February Pieces Of My Mind #2

"Doesn’t this mean that only sub-Saharan Africans are fully H. sapiens sapiens?"

By definition, individuals who can mate and produce fertile children are members of the same species.

I know, but H.sap.sap. is a sub-species.

Careful - there's this:

http://dienekes.blogspot.hk/2016/02/are-living-africans-nested-within.h…

I wonder how this research accounts for the fact that modern Africans are way, way more diverse than the modern inhabitants of any other part of the world.

Auntie Beeb has a story about a lost town in Suffolk that was destroyed by storms.

I wonder how this research accounts for the fact that modern Africans are way, way more diverse than the modern inhabitants of any other part of the world.

Most likely, it was one or a few bands of humans that left Africa. Most stayed behind. Of course the (at the time) larger group would be the more diverse.

You see this with language groups as well. Take the Austronesian language family. Of this family's four subgroups, three are found only on Taiwan. The fourth includes languages from Malagasy to Hawaiian, and all of the Polynesian languages in between. Or consider that the non-indigenous inhabitants speak one of five languages, all Indo-European (Spanish, English, Portuguese, French, Dutch), as opposed to the indigenous languages, which are spread out over several families.

#4 - Possibly by interbreeding with archaic humans in Africa.

I'm not saying I think it's right. I'm just saying we need to be careful about prior assumptions. This paper has thrown everyone into confusion. Now they don't know what to think.

There's another paper out that shows that Western Pygmies definitely did.

It's a case of the more data that becomes available, the less it can be explained by a simple model. Modern human origins are looking increasingly like a very tangled bush.

There's a lot of discussion here, without any resolution.

http://www.unz.com/gnxp/why-i-still-lean-toward-a-sub-saharan-african-o…

I think the basic argument is that there was a 'ghost population' in Eurasia which now no longer exists, and modern Africans are nested within Eurasians if this ghost population is included as part of Eurasian. There is also mention of s-s African diversity resulting from interbreeding of AMHs with archaics in Africa.

Really a lot of confusion, and people are not clear on what to make of it.

I think it calls for a wait and see attitude, without rigid adherence to priors.

#1 - It's worth pointing out at this point that the species concept is one of convenience, and there is no single universally accepted definition of what constitutes a species, a sub-species or a race.

Interspecific breeding resulting in fertile offspring happens all the time - one of the classic examples that is happening right now is hybridisation of wolves with both coyotes and domestic dogs in America. But no one argues that wolves, coyotes and domestic dogs are all one species. On the other hand, the classic example of hybridisation resulting in infertile offspring is horses with donkeys.

So the fact that humans could and obviously did interbreed with at least two (and very likely more than two) sorts of archaic humans does not automatically mean that Neanderthals and Denisovans should be considered to be the same species as anatomically modern humans. They could be, or they could be considered to be different species which had simply not diverged genetically from AMHs for long enough for offspring to be infertile (it takes at least hundreds of thousands of years of genetic isolation for speciation to occur). But it does rather look like it was marginal - male offspring from Neanderthals mating with AMHs were probably infertile, and maybe only the occasional female hybrid was fertile.

So, they could be considered different species or different sub-species; it doesn't really matter. Certainly they were at least sub-species, i.e. more different than races.

There is a tendency to think of human evolution in terms of punctuated equilibrium, but Gould was wrong about that, like he was wrong about most things. He showed that punctuated equilibrium occurred in a species of snail. But it has not occurred in most species, where evolution is much more of a gradual process.

So we have got used to the idea that "anatomically modern humans emerged about 200,000 years ago" based on one set of remains - the Omo specimen. But it almost certainly was not like that. Other remains have been found with a mix of more archaic characters.

It begins to beg the question of what characters we assign to define whether an individual was or wasn't anatomically modern. Brain size gradually enlarged up to 200,000 years ago as found in the Omo specimen, but average brain size was larger in Neanderthals. And modern human brain size has been progressively shrinking again during the Holocene. Evolution is not directional - it is not always towards greater complexity.

If Jrette wants to show off, I recommend "Memoirs of God" by M. Smith which shows how monotheism slowly evolved in Palestine/Israel. The book actually takes into consideration the order in which the passages were * written*; much different from their nominal order in the OT. Also, lots of passages have later been inserted into various OT texts, so untangling the history of the OT (and thus the birth of Abrahamic religion) seems downright heroic.
If Juniorette really wants to shine, she can read "The Ark Before Noah" about how a Sumerian myth became embedded into the Abrahamaic religions.
PS The latter book is actually quite interesting, unlike most Bible-related stuff.

I went through a whole phase of being interested in Biblical history applied to the NT as well, which can also be interesting if it is written by objective historians deconstructing the NT and documenting how they think it was written and by whom, how the various gospels disagree with one another and historical facts (things like total solar eclipses can be dated precisely and make liars out of gospel writers .

The conclusions I came to were that: (i) Yeshu bin Joseph (usually called Jesus) was probably a real historical person, but very different from the way most alleged Christians imagine him, and (ii) whoever wrote the John gospel had to be on crack. Also (iii) John the Baptist was a real historical person, and a bigger noise in his day than Yeshu.

You might enjoy this echo from the primaries: Steven Colbert interviews Triumph the Insult Dog. http://freethoughtblogs.com/singham/2016/02/22/stephen-colbert-intervie…
-- -- -- --
My favourite among the Abrahamic religions is Waffleism, invented by Martin Kellerman and his drinking buddies. Their head prophet is Waffles, the cook on Noah's Ark.

Yeshua bin Joseph was probably a disciple of John the Baptist, although that part got glossed over...
Regarding water.
Any prophet that had told his followers to boil the water hefore drinking it would have had a religion that outgrew the rivals, as the others fell prey to bacteria. Strange that none of them got any divine instructions to that effect.

"Gould was wrong about that, like he was wrong about most things"

Such as?

#13 - Well, he did seem to drink rather a lot of wine. Maybe he really knew what he was doing.

#14 - Adaptation.

#14 - You want another one? He believed evolution was directional towards greater diversity, which is not necessarily true. Evolution is not directional, and it can and often is driven by adaptation. He rejected the notion that human races can be discerned genetically, i.e. he bought into Lewontin's Fallacy. But then he and Lewontin were both Jewish Marxists, so they were singing off the same song sheet, as it were.

Gould believed that politics and religion should not be allowed to mix. I'm with him there. But I also don't believe that politics should be allowed to colour science, and he did. I'm prepared to say that's wrong. We should espouse and strive for the truth, no matter how much it might offend our beliefs, political or religious.

It will soon be 30 years since the Swedish prime minister Olof Palme was shot.
This morning, Palme’s former chief of staff told TV that a person with a professional secrecy duty* had told him that the late Christer Pettersson** ( prosecuted but acquitted for the murder) had confessed to him/her, and since the person did not want to take the secret to the grave the info was passed on to the chief of staff.
Since the major witness for the prosecution, the widow, had photographic memory, and the witness psychologist later lamented that the court had misunderstood him and been unduly skeptic about the widow’s testimony it now looks as if the case is closed, more than a decade after Pettersson died of natural causes.
* Like a priest at confession
**Pettersson was sometimes called “The National Alcoholic” during the trial, as he was a long-time addict and jailbird. Also, a real asshole with a manslaughter conviction.

Birger@13: There is a reason why turning water into wine was considered a miracle back in the day. Adding alcohol would also inhibit the harmful bacteria, which is why the West developed the custom of drinking beer and wine. Oddly enough, the Quran works against that by specifically forbidding the consumption of wine (which most Muslim authorities interpret to cover all alcoholic beverages), and many countries in the Middle East and North Africa have lost their winemaking traditions as a result. It may have helped that coffee was an available alternative in that part of the world--that, like tea, involves boiling water.

Ted Cruz has brain fart, wants to deport 12 million / 4% of US population... http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/ted-cruz-deport-12-million-undocume…
This is fun. I can mock these jokers with a clean conscience.
Ted Cruz (wearing wellington boots);“The next sketch is about in-sur-an-ce. It is called the in-sur-an-ce sketch” (repeats 4 times) (Michael Palin pours bucket of water over him).

"This is fun. I can mock these jokers with a clean conscience."

Both Trump and Cruz stand a significant chance of winning. I'm sure both would keep their promises here. Those who say that it is impossible are ill-informed.

Philip, yes, but I have zero chance of affecting the outcome. I might as well laugh on the way to catastrophe.
--- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
"Listen to the Oldest Song in the World: A Sumerian Hymn Written 3,400 Years Ago" http://www.openculture.com/2014/07/the-oldest-song-in-the-world.html

Kurdish special forces rescue Swedish girl from Islamic State jihadists http://www.rawstory.com/2016/02/kurdish-special-forces-rescue-swedish-g…

I have some good Kurdish friends in Perth. Good people. I'm not saying I know all Kurds are good people, but those ones are.

It's worth reading and/or listening to this whole thing - David Reich is first talking about India, and then Europe:
http://edge.org/conversation/david_reich-the-genomic-ancient-dna-revolu…

John, you might be upset that I bring this up, but there is some recent news that cannot be ignored in a blog that -among other things- covers Chinese culture.
The Chinese president has recently issued new guidelines for media that are quite strict -in effect they may herald a return to the less happy times, the years after Tianmen.
The relative freedom of speech in mainland China has always been a privilege granted by the party, rather than a right. Now that the economy is slowing down the party may feel it is time to rein in media tp pre-emt expressions of dissatisfaction. The Chinese economy is still very strong but the wealth is not evenly distributed regionally and demographically so the government will be wary of friction. The abduction of several publishers that were staying in Thailand is probably another harbinger of reduced tolerance for dissent.
.

Gardasil Has Already Drastically Cut HPV Infections in Young Women http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2016/02/23/gardasil_vaccine_is…
Actually, Gardasil would also be very good for young men. HPV can induce cancer and other disease in both genders. This is another reminder that medical issues should be decided without pandering to fringe groups with their minds in the 19th century.

"Nature" magazine: "A world where everyone has a robot: why 2040 could blow your mind" http://www.nature.com/news/a-world-where-everyone-has-a-robot-why-2040-…
Unless they have cures for Alzheimer’s and similar unpleasant gifts of age, my mind may be incapable of blowing up. But I hope to experience something like what they forecast.

The HPV vaccine is excellent. It has already wiped out condyloma among young people in Sweden.

#24 - I'm not an apologist for the Chinese government, Birger. On balance, I like what the current government has been doing, coming down very hard on corruption at very senior level. It's what they needed to do. That's one big reason why wealth is so unevenly distributed.

You can't make an omelette without breaking some eggs. There's bound to be dissent. What makes you think those publishers are on the side of the righteous?

If you're going to launch into print over every little squeak that comes out of the current crackdown on corruption, you'll have a full time job. Me, I detest corruption, always have, and I say more power to Mr Xi - he's the leader they have needed for a long time.

There's only one country on earth that has absolute freedom of speech - it's not mine, and it's not yours either, and I'm glad I don't live there.

...cnt'd - my concern, if I have one, is that you seem to have a model in your head of what China is like that is nothing like reality on the ground. It has its faults, no question - massive faults. I'm all in favour of well placed criticism, but you won't get an accurate picture from a lot of commentators.

Check these figures - one of the major problems the country faces is not some giant police state, it is the opposite - it is a giant free-for-all with no one enforcing the laws, and hopelessly under-policed.

http://www.gutenberg.us/articles/list_of_countries_by_number_of_police_…

Sweden is a lot more heavily policed than China.

http://shanghaiist.com/2016/02/24/elderly_street_cleaner_prompts_soul_s…

These people are publishing from within China and sending out to the world, and I'm not seeing any 'tightening'. They are frequently critical of various authorities there, seemingly with impunity.

Birger@24: I haven't seen any evidence that control of Chinese media by the Beijing government has gotten noticeably stricter in recent years. The Great Firewall of China has been in existence for several years now, and there have been occasional stories of innocuous search terms being blocked because they became associated with some dissident movement. Not to mention several Western sites being blocked, either intermittently (BBC News has been in that group) or permanently (sites that discuss topics about which the Beijing government is sensitive).

The Chinese government, with some justification, sees unchecked corruption as being a potential Mandate of Heaven issue, so they are taking steps intended to go after corrupt officials. (Assuming as I do that the government wishes to retain the Mandate of Heaven, it follows that they will take steps to defuse any problems that they think might reach Mandate of Heaven levels if unchecked.) As an example, new guidelines were issued last week about weddings and funerals of Party members: they should not be too lavish, lest people think that said Party member is (or was, in the case of funerals) living beyond his visible means of support. Whether these measures are actually effective, and more importantly are seen as effective and not just an excuse for settling political scores, are legitimate questions, but there is no doubt that the government wants to be seen as fighting corruption.

- Have you lived much in any place whose name contains the letter sequence LTSJÖB?

Must have been a BAD place

Discouragement of lavish spending is a parallel measure to coming down hard on high level corruption. The two logically go together. People are now afraid to display conspicuous levels of lavish consumption. The stream of Mainland tourists into Hong Kong spending obscene amounts of money on the world's most bizarrely expensive brand name merchandise has slowed from a torrent to a trickle. Short term, the HK retailers of all of this crap are screaming, but they are getting zero sympathy from the locals because HK people don't buy that stuff, and get zero benefit from it being sold here.

Meanwhile, what's with this place? I thought he said 8 years ago he was going to close it.
http://www.abc.net.au/triplej/programs/hack/shutting-down-gitmo/7197144

I was referring to a very recent news item, in Swedish TV wednesday. I have not had time to find comments in English-language media.
-- -- --
For certain armchair patriots who think arbitrary hard imprisonment means "effective" (remember " boot camp" imprisonment of juvenile offenders) Gitmo is a symbol of "being hard on terrorism". They think in symbols rather than formal logic., and so have blocked any attempts to close this abomination.

So Obama gets a free pass from you, despite making an election pledge to close it before he was even elected, but Xi doesn't because there are rumours going around that some seditious booksellers hiding out in Thailand were snatched by Chinese security and dragged screaming back to the Motherland - when in fact it looks quite possible that they had committed (real) crimes.

Not very even handed, is it, Birger?

And if I may be permitted to remind you, Gitmo hasn't just been a prison - it involved torture, which in most people's language would be regarded as a war crime. It says something about the American people that it still remains, and still has inmates. Not a few armchair patriots, the American people. They elected both Bush and Obama democratically, so they have to take responsibility for their actions, or inactions.

You see, I have never had an objection to fair-minded, well informed criticism of China and its government; my objection was that it was all anti-China all the time, with no attention on any other country or its government.

I have not written that much about American politics at this blog, since stating that American politics is corrupt, and American politics are deeply unfair is pretty much like writing "water is wet" (at least in Swedish media, I do not know the situation overseas).

So I assume everyone knows about the grotesque amount of money flowing into US politics from corporate interest groups, the use of torture (domestic and abroad), the way the Obama administration has prosecuted whistleblowers but not war criminals et cetera.
I have therefore only written about the most Godzillaesque cases of abuse/corruption/stupidity in the west. During Bush several bilion dollars in cash to the Iraqi government just evaporated without a paper trail- this was just business as usual. Picking a specific topic is like looking for a specific herring in a huge school.
And now a group of evil clowns are lining up for the presidency; -I *should* write more about them, but at some point it is like what Voltaire wrote about history of the Turkish rulers -just one barbarian succeding another. And there is plenty of coverage of the mess in Swedish and English-language media, so I often skip the depressing task of writing about it.
BTW Trump wants Gitmo to stay open (to no one's surprise)
Cruz is a theocrat. (Marc Rubio is awful but the contrast actually makes him look "good")
--- --- ---
Swedish-language article: "Xi Jinping stärker grepp om medier" http://www.dn.se/nyheter/varlden/xi-jinping-starker-grepp-om-medier/
(Feel free to find an English-language link of the topic, The Guardian is more interested in the Chinese economy...)

http://shanghaiist.com/2016/02/25/xinjiang_musical_war_on_terror.php

Go on, you have to laugh.

Well, at least it beats flame throwers.

#36 - No need. I found I could read the Swedish headline with ease. Hanging around you guys has corrupted me linguistically.

And THIS is why I find it depressing to read (and report) about the fewer swamp: “TN Bill Would Let Pro-Slavery Group Accredit Schools” http://www.patheos.com/blogs/dispatches/2016/02/24/tn-bill-would-let-pr…

Here is a more wholesome news item, as in, not inducing vomiting:
"Newly discovered planet in the Hyades cluster could shed light on planetary evolution" http://phys.org/news/2016-02-newly-planet-hyades-cluster-planetary.html

Songs that the Hyades shall sing
Where flap the tatters of the King
Must die unheard in
Dim Carcosa

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carcosa

Hyades / The King in Yellow? Not a fun place to live.
-- -- -- --
Mano Singham has been covering the fever swamp, so you don't have to: "The influence of the Koch-led oligarchy" http://freethoughtblogs.com/singham/2016/02/19/the-influence-of-the-koc…

Team discovers fabric collection dating back to Kings David and Solomon http://phys.org/news/2016-02-team-fabric-dating-kings-david.html
But isn’t writing about “the era of David and Solomon” a lot like “the era of Isildur and Arnor” ? “3000 years ago” works better.
-- -- -- --
Researchers conclude the universe contains fewer Earth-like planets than previously thought http://phys.org/news/2016-02-earth-unique-thought.html
-which makes it even more inexcusable for the King in Yellow to mess up the home planet of Carcosa!
Morew details: Terrestrial planets across space and time http://arxiv.org/abs/1602.00690v1

Swedish-language article: "Xi Jinping stärker grepp om medier"
I justify posting it since this *is* a clear signal of a policy change. Hof far the party intends to take it is another matter.
This seems like bog-standard pre-Gorbachev Eastern European fare. Not particularly shocking, but not encouraging either.
http://www.dn.se/nyheter/varlden/xi-jinping-starker-grepp-om-medier/
(english summary) Xi visited the three largest news [redaktioner=editorial staff/workplaces] in the country and told them in no uncertain terms that they exist to serve the communist party. The party leader and president said that the purpose of all media are to speak for the communist party and protect its authority. Xi demands more political lessons for those working in government media and that recruitment should be done by political merits.
“It is the task of the media to restore the people’s confidence for the party”, especially as the economy is slowing down, is the message from China Daily.
A year ago, Xi told the artists their art should be politically inspiring.
Lately, much [is written about] all those that should serve the party. "

Tpyos happe3n when hurried I write. Irritating it is. Off to the Dagobah system I am.

"There'll also be public talks from law-enforcers, but more importantly: singing and dancing!"
I can live with that. This goes counter to the article from The Daily Mash:
UK violence falls below acceptable levels http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/society/uk-violence-falls-below-acce…

Vigiland https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cr4DDZqGm2k
I thought these guys were British for sure.

Chinese media work for the Party. Xi wants a more effective mouth piece as a vehicle to disseminate government policy.

Mainlanders comment on Weibo in their millions, using pseudonyms. It's uncontrolled because it's impossible to control. People say what they want to say.

Western media work for Rupert Murdoch.

Fox News, anyone?

Now Hong Kong's only serious English language newspaper is owned by Mainlander Jack Ma. Chief Editor is Burmese, Yonden Lahtoo, who seems to have some quite conservative views. Seems to be taking a more conciliatory (or balanced, depending on how you see it) view lately. Currently pay-walled, but Ma says he is going to make it free of charge.

Apple Daily, HK's biggest selling Chinese newspaper, is owned by Jimmy Lai, a Taiwanese, and publishes nothing but anti-government rhetoric.

So what? I don't see why Swedish media see it as such a big deal. Who owns them, anyway?

Well? Who do own the Swedish media? Or who run the blogs where these revelations are apparently made much of? It's a fair question - you should always question the sources of your information.

Not that Xi's visits and lectures to the state media outlets is any revelation - they are old news here. They got a couple of column inches on the front page for a day, which means kind of notable but not something really important. After all the state media are government owned and are expected to be the mouth piece for the government - if they haven't been sticking to the script, they need to be told to toe the line.

Quite often they might overshoot - like when an American warship sails close to the Paracels in an obvious act of provocation, the state media might publish a piece saying the Chinese military should fire on them to teach them a lesson, and they might need a word from the government to tone down the rhetoric and not be so confrontational.

You still don't know what you are talking about, Birger. I know you think you do, but you don't. Not on this subject.

In the English north, the target of the original “reavers”* (the root of the word “bereaved”) http://www.yorkshirewalks.org/diary11/diary428.html
…”Thorpe, which is known as 'The Hidden village'.The border reivers, raiding parties of Scots, used to operate as far south at this part of Wharfedale until the 1500's, stealing cattle and anything else that was easily portable. These raids tended to follow the rivers and all the towns and villages in Wharfedale suffered attacks except Thorpe. The village is up a side valley obscured from view by the conical hills and it was fortunate enough to escape the attention of the raiders.”
*Not s high-tech as the reavers in “Firefly”

Reaver and bereaved share a common Germanic root. Neither is daughter of the other.

So the roots of bereaved go back further? I suppose it makes sense, considering iron-age societies.
-- -- --
How a Rotherham gang with history of criminality abused vulnerable girls http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/feb/25/how-a-rotherham-gang-wit…
-- -- --

I do not question that most Chinese (or everyone else) can live good lives without problems with authorities.
However.
Power differentials matter for the small percentage of the population that do get into a serious conflict.

To avoid “triggers” I will use an example from Russia. A professor recently got sentenced to 15 years for discussing defence-related things that were already public knowledge with a foreigner.
Most Russians do not get sentenced to prison for anything, but for those who get singled out for arbitrary treatment the absence of an independent judiciary makes a *lot* of difference.

But the Russian media (owned by Putin’s political allies) do not cover such cases, meaning Russians must read about it on foreign web sites that often get trashed by “denial of service” bot attacks engineered by Putin allies.

Americans can live their whole lives without getting into trouble with the authorities. But if they get confused with someone else and get on the “no flying” list it can take years, and a fortune in lawyer costs, to get off. But the Americans are convinced America is the bestest of countries right up to the moment it happens to *them*.
And while nominally a nation ruled by law, the power differential between ordinary people and national security agencies is so big that lives get ruined all the time.

When Bush got re-elected I got scolded by an American acquaintance for criticising US politics. My claim American media was biased was not received well. It would take two failed wars and Edward Snowden for US Television* to start discussing stuff we read about daily in Scandy/ British/ German news media.

Governments -all governments- are not devoid of abuse. And media do not cover more than they have to, to keep the owners happy. And I am not specifically anti-Xi anymore than I am anti-Obama**, although both should be scrutinised on account of the power they wield. (BTW America gets so much coverage every day that I get "US fatigue syndrome" keeping up with events)

*Not including Fox news. It is the “Der Sturmer” of TV.
**But I am definitely anti-Murdoch. On account of his record of perfect evil.

Just to be certain, the Rotheram gang were South Asians, not East Asians.

In America and Australia, 'Asians' means East Asians. In the UK it means South Asians.

I took a leadership course once in which the guy said "All leaders have a limited life, beyond which they become affected by power. And they will cling to power and do anything to resist losing it. They always have to be removed, sometimes forcibly." The examples he gave were that Margaret Thatcher had to be forced from office by her own party, and Gandhi had to be assassinated.

Both Obama and Xi have legally limited terms. Obama got more time than Xi. I'm betting in the big scheme of things, Xi winds up doing more real good.

Small percentages are outliers. Small percentages of people fall under buses. I'm not willing for the good of the vast majority to be sacrificed for the sake of the unlucky few.

And before anyone gets all boo-hoo about Gandhi, learn some of the real truth about him, including his racism.

Birger, bereaved has nothing specific to do with Scottish border reavers. One means robbed, the other means robbers.

Western media work for Rupert Murdoch.

Technically, the US media have various corporate owners: The American ABC is a subsidiary of Disney (how can you be a self-respecting journalist when your boss is a fictional rodent?). CBS and NBC are subsidiaries of other corporations. CNN sold out to Time Warner. True, Murdoch owns Fox News and the Wall Street Journal (in the latter case, he breached the once-solid firewall between the news and editorial/opinion parts of the paper). The end result is a national media with no interest in reporting news that is uncomfortable to the owners. There is a running joke about US media that if certain politicians were to claim that the earth was flat, the headline would be "Opinions Differ Regarding Shape of Earth".

I understand that things are a bit better in the UK (the Guardian and BBC help keep Murdoch's news bureaus from getting too dishonest) but worse in Australia (where Murdoch's properties have a dominant market share). I don't know about the rest of the world.

Australia has two government funded broadcasters/online newscasters: ABC and SBS. They have the second, SBS, because it is multi-lingual. In printed news Murdoch is dominant.

ABC and SBS both have a left liberal bias in reporting news, so - fine, if you know that, you know how to interpret the news to your own preference. Editorially they are run by idiots. One thing they do which I really like (and which the politicians hate) is that they do fact checks on statements made by politicians and publish the results online. The politicians are sometimes caught out making public statements which are totally made-up bullshit - no factual basis at all. That happens less now because they know someone is likely to be fact-checking them.

Some of the editorial stuff on ABC is just drivel. SBS is slightly better, in that it tends to steer clear of editorialising too much - broadcasting in multiple languages, it doesn't really have the time or budget to do too much opinionating of its own.

The 'lifestyle' type 'fun' stuff on ABC is nuts. They had one vet write an article that sleeping with animals is good for you. So I challenged her in writing online on Toxoplasma gondii - I think she didn't know what it was, because it took her a while to respond, then she came back with some lame response about how the dangers of Toxo had been exaggerated. So then another reader came back at her, challenging her with known adverse effects of Toxo, and she never responded.

There has been other stuff like that - like the Indian lady in Sydney who shaves her head and says we should all be vegans because we are related to gorillas and they only eat vegetation, and therefore our bodies are not evolved for a meat diet.

The ABC don't choose the people they have writing that stuff carefully enough. The SBS is a bit more careful, and sticks to serious stuff like education policy.

I totally ignore the Murdoch news organisation. If people prefer his crap to the government-funded organs, more fool them.

The stupidity of the ABC in publishing that vet's article on how it is healthy for humans to sleep with their pets is, of course, that she is an animal doctor. They should have got a human doctor, or the opinions of several, to write about it.

Likewise the 'lifestyle' piece by the stupid Indian lady - they got no counterbalancing opinion from people who could have told them that the ancestors of modern humans split from a common ancestor with gorillas something like 10 million years ago, and that we have evolved somewhat since then.

They should not be publishing worthless garbage like that - not on my tax dollar.

This gives you a bit to chew on. John Hawks is always good - careful, measured and logical. And expert on bones, not just genes, so he can bring the paeloanthropology and genomics together:

http://johnhawks.net/weblog/reviews/neandertals/neandertal_dna/neandert…

BTW just to avoid misunderstandings my reference to Rotherham was about showing how a vulnerable minority can suffer without the majority noticing, not about the perpetrators being of asian descent (I am not an UKIP follower)
-- -- -- -- --

Surprising mathematical law tested on Project Gutenberg texts http://phys.org/news/2016-02-mathematical-law-gutenberg-texts.html

Is this one of the techniques hat can be used to spot when a text has "evolved" at the hands of multiple authors as it is passed down time? The Iliad, the odyssey et cetera.

-- -- -- --
And John Hawks seems to be one of the rare writers that makes an effort to make the text a pleasure to read, instead of cramming facts into a lump that requires multiple readings.

The cost of judge Scalia’s death to business http://freethoughtblogs.com/singham/2016/02/28/the-cost-of-scalias-deat…
(evil schadenfreude chuckle)

Yes, reading John Hawks is always a pleasure.

The Rotherham racket was run by organised Pakistani gangs, and the reason it was never properly investigated was the desire not to give offence.

Gypsies - sorry, Roma, that much maligned and mistreated bunch: http://www.unz.com/ldinh/gypsies/

I have noticed that the sales on quadcopters have made them quite affordable. If one is big enough to lift a high-quality video camera, it should be possible to get useful images of subtle terrain features at sunrise and sunset, as the shadows reinforce them.
I am surely not the first to get this idea, but I suspect the camera would be the expensive component, preventing the use of quadcopters for surveys of regions with signs of ancient settlements.
And you would want to have specialised algorithms to "stitch" the images together.

A rarely considered aspect of the autism/vaccine controversy http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?id=4033

Kidnap victim tied up and left for dead escapes on to crocodile farm http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2016/mar/01/kidnap-victim-tie…
-Crocs are beneficial!

More than $1bn deposited in Malaysian prime minister's account – report http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/mar/01/more-than-1bn-deposited-ma…

Isis kills eight Dutch members for 'desertion' http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/feb/29/isis-kills-eight-dutch-mem…
Poor HR practices. I don't want ISIS as a boss.

"Could Cthulhu trump the other Super Tuesday contenders?" http://www.rawstory.com/2016/03/could-cthulhu-trump-the-other-super-tue…

“Could Cthulhu trump the other Super Tuesday contenders?”

A former graduate student (now Ph.D.) had the following bumper sticker on his car:

CTHULHU FOR PRESIDENT
Why vote for the lesser of two evils?

More than $1bn was deposited into Malaysian prime minister Najib Razak’s bank accounts from 2011 to 2013, far more than the $681m earlier identified.
The 681 m was reorted as a “gift” from the Saudi royal family.
Last year, a Saudi blogger who was under threat by prosecusion for criticising the theocracy fled to Malaysia, where he was promptly arrested and sent back to Saudi Arabia without a hearing in Malaysia (coughmoney changing handscough).
This reminds me of the two Swedish party leaders who harshly criticised the Swedish government for criticising the Saudi record of human rights violations. Also fifty Swedish business executives wrote an open letter saying we should not criticise Saudi Arabia.
It seems they are correct in assuming it pays to keep on the good side of the Saudi royal family. I wonder if any Swede has received any “gifts”…?

Birger@70: For that matter, even the US politicians who are the most eager to start wars in Muslim countries, ostensibly to fight terrorists, have not suggested fighting such a war against Saudi Arabia, despite the tacit support of the royal family (at minimum; there is some evidence that some in the House of Saud are active supporters) for groups like Daesh. That includes Donald Trump, of whom I have heard said that the main difference between him and Vizzini is that Vizzini understands how foolish it would be to start a land war in Asia.

Also, the Saudi intelligence forces are said to sometimes help out doing the Dirty work the American intelligence agencies do not want to do themselves. This is apparenltly even more important to the American allies than the value of the Saudi oil.
-- -- --

There will be a Heavy Metal festival in Umeå this weekend.
-- -- --

The detective story/thriller "Available Dark" by Elisabeth Hand is about art photography but peripherally touches the past Black Metal scene in Norway.
Killer stages his killings to represent the Jolesveiner in Iceland; Gluggagegir, Hordaskellir, Dvörusleikir, Lampaskuggi Ketrókur ert cetera.

Mystery on the marsh: A newly discovered Anglo-Saxon island http://phys.org/news/2016-03-mystery-marsh-newly-anglo-saxon-island.html

Self-evident facts about the paleolithic! http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?id=4037

BTW David Duke has endorsed Trump as the man who "will save America from the Jews" .