Slashdot Mirror
Ancestry Surprises From New Genetics Analysis Method
An anonymous reader commends a recently published study involving a new way to analyze genetic variation in human populations (full article published in PLOS Genetics): "[S]cientists from Ireland, the UK and the US analysed 2,540 genetic markers in the DNA of almost 1,000 people from around the world whose genetic material had been collected by the Human Genome Diversity Project. The results include a number of surprises... the Yakut people of northern Siberia were found to have received a significant genetic contribution from the population of the Orkney Islands, which lie off the coast of Scotland... there must have been a period of gene flow from northern Europe to east Asia. The study also shed light on the peopling of the Americas, as the results suggest that the native populations of north and south America have different origins."
A lot of people didn't want to give up on the idea that the arctic bridge was the only way people got to the Americas, when it made much more sense that some people could've traveled the ocean to settle here.
Do it yourself, because no one else will do it yourself. [beta blockade 10-17 Feb]
Well, there's anthropological evidence that there were several migrations from Asia to the Americas, namely, two island-hopping sea routes and one over the land bridge in the north. This just sort of confirms this idea.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
This story sparked my interest so I searched for a while on the internet to find some maps of what the world looked like back in the ages and where evidence of people has been found linked with DNA evidence of how people actually have moved.
I sadly came up with nothing... anyone who knows where to find anything like this?
This isn't to say Polynesians were the first to South America, as Easter Island was populated around 2000 years ago while S.A. was populated many thousands of more years before that. However, it seems likely that there might have been genetic mixing between Polynesians and South American coastal tribes.
There's not as much area when you move further north, so it's not surprising that the peoples up there would interact more. There's probably been some interaction with the Ainu people of Japan, too, due to many Caucasoid traits they have. The one thing about Homo Sapiens is, we tend to move around a lot.
By the taping of my glasses, something geeky this way passes
Ever seen Gattaca?
The end of WWII supposedly brought an end to eugenics in Germany, but it was, even then, thriving in the English speaking world and continues to do so.
The weakness of our civilization has become a lack of any moral vigor. Pretty much every time there is protest on moral grounds it is trivialized by the media and the whole thing is treated like a sport between nay-sayers and scientists.
It's a weakness because it breeds distrust and fear in the community. if we don't come up with/maintain some kind of moral integrity in our scientific community, we will be overrun by groups who will impose an extreme opposite on us. And yeah, you're right, someone will come up with a logical but crazy conclusion and we'll have another wave of white-coat slaughter happening.
Do it yourself, because no one else will do it yourself. [beta blockade 10-17 Feb]
Do it yourself, because no one else will do it yourself. [beta blockade 10-17 Feb]
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
*nawcom RsTFA*
Awww..shit. :(
(I know im gonna get modded to hell, but...)
Ever seen Gayniggers From Outer Space
Ever watched it? http://www.moviesfoundonline.com/gayniggers_from_outer_space.php
P.S. I'm not racists, or homophobic, nor is the movie... but its also not really that ammusing either...
its just the first thought that crossed my mind... hmm...
I haven't seen that, but have you seen Killer Klowns from Outer Space.. or what about The Chicken From Outer Space. Of course there are others but..
P.S. I have nothing against chickens but.. what were we talking about again?
Do it yourself, because no one else will do it yourself. [beta blockade 10-17 Feb]
Extensive studies of mitochondrial DNA have pretty much confirmed migrations from east Asia to northwest America, then down south. There were, of course, more than one wave of such migrations. I doubt very much that the natives of north and south america "have different origins", because that would contradict well-established evidence that this is not so. However, they could certainly have a different mix of dna mutations showing various mixes from different areas.
"In their proposed scenario, the population which first colonised North East Asia also crossed the Bering Strait and eventually made it to South America. This population was subsequently replaced by a population more closely related to modern East Asians. These people also successfully crossed the Bering Strait and contributed to the ancestry of the native North Americans."
Slight problem with your theory - not too many Jews in East Asia.
Well, primitive tribes _were_ extremely aggressive, and did fight all the time.
On the other hand "contributed to the ancestry of the native North Americans" implies interbreeding, rather than genocide. I.e., they fucked their way across two continents.
It's not exactly surprising, though. A staple of tribal warfare, and it even lasted well into Iron Age in Greece for example, was raiding for another tribe's women, not just their food.
Life expectancy for women was rather disproportionately lower than for men in primitive societieties, and for men it wasn't as high as to reach andropause first. So eventually a lot of still able men were left with the prospect of either finding another woman somehow, or playing with Miss Rosy Palm for the next 5 to 10 years. Meanwhile the next tribe had plenty of women. Are you thinking what I'm thinking, Pinky?
Of course then the next tribe had an acute shortage of women, so the cycle of violence continued.
So I'm saying that interbreeding would have been inevitable. When the newly arrived East Asians won a raid, they got some women from the previous populations, when they lost one, the opposite would happen.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Ive seen Killer Klowns, and I think ive seen Chickens too... from what i found from it, looks familliar...
And we were talking about the genetic categorization of movies... Six Degrees of Outer Space...or something...
Yakut people of northern Siberia were found to have received a significant genetic contribution from the population of the Orkney Islands, which lie off the coast of Scotland.
My wife's pregnant with her first. We had a girl's name picked but were having hell trying to find a boy's name. She was having trouble so we had another ultrasound. We now KNOW it's a boy. I think this story has settled it. I'll be naming my first born Vladamir McHaggis. Being beaten up will build the boy's character.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
The articles "mtDNA Variation of Aboriginal Siberians Reveals Distinct Genetic Affinities with Native Americans" and "Mitochondrial DNA Variation in the Aboriginal Populations of the Altai-Baikal Region Implications for the Genetic History of North Asia and America" from 2004 indicate that ALL native Americans have a single origin. I guess the controversy of single or dual origins lives on and if I understood it correctly the field is still open for reinterpretations.
Yes, Eugenics has a bad rap because of the way it used to be done forcibly in Nazi Germany, the US and other places.
But what's wrong with it if it's done in an ethically responsible way? [Prospective] parents have access to genetic testing/counseling if there's known risks like hereditary diseases, and embryos can be tested and aborted if they have severe [genetic] defects. If a couple has significant genetic defects they can choose to adopt. That's eugenics, pure and simple. What's wrong with that?
And don't start with a slippery slope argument. It's up to legislation to set the proper limits and it's up to society to apply scientific results in the proper way. We are able to read the genome today, and it's getting cheaper and cheaper. Applied properly, this can be very beneficial. Applied badly, see Gattaca.
thegodmovie.com - watch it
"But, genetic evidence proves that they come from Taiwain."
Most people in Taiwan are not "Taiwanese", they are ethnic Chinese which have outnumbered the original, mostly Malay people groups. I am not sure which of these you mean by saying "from Taiwan". The ethnic Chinese have not lived there for so long, just a few centuries.
But what's wrong with it if it's done in an ethically responsible way?
Make sure it's voluntary, and I have no objection. Once you let a governmental organization have anything to do with it though, it becomes evil and must be stopped at all costs.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Only three things are certain; death, taxes, and apocryphal quotations - Ben Franklin.
Hint: its what happens right after "tested and".
OK, so you don't agree with me about abortion. And you probably don't think that in 50 years people will think aborting one in three black children is 1920s eugenics, except with scaleability added.
But lets talk about legislation. See, I don't think saying "If there is a problem, fix it with a law" is an adequate response to "Law consistently fails to solve some problems, for structural reasons". Take the abortion regime in the United States, for example. Ignore the moral dimension for the rest of this post -- you don't have to agree that abortion is bad, you just have to make objective judgements of when it is legally available and when it is not. As a statement of fact, the United States has one of the most permissive abortion regimes in the Western world. Yeah, really.
Has the legal system in the United States hithertofore successfully discriminated between good reasons for abortions and bad reasons? No. Its set up so that it is essentially impossible to force that distinction into law. As a result, despite having a massive political movement dedicated to opposing abortion, and extraordinarily conservative attitudes about sex and abortion relative to peer nations such as many in Europe, the United States in actual practice prohibits far fewer abortions that peer nations in Europe do. (Really: take a look at the gestational limits in Europe. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6235557.stm That is 12 weeks in Belgium, Denmark, etc -- that limit would be and has been stricken as unconstitutionally restrictive in that noted liberal hotspot, Kansas.)
There's a bunch of reasons for that. One is the particularized development of the US abortion regime through the courts. Another is that the current American political consensus is somewhere between "I really do not want to hear about this, ever" and "Well, certainly SOME fraction of abortions are justified, for terrible circumstances which I would never, ever inquire about in polite company". A third is that the primary providers of abortion, who theoretically would end up as expert decisionmakers for legal compliance, are a political movement dedicated to keeping abortion restriction free. As a result, the questions which could theoretically ferret out "good" abortions from "bad" abortions, if one believed that such distinctions existed, can't be legislated and don't get asked.
The same will be true of eugenics.
Would America be socially willing to ask prospective eugenics parents "Excuse me, heard about your problem, so sorry. By the way, was that problem 'Your child is 78% likely to be missing a limb' or 'Your child is 83% likely to be left-handed'"? (Presumably that would be "bad" eugenics, right?) No, we won't be -- egads, that would be a ghastly thing to ask someone, particularly someone who just lost a child because he was headless. So nobody will be asked anything, just like nobody is required to substantiate why they want an abortion.
Would America be willing to impose a coercive state apparatus on eugenicists to ensure that some crazy 1920s-reject racist doesn't recommend 1/3 of black kids for termination? No. Heck, no need for a hypothetical here: we actually do terminate 1/3 of black kids, in the status quo. There is no national coercive apparatus monitoring abortion.
Eugenics will be worth billions upon billions of dollars, with a well-funded lobby, like reproductive medicine is and like abortion is. Children with birth defects, and children with "birth defects" like being left-handed or not predisposed to being athletic or possibly being gay, do not typically have much campaign cash to spend. Which group do you think is going to win in the US political system?
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
Eugenics has a bad rap because it's been throughly disproven as complete pseudoscience.
That's not eugenics... That's just genetic screening.
Eugenics is the process of sterilizing "lesser" peoples, such as the poor, and non-white, because of the (false) theory that their offspring were doomed to be similarly intellectually handicapped, regardless of the amount of education they received. This is basically the same (racist) argument long used to suppress negros, being applied instead to poor "white trash" classes of people.
On the (entirely separate) question of genetic screening, I would certainly discourage it. People's desires for their children, and culturally-influenced impression of what traits are "good" and "bad" are not necessarily correct. Some of the smartest people to ever have lived suffer from physical and mental defects, and it's currently impossible to know if their intelligence was in spite of, or perhaps because of that very handicap. If anything, I think modern history has proven that genetic diversity is a GOOD thing. Yet, people have proven to be irrational beings, by and large, and need to be protected from their own desire to establish a monoculture in selecting their offspring.
What happens when everyone on the planet is selecting their unborn children for intelligence, only to find out that our current established theory of what genetic traits lead to intelligence turn out to be wrong, and the world is filled with a generation of mentally handicapped children?
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
What would you class as interfering?
Any use of force, including the use of tax money.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
If eugenics is pseudoscience then so are evolution and agriculture; they all depend on the heritabilty of characteristics.
No matter how evil some applications of it have been, that's an entirely separate issue from the science itself.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
What's wrong with that is the premature death of a potentially viable human. Our second daughter had an unusual protein count AFP in her amniotic fluid and the medical staff told us that she was very likely to have Down's syndrome. They asked us if we wanted to abort. We decided not to. Good thing too, because that medical advice has since been found to be invalid. She did not develop Down's and she's in college now.
Invenio via vel creo
If it's science, it should ALWAYS be open for reinterpretation as more data is collected and as analysis techniques improve or are replaced with better procedures.
IMHO, an open mind should be, well, open.
Invenio via vel creo
Considering the remarkable ability of Chinese vessels in the era before Christ we may have Chinese settlers in early South America. Japanese vessels are another distinct possibility.
Despite extensive Chinese record keeping, there is no evidence at all that the Chinese made it to South America before the Europeans. If they had made it, they would have encountered a populated continent with many different cultures already, quite able to defend themselves against a few Chinese ships. If it hadn't been for smallpox, the Europeans wouldn't have stood a chance either.
If it's science, it should ALWAYS be open for reinterpretation as more data is collected and as analysis techniques improve or are replaced with better procedures.
Unless you're a proponent of anthropogenic climate change. In that case it's ALL settled science and there is a grand consensus with nothing left to discover or analyze.
(that was sarcasm btw)
No science is ever settled. Even models like newtonian physics, which still 'works' for most calculations we need, get superceded by newer models (i.e. relativity in this example).
Actually, what's wrong in the example you gave was making a decision on incorrect information.
Now it was your child and your decision, but you're judging an a priori decision in the light of a posteriori data. What if the test had been right? How would your marriage and/or other kids have coped?
Of course no test in 100% accurate and life often involves making descisions on imperfect data. Still, I'm glad you were lucky.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
That's not news. If he'd gotten some action without paying for it, well that would be different...
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Eugenics has a bad rap because it's been throughly disproven as complete pseudoscience.
No, it has not. There is mountains and mountains of scientific study showing that many traits, including intelligence, are highly heritable.
That's not eugenics... That's just genetic screening.
Yes, that is eugenics.
Eugenics is the process of sterilizing "lesser" peoples
No, it is not. Eugenics has never been about oppressing minorities or disabled people. Eugenics has been about encouraging people with the most desirable traits to breed. What you describe is not eugenics - it is, as you say, sterilization and euthanasia. That is not eugenics.
What happens when everyone on the planet is selecting their unborn children for intelligence, only to find out that our current established theory of what genetic traits lead to intelligence turn out to be wrong, and the world is filled with a generation of mentally handicapped children?
Except that, two intelligent parents are highly likely, according to well-established science, to have similarlly intelligent offspring if they breed.
Sure, the Book of Mormon and umpteen similar texts from the time of Hakluyt and onward. Heck, let's lump in Brendan, Atlantis, and Avalon too. My point is that there are a lot of mythic texts which discuss ancient migrations and subsequent discoveries of remnants of these ancient cultures. But that's von Daniken country and not history nor anthropology.
There is very little to suggest dna from "lost Israelites" in the Native American population.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
Only three things are certain; death, taxes, and apocryphal quotations - Ben Franklin.
Nice soundbite, but impractical.
Take one common cause of genetic problems - inbreeding.
Either you use force (making incest illegal) or you use force (tax money) to look after the resulting crop of web-footed 'tards.
Only three things are certain; death, taxes, and apocryphal quotations - Ben Franklin.
The movies they attach are not very good.
I have some Python source code for doing similar things with the case of European nations on http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~cook/movabletype/archives/2007/06/animated_mds_co.html (there is an animated GIF there).
A bit more discussion about my methodology is at http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~cook/movabletype/archives/2007/06/nations_of_euro.html
Actually, I've observed that many (including not a few scientists) defending evolutionary theory tend to be more dogmatic and less open to discussion than the ACC crowd. Not that the ACC or other environmental activists are shrinking violets.
In math and physics, no matter how good it looks or works or fits with experimental data, a model is a representation, not exactly the real thing. As discovered when Newtownian physics were determined to be a special case of relativity where v << c. Models expand and change as experimentation breaks expectations.
In science, no matter how well supported by observations, a theory is a theory until proven by repeatable experiments. Understanding of observations is often changed by experimentation. Theories should then expand and change to encompass repeatable experimental results. Theories without expermimentation have real utility, but should not be considered as proven. Prevailing and widely accepted theory not withstanding.
Invenio via vel creo
> Could the Book of Mormon be on to something?
No. Being a religious text, it'll just be a bunch of crap thrown together by idiots in a bid to control people. It's fairly easy to use language - any language - to succinctly and precisely describe something. If you're not doing that then you're just fishing.
Succinctly and precisely describe the color blue, without resorting to wavelengths, as that's definition, not description. Or music. Or love.
I see your informative link, and raise you a pithy comment.
"normal elevation. 75% of AF AFP test results in the range 2.0 to 4.9 MoM are false positives: the baby is normal."
Emphasis added.
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
Blue is the colour most often taken by the sky on a cloudless day.
Rule of Slashdot #0: You and people like you are not representative of the larger population. - A.C.
You have triggered a mandatory reference to Baby's Named a Bad Bad Thing . No other penalties accrue at this time.
Mitocodrial DNA is very effective at tracking migration patterns of populations. Even if the Y-side or autosomal data shows some mixing in of other genes, that still negates the possibility of "different origins".
There's an enormous difference between the proper skeptical view required for good science and the "This is too complicated for me to personally understand so it must be wrong, let's go shopping!" attitude displayed by the global warming denier and anti-evolution crowds.
If you mod me Overrated, you are admitting that you have no penis.
The color you get when you mix yellow and green.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
IMHO, an open mind should be, well, open.
That's right... just not so open that your brain falls out. Hence why I happily close my mind to, for example, the ramblings of ID proponents.
Either you use force (making incest illegal) or you use force (tax money) to look after the resulting crop of web-footed 'tards.
Inbreeding does not cause genetic problems - it simply increases the odds of inheriting a deleterious recessive allele. Studies have shown inbreeding increases infant mortality rates but had no impact on school performance, indicating that most genetic problems associated with inbreeding are selected out quickly.On the other hand, drinking alcohol during pregnancy has been shown to cause a host of birth defects and genetic problems in the offspring, yet no one suggests banning mothers-to-be from drinking.
But what does that look like? How would you describe it to someone who hasn't ever seen the color before?
You didn't describe it, you just pointed it out.
You might want to look around at your feet for something gray and roughly hemispherical. ;-)
If you don't listen to others, despite their differing views, you'll never know if they have (or have stumbled) upon a substantive and salient point that deserves your attention. If you don't respect the "opposition" enough to listen, why should they respect you enough to listen to you? People are, in my experience, much more likely to listen to you if you are attentive, respectful and not dismissive while arguing your point of view. Civil dialog requires that you allow the conversation to go in both directions, even if you don't receive value every time. Lectures are not dialog.
This is not to say that you must "suffer fools," in an unlimited fashion. You might try one of my favorites, "I think we'll have to agree to disagree on this until more data comes in." Then change the subject.
Invenio via vel creo
I don't get this attachment to a specific unborn fetus. Ok, so maybe you have to abort one or two here or there. Where's the problem? Just have sex again. A woman has the potential to create 12 new fetus every year.
No one should be having more than two kids anyway. In fact, plenty of people should be self-limiting to one or none.
"Liechtenstein is the world's largest producer of sausage casings, potassium storage units, and false teeth."
I think you are confusing a theory and a hypothesis (or a hypothetical theory). A theory isn't really proven by experiments, but a hypothesis is. A theory changes as evidence changes.
People are, in my experience, much more likely to listen to you if you are attentive, respectful and not dismissive while arguing your point of view.
You're convolving an open mind (one willing to accept new ideas and facts) with a civil one. My mind is not open to Intelligent Design because it's a dressed up version of creationism, and as such has no explanatory or predictive power and is not a valid scientific theory. Will I be respectful in a debate with someone on the topic? Certainly. But I will happily reject their ideas out of hand because they are, frankly, ridiculous.
Most Anthropomorphic Climate Change (ACC) deniers I've heard don't argue the observations of average temperature increases, but argue the root causes and/or significance of these observations. They also argue the projections offered by ACC promoters as scientifically unsound or overly dire (read: hand picked data).
The "anti-evolution" crowd is very diverse and hard to characterize. I'm part of the "anti-evolution as unassailable fact" crowd. For some, like myself, we simply prefer to allow the theory to be a prevailing theory without asserting that it is absolute truth and completely correct in it's current form. It is the best explanation that science can offer at the moment based on the data, but it does not lend itself to experimental verification. I expect the various theories which are generally grouped as "the theory of evolution" to be adjusted and rewritten as more data become available. I expect the DNA revolution to rewrite several prevailing theories as we gain even more insight in to human and animal genomes.
All or nothing approaches to dialog tend to leave one with the latter.Invenio via vel creo
Pro tip: Even though this post implies you're just as likely to get superman as not, sleeping with your sister is typically frowned upon and may be considered a major social faux pas!
Any plan which depends on a fundamental change in human behavior is doomed from the start.
That's my point. How often is medical advice given without a clear understanding of the statistical significance of the data behind it?
Invenio via vel creo
Kevin Spacey is from outer space?!!!
I drank what? -- Socrates
... public school teachers. They'll have their own union, which will vigorously work to expand their budget by touting how totally dependent society is on them. You think the Public Reproductive Health Professionals Union is going to be politically neutral on the question "Should the abortion regime in the United States be determined by state legislatures instead of the U.S. Supreme Court?" Hah. I'm sure they'd sit by as a giant portion of their membership saw their practices illegalized.
(Note for non-Americans: the 50 American states have vastly differing levels of support for abortion. At least two dozen of them would have laws banning all abortions except in the case of rape, incest, or severe risk to the mother within 24 hours of those laws being declared constitutional. On the other hand, California and New York would presumably choose a regulatory regime similar to the one currently in place, probably with a few minor pro-life victories at the margin like on partial-birth abortion, which polls well essentially nowhere.)
Even in the absence of "Oh, wait, as public employees we have the best incentive for political activism because we can vote ourselves money", cash isn't the only reward someone can work for. There are plenty of folks who work for Planned Parenthood who get the same thing out of their job that the lay workers at a Catholic church get out of theirs: the feeling of satisfaction from doing that something they sincerely believe to be good.
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
We decided not to. Good thing too, because that medical advice has since been found to be invalid. She did not develop Down's and she's in college now.
Because if you had aborted, then had another child who grew up and went to college, the difference would have been...?
To put it crudely, babies are - for all practical purposes - a resource with infinite supply. Lots of people seem to lose sight of that.
It's clear from your cavalier approach that I value potential life differently than you. IMO, the fetus is not part of the woman's body once the egg is fertilized. It is internal to the woman's body and dependent upon it to be sure, but the fetus is, at that point, genetically distinct and will generally, barring adverse action, come to be a unique human being.
As my story above illustrates, medical advice is often provided as unassailable fact with woefully inadequate understanding of the studies and statistics upon which it is based. See the false positive info from Muad'Dave above. In many cases, it's more a crap shoot in random gravity, than reliable fact.
I chose not to end a human life based on a recommendation that turned out to be based on flawed data. I am loathe to encourage anyone else to end a human life under uncertain circumstances. There exists reasonable doubt. And where reasonable doubt exists, we should not impose a death penalty.Invenio via vel creo
Please see Genetic Distinction above. I'm all typed out.
Invenio via vel creo
Eugenics is the process of sterilizing "lesser" peoples, such as the poor, and non-white, because of the (false) theory that their offspring were doomed to be similarly intellectually handicapped, regardless of the amount of education they received. You're talking about particular implementations of eugenics, not eugenics itself.
I think grampaw is trying to draw a distinction between voluntary eugenics and involuntary eugenics.
A bad analogue would perhaps be, the difference between a volunteer military and a conscript military.
Peacock tails are the result of peahens' idea of eugenics. Maybe we can do better, maybe not.
But when a government gets involved, it's gonna suck.
If you read the Mormon books. (I've been seeing too many FLDS stories on the tely lately.)
That is one method used for the purpose of eugenics, NOT the definition of eugenics.
STOP confusing a method amongst many with the common purpose of the many methods. This is really, really bad. I'm holding back insulting words here, because I abhor that intellectual pitfall you're mired in.
Eugenics is a social philosophy which advocates the improvement of human hereditary traits through various forms of intervention.[1] Throughout history, eugenics has been regarded by its various advocates as a social responsibility, an altruistic stance of a society, meant to create healthier and more intelligent people, to save resources, and lessen human suffering.
Earlier proposed means of achieving these goals focused on selective breeding, while modern ones focus on prenatal testing and screening, genetic counseling, birth control, in vitro fertilization, and genetic engineering. Opponents argue that eugenics is immoral. Historically, a minority of eugenics advocates have used it as a justification for state-sponsored discrimination, forced sterilization of persons deemed genetically defective, and the killing of institutionalized populations. Eugenics was also used to rationalize certain aspects of the Holocaust.
You can't take the sky from me...
IMHO, an open mind should be, well, open. Actually, I've observed that many (including not a few scientists) defending evolutionary theory tend to be more dogmatic and less open to discussion If they are defending, it means they are attacked. When your door is open and you are attacked, you close the door.
That's because they are being pestered by people with closed minds who try to force things that are NOT SCIENCE into their science.
Open minded scientists are obviously not interested in discussions with close minded obscurantists. That doesn't mean the scientists aren't open minded, that means they aren't dupes to sheepskin labcoats worn over the shoulders of lupine evangelists. In science, no matter how well supported by observations, a theory is a theory until proven by repeatable experiments. See, just like that nonsense. A theory is still a theory after proven by experiments. DUH!
Open minded scientists are not interested in discussions with people who don't even understand something so simple, yet want to argue something much more complex.
You can't take the sky from me...
Most Anthropomorphic Climate Change (ACC) deniers I've heard don't argue the observations of average temperature increases, but argue the root causes and/or significance of these observations.
That's the latest strategy. At first they argued the data was wrong, and many still do.Then when the data became overwhelming they moved the goalpost to "you can't prove I did it, nobody saw me do it".
Then they added a new front in the form of "what if it's a good thing, warm weather is nice!".
The only constant is the hardline "no, we will not change the way we make money".
You can't take the sky from me...
But they'll be back, they'll go to their pastor, get another bullshit "data" argument fed to them, and they'll bring it back, with an air of "haha! I got you now" about them.
You can't take the sky from me...
"Unassailable fact..."? I dunno. I put my faith in DNA cladistics, rather than taxonomy. The old form-and-function studies clearly belong with the dinosaurs these days (since fossils that old apparently don't preserve DNA). But if you look at dead-certain DNA clades for "obviously unrelated" (according to plant taxonomy) but nearly invariant (according to DNA) stuff like lotus lilies and plane trees (sycamores to us Midwesterners), then you get a really weird jolt.
It appears that DNA is extremely plastic, making Evolution extremely easy. In other words, species are a complete misreading of what's going on (little more than a cultural preference for Nouns instead of Verbs), and Darwin not only had it right, but had it righter than anyone prior to Watson & Crick could possibly have imagined.
The thing that makes variation go is the ability of DNA to conform itself like clay to gaps broadly opened by the ecosystem. That means so much for taxonomic "family trees," because any species capable of sex contains an entire Australia in its genes, regardless of starting point! And, considering some recent studies in apomictic species like dandelions, maybe even the sex part is optional.
``Tension, apprehension & dissension have begun!'' - Duffy Wyg&, in Alfred Bester's _The Demolished Man_
Abortion laws are more restrictive in Europe because sex education is immensely better, thus far less people need late abortions (past 12 weeks) since they are better informed about their reproductive physiology.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
There's the issue... a lot of people have a problem saying that a specific person should not be born because they have a defect -- oftentimes it is the genetic outliers that cause the most interesting contributions to society.
One of the biggest issues would be "who gets to decide what's a defect".
For instance, some skin pigments are better at protecting the skin against radiation that can cause cancer. Do we discourage people with "defective" skin pigments from having children because the pigment defect is preventable and avoidable?
I come from middle-class privilege (relatively--hard circumstances, broken family, stress and hellish problems, but enough money). My sister is of average intelligence but uneducated, and not curious; worked hard, got lucky, and could retire at age 40. I'm brainy in a weird way, sometimes scary smart to others, but hampered in other (nerdly) ways by that. I'm not interested in wealth, and have always been debtless but nearly broke.
Anyone comparing us would point to me as more "intelligent" yet not as smart as her. I concur, she's the smart one.
There's canny, there's clever, there's deep, there's skilled, there's insightful, there's eidetic memory, there's a bevy of words to describe intelligence. Likewise, there are many markers of success, and everything's context. Cue the zen koans; you can't puzzle this out with the simple matrix of genes - IQ - culture - class.
Damn those pesky terrorists
> Succinctly and precisely describe the color blue, without resorting to wavelengths, as that's definition, not description. Or music. Or
> love.
What's wrong with using a definition to Succinctly and precisely describe something?
The definition of music is a little harder to pin down. Most people would agree that it's the organisation of sound in the medium of time, but then you have to deal with the left overs, such as people who perceive/describe natural phenomena (waves, wind etc) as sound, or composers/organisers of sound/noise such as John Cage, who try and avoid the imposition of humans onto the creative process.
I thought love was rather well understood - natures way of making more nature. A chemical reaction which temporarily increases the desire for sex between two people for a period of time. It's hard wired - you don't have to understand it - probably can't understand it. Why does music/sex/food feel good? It just does - people who are not hard wired to experience them as positive (or pain/loneliness as negative) evolution tend to get used as sources of protein for happier people with better record collections.
I have this great photo of my spouse at 9.5 months pregnant in the pub hoisting a glass of stout... with the midwives. An hour later, our son was born.
At that very late stage of pregnancy a proper dose of nutritious alcohol isn't a bad thing, in fact it was just the thing to induce labour. But you should have seen the looks on the faces of the other customers! Especially as she put down the nearly empty glass, and got up to walk to the car, saying "it's time, aaah, go go go!"
Alcohol at any dose is primarily risky when the nervous system is forming, during the first trimester of pregnancy. After that, be very very careful, and at the end, it can be an aid. Like most things medicinal, it isn't cut and dry, and any laws to the contrary might have endangered our son, who needed to come out that day.
Damn those pesky terrorists
Think basically of the infamous Goering quote:
I think basically the same applies: Why would some poor hunter-gatherer slob want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his hunting in one piece?
Humanity for the most part has been subject to some pretty nasty cycles of overpopulation, famine, etc, which resulted war. Overpopulation has only been solved recently when, basically, it became a given that if you make 1-2 kids, chances good are they'll survive. So no need to make 10 to beat the odds. Women have better chances to survive too, so there goes another reason to attack the next tribe. Famine was another big motivation for war too: when the alternative is literally starvation, "better them than us" arguments are a lot easier to swallow. And hunter-gatherers were particularly vulnerable, due to the natural cycles of predator and prey, plus the nasty effect that overpopulation actually pushes the prey populations down, amplifying the effects of that. (To get an idea: Neanderthals actually managed to push themselves into extinction by over-hunting what they could hunt with their tech level.) Nowadays even if you live on a reservation, I'm guessing you can rely on the government or humanitarian organizations to pull you out of shit anyway, if it hits the fan. Etc.
Why _would_ you go to war with another tribe nowadays? What would you gain?
Culture and enculturation _may_ have slowed things down, mind you. After a few thousands of years of chest-thumping about being teh fearless and aggressive warrior, and one's standing in the community depending on that image, it doesn't go away easily. People will continue chest-thumping just so they don't lose face. Groupthink... err... enculturation works that way.
But after a couple of generations, people start to take it for a given that, wth, there's no _point_ in raiding the next tribe. And there's even less point in trying to raid the white man's towns, because the darned white man in the meantime has tanks and machineguns and other nasty stuff.
Basically I'm guessing there wasn't anything special, nor especially peaceful or spiritual about those who survived. They just turned out to be, well, humans. No better and no worse than the white guys and gals around them, and no better or worse than the tribes which didn't make it either. It was the conditions that changed, not the people that were any special. And the people changed as a result, same as everyone else would and did.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Actually vitamin D deficiency is a major problem for dark skinned people at higher latitudes because it is made in the skin from cholesterol under UV radiation. That is more of a problem evolution-wise than skin cancer because it can cause development problems in children, while skin cancer usually happens later in life.
There's a reason why 100% of people at higher latitudes lost their skin pigmentation.
thegodmovie.com - watch it
thegodmovie.com - watch it
That's actually a valid point.
Since western society moved from 8+ to 1.7 children per couple, the main investment is in raising the kid (education etc.)
Having a kid (or not) in the first place isn't the big deal, since child mortality isn't a big selector and pregnancy isn't a life threatening condition any more.
thegodmovie.com - watch it
from http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/describe
Yep that's exactly what he did. If a word is not to be taken axiomatically then it has to be described using words or ideas that are taken to be axioms or can be built from words taken to be axioms.A color is either a wavelength or range or mix of wavelengths of light or is defined by similarity to what a person perceives. If you want to describe a sight to a blind person who does not and can not have the experience of seeing, then the blind person has to provide the necessary axioms.
You have stated that the basic axioms are insufficient, therefore you have introduced a new axiom. One of the axioms is that both sender and receiver are using the same set of axioms. Therefore, given a set of axioms, i.e., words related to wavelengths not allowed and words related to sight not allowed, it may be impossible to describe color.
Here's a similar exercise: describe a sphere to 2-D individual, without using a third dimension. Don't like that, describe what the entirety of a hypersphere looks like. Or back to sighted questions: What do gamma rays look like? And if you say they are invisible, well that just means not visible. You might as well say you don't know because you can't see gamma rays.
Likewise, the color blue holds a mostly common experience, but think about people who are color-blind and may have an entirely different experience. The GP description of blue which was true for a normally sighted person, and your different description for a blind person, could be different still for a color-blind person. All would be valid under the right axioms and could be false under a different set.
Our founding fathers removed the guys in charge. Be American. Vote incumbents out.
Marx and Engels don't actually corner the market ('scuse the pun) in 21st century thinking about social power.
Current theory in power relations is heavily influenced by Foucault and structuralists and scholars like Frederic Jameson, and systems theorists like Bateson. Remember, context is everything, so that a person in one situation and moment can be abusing their power, and in the next be the abused, due to a shift in the 'story' or rules. The narratives of oppression, such as slavery or settler-aboriginal, are pretty persistent, and run through modern society in complex ways. Some people actually still think that way, and try to spread their ideas. Usually, the oppressed in any situation contributes to their own oppression through all kinds of denial, or unstrategic resistance. Privilege is often denied in polite situations to disguise embarassing responsibilities, which makes it harder to clear things up.
Ideology is like halitosis: it's someone else's problem.
Damn those pesky terrorists
Some of the smartest people to ever have lived suffer from physical and mental defects, and it's currently impossible to know if their intelligence was in spite of, or perhaps because of that very handicap. If anything, I think modern history has proven that genetic diversity is a GOOD thing.
Written like someone whose never seen the horrors of sickle cell, hemophelia, or any number of damn near fatal diseases that can be avoided through genetic screening. So assuming you're male and you think being born with a handicap is a great character builder, will you replace your mate's folic acid supplements with a placebo?
I laughed at the weak who considered themselves good because they lacked claws.
That's a real nice cop-out... Except, of course, for the fact that there are a large range of genetic disorders alive and well in my family tree, which I stand a very good chance of passing to my offspring.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
I've listened in on the discussions over whether or not the Chinese "beat" Columbus to discovering the Americas, but not been terribly interested (if they got there, they didn't settle or stay, for whatever reason). However I've never heard any proposition that the Chinese were doing this 2 millennia ago. 600 years ago, yes, I've heard that, but not two millennia.
Please cite your sources supporting a date significantly before the year 1400 (on the Gregorian/ Julian calendar) for a Chinese trans-Pacific voyage.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the original article sounds worth a proper read. Which I'm going to do once I've scanned the commentary. My take on an alleged association between the Orcadians and north Siberians would be to look at the Vikings, who were certainly present in Orkney, and were operating in the "Mediæval climactic optimum" ; I wouldn't put a bit of North-Siberian seed-sowing past them.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
Not being a pædiatrician, I'll take that as read : that an unusual AFP protein count is associated with an increased probability of the ftus having trisomy-21. It's a probabilistic thing, not a on/off measurement.The foetus that developed into your daughter hasn't ever had trisomy-21. There may be some other abnormality that lead to the AFP oddity, but it obviously hasn't had any serious effects (yet). A human that's more developed than the first cellular division cannot develop trisomy-21 (actually, I don't think it can develop any later than reduction-division to form the gametes).
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
Sorry, but I refuse to "commoditize" human life. I have no wish to be treated primarily as a commodity. My labor, OK. My life, no way.
Invenio via vel creo
Why do you think the capitalism beat out central planning communism? Because capitalism puts more decision making in the hands of the slightly less dumb business leaders. And occasionally a Steve Jobs type.
Hence, we are better of with societal pressures for now, given that we continue to help the 3rd world make it over the hump to where they stop megaproducing babies.
This has already happened with the west, and places like Japan, etc. So there is a future going this route.