Neandertals and Nincompoops

Ice Cream day. And despite my hatred for the persistent misuse of the word literal –

Literal Lit”er*al (l[i^]t”[~e]r*al), a. [F. lit[‘e]ral, litt[‘e]ral, L. litteralis, literalis, fr. littera, litera, a  letter. See Letter.]   1. According to the letter or verbal expression; real; not figurative or metaphorical; as, the literal meaning of a phrase.      [1913 Webster] 

– today and the next few days will be close, closer, at least, that what most of the bogs mean when they use the word. 

The organizational stress of yesterday’s rainfall was cancelled, but not before its approach played merry ned with my sinuses and teeth. Too often that ache is the worse part of the weather disaster trumpeted but  unfulfilled by the weather beavers. 

Evidently their predictions of wind speed and intensity proved to be overoptimistic. I use “optimistic” because it has become evident that the weather beavers have been “crying wolf!” to increase their dwell time and hence revenues. This is sad. Now they have reduced themselves to the level of journalists and can no longer be trusted.

It seems, according to the Max Planck Institut, [Link] that allergy problems such as these can be blamed on miscegenation. Seems we got some disease resistance/protection and allegies from Neandertals. 

This brings up the intriguing question of whether those late comers from Africa do not suffer from allergies? You know, the ones who are pure Sapiens, unlike the rest of us mongrels. 

Along that vein, a study by wonks at Carnegie-Mellon U [Link] indicates – by claim – that outgroup violence – themism violence – does not arise from religion belief. Does this indicate that evangelism – and its muslim equivalent – are organizational in origin? Answers unforthcoming again.

It is becoming increasingly evident as we complete one-sixth of the twenty-first century that its great challenge may be whether we succumb to the tyranny of religion slavery?

Increasingly, all religions seem to be deciding that their existence is incompatible with both other religions and self-determination – to include democratic government.

I hear every day here in the old confederacy from some christianist thumper that his denomination is under attack. Indicatively, this attack is blamed on those who want to determine what they believe and that – almost certainly – isn’t his flavor of superstition rather on the other denominations who want to destroy his and absorb its adherents involuntarily. If it were not so horrible it would be entertaining given the conflict’s Darwinian nature. 

And Hobbesian? 

Another time I am glad to be a senior. Despite my neandertal DNA.

Recognize, Exterminate

Two Day. Even sparser at gym. Only one weight bouncer – the polite one! – and one educationalist – the demure one! – so good environment. Podcast was a combination of the Guardian Science episode, dealing with Autism Spectrum, and a melange of NPR bits.

The Autism podcast was a mixed bag. It was an interview of some journalist who had written a book about autism. Normally this is a bad thing since journalists are not good sources of accurate information. Since the tenor was primarily social rather than technical, and what technical there was cast all sorts of disillusion on the medicalist community for lack of ethics, the ‘cast wasn’t all bad. I have to admit that the detail spent on considering Autism as natural rather than evil was a mixed bag. On the one hand it means that parents don’t have to hide their autistic children or pack them off to Bedlam, although I have my doubts that many parents will be forthright about such and them geeks and nerds. Somehow I see bogs as trying to hide the shame of deficient children, which is what is wrong with society and the whole autism situation. The cure is preventing them from reproducing, I fear.

There is also some hope that by opening up the situation some assistance for adult Autistics may arise but given the tenor of contemporary politics, especially among Repulsians, I rather more expect death camps. It is all too easy to picture any of the current Repulsian candidates for POTUS nomination announcing that they will solve the Autism problem if elected much as Adolph Hitler solved the Jewish problem. 

On a milder level, do you see the Congress doing anything positive for people? I don’t. They seem to want to roll things back to before Magna Carta, at least. And probably re-institute slavery. And I find it hard to consider non-cooperation and thereby non-governance as a virtue. 

On a lighter side, I did note that the quality of NPR reportage was deteriorate strongly lately. I was particularly taken by one interview, dealing with infrastructure, where the journalist was obviously not listening nor hearing what the interviewee said. Her questions were so orthogonal it whole thing sounded rather like Faux News. 

Sinister ain’t Evil

Mundane day! Back to gym and bulling weight bouncers. And a rather depressing episode of the CBC’s “Best of Ideas” about sports fanaticism. Ayeh, fans. 

They mostly talked about the majority who have this affliction(?). Those who watch sports in stadiums or televisions but, in the main, don’t do any, or much, themselves. Only a bit about the rationals who are orthogonal to all of this.

As might be guessed, I am one of the latter. Don’t care for sports. Find jocks and coaches universally bullying and arrogant. Find spectator sports a boring perversion, rather like watching the reproductive activities of slime mold. And I fear, regard it with the same level of intellect. I don’t object to those folks’ fanaticism so long as they don’t inflict it on me. In that regard it’s rather like religion: I consider evangelism to be a mortal sin. And inflicting you sports “beliefs” on me is, IMHO, justification for discorporation or worse. 

I do admit in my young adulthood, when ESPN was brand new, to watching women’s collegiate field hockey, and chess matches. Yes, they televised both in those days. The two genre were about equally boring. The only good thing about the women’s collegiate field hockey was the fights. Sort of an exemplar of class struggle, if you will.

On which azimuth, I noted an article [Link] on the causes of ‘left-handedness’, some work out of U St. Andrews. Apparently note golf related although I used to hear all manner of handedness complaints from golf players when I tried to learn the game. Abject failure incidentally. Spent too much time figuring out the physics and not enough the body motions. So I gave it up. And have enjoyed the decision ever since.

Anyway, the lads (lassies?) from Scotland indicate that left-handedness is likely genetic but they haven’t found a gene for it. But it is related to the genetic of organ reversal. And they say that right-handedness is obviously a survival advantage.

I guess I find that more than a bit themist and reach a bit of a different outlook Remember that I have a ‘mutation’ for early rising which is an obvious survival advantage in a social context since it ameliorates dawn ambushes. I offer that left-handedness is itself a survival advantage for the species. Can’t say what but there has to be something that strengthens the social organization. 

I was discussing this the other day with my colleague Magnetic Inductance Force. He offers that left-handedness is similarly ostracized as early risers. That changed to a physical ostracism when mass production came in and may get solved, at least in part, by 3-D printing. But he also advances this idea that we should teach left-handers how to write backwards so they don’t drag their hands in the ink. Or reverse the keyboard. 

Sometimes I think we nerds are mental left-handers.

Return to Good, Maybe, temporarily

Not badly. Another night of not having to arise to inspect drippage, although I find the practice has an inertia. And I suspect that nature will be perverse and I will have another night of inspection before I can quite restore cooperation between sleep and bladder. It was, in fact, sufficiently warm for me to assay to the park for a constitutional this morning, the first of the year. It was a mixed bag. I had a bit of discomfort shading to pain in my foot so the going was a bit rocky, and the recently recharged batteries in my head lamp weren’t, and it was foggy, and I was more  bundled than I like to admit even if comfortable most of the time. And the podcast, an episode of Prairie Home Companion from several years ago – yes, I am that far behind due to scheduling changes – was only two laps long. But otherwise it was great and wonderful and quite restful.

Speaking of which, I ran across an article [Link] in a rather disreputable British news(?) rag about how academics from Tel Aviv U have discovered a heart 300 KY old. Seems that neandertals like to come home to a cozt (?) home after a long day of human stuff. Anyway, its a neat thing in that its rather old and indicates that humans have had fire a lot longer than the Promethean myth.

Also ringing in on the subject is a work [Link] from fair Hahvahd indicating that most people have 0.01 to 0.03 nenadertal DNA – unless you are of fairly pure African descent. This is only sorta new but I always marvel at the irony of this result, which evidently the liberals can’t talk about and the religio-conservatives won’t, that the folks from Africa that used to be held in chattel slavery in this country, partly justified by their lesserness, presumably genetic, are actually more purely Homo Sapiens than the folks who “owned” them. And the only obvious way to maintain their attitudes is to adopt diversity so they can argue mongrels are more robust, which they seem to be, at least in dogs, but that also opens the tent to the camel, at least metaphorically. In either case, the gig is up and both sets of prigs are undone and embarrassingly so.

And lastly, rebounding on a previous topic, I noticed that the Tuscaloosa News, the news rag of the town adjacent the Campus of the Black Warrior, has printed a descriptive indictment of the meteorology instrumentality in middle Alibam.[Link] Is it any coincidence that the Alibam Dermatologist aka Guvnuh has residence in the town? Probably. But it is nice to see some of the blame going to inept weather ferds instead of just politicians. Both deserve some guilt and shame. And a bit of fear.

Ball but no Chain

Here we are at the back edge of week in, looking into an abyss of holiday yuck and stress. For once the weather is waiting. My browser tells me it is 53 degF in Greater Metropolitan Arab and I was able to go to park and use the walking path instead of having to be placated by my stationary bicycle. But portents of nastiness are looming for the week out period.

That seems to sum up the situation I recently noticed [Link][Link] in articles having to do with some Neandertal DNA from the Denisova region. This DNA dates back about 50 KYA and is of such richness that it indicates some rather intriguing things. Based on the analysis, it seems that this DNA provides us a pre-date for incest taboo and marriage customs. This follows from both a close genetic correlation of the DNA individual’s parents (indicating some degree of incest) and a wide spectrum of outbreeding (which indicates some degree of sexual liberalism.)

In a sense, this is not surprising. Social structure was supposedly simple, the 25-50 people hunter-gatherer band although that labor structure is uncertain for Neandertals based on previous work that has indicated female might be hunters. Given a small social community with only sporadic outside contacts, interbreeding would be expected as a necessity to assure cohesion of the group and the production of offspring. Given the supposed egalitarian nature of such groups, fidelity may be a secondary consideration, which could indicate the genetic outbreeding was a natural extension during rare interband socialization, possibly as an alternative to fighting.

If so, this could also indicate a vector for the development of stronger socialization among bands and the evolution of marriage customs in response to the time bomb of incest. Regardless, this work would seem to not only give us a time datum for that period before incest was taboo and marriage had been adopted.

And it puts rather another counter to mystical religionist claims on the board.

humans, history, society, Neandertal, DNA, genetics, biology

Human Sadness

It’s back edge of week out, false shabbat. Time to clean out a few tabs. And occupy ourselves betwwen the last storm and the next; portent of things to come with climate in Amerika. What a time for government to be ineffectual and incompetent. Blatantly!

Speaking of blatant, researchers at U Pennsylvania have measurements that supposedly indicate functional differences between the brains of men and women. [Link]

‘The results showed fundamental sex differences in the architecture of the human brain. Male brains facilitate connectivity between perception and co-ordinated action, whereas female brains facilitate communication between analytical and intuitive processing modes.’

This would seem to confirm the traditional (?) hunter-gatherer differentiation. And I suppose we also now need to hunker down from the storm from feminists? Also explains why my attempts to communicate with FD SCP are always so whacked. As is usually the case, I am being held to a standard that is orthogonal to actuality and capability.

I ain’t gonna carry this any further. Persecution by government fascists and such is minor compared to the scorn of women.

In a related matter, investigations at a site in Spain have indicated that early European humans were diverse, in a species sense, and fabulously miscegenetic. [Link] So perhaps early man really was idyllic? At least until primitive homo sapiens happened on the block? Or is that why they came up from Africa? Club Euro? And what does this have to do with incest taboo? It has to come from some harsh conditioning to be so innate.

Next, back to U Pennsylvania, it seems that those Massive On-line Open Courses (?) are hideously leaky. Living in a barnacle level conservative state I should be tempted to say it is the “free” aspect but my nerd sense indicates that is rather too establishmentarian capitalist slime mold. Anyway, something like half of the folks who register bother to attend any lectures and only a small fraction, examples cited ranged 0.02 to 0.13, finished the course. The latter variance may be attributed, preliminarily, to instructor charisma and ability, I should tihink.

This is not surprising. MOOCs seem rather more attractive in the ideal than in the specific, in which regard they are consistent with college in general. The idea of doing things with minimum friction is always attractive but once the hidden friction is evident, motion decreases. I have looked at MOOCs, they are widely promulgated and upon examination equally widely numbingly boring. I have yet to find a course I want to sign up for. Most are so unappealing that I would rather purchase a book and educate myself. And the few – VERY few – STEM courses are particularly mind numbing in terms of subject matter and precis. Whatever happened to “introduction to normed and vector spaces” or “principles of chemical composition”? But when I consult college catalogs I find that the human presence, traditional (?) courses are as lamely and insipidly named and planned. Am I that much a product of my youth or has college really become as boring as high schule? If so, no wonder all the students want to do is party and endure for a certificate. And know nothing upon graduation.

humans, genetics, reproduction, gender, education, academia

Breeding Neurosis

Boundary of week out. Gym completed for the week. Maybe. And today was sleep in day. Which was semi-successful given the joys of sinus ache and tooth discomfort. So I can spend some time whacking articles.

Before I begin that, I should comment that I use the OLD Scribefire as a blog editor. The new one just flat doesn’t work. It won’t spell check – and I really need that feature – and it won’t post – which makes writing a blot rather a masturbation. There are a few blog editors out there, but most of them don’t work very well. The official KDE blog editor, Blogilo, also won’t post or spell check, and no one in the  Ubuntu/Kubuntu community seems to care to fix it. But what really fries me is that the spell check in FireFox isn’t a learning engine. Oh, you can add words to it’s vocabulary, which is a good thing given my proclivities, but when I misspell a word, it manages to offer me lots of inaccurate choices.

For example, I misspelled gym as gyn, and of the six or so offerings, none was gym. Hunh? Who composed that algorithm?

Anyway, bitchin’ over. On to the real poo.

I ran across a nice article [Link] about some work by bone diggers from Washington U and the Chinese Academy of Science on some 0.1 MY old homo sapiens bones. Seems one of the skulls shows indication of a deformity that can be rather conclusively associated with inbreeding. Now I am not going to make any snide comments about Chinese precursors. I have lots of respect for them. They are humans and have the same strengths and weakness of all humans. OK, maybe more strengths. And fewer weaknesses. Other than being as incapable as we are of dealing with too many people in a rational fashion.

A lot is made of our “incest taboo”, but it had to come from somewhere. After all, taboo isn’t a genetic thing normally, it’s social. And it is almost planet wide. And yes, the ancient Egyptian tyrants practiced inbreeding but they were pretty careful to exercise alternating generation of inbreeding and outbreeding. And even then they had plenty of problems.

Anyway, the bottom line is that humans – homo saps – all over Tellus had to mate with close kin and have whacked children, but not too many, or too badly whacked, and learn that you needed effective birth control to copulate with kin. So the inclination to enjoy some slap and tickle with siblings isn’t uncommon. And that is what is the poo today.

We have effective birth control. And safe abortion techniques. But we are perverse in our avoidance of incest. It’s a social no-no and often a legal chasm. Lots of abortion laws have a special clause for incest. In many ways it’s the only reason for abortion agreed by all.

So the question arises as to why we are this way? We understand – well, at least the geeks and nerds do – the risks and pitfalls of genetic defects of this type. But we still react like neuronegs to the very idea. Why? And we need a better answer than “Because” or “It’s filthy”. Or we’re never going to be an adult species.

humans, behavior, incest, genetics, society

Racist Soap

Once more into week out and all sorts of juicy tabs to crunch upon. And a right riled temperament given some local ass hat started calling at 0630 and rooted out FD SCP with her repeated inability to get a phone number right.

On a more pleasant note, the not-wonks at fair Hahvahd have posited a date for the miscegenation of sapiens and neandertals. [Link] Seems the dirty deeds were performed somewhere between 47-65 KYA. Of course this only applies to those who departed Africa no later than that time period so we find ourselves in a rather intriguing situation with respect to racism.

I have commented on racism previously and have not retreated from a view that it is governmental oppression and a hiding place for those who cannot compete and achieve. Its basically an instantiation of the Chinese observation that the first man to sling mud loses ground. I will not dissemble that for most of the history of this nation the caucasians viewed the negroids as inferior, largely for economic reasons but partly because of insecurity. Happily we fought a nasty war to put an end to the economic piece but the social componenet seems to still be with us, again because of incompetence.

During much of that period, whoever was not caucasian (and wealthy) was considered to be genetically inferior, and religionally cursed. Sadly the religion nonsense is still with us and now courtesy of science the genetic thing has returned. The intriguing  part however is that those who left Africa after 47 KYA are pure homo sapiens while everyone else is a mutt, a mixed genetic conglomeration of sapiens and neandertal. This, of course, raises the not necessarily relevant question of whether mutts are better than pure breeds? Perhaps we should consult with a kennel club?

In a similar article [Link] it has been shown that Triclosan, an antibacterial commonly used in liquid hand soaps, causes muscle deterioration. I have been hunkering for the upswell of indigation among parents of shule children demanding that their children not be crippled by educationalists’ mania over hand sanitation. This will not be easy. I did a survey at MalWart and determined that about 0.9+ of all hand soap they sell contains the poison and that which does not costs twice (at least) as much.

So since the issue is economic, is triclosan racist?

humans, genetics, miscegenation, soap, crippling

4th Watering

What a difference a decent inn makes. Despite the rain yesterday, perhaps because of, and a period spent standing and watching rain awaiting the arrival of a tornado/wind storm that never intruded on my locality, much was done. FD SCP was busy with her information gathering mission and I romped over a bit of the landscape.

The morning started with a visit to a chain restaurant that I used to frequent during my graduate shul days. They have recently added fast breaking fare to their menu and I decided to sample the food space. The food itself was quite good, which probably indicates any number of things wrong with it in terms of health and longevity. I do not envy these corporate ogres their dilemma over pleasing customers so they repeat and killing them off. Alas, American business has always been congenitally weak in balancing short and long term activity.

I did my bit for making life miserable when I lectured the manager about the inapplicability of the term "lactose intolerance" to adult humans and shamed him for lacking a supply of dairy-free coffee whitener by bringing a supply from my motorcar. I did refrain from lecturing further on the inconsistency of this matter in the popular (?) physics sit-com Large KaBoom Kitsch, that any real physicist who lacked one of the cattle herder’s mutations would not use the "I" term except to communicate with mind stagnant bogs.

Then I motored over to the Kennesaw Mountain Battlefield National Park to photograph ordnance for my colleague, Total angular Momentum Magnetic Inductance. The mountain proper was closed for safety reason – a good high optical depth fog – so I was limited to photographing the few pieces at the museum/people center. In the midst of this I found myself drafted into a rather lengthy discussion/impromptu lecture for some college students on the basic physics of cannons. Thus was much of the morning consumed.

I returned to quarters for an ablution and then sallied out to find a stray foodstuff or two but was recalled by FD SCP to perform the sacred Southron ritual of tornado temple whereby people crowd in tight spaces and contemplate their end at the hands of a whacked atmospheric environment. While the contemplation of futile existence and unfulfilled possibilities may be sound, the crowding in with bogs is not and so I elected to stand outside under an awning, next the door to the shelter, and enjoy the elements while I awaited what Nature might deliver.

After a half-hour the holy alarums were sounded ending the service of stupidity enumeration and I could sally forth to damage luncheon. Afterwards I sat about and gave in to the temptation to contemplate the interior ballistic differential equation of motion of cannon projectiles, which is rather nasty. Thus was an afternoon diverted from report writing to physics.

Can Free Will exist in absence of Freedom?

OK, boundary time again and the weather beavers are playing horsemen this morning. Actual, sorta, frost! That is, the tips of leaves that are curled up away from the ground actually have a thin layer of semi-solid condensate on them. Happy that I didn’t have to get up three hours ago to go to gym and experience all that in extended form. As is, all I had to do was venture out to spread seed for the birds and squirrels who won’t arrive for a while yet until Sol is fully illuminating the ground.

Meanwhile, I get to start cleaning up tabs. First, an article [Link] quoting Michael Dell,

“We don’t see the PC as going away at all. We see our customers continuing to use the PC as part of the total solution.”

Can’t say that I disagree. The smart phone and/or tablet may replace the desk/lap box for those service folk who trapse into the field, and maybe for the decision makers, but for the vast middle of the organization a more robust and functional infrastructure is necessary.

This brings me to wonder. While I was wandering through my daily readings I came across some journalist waxing doomish over the replacement of “public works” with “infrastructure”, arguing that people know what public works is/are (collective or plural?) and don’t know what infrastructure is (collective.) [Link] I found myself thinking this both too pat and specious. I am quite comfortable that I understand what “infrastructure” is, but I am admittedly fuzzy on “public works”. Is this latter some archaic form of community service that doesn’t involve imposition by a justicer? My point is that while I do have a knowledge of the mechanics of systems, I am GEN X and of moderately advanced age, so how can I credit this hypothesis?

Anyway, returning to the Dell declamation, I am watching with some anticipation. Dell recently slipped from second to third in the PC market and we have the upcoming Windows Ate release that will change the boot infrastructure of the PC in a desperate Apple-like attempt by MegaHard to exclude Linux from the playing field. Meanwhile MegaHard is emulating Apple and Canonical/Gnome with Tile GUI into the realm of smart phones and tablets and alienating the urine of devoted users. Since a significant piece of the refurbished computer marketplace is Linux and home users, and both Linux and earlier versions of Winders don’t pass MegaHard’s legitimacy standards, and number one in that marketplace is Dell, the Chinese curse would seem to be extant.[1]

Meanwhile, the Yankee government seems to still be in fear of Facebook, [Link] which may not be as much in error as the continued persecution and attempted prosecution of Julian Assange. Facebook at least is active instead of passive although it is always amusing when the YG runs afoul of strident capitalism. Some days the emerged association of democracy and capitalism is almost humorous. But the directions on how to disable that abnoxious timeline is welcome as a public service (‘work’?) for those of us who find Facebook increasingly overparasitic and autarkic.

And lastly, as a bit of that hoarfrost on the tips of the leaves, I have to make note of a lovely piece in Scientific American, mostly because it is so rare that SA has a nice, pleasing article. [Link] The piece deals with those sadly strident handicapped who cannot do maths because of their parents’ (and now their) deficient genome. The article also demonstrates the widespread presence of these people in journalistic trades,

Admittedly a bit dated, but then the time scale of defective DNA in humans is centuries, not years.

One may only hope the Repulsiveican candidates for Chief Executive candidate do not see this. They seem to have enough problems with primary and secondary sources, much less reality stuffs. Certainly the maths we have seen from both they and the Demolitionats is self-serving, diversionary, and genetically deficient.

[1]  For those unaware, “May you live in interesting times.” For all, my apology for sullying the blot with the “I” profanity word.

humans, behavior, computers, capitalism, genetics, extinction