Wednesday, May 7, 2008From Zero to Awesome in 3.5 Minutes After X-Men: Evolution, I wasn't exactly thrilled about yet another X-Men cartoon, but there were a few glimmers of hope. Stephen Jay "Spike-Guy" Blum was reprising his role as Wolverine (he's Wolverine in videogames), and Kari "Fuu-Girl" Wahlgren was, of all people, Emma Frost. Then they released this trailer:
Hooooooly smokes! Sentinels! Genosha! Spiral! Hulk! Mojo! New X-Men! People I'm not hardcore enough to recognize! It's all quite overwhelming. link : 9:37 PM
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Friday, April 25, 200868,000 BC CNN had a headline that caught my attention: "Humans nearly wiped out 70,000 years ago, study says." Now that's news! The gist of the Associated Press article it uses can be summed up by two quotes:
Paleontologist Meave Leakey, a Genographic adviser, asked, "Who would have thought that as recently as 70,000 years ago, extremes of climate had reduced our population to such small numbers that we were on the very edge of extinction?"And: "Dr. Spencer Wells, National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence and Director of the Genographic Project, said ... "Tiny bands of early humans, forced apart by harsh environmental conditions, coming back from the brink to reunite and populate the world. Truly an epic drama, written in our DNA.”" My suspicio-meter immediately hit the jackpot. That's a pretty tall order for a study on genetics. The mention of climate also sounds like an attempt to make the news by linking this study to global warming. I followed a link to the Genographic Project which was the source of this story. Being the responsible researchers they are (after all being part of National Geographic), they had a free link to the actual scientific paper that is the root of these findings. Of course I read it immediately. It's a good paper. And this is coming from someone who, let's say, doesn't have that much faith in genetics research. It's highly technical of course, but the introduction and discussion are very clear. And I'm glad to report, the article is very non-sensationalist. It does contradict the popular digest of the source material on several key points: Humans were Near Extinction The AP article states that populations might have been as low as 2,000 around 70,000 years ago, citing another scientific paper not referenced. I tracked it down!* It actually does not say that the human population dropped to 2,000. Instead, the human variation we see today can be projected to exist in around 2,000 people 70,000 years ago. Is there a difference? Yes, because there could be untold number of people living 70,000 years ago whose unique genetic markers did not make it into our modern population. Unfortunately one of the flaws of genetic research in anthropology is that these hypothetical extinct lines cannot be detected, measured or accounted for, though they are likely to have existed. The scientific paper clearly states this, though that didn't make it into the Genographic or AP articles. The Wells quote is very dramatic, mentioning how ancient humans had to band together after a long split to repopulate Africa and then the rest of the world. But, the scientific article portrays this split differently. The split isn't between caves, huts, villages, or other small groupings. The split is between the entire south Africa and east Africa! At this continental scale, there is really no personal drama as the quotes suggest. If one of the two groups had gone extinct who is to say that the other group wouldn't have taken over and populated the world? Did the people living back then even recognize an intracontinental split between populations? Climate is the Culprit Even the AP article says "It is possible that this climatological shift contributed to the population splits," (emphasis mine). In fact, there is absolutely nothing linking climate to low population in the scientific paper. The paper does mention droughts as an event that kind of coinicides with the period of low human population (actually according to the paper the droughts ended 20,000 years before the populations merged, making me wonder if they even correlate). In this case, both quotes about climate or the environment as the cause of these populations shifts are just pure speculation and "wishful thinking" if you can call it that. It is very important to remember that correlation does not equal causation. Just because two things seem to be happening together, doesn't mean they are related. It's 70 degrees this fine morning and I had Chex for breakfast, but it doesn't mean I ate Chex instead of Trail Mix Crunch (which is really good by the way) because it's 70 degrees. --- Considering material from the scientific papers, the popular quotes above exagerrate a few key points. Human population has not been determined to be around 2,000 at that time, nullifying any talk of near-extinction. Climate has not been determined to be the cause of the misinterpreted population estimate. There was a large split between two African populations, but not between individual bands. The groups eventually fused before humans crossed into Eurasia, but at such a scale of time and space that the lay-term of reunion is meaningless. So there you go, scientific research from paper to popular press and all of it's varying forms. *sigh* if only I can write my dissertation proposal with this much speed and energy. *Zhivotovsky LA, Rosenberg NA, and Feldman MW. 2003. Features of Evolution and Expansion of Modern Humans, Inferred from Genomewide Microsatellite Markers. Am. J. Hum. Genet. 72:1171–1186 Labels: anthropology, genetics, news link : 10:13 AM
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Sunday, April 20, 2008Spring Cleaning Around the Home(page) One of this weekend's goals was to clean up around the house. I vacuumed the downstairs area and wiped down the fixtures in my bathroom but then I got distracted and started working on my website. It's tangentially related I guess. I fixed some of the alignments so things look a bit more orderly. I shrank the margins between the sidebar and blog (while widening the sidebar). The long list of archives is now in a menu. I can't believe this blog started in 2006. I uploaded a few flickr photos and the flickr sidebar is now mashed up against the links bar. That was unintentional but I'll see if I like it. The random box of minibanners is now wider to match the rest of the page. Next up is the professional page. I'm adding a sidebar with a table of contents so one can zip to their favorite section of my CV. And after that, the comics page will get a makeover as well. Top of that list is to remove the PayPal buy buttons. That experiment has officially failed.
Labels: personal link : 11:53 AM
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Friday, April 4, 2008Declassified Story from Work and Other Notes
 {Rawr.} link : 10:25 PM
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Wednesday, April 2, 2008I Can Haz Productive Role in Society? It's now confirmed that I won't be going to Peru this summer. It looks really good for next summer though; the universities involved seem enthused but we just couldn't get the logistics set in stone in time. In the meantime I evaluated what I was doing day to day. The comics, games, and anthropology routine is nice, but none of them pay the bills, at least not at this time. Being at home most of the time, now mostly alone nowadays, was also starting to get to me. I had played with the idea of getting a job before, but with Peru plans in flux I decided to go for it.
I'll be honest and say I'm a snob about what I want to do. Secretarial work is pretty much out; I don't even want to answer my own phone, as my friends know. I want a job that's out of the ordinary, I suppose. There was an open position for someone to milk cattle at the MU dairy farm. I was around 73% serious about checking that one out, just for the hilarity. I didn't want to take the place of someone who would actually want to do that for the job experience so in the end I didn't apply. I almost applied for a job taking care of lab animals. I totally would've if I didn't find another job.... ...which I can't really tell you about because I signed some confidentiality agreements. All I can say is that I grade exams. It's kind of cool being caught up in secret stuff, but it's not very conducive for blogging. So far it's been a great experience, and I've met a bunch of cool people from many backgrounds. Getting paid for doing something that has an effect on society is more rewarding than I had expected. Since I'm late to the employment party I guess you all know the feeling by now, but I'm going to enjoy it's warm glow while it lasts. By the way I got my job through MU's temp agency, called SOS. Which means that I'm part of the SOS Brigade and will have to learn their dance: link : 6:12 PM
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Saturday, March 29, 2008Here's a Stupid Idea: Earth Hour I usually don't take a stand in this blog for professional reasons but I'll make an exception for Earth Hour. Who's stupid idea is this?*
Change doesn't happen by suggesting people do something different for an hour.** You fix the world through improving education, and following that by having world-minded people in positions of power: corporations, universities, world government. It'll take decades, but the results will be glorious. Publicity stunts like Earth Hour do absolutely nothing for anybody or anything. It makes the whole concept of environmentalism look like a fad that will go away if you wait long enough. So what am I doing from 8 to 9PM this fine Saturday night? I'll be working on my computer, posting this blog entry. *Oh my, I knew something stank. Earth Hour was created by the World Wildlife Fund. I have prepared rant for how idiotic they are, centered around their use of funds for the frivolous bullying of the World Wrestling Federation. I'm sure many pandas were saved by that campaign. **Indeed, I believe that programs geared toward promoting green living to the individual consumer is a horrible waste of time and money. Convincing one director of a major corporation to "go green" will have more of an effect on the environment than convincing a million ordinary people. Labels: rant link : 8:10 PM
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Tuesday, March 4, 2008Financial Tip of the Week: Don't Get Caught So... it looks like the person at MU responsible for the weekly financial tips newsletter/blog has resigned after being accused of stealing money from the university. I for one am outraged. Outraged that he got caught before he perfected his technique and gave the students tips on how to do it too.
Labels: whut link : 11:06 AM
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