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US Geneticist Discusses North Korea Trip With Dennis Rodman
sciencehabit writes "If you happened to catch any of the news coverage of Dennis Rodman's trip to North Korea last week, you might have spotted in the big man's entourage a white guy with an Amish-style beard, as in clean-shaven cheeks and no mustache. That's Joseph Terwilliger, 48, a statistical geneticist who splits his time at Columbia University and the University of Helsinki. He's now visited North Korea three times with the basketball star. He sat down with Science Magazine for a Q and A about how he got involved with Rodman and whether the trips are helping--or hurting--U.S. relations with the country."
..what is this doing on Slashdot?
Is this the current Slashdot meme? Can't you find some subtile but helerious (in a geeky way) tie-in with Natalie Portman? Good grief, put some effort into it, man!
But to answer your question, the man is not just a geneticist, but a statistical geneticist, so that qualifies for the minimum needed geek factor for a poorly edited Slashdot "story".
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Let me guess, the water park slides all end in shark tanks?
I then kept moving in the tube and five other Korean men also were knocked to the ground in their effort to stop my tube from going off a 100 foot cliff that was located at the bottom of the bunny slope.
North Korea, the only country where humans are cheaper than a fence.
1. North Korea is probably the most interesting bit of foreign policy, which does appeal to nerds.
2. Look at the picture, the guy is clearly a nerd.
3. More importantly, from TFA: “Most of my work has been on trying to identify natural experiments that mimic experimental conditions in a way that might help us to understand the genetics of normal human variation in health and disease." The article is focused on stuff that has a more general interest, but North Korean genetics are absolutely interesting to a bio nerd as a "natural" experiment in the sense that it's not setup specifically to be an experiment.
It would be very interesting, for example, if you could show rapid human "evolution" in response to the shit that's going on there. I've heard that north koreans are on average a foot shorter than South Koreans. They've only been separated by two or three generations. Presumably a lot of that is due to malnutrition, but it's not too hard to imagine that some of that is due to people who are genetically predisposed to being shorter would survive better. How fast is that happening? Are there genes which correlate to "speaking out against tyranny" that are being selected against?
There are definitely very interesting questions that can be answered by north korea. It goes without saying that I wish this experiment were not occurring, but since it is, may as well collect data from it (though there are issues with informed consent probably).
I think it is a bit different. He's interested in N. Korea because human experimentation has been happening, and sees an opportunity to get data that would be otherwise unavailable, even unethical. His acquiring the data however, is not the cause of that unethical treatment and if he abandoned his studies, that treatment would continue unabated.
In a similar way, medical scientists study the effects of people's habits, for example, what happens to people who smoke, who run, who work in coal mines, who eat only vegetables, etc. etc. The scientists aren't the ones inducing people to engage in any particular behavior, but they see an opportunity to gather data by looking at various groupings. So while it would be one thing to set up an apparatus that made a person breathe coal dust for a decade, it is another thing altogether to acquire data from people who for some other reason unrelated to the scientist or the study, breathed coal dust for a decade.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
Japan will wage another massive war against a reunified Korea rather than see Korea become the other dominant force in the area (second to China). Japan is an incredibly racist and fascist State. It pretends that, despite the rise of China, Japan is still 'top dog'. It will NOT allow its old slave colony of Korea to gain greater power than Japan itself, not least for fear that Korea will eventually seek revenge for the deplorable history of crimes against the people of Korea by the Japanese.
Japan has far more to worry about from the PRC than Korea, unified or otherwise.
Population of Japan: 127.6 million
Population of South Korea: 50 million
Population of North Korea: 24.7 million
A unified Korea starts off with less human capital than Japan. That's without accounting for the generations long project of bringing North Korea out of the stone age. It cost trillions of dollars and took more than a generation to bring East Germany up to West Germany's standard of living. North Korea starts out from a much worse state than East Germany. East Germany had a relatively educated population, a decent industrial base, and preexisting trade relationships. North Korea has none of those.
Bottom line, Korea isn't going to overtake Japan in any meaningful measure of power (hard or soft) within the 21st Century, unification or not. Japan has a fairly deplorable history in Korea that they still haven't owned up to, but their actions in China during WW2 were arguably worse, and China actually has the soft and hard power to give Japan a run for her money. Of course, Japan + the United States + Australia + the Philippines + New Zealand + Korea is a different story. Beijing will be contained the same way the USSR was contained, by an alliance of like minded Democratic counties.
Remember how when WW2 began, Russia was an aggressor (and partner of Nazi Germany in the invasion of Poland) and NOT a victim.
The Finns, Estonians, Latvians, Poles, and Lithuanians are sympathetic to this argument. Of course, you've vastly oversimplified matters. Hitler had designs on the Soviet Union before he ever came to power (read Mein Kampf) and one could easily argue that Stalin's ruthlessness towards his small neighbors bought needed strategic depth that saved Moscow in 1941. Germany was coming regardless of Stalin's treatment of his smaller neighbors.
The bigger lost opportunity was the chance the Western Powers had to enlist Stalin in a containment alliance directed against Germany, France tried to make this happen, but the UK was ambivalent about dealing with Stalin for obvious reasons. Whatever slim chance existed evaporated after Munich, when Stalin concluded that the West lacked the backbone to stand up to Germany. Once the balloon went up Eastern Europe was screwed regardless of what happened on the battlefield. The UK couldn't impose its will on the USSR, France was a spent force, and the United States wasn't going to absorb another million battlefield casualties for the sake of Poland and the Baltic States.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Also I'd think that the Korean War, economic sanctions, etc., have done more harm to US - NK relations than these visitors ever will.
You're right. After all, we started a war of aggression, attempting to unify the country at gunpoint. Once we were defeated by the free and brave North Korean people we spent the next half century engaging in terrorist attacks against them. We even sent commandos across the border in an attempt to assassinate their President once upon a time. Heck, just a few years ago a United States Navy Submarine torpedoed and sank a North Korean ship on the high seas, killing dozens of innocent North Korean sailors just to make a political point. That's not the only hostile action on the high seas, one time we captured a North Korean ship in international waters, then held the crew hostage and tortured them for nearly a year before releasing them.
The history of American aggression towards North Korea is truly astonishing. Thank you Anonymous Coward for bravely stating the truth, which shall set us all free!
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.