out of the way, or run head on into that wall, have your credibility fly right through the windshield, and splatter that intellectual credibility all over the brick in gobby gorey spender.

Choose.

I will be over here eating popcorn.

Wrong.
http://nautil.us/issue/24/erro...

As to where my system would work, Wrong again.

I gave EXAMPLES of different things that could be tried. My examples were not comprehensive. There is an entire library of methods of ferreting out bullshit that can be tried.

I gave you an example of perhaps two or three... of which you are only acknowledging ONE. You are then suggesting that I am only offering one method while at the same time contradicting yourself by referring to it as cloak and dagger which is an entire field of methods going far beyond any one thing.

The core concept is to TRICK frauds into outing themselves. Do you imply there is only ONE method to trick a person?

Obviously not. So enough with that bullshit and no I am not going to list every possible way you could possible trick any possible fraud. That would be an infinitely long list.

As to being poorly informed... here you're assuming that I would keep things the same way in every situation where it would weaken my argument while at the same time I would change anything again only in cases where it would weaken my argument.

That is specious. Are you one of those people that can't be reasoned with unless communicated with in a 5000 page report that basically restates the same concept that could be summed up in one paragraph a million different ways so that it can't possibly be intentionally misinterpreted even in the most unreasonable context possible? Because that is what your comments are sounding like at this point.

Assume for a moment that I am neither an idiot nor ignorant. Just for the sake of argument.

Then reread my position with that presumption. You keep filling in blanks with unreasonable assumptions and then attributing that to my intentions.

I am not an idiot, thank you.

As to your position that science is only having a problem because of politics... it is an element but it goes both ways. Some people try to exploit the credibility of science to advance a political agenda. And when you do that there are consequences.

You don't get to step into the ring, whore out your principles to advance a political cause, and then pretend you're some detached holy monk.

Either be that monk and askew all political ties. or when you enter the ring you're a political agent.

The same goes for judges for example in court trials. A judge that has conflicts of interest is disqualified from administering that court.

You see that with journalists as well. If you have conflicts of interest then you're not an impartial reporter and most journalistic ethics policies will oblige you to recuse yourself.

If you don't think politicians can bias scientists or that scientists are sometimes biased by money or power then you're a fool.

No offense. But scientists are people just like everyone else. If a judge has to recuse himself and a reporter has to recuse himself... then suggesting that a scientist need need never recuse himself is asinine.

Here's an article (not about aging but) about genetic networks and evolution: http://nautil.us/issue/20/crea...

Fruits and Vegetables Are Trying to Kill You:

http://nautil.us/issue/15/turb...

Yep, but the core didn't hit the water table. They located most of it years and years ago. The core is currently a solidified mass through a bunch of pipes, solidified pools, and such through much of the structure under where the reactor core was, the best known formation is the 'elephant's foot' located in a sub-basement.

Taking pictures of it was an interesting affair because the radiation is strong enough to fry even our best shielded robots, not that the Russians had them, so they had to get creative with more primitive tools.

Still, I haven't seen any evidence that it managed to make it to the water table.

We are pretty much already completely homogenized. I doubt this could have much of an effect. Just read this yesterday, pretty interesting. http://nautil.us/blog/we-are-all-princes-paupers-and-part-of-the-human-family