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Also, from skin cells making the entire political debate kinda moot. Some people will never bury the hatchet. Once a term is associated with politics, it'll always live under a shadow. Kinda sucks.

It will still be diluted and changed.

http://genetics.thetech.org/as...

From the link: A bit of recombination with the X, some recombination with itself, and a few uncaught errors makes for a slightly different Y.

My point still stands. My Y chromosome will not be diluted to nothing after a few generations.

It will still be diluted and changed.

http://genetics.thetech.org/as...

The FBI doesn't have identical fingerprints, what they have is the number of elements of a fingerprint used to "hash" the fingerprint results in collisions. Since identical twins don't have the same fingerprints. That said, an "identical" fingerprint, however unlikely since the fingertip would have to be the same size and shape to begin with, is certainly within the realm of statistical possibility, the likelihood of a person having an identical set of fingerprints would be truly astronomical.

As cool as this would be *now*, given enough generations these mutations will disburse (ever wonder why so many people have blue eyes?)

Well not till you mentioned it, so I checked out of idle curiosity. Using carefully selected words for the search:
how many people have blue eyes

Blue eyes are indeed becoming less common in the world. One study showed that about 100 years ago,
half of U.S. residents had blue eyes. Nowadays only 1 in 6 does. http://genetics.thetech.org/ask/ask355

2% of the population has green eyes. It's the rarest eye color. 8% has blue, or a variation of blue like violet or grey.I guess the rest has brown or hazel. http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_many_people_in_the_world_have_blue_eyes

Approximately 8% of the world's population has blue eyes http://www.funtrivia.com/askft/Question79523.html
which references http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eye_color#Blue that makes no such claim.

8% is the answer most often given.

As for the mutation for blue eyes.
According to a team of researchers from Copenhagen University, a single mutation which arose as recently
as 6-10,000 years ago was responsible for all the blue-eyed people alive on Earth today.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-511473/All-blue-eyed-people-traced-ancestor-lived-10-000-years-ago-near-Black-Sea.html

All joking aside, though, I also got curious. And, as I went to Google College, unlike some underprivileged folks, let me share my inaccessible knowledge: http://genetics.thetech.org/ask/ask68

Is this a joke? Have you never seen the red/blonde haired blue/green/grey eyed people in northern South Asia? Or the blonde Aborigines? Or black people with blue eyes? The iconic ancient painting of (maybe) Tocharians with red hair and blue eyes? Sure, the diversity increases in (northern) Europe, but it assuredly exists elsewhere (the Nazis had problems explaining it).

Surely you have heard of recessive genes, and the decreasing chance of being Black or Asian and having blue eyes.
Without a blue eyed person in the family tree of BOTH parents your chance of having blue eyes is slim to none.

Try here for a simplistic (but still pretty good) explanation.

It turns out its not quite as simple as that because eye color is not controlled strictly by one gene, and there are more than one path to blue eyes (and all of them are recessive genes).

There are rare mutations that can spontaneously cause blue eyes as well. These are even rarer.

That you can point to a few individuals that have unexpected eye and hair color means nothing.

What number you get depends on the method of comparison. I've read every number between 94% and 99% for the fraction of DNA that humans share with chimpanzees. Since the bonobo is almost but not exactly a chimp, there's no surprise in this article. It's confirmation of what we thought we knew based on morphology. Yep! Bonobos are ALSO closely related to humans and chimps. Here's a site that states different numbers and discusses a number of other species: http://genetics.thetech.org/online-exhibits/genes-common And different numbers here: http://anthro.palomar.edu/primate/prim_8.htm To look at relatedness, there are more subtle measures. We have genetic tests now that can be used to establish probable paternity and measure genetic relatedness of individuals within the same species. These tests focus on differences in detail rather tnan overall similarity. Another thing to look at is chromosomes. People normally have 46 chromosomes. Chimps and bonobos normally have 48. Our chromosome 2 is divided into 2 chromosomes in chimps and I'm guessing also in bonobos.

Wow, thanks for that wonderful response.

My pleasure :)

Dealing with willfully-blind creationists can be extremely frustrating, especially having to deal with all of the misinformation they spew in public. It's a pleasure and a bit of sunshine to answer honest sincere questions on evolution with someone who is actually interested in information and understanding.

Creationists quite often ask challenge "questions" against evolution, but trying to answer those phony questions is like pounding your head against a brick wall. It's impossible to explain something to somebody who has a powerful desire not to understand it.

If you can find the links, I'm sure it would be a cool read

I just found the links. The first two are rather technical science papers on particular 44 chromosome cases. Here and here. Note for reading them: "Robertson translocation" is the technical term for two chromosomes glued together. I also just found a mostly non-technical article on an additional Chinese man discovered with 44 chromosomes.

That article cites a 2/3 difficulty in fertility, and I now realize my mistake when I said 50% fertility. Still, 2/3 isn't as harsh as it sounds because a failure costs a lot less time than the full-year involved in a successful pregnancy. Of course that's little consolation for a woman who might endure two early miscarriages for each successful childbirth.

I still have some issues with the probabilities of some characteristic's evolving completely unguided

I have personally preformed experiments, I've witnessed first hand the creative power of unguided evolution :)

I realize my last statement was a big a claim to make, and it definitely warrants explaination. But first I need to explain the concept of the evolution process. Evolution is fundamentally about information. Everything about species lies in the information in their DNA, and evolution is fundamentally about processing that information. Evolution is about children inheriting that information, it's about mutations in that information, and it's about selection killing off the "least good" copies of information. The process simply repeats the cycle using the survivors, using the surviving copies of information.

The evolution process is in essence: (1) Reproduction with (2) inheritance and (3) mutation. (4) Selection. Those are the four necessary and sufficient criteria for evolution to happen.

Reproduction of information, with inheritance of information, mutation of information, along with selection of information to repeat the cycle.

Note that the only "information input" going on in that cycle is that some individuals (some copies of information) get killed off. There is also random noise input from mutation, but that in itself cannot add constructive information. The only constructive information input is to delete the worst copies of information.

Consider for a moment the simplest possible case of flipping coins. Merely by deleting all of the tails the result is completely non-random, the end result is perfect heads. Random noise + selective deletion = highly directed result. In a more subtle sense, deleting "bad information DNA" is sufficient to force the highly directed result that the remaining DNA is inherently enriched with good or useful information.

Note that different species experience different kinds of selection. For example for birds, the laws of aerodynamics pretty much define what is a good-bird and what is a bad-bird. The DNA information defines the bird's body, so in essence the laws of aerodynamics are killing off the bad-information DNA. Over generations the mutating DNA is increasingly enriched in exactly the right information

One day, hopefully, we will be trying to extend our society beyond the life of the Sun.

While the sun is thought to have billions of years before it burns out, men as in the male sex may only have on the order of a few hundred thousand years before they become extinct. A debate is going on as to whether man can continue without intervention, as in genetic engineering.

we as a species are trying to maintain our style/standard of living out as far as possible

I'm no Malthusian but I don't think the whole world can live as people in the US do today.

Falcon

If you're going to be in California:

For kids and adults -- the Tech Museum of Innovation in San Jose -- http://www.thetech.org/

A little farther north -- The Computer History Museum in Mountain View (it's only a couple hundred yards off 101, so it's the easiest of all to hit) -- http://www.computerhistory.org/

Somewhat farther north in San Carlos, again just a hair off 101 -- The Hiller Aviation Museum -- http://www.hiller.org/

In San Francisco -- The Exploratorium -- http://www.exploratorium.edu/ -- possibly the most fascinating place you'll ever see -- lots of hands-on science.

That's four within about a 50 mile stretch.

Remember:

When you go to New York, people ask, "What plays did you see?"

When you go to San Francisco, they ask, "Where did you eat?"

Just look at any set of siblings, who can range from smart to dumb-as-rocks, from beautiful to homely, from athletic to klutz, all with the same genes.

That happens because they don't have the same genes. Genetic recombinations between the same two subjects (mom and dad) don't occur the same way each time. On the contrary, they tend to be quite chaotic and unpredictable. Read more here: http://www.thetech.org/genetics/ask.php?id=138

Well, even the DNA samples have been called into question. Yes, if you actually recorded every single piece of DNA in a person, you'd probably have something close to foolproof. But not quite.

As it is though, I think we only look at a 130 some markers... so the changes of "collisions" are greatly increased. Also, it's been shown that some people actually have two sets of DNA. It's not been ascertained how many people may have two sets of DNA in them.

I could not, would not, on a boat.
I will not, will not, with a goat.
I will not eat them in the rain.
I will not eat them on a train.
Not in the dark! Not in a tree!
Not in a car! You let me be!
I do not like them in a box.
I do not like them with a fox.
I will not eat them in a house.
I do not like them with a mouse.
I do not like them here or there.
I do not like them ANYWHERE!

Actually, we DO look at their willingness to breed and physical handicaps stopping it - we do no look at the egg level. There are a variety of plant species that can be "forced" to breed by various manipulations, but do not do so in the wild. They are still classified as separate species. If I make a group of dogs that can only interbreed with each other due to penis and vagina shapes, of course everyone would still call them dogs, but since this new "sub-species" cannot interbreed with the rest of the dogs, any micro-evolution that occurs in the group will tend to make them even more distinct from "dogs" in general.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Species for lots of info on how species are defined, and note how much a human construct is the whole idea of a "species" in the first place

A bit of searching turns up http://www.thetech.org/genetics/ask.php?id=143 which claims studies showing creation of new non-interpbreding populations of yeast - thus new yeast species. It can also be argued that Triticale is also one example of a man made new species (see: Triticale, a Man-Made Species of a Crop Plant V. T. Sapra, E. G. Heyne, H. D. Wilkins, Transactions of the Kansas Academy of Science, Vol. 74, pp. 52-58).

If you start claiming that "they are all yeast", or it is still "grain", you would be correct, but they are different species of yeast/grain, just like we have different species of deer. If we ever created non-interbreeding strains of cows, we could have to stop using "cow" as a species and start talking about cow-a and cow-b species.

Some that I've been to (these are all excellent):
Arizona Science Center (Phoenix, AZ)
St Louis Science Center
Tech Museum of Innovation (San Jose, CA)
The Exploratorium (San Francisco)

Some I have yet, even though I live in the area:
Children's Discovery Museum (San Jose, CA)
The Intel Museum (Santa Clara, CA)
Computer History Museum (Mountain View, CA)

If you're looking for geeky museums, the SF Bay Area probably has more of them in a smaller radius than anywhere else in the USA.

The Tech recently launched a Science on a Sphere exhibit on their lower level too. It's pretty cool stuff.

"Written examinations? Nobody has to type the Morse anymore? Anyone here who got his license recently care to shed some light on this one?"

If you consider five years ago 'recent,' that's when I upgraded to Extra class after 22 years of being a Tech class licensee. I would be happy to comment.

The Morse code requirements have been fading for some time. At one point, you needed to be able to send/receive at 13WPM to get a General or Advanced class license (the Advanced no longer exists), and 20WPM to get an Extra class.

The FCC eventually dropped the speed requirement to 5WPM (that originally required to get a Novice or Tech class license), so all those who had originally taken the 5WPM Morse Code element (I had, back in 1977, when I was first licensed) were eligible to upgrade simply by passing the higher-level written exam.

I had, as you might imagine, gained quite a bit of experience with electronics and radio after 22 years of being a hamateur, and fixing commercial 2-way radios, so taking the Extra-class exam was the next logical step for me. It's just that I never liked communicating via Morse, so I never practiced it beyond one on-air contact.

The written exams I keep referring to are multiple-choice 50 or 100-question exams which cover basic electronics and radio theory, operating practices, and FCC regs as they pertain to the amateur radio service. They get progressively more difficult as you go up the ladder of the various license levels, making greater knowledge and experience in the radio field a requirement as you try to advance through General to Extra.

Amateur radio is, I think, a fun hobby, despite the naysayers. It is especially useful during natural disasters, as I found out directly during the Bay Area's 'Quake of 89,' the East Bay Hills firestorm of 1991, and the Nisqually earthquake in Washington in 2001.

If you're interested, now that the Morse requirement is close to being eliminated, you should check in with whatever ham radio club(s) are local to you for license classes. You can find such clubs in your area by searching at this link.

You can find further information on amateur radio, and how to get your license, from this link (RealPlayer or similar required).

Keep the peace(es).

The written

What? Unfortunately, no one is immune to HIV.

OK, maybe not immune (without a qualifier), but how about virtually immune?

People with two copies of the CCR5 delta32 gene (inherited from both parents) are virtually immune to HIV infection. This occurs in about 1% of Caucasian people.

It is then unfortunate that most of our orbiting devices are launched to much higher orbits that the Shuttle can reach. Shuttle: 400 km. Geostationary: 35,786 km. Some satellites are on orbits that are highly elliptical and are not easily accessible by Shuttle.

In other words, the only "access" to a satellite the Shuttle can provide is to launch it in first place. Considering that this can be done with any rocket, less cost and zero risk, I don't see much value in such launch method at all.

It is hardly a surprise then that in last decades NASA had much more success with remotely controlled robots than with Shuttles. IMO, Shuttles provided zero science for all their life to date, and they gave us only some technological advances which may or may not be of any use elsewhere.

Basically, Russians are the modern day "vikings" today. However, American Indians have thier roots from Asia at the genetic level. Durring the time when the landbridge was available, early humans crossed it from Siberia to the Americas.

http://www.thetech.org/genetics/ask.php?id=41

Several years ago the Tech Museum in San Jose had a revolving 3-D scanner that would scan people's heads. After you got scanned, it created a 3-D model of your head with a full-color texture map (which looks really strange when flattened on a monitor because you discover that your face is only a very small part of your head). You then were given an URL that would work in other exhibits and let you download your face.

I wonder if its still there.... I wonder if I still have that file.....

Agree with heroic Hertzfeld (more info in Programmers at Work ). I'd add Warnock and also strongly endorse Wolfram (whose invincible iconoclasm is admirable). And PARC should be better represented, I'd cite Adele Goldberg for the under-appreciated Smalltalk-80. At least she gets to contribute to Cringely's Triumph of the Nerds.

Where are Dijkstra and Wirth (who did far more than most people realise - Wirth essentially created a European "Sun Microsystems" at ETH)? Remove the "+10:American" bias - but Knuth should probably be mentioned at least twice. :)

Thanks for your response.

Can you add some specifics about the evidence for no bottleneck? Also, what is the later bottleneck you refer to?

Here's the website of the original research: Joe Chang's website

The Joe Chang work I originally is just one thing. There is the NYTimes work we discussed with it's striking parallels in the Bible, there is the evidence to think higher observed mutational rates date mEve earlier, as well as other genetic evidence on recent divergence of populations. There seems to be some evidence for similar acceleration for Y Adam timelines. I recall reading about similar trends for agricultural plant and animal lineages.

There is also a different genetic study (see article) that concurs with the Biblical assertion that Jews and Arabs have a common ancestor. And other genetic studies back a similar assertion for a Jewish "Cohen priestly gene" (also mentioned in the article).

What we’ve learned from studying the Y chromosome
...
The mutation rate scientists have used in the past was based on circumstantial evidence because there was just too much DNA to sequence. Until now.

For the first time, groups in Indiana and New Hampshire have figured out a mutation rate based on sequencing huge amounts of DNA from lots of the roundworm, C. elegans. How much DNA? An astonishing 4 million base pairs…an impossible number just a few years ago.
What the researchers found was that the mutation rate was 10 times higher than previously believed or around 2 mutations/generation for C. elegans. There are possible reasons that given the way the experiment was done, the mutation rate might have been artificially high. But, if the new number is true, it calls into question all sorts of things.

For example, partly based on DNA evidence, scientists believed that chimps and humans separated about 5 million years ago. Was it actually 500,000 years ago? Humans began their migration out of Africa 100,000 years ago. Or was it 10,000? Did “Adam live 50,000 or 5000 years ago?

The Tech in San Jose, CA has a yearly video game tournament where winners of selected games on the big 3 consoles play head to head on their IMAX dome.. first year I saw it, Halo.. with digital surround and picture on the dome.. and leather seating too. Mmmmmmmm.

http://www.thetech.org/maxgames/

Pretty cool event.

A novel concept, but hardly a new one. For the past three years, the Tech Museum of Innovation in San Jose, CA has been running the Maxgames. The finalists for most of the games get to play on the IMAX Dome screen (Project Gotham Racing looked quite nice on the Dome when I played referee the first year).

A novel concept, but hardly a new one. For the past three years, the Tech Museum of Innovation in San Jose, CA has been running the Maxgames. The finalists for most of the games get to play on the IMAX Dome screen (Project Gotham Racing looked quite nice on the Dome when I played referee the first year).

The Tech Museum of Innovation in San Jose, CA. hosts the annual MaxGames Video Game Tournament. The finals are played in the IMAX dome: 40'x60' image and a 13,000 watt, 44-speaker sound system.

http://www.thetech.org/events/maxgames/2004/

They could use satellites in polar orbit, which would be visible from either pole about half the time.

The FAQs say

When it gets down to the final four players, we move to the large format dome screen where everybody gets to see who has the right stuff.

Does "everybody" include the players also or will they be supposed to be playing sitting in a cube with a normal display? If it does it'd be an advantage for some and disadvantage for some others depending on how well they can peep at the others' games.

But if it doesn't,
Finalists on several of the games will duke it out for the championship on the museum's Giant Dome Screen [82 feet in diameter, and covering 12,000 square feet] and its 13,000 watt, 44 speaker sound system.
from the post would be misleading i suppose

A gaming competition!? whoohoo!
As much fun as LAN Parties are, there will be a massive Super Mario Kart: DD tournament here, along with several other games. If console competition is your thing, this event sounds like it would be right up your alley :-)

And here is a list of all the console games that will be played at the tourney along with rules, etc.

And as a courtesy to my fellow readers here's just the list:

# Tony Hawk 4
# DDR: Max 2
# Downhill Domination
# Mario Kart Double Dash
# Super Smash Brothers Melee
# Super Monkey Ball 2
# NASCAR Thunder 2004
# Halo
# SSX 3

The kernel of that joke is true.

I remember buying these ball-points in the late 70s that you could write upside down with, and the technology was developed for NASA.

Buy one here.

Low earth orbit is still in the atmosphere, specifically called the thermosphere it has the least amount but the most energetic particles and is therefore the "hottest" by the definition of temperature. You don't go hard vacuum for 500-600 km.

Take a look at the Powers of 2 Clock and you'll know what I mean.

Other cool stuff in San Fran: The Exploratorium and California Academy of Sciences.

Heading down the coast, there's The Tech Museum in San Jose

There's Fry's stores all the way through California, and they have neat themes like alien invason, alice in wonder land, ancient rome, etc. (I plan to pilgrimage to all of them at some point.) Although they are getting to be more like a giant consumer electronics store than somewhere to go for parts.

Unfortunately it looks like the Griffith Observatory is closed, but I'm sure there's plenty of other geek stuff in LA that people could point you to. There's just so much that nothing uniquely cool comes to mind.

In San Diego we have Balboa Park which has a aerospace museum, model railroad museum, automotive museum, etc, plus the Zoo. And there's the Wild Animal park. And the Birch Aquarium up here at UCSD. And the Gaslamp area, which has good bars ;-)

• National Museum of American History: Everything from a Morse's original telegraphs, Bell's original telephones, an Enigma, an ENIAC, a Hollorith Tabulating Machine, to a Trash-80 in the Information Age Exhibit located in the lower level
• Air and Space: The Wright Brother's Flyer, the Spirit of St Louis, the X-1, and if you visit after Decemeber of 2003, head out to Dulles Airport to see Udvar Hazy Center which will have even more aircraft including a SR-71, the Enola Gay, and the original space shuttle Enterprise.

In Boston, check out the Computer History Museum

In Chicago

• the Museum of Science and Industry is worth a visit.
• Plus there are plenty of Frank LLoyd Wright buildings to visit.

In the Bay Area there is

• the The Tech Museum in San Jose which is okay but if you plan far enough in advance (reservations are required)
• the Computer Museum History Center in Mountain View is probably the best collection of computers since the 50's.
• Intel has a museum at it's San Jose campus.
• Also dont miss a visit to Weird Stuff in Sunnyvale.

You could go visit the birthplace of Silicon Valley: Mountain View/Palo Alto CA (in the Bay Area). On the corner of San Antonio Ave and California Street is a little historical sign indicating the site of what was Shockley Semiconductor. There's a shopping center and an ergonomic chair store there now. Not much to see I'm afraid, but I do like to rub the sign for good luck when I walk past.

Additionally, if you come to Mountain View/Palo Alto, you get to see acres and acres of deserted office space, a true testament to the moment that was the 90s :)

On the plus side, after seeing the historic sign, you can walk over to the Milk Pail and get yourself some of the best cheese in the South Bay.

The Tech Museum is in downtown San Jose too. While not currently cutting edge, there are some very cool exhibits worth seeing if you're in the area.

Why don't we get Parker Brothers/Hasbro/whoever to make a "Media Monopoly(TM)"

Don't believe me? Here's the link to the event's page on their site: http://www.thetech.org/events/maxgames/

Don't believe me? Here's the link to the event's page on their site: http://www.thetech.org/events/maxgames/

...but I intend to follow in his footsteps: when I die, my age will also be a power of 2.
Ahhhhh...if I can make it past 64, I'll be at least 128 or mybe 256! x--

i hope no one in the south bay area forgot about the max games yesterday at the tech museum in san jose.

nothing like halo on the imax dome. except, maybe, grand theft auto, which some reason was verboten.

come to think of it, i'm glad some people from the south bay did forget to go -- it would have been awfully crowded.

i hope no one in the south bay area forgot about the max games yesterday at the tech museum in san jose.

nothing like halo on the imax dome. except, maybe, grand theft auto, which some reason was verboten.

come to think of it, i'm glad some people from the south bay did forget to go -- it would have been awfully crowded.

I do believe the original prototype is still on display at The Tech Museum of Innovation, San Jose, CA.

It's encased in a transparent plastic box and you can actually pick it up and study it at close. I was lucky enough to get a couple of snapshots of it.

Get a glimpse here.

I thought "oceanic crust preserved in the southern Tibetan plateau" and Antarctica previously being nearer the equator and moving south was due to plate tectonics; but what do I know - I'm a wacko who thinks destroying our only habitat for short term financial gain is insane, and that 7th generational thinking is a good thing...

Freeze-dried astronaut ice cream, available from NASA, science museums, or camping goods store. You could even include a note about wanting to travel to the stars with her/him.

Not likely: I think I've heard the Steves are friendly, but not overly so. I can't find a reference right now, but here's a good Woz Interview.

I know that Nolan Bushnell was a key player in Atari's early years, and that the Amiga and Atari ST were actually "swapped" between companies where execs "jumped ship" - but what about Commodore's early years?

I took a quick look for historical links, and came up pretty much empty-handed. Anyone have better resources?

Quotes:

• He is arguably the father of computer entertainment.
• Nolan Bushnell founded Atari in 1972
• and the following year opened the first Chuck E. Cheese's restaurant
• created [...] Commputer (sic) Space (in 1970), in your daughter's bedroom