Thursday, June 25, 2009

 

Among Many Peoples, Little Genomic Variety

I have a friend with slightly darker skin than me and he said people with colour prejudice are evil and I replied no, they are ignorant.


No he wouldn't have it that they were ignorant, he was adamant they were evil , so I said they were unaware of the genetic evidence some of which follows.


The more people are aware of this evidence, the more racial prejudice will be marginalized.


By David Brown
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, June 22, 2009


There is a simplicity and all-inclusiveness to the number three -- the triangle, the Holy Trinity, three peas in a pod. So it's perhaps not surprising that the Family of Man is divided that way, too.


All of Earth's people, according to a new analysis of the genomes of 53 populations, fall into just three genetic groups. They are the products of the first and most important journey our species made -- the walk out of Africa about 70,000 years ago by a small fraction of ancestral Homo sapiens.


One group is the African. It contains the descendants of the original humans who emerged in East Africa about 200,000 years ago. The second is the Eurasian, encompassing the natives of Europe, the Middle East and Southwest Asia (east to about Pakistan). The third is the East Asian, the inhabitants of Asia, Japan and Southeast Asia, and -- thanks to the Bering Land Bridge and island-hopping in the South Pacific -- of the Americas and Oceania as well.


To read the rest please click here.





Sunday, June 21, 2009

 

The moon

They tell me the moon moves away from the earth 3.8 centimeters a year.

One inch is 2.54 centimeters for those who don't speak metric.

The moon's apparent diameter gets slightly smaller every year.

This is called the theory of the very slowly vanishing moon.


 

Rubik's cube

Many years ago I taught myself to do the Rubik cube, it used to annoy me that
I never passed on that knowledge, I am annoyed no longer, I taught my son my
method, and he can now also do the cube.

A nice fathers day present!

Getting older does not hurt so much if you can transfer some of your skill set
to the next generation.


Friday, June 19, 2009

 

Brit becomes world's oldest man

Mr Allingham, whose life has spanned three centuries and six monarchs, has five
grandchildren and 12 great-grandchildren, 14 great-great grandchildren and one
great-great-great grandchild.

From

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Allingham




Thursday, June 18, 2009

 

Stuff twitter


Hello All,

It has been a while and I have been a twitter, more from the desire to emulate
mobile texting than anything else.

So the problem with being a 'twit' (shortened for the sake of brevity) is
writing only in the short 'sound bite'.

So anyway today, I went in person to Peterborough and applied for a fast track
passport, sort of pay an arm and a leg and wait a week, to be reminded I am
only a member of the hoi polloi after all.

I ask you, my last passport get lost in a house move. So I had to get my
passport application countersigned (and here is the bit that got to me) by a
professional person, as tho' the only people that can be trusted are
'professional' people yeah like all working people can't be trusted and all
'professional' people can be trusted - don't make me laugh.

Running around yesterday like a chicken with it's head cut off trying to find
someone to countersign my application and photograph, found someone at last -
thx M. Why can't I just give them my national insurance number to verify that
I am me.

So anyway drove to Peterborough with N riding shotgun and serenading me on the
harmonica and we arrived no problem. When I filled in the form one of the
questions was, when had I applied for my first passport I knew it was in the
80's but not exactly when.

They sent me away for an hour whilst they went through their records and they
found my original application! 1987 was when I applied for my first passport.

What this means is I began driving trucks on the continent then, this ties a
lot of my life's threads together.

They kept my birth certificate, I know not why, they said they will return it
soon.

I do not like it that they have my birth certificate. I can no longer prove I
was born.

Now I only exist as a figment of my own imagination.

N got a nice shot of Peterborough cathedral.



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