Yet another example of religious insanity:
A British primary school teacher has been arrested in Sudan, accused of insulting Islam's Prophet by letting her class of 7-year-olds name a teddy bear Mohammed, her school said on Monday.
Colleagues of Gillian Gibbons, aged 54 from Liverpool, told Reuters they feared for her safety after receiving reports that young men had already started gathering outside the Khartoum police station where she was being held.
I don't know why they're blaming the teacher. Clearly, all of those 7-year-olds need to be hauled out of their homes and stoned to death.
- Log in to post comments
More like this
I haven't said much about Gillian Gibbons, the unfortunate schoolteacher from Britain who fell afoul of religious fundamentalism in Sudan when she did a class exercise in which her class picked a name for a Teddy Bear. Unfortunately, the name the children picked was Mohammed. Because of Islamic…
After being imprisoned and facing a lynch mob, the teacher in Sudan whose class named a teddy bear "Mohammed" has finally been freed. She has a very positive attitude and says nothing but generous things about the people of Sudan, and thanks the Sudanese government for letting her have a bed while…
I have a friend who, about 15 years ago, went from being a high school teacher to being the chief lobbyist of a very large company. A couple weeks ago we had a conversation in which he said that if he was still teaching advanced government, now that he's actually worked up close with the…
And so it begins.
Well, it hasn't really just begun. In fact, it's been going on a long time. I'm talking about confusing correlation with causation when it comes to vaccines. For example, the "vaccines cause autism" variety of the anti-vaccine movement blatantly confuses the correlation with the…
Jesus Christ!
And I'll bet that quite a few of those young men are named "Mohammed". Obviously, the police should haul them all in and throw them into the impound locker with the teddy bear.
Isn't Mohammed an extremely common given name among Muslims? Is everyone named Mohammed an insult to the prophet? I guess everone named Mohammed needs to be killed, eh?
Isn't Mohammed a common name in Arabic/Moslem circles? IIRC, the leader of the 9/11 murders was an Egyptian named Mohammed Atta or some such.
Sounds like the boys down in Sudan just want to stone a Xian teacher for old times sake. Must not be much else happening there
FWIW, the Sudan is one of the few theocracies left in the world. They could be blazing a trail for the USA, if the theocrats have their way.
This is no fair representation of the Islamic world. The vast majority of Muslims are tolerant and open-minded individuals, and are just as appalled by this incident as you and me.
So the "Voices of Reason" keep saying. They conveniently ignore the evidence which indicates that "the vast majority of Muslims" are utterly warped and deranged by their religion.
OK, at the risk of being a smartalec, I thought religion itself was insanity. Apparently I haven't been paying close enough attention to NPR (Non-believer's Press Releases)....or, at the very least, I believe I haven't.
Still, it seems that 'insane insanity' doesn't appear to be too helpful a reduction. Can I then puckishly conclude that religion itself is not insanity, or is that religion is just a subset of insanity in general? I just want to know what kind of crazy I am.
Oh, wait. I'm a theist blogging on Pharyngula. That kind of crazy.
Jehovah, Jehovah, Jehovah.
*ducks*
Religion is a subset of irrationality, a concept that strive to limit in our day to day lives.
"My plush octopus?" As in, you have only one? This has been a severe day of disillusionment. :(
WRT Scott's comment:
The supernatural claims of religion (the factors, in other words, that distinguish a "religion" from, depending on the religion in question, a "philosophy," a "political movement," a "community service organization," or a "street gang") satisfy the technical definition of "delusion" (or would if the definition weren't arbitrarily written to exclude it) but I would contend that it is in many cases is properly classified as a similar phenomenon to "hallucinations in the sane." This is not one of them.
I wish I could say I was surprised. Any word on whether the British government is going to be able to get her out of there?
Anyone who believes something without evidence is crazy. Are moderate Christians just as crazy as Islamic fundamentalists? Well that's a good question, and I can't say I know the answer. What I do know, however, is that Islamic fundamentalists are much more stubborn, and infinitely more dangerous.
That makes me feel a little awkward about having named my plush piggy Lying Pedophile Mo' Hamhead.
I read this story earlier today and just felt sick. Particularly when I got to the part about men gathering outside the police station. So can anyone tell me... where do I apply to leave the human race? I refuse to be a part of any species which contain members so vile, so repulsive. Gah! I feel dirty.
Hmm, If I sew on a few more arms...
Anyone who believes something without evidence is crazy. No, you're thinking of "stupid." The insanity part comes wen you try to build on that foundation...oh and torture and kill people who don't agree with you -- and that's religion.
Kids got to take that doll home. It's possible that some of them even slept with Mohammed.
How many millions will the Brits have to give Sudan to get that woman out of jail?
Fanaticism pays.
Boy, JeGodvAllah's got a thin skin. Perhaps He/She/It would feel a little more self-confident and a little less self-conscious if He/She/It stopped using so many aliases and prophets and started speaking for Him-/Her-/Itself.
My psychiatrist's been coaching me for years to just come out and say what I mean. Couldn't hurt for the Big Guy to join some sort of therapy group and learn how to communicate.
but... but... teddy bears are great, surely? they wouldn't, for example, stone people to death? they're the very model of morality.
God, would you ever shut up about religion and creationism. You're the worst creationist of the lot, your attack on James Watson recently put you firmly in the leftist race-creationist camp.
http://www.slate.com/id/2178122/entry/2178123/
Clearly the teacher is not the only one to blame in this. Twenty of those sinful little seven-year-olds voted to name the bear Mohammad. Even worse, the remaining 3 seven-year-olds were defiant enough to vote *against* Mohammad. I'll bet some of them even compounded their crime by being female. Fatwas all around!
I'm trying to joke, but the sad part is, it makes just as much sense to punish the children as the teacher. As several posters were quick to point out, the name Mohammad has a history of being used for non-prophets. I could try and analyze the psychology of this latest outcropping of insanity - mass hysteria, presumably - but why bother? The point is, this is not justice, and this is sure as hell not sane behavior.
Religion and perspective - ne'er the twain shall meet.
"God, would you ever shut up about religion and creationism."
God has actually been curiously silent on the subject.
Polpo Allah Luciana?
D'uh, typing is fun.
They conveniently ignore the evidence which indicates that "the vast majority of believers" are utterly warped and deranged by their religion.
Fixed that for ya Jaime.
An 'expert' on IQ said on BBC radio 4 recently that the average IQ of people in that region is about 85. If he's correct, that might help explain their behaviour.
Maybe the teacher was teaching the kids about that new theory that's sweeping the scientific world; whatchamacallit.. Indignant Design theory
Oh, and on a related note, it turns out that the Saudi rape victim the courts decided to give more lashes was having an affair, so I guess that's all right then.
And as for you, I'm rather tired of explaining the wealth of flaws, distortions, and outright lies in The Bell Curve. You'll notice the study Saletan sites is - drum roll please - based off The Bell Curve.
I do have to applaud the way Saletan tries to label anyone who disagrees with this bullcrap a creationist, though - apparently with a straight face. Clearly believing Adam hung out with plant-munching velocoraptors is the same as pointing out basic statistical flaws in The Bell Curve. In this spirit, I'd like to suggest Saletan - and yourself, of course, dear poster - are Honesty Child Molesters.
No, I meant what I said. The vast majority of Muslims are utterly warped and deranged by their religion. Muslims. Most Christians I know are relatively harmless. Most Muslims, on the other hand, as a mild example, believe that apostasy should be punishable by death. All the statistics indicate this.
Well Bah Humbug, I am serious when I say all who go about with Religious Fundimentalism upon their lips should be boiled in their own pudding and have a stake of the Olive Branch shoved through their hearts. I am sick and tired of hearing about the &^%&^$%#@^*&)&(&* Nutcase Muslims, when will they be forced to come out of the stone age and read their own Book of the Prophet, if that is what they want, the Stone Age, then I say let's bomb them back into it. All Muslims, thank GOD, are not Insane. Now that being said I believe that all Religion has ever done for the world is create lunacy and extremism. Mankind is not smart enough apparently to live it's existence without a crutch.
The Christians believe that too, and it says as much in their book. We just have a society of laws that forces them to behave. As soon as that isn't there, they're at least as gleeful about killing heretics as the Muslims are.
Theory = 'races seperated by over 40,000 years of evolutionary history and facing wildly divergent selection pressures magically evolved identical IQ levels'. That is creationism at its worst, and it's what Myers believes.
The Xian bible says that
1. Disobedient children should be stoned to death at the city gates (Deuteronomy).
2. Witches should be put to death.
Neither happens very often these days. There are civil laws that keep them from murdering their kids or alleged witches. In a theocracy, both might be more common.
Why aren't the Christians rounding up all the latinos named Jesus? Religious fundamentalism is fun!
A teddy bear? Oh my aching stigmata! Will the wonders of stupidity never cease?
On the other hand...
Well, yes, but... but no. It's critical to understand the subtle nuances of arbitrary religious symbolic boundaries. It's not okay to name a perfectly innocent child's cuddly toy after the prophet, but it's perfectly okay to name a mewling, drooling, pooping tabula rasa bundle of sin joy after the prophet.
I suppose I'll be stoned to death for naming my piccolo "Allah Breve".
And what races would those be?
My question was of course in response to the last post by this "andromeda" person.
"Seperated[sic] by over 40,000 years"? I've always wondered where that idea came from. Were humans distributed along racial clines all enforcing anti-miscegenation laws or something?
How about "humans have been interbreeding and interacting liberally for tens of thousands of years and in the absence of some kind of (magical) genetic isolation mechanism we'd expect similar capabilities distributed throughout"?
She's a foreigner. In some places that makes her fair game for all blame (especially various Arabic and Islamic places, from which I've heard of previous such legal injustices before). It's probably also particularly damning that she's a female. Again notably applicable in the same places but hardly unique to them.
WEll, I think I've seen enough fruit this evening to make a fruitcake.
The millions Britain pays to get her out should be spent on sending a rapid reaction force there to slaughter these stupid bastards at the same time, and make the Sudan a protectorate again. Or dig a Vulcan bomber out of a museum somewhere and use it to rain twenty thousand pounds of teddy bears down on the place. Take your pick.
It's a trumped up charge against an innocent woman; proof that even those who go to a place solely to do good cannot escape the wrath of the Islamist Fuckhead Society. (As if the beheading of left-wing aid workers in Iraq wasn't proof enough.)
If I were an imam, I'd have put out a fatwa on these bloody idiots already. Or on the teddy bear.
"Clearly, all of those 7-year-olds need to be hauled out of their homes and stoned to death."
Don't give the "gathering young men" ideas. Perhaps they won't think of that themselves.
'races seperated by over 40,000 years of evolutionary history and facing wildly divergent selection pressures magically evolved identical IQ levels'
And precisely the same magical number of fingers and toes!
Or what about the idea that our linguistic and cognitive abilities evolved prior to the divergences that account for the superficial differences between races? How about that intelligence (being coded for at a large number of loci) could be under stabilising selective pressures, and thus would remain roughly consistent under a thousand generations.
I mean, we've all got the same number of legs, arms, fingers and toes, and that didn't happen by magic. The evolution of the human brain from our last common ancestor with chimpanzees (~5-7 MYA) to tool using (~2.5 MYA) took 4.5 to 2.5 million years. How fucking fast do you think brains evolve, anyway?
At any rate, there is no reasonable need to rehash this argument. And since there is no valid scientific reason to abandon the hypothesis that there is no significant difference in intelligence among 'races', your comparison of a person who does not to a creationist is frankly wrong.
How is it that the people who argue the hardest for intelligence differences between the 'races' seem the stupidest, anyway?
ow about "humans have been interbreeding and interacting liberally for tens of thousands of years and in the absence of some kind of (magical) genetic isolation mechanism we'd expect similar capabilities distributed throughout"? mostly seperate. most british people today are descended form the origninal inhabitants. any interactions that occur are at the extreme periphery.
If adults in authority can get away with equating a teddy bear with the thoroughly dead prophet, then I'm with George Carlin: religion is mental illness.
Like the Gauls, who inhabited a large swath of western Europe and were the progenitors of the "original" Celts? And don't even get me started on those Normans and Saxons. All dirtying up them pure Anglos.
No, no interbreeding there at all.
I better not say what I call my piggybank!
Mr Shrek is British, Geordie to be precise, and my in-laws are the most in-bred lot I've ever met.
It's England, not Australia. People have bloody well swum the channel, and it was narrower in the not so distant past. Armadas have invaded England, raped, conquered and settled the 'English' for two thousand years. It is one of the worst examples of a genetically isolated population outside of the Mediterranean area.
You know, considering that scientific racism fits PZ's description of creationism, as analogous to a football team that's lost every game but still demands it be given a place at the superbowl and cries foul when it isn't, at least as well as most creationists do, that comparison is exactly 180 degrees wrong and 100% ironic.
What is the "leftist race-creationist camp"?
A group of liberals who creates races?
I like this one today, too:
(11-26) 12:00 PST SAN JOSE - A South Bay psychic and fortune teller known as "Miss Donna" has been charged with bilking $445,000 from a woman by telling her she was cursed and needed to pay up so she would be cleansed of evil, prosecutors said today.
Eric Turkheimer on Cato Unbound says that the research program that races differ in genes for IQ is wrong because it reinforces negative stereotypes about an historically disadvantaged population. I think that he is right.
http://www.cato-unbound.org/2007/11/21/eric-turkheimer/race-and-iq/
Turkheimer, incidentally, conducted important research on the relationship between socioeconomic status and heritability of IQ.
What an extraordinarily untrue statement! Unless you are saying the original inhabitants of Earth. In which case I'd agree that there's not a lot of sign of alien invasion (or of godly intervention preventing that common descent).
I hate to feed the troll but andomeda has come up with an ingenious way to excuse his obviously meager IQ. Blame it on his race, whatever that may be.
The British are pretty mixed due to sequential invasions by the Romans, Anglo-Saxons, Vikings, Norman French, and the current influx of Asians and Blacks. The preRoman population, celts, are themselves relatively recent immigrants from the continent. The language, English, is itself a recent derivative of Old German.
So what is wrong with being ethnically mixed? Many or most Americans are so wildly mixed that it has long since ceased to be either interesting or important. FWIW, geneticists identify mixing of various populations with a phenomena called hybrid vigor. This is why, for instance, most corn is double hybrid and why mutt dogs are considered the most intelligent. Hmmmm, maybe andromeda's problem isn't an inferior racial (best guess, Trollish) background. Maybe he is just too inbred.
Like, wow. That is one of the more spectacular self-immolations I've witnessed here.
Add in Christianity and Judaism and pretty much every other religion and you'd be completely right. They're frequently a bunch of nutters and more than willing to kill for what they believe in.
Look at the history of most any Mennonite family and find out how many were killed for their beliefs. Quite a few in mine. Even here in America where that stuff isn't supposed to happen. Which is why huge swaths of Mennonites left the United States for Canada and up-state New York, where they were safer from religious extremists in the more populous parts of the colonies.
And, of course, the harassment of the Mormons, including the lynching of their founder, across the United States into the wilderness of Utah. And then, it's not like the Mormons have clean hands with their "Mountain Meadows" scandal. They're well known to have brutally butchered 120 men, women and children on the way to California.
And, of course, abortion provider killings. Bombing of doctor's offices. The demands for "biblical" law.
Perhaps by 'original inhabitants' Andromeda really means 'kinds'.
That would make the truthfullness of the claim on par with the rest of the creationists' bullshit. At least we now know why Andromeda's so pissed off at PZ for being anti-religion and anti-creationist.
What Andy really means to say is, "I know you are but what am I?"
Yes, but they never cease. Humans fuck, almost like bonobos. Which is why all human variance is clinal.
The only reproductively isolated group of humans ever were the inhabitants of Easter Island for about 400 years. It would make a lot more sense to divide humanity into two races, Native Easter Islander and Everyone Else, than any other scheme that has ever been advanced (and dozens, if not hundreds, of contradictory schemes have been proposed, and often religiously believed in).
The 'offending' school has now been closed until January. Sharia barbarism 2, rationality and education, 0.
...young men had already started gathering outside the Khartoum police station...
Now, before you criticise these young men, remember that they are motivated by faith, just like scientists! Right?
andromeda,
care to elaborate?
Although DNA research as shown that, in the areas where used, that local inhabitants lines can be traced back to prehistoric there is also a large amount of new blood coming in (well apart from in Norfolk where rumour has it a descendant of the beaker tribes is looked at funny) eg, well the amesbury archer (to save you the effort a skeleton found at stonehenge dating back to 3200 bc who lived in the alps as a child.
Disturbing number of people reaching for fantasy ordinance.
You're presenting England as isolated? Really? They've been invaded and colonized by pretty much the entirety of Europe. Ever notice how similar German is to English? That's because the Anglo-Saxons were originally made up of by invading Germanic tribes, and they only came after the Romans, who weren't the original inhabitants either. Not that it was one tribe, either - that apostrophe is there for a reason. The Angles and the Saxons were separate tribes.
Then of course you have your various Danes, your Franks, your Norse, and your Normans - who owed their origins to both France and Scandinavia.
I look forward to seeing what you come with next. There's nothing quite like misinformation tetherball.
I bought that book. Everyone was a-twitter about it and I wanted to see it for myself.
I've also bought books by Robert Bork, Al Franken, Burdick & Lederer (The Ugly American), Michael Moore, Dinesh D'Souza and a bunch more. I find them interesting and like to delve into the footnotes, the arguments, the logic, etc.
Some have been good books (Franken's), or entertaining (Moore) and some have been bat-shit crazy (Bork). Even when I don't agree with the entire premise of an author's position, I can sometimes see some validities in claims against the "opposition," even if they're massively over-stated.
Unfortuantly, The Bell Curve was probably the hardest to see the BS in. Mostly because it was deliberately obfiscated/wanked in so many areas that I didn't know where to start shoveling the shit.
But I did like the way they sold thier "blacks are inferior" argument. Not by attacking blacks at first, but by attacking poor whites. I thought it was a clever way to pull the wool over the eyes of others.
When is Coathangrrrr going to come in and scold us for ridiculing Muslims?
By the way, if anyone wants to read a good treatment of English history, I recommend Warren Ellis' Crecy. It's an enjoyable read, told from the perspective of an English longbowman and filled with details such as how the longbowmen dipped their arrows in the latrine for a bit of biological warfare. It also has swearing.
I suspect as soon as he/she/it is done hashing out the ethics of removing lint from one's navel elsewhere on the intertubes.
:LOL: That was frackin' funny. England had one of the most diverse ethnic backgrounds. Starting with Celts, Britons and Picts, who inter-bred like crazy, the population was further diversified with the Romans.
Following the collapse of Roman rule, England was invaded by the Anglos, the Saxons, the Jutes, and the Frisians who conquered and divided much of England amongst them. This remained, pretty much, status quo until about 800AD when the Vikings invaded and colonized much of England, especially in Northumbria and spread their genes far and wide.
By the 10th Century or so, much of England was under the control of the Danes. The Normans got into the picture in the 12th Century.
The point being that England is a hodge-podge of Northern European ethnic origins. Hardly some "pure bred" race.
I understand completely. I study the various species of wingnuts because it's a great way to train one of God greatest gifts (sic), critical thinking. They're like logic problems written by the severely disturbed.
Wow. see what you miss when you go away for a few hours?
First off: Sudan is not alone in being a theocracy.
See Also: Iran. Saudi Arabia is not far behind as the royal family can't ignore the clerics without setting up a religious revolution. The United States is still quite a ways from a theocracy, so long as the Constitution and the Bill of Rights stand. Get rid of either of those documents and it'll be game over before you can blink.
I know that I am stating the obvious here but andromeda is one of the most ignorant trolls to show up here. Betty is more intelligent. (While being more deluded.) Making an argument about the British Isles while knowing nothing about the history of the British Isles. Truly staggering.
If one is going to try to make the racist argument about the Anglo-Saxons, at least know the history. Thought one would be hopeful that such historical knowledge would knock the racist leanings from you.
Andromeda may have misunderstood some reports saying the historical migrations had less impact than believed.
"In The Tribes of Britain, archaeologist David Miles says around 80 percent of the genetic characteristics of most white Britons have been passed down from a few thousand Ice Age hunters."
Needless to say this is not the last word on British genetics, some studies have found a huge Saxon impact (and if you think "around 80% of most" counts as purebred, I have some puppies to sell you...)
I've noticed a common them here among scientific racists, creationists, and climate change denialists.
As a general rule, they tend to glom on to the ideas of the lone or few who dissent from the general scientific consensus and insist that the rarity of said dissenters and the paucity of their refereed scholarship is due to The Great Censorship Conspiracy of Academia. Secondly, they respond to any criticism of such dissenters with some vague ad hominem attack accusing the critic of an inability to think outside the PC/liberal/leftist box (because, um, it takes a really novel, free-thinking mind to suggest that people of a different ethnicity or race might be somehow sub-par).
Unfortunately, in nearly every case I've seen here, the general level of knowledge demonstrated by the 'free-thinkers' outside of what they've read in The Bell Curve or on Climate Audit is nearly nil.
For people who like to accuse others of dogmatism, they give every indication of being dilletantes who happened to stumble upon a book or resource that validates their racism, creationism, or climate change denialism.
Haven't these people ever heard of getting a second opinion?
The only reproductively isolated group of humans ever were the inhabitants of Easter Island for about 400 years.
A bit OT, but Tasmanians were possibly isolated for thousands of years.
For some off-topic comic relief, Tyler DiPietro has a nice rendition of "Shorter Bill Dembski":
Read the original at your own risk, and be alert for Teh Burning Stupid.
I don't think Muslims are any more deranged by their faith than any other large religious subset of the total human population of this planet. What you do have are cultures in certain states which are more prone to extremism and violence. The fact that some claim to be carrying out violent and oppressive acts in the name of Islam does not mean that adoption the faith automatically turns all its followers violent.
As for andromeda's comment about British descent, speaking as a Brit, my first response is that I'm happy to acknowledge we're a bastard 'race'.
My second response is, bollocks!
DLC, Saudi Arabia is 'not far behind'. Saudi Arabia is a theocracy. Those clerics have free ride over the population. And look at the fruits. Most of the September 11 terrorists were Saudi. Most of the leaders of Al Quada are Saudi. Most of the terrorist entering Iraq in the wake of the American invasion are Saudi.
I am not even touching on the treatment of women. Just keep in mind US military women are not allowed to drive there. (But the Southern Baptists must be jealous.)
This one of the great allies of the US.
The only reproductively isolated group of humans ever were the inhabitants of Easter Island for about 400 years.
What about Tasmania? IIRC it was home to the longest-isolated group of people known.
It would be nice if there were an edit feature. I had the wrong name; it is Brenda, not Betty.
But the Juto-Frisians had really poor press agents - there's a lesson there...
Perhaps the teacher is in trouble because she was teaching the kids how to vote - a dangerous idea!
There is a wonderful book, Before the Dawn (2003) by Nicolas Wade which describes many aspects of human evolution from the emergence of Homo sap. in eastern Africa to the beginnings of recorded history. In a broad sweep, Neanderthals were replaced by behaviorally modern humans in Europe, perhaps as late as 15,000 ybp in the Iberian peninsula. Agriculture spread from the Fertile Crescent rapidly across Europe at the end of the Younger Dryas, but, the techniques spread, the genes of the early practitioners by and large, did not. There is a remarkable degree of 'regionality' of certain genetic markers-- see the afore mentioned reference for greater detail. I will try to pick up this thread tomorrow, but, flittering off to write lectures for an 8:30 A.M. class.
Unfortunately, the operative word is was. The last pure-blooded Tasmanian Aborigine died over a century ago, thanks to colonists from Ye Olde Genetically Isolated England, and any remaining descendants are part British as well.
Of better or for worse, the handful of 'uncontacted peoples' are pretty much the only remaining places you can find any vague degree of genetic isolation, and they're not very practical for testing. Sentinelese tend to be a bit too hostile to take an IQ test.
It's not just the dogma that makes people nuts. You have to wonder what sort of lives these people are living where they have nothing better to do than go down to the local precinct and threaten someone who's already locked up.
That sounds interesting, but what exactly is the relevance? Is it just an interesting sidenote, or is this intended to bolster the arguments of fork-tongued fuckwits like andromeda who argue that a person's skin color is a predictor of their IQ and various other traits, and accuse people who deny their very specific claims about what "race" comprises and implies of believing that heredity does not exist?
Make that "..and various other traits, and pretend that people who dispute their very specific claims about what "race" comprises and implies are actually arguing that heredity does not exist at all?" I second the wishful thinking about an edit button, but it'd probably cause more problems than it solves, especially if comments are reviewed...
re. #s 56 (David Marjanovic)
#72 and #76 were correct, #81 brings in a red herring. David did write 'only...ever', so Tassie must have slipped his mind.
Given the small size of the effective population before contact (and consequent low genetic variability, it can be inferred), the absence of extant 'pure-blooded' (sic) Tasmanians probably doesn't mean much additional genetic diversity has been lost there... except for Tasmanian Y chromosomes, which are probably completely extinct.
Isolation occurred at some unknown time after the end-Pleistocene sea-level rise, either when Bass Strait became unnavigable in bark canoes or when the Tasmanian population lost that technology - unless occasional mainlanders got blown south from time to time, which I concede is not totally unlikely over such a long timescale.
And won't YOU feel bad when they actually do it.
I blame A.A: Milne myself.
Bob
On the BBC they were saying that she's apparently in line for a sentence of 40 lashes.
Sheesh, you'd think she was a marijuana smoker, with a sentence like that.
Gah! Ignore the extra dot!
I always do.
Sheesh, you'd think she was a marijuana smoker, with a sentence like that.
What?
Huh?
Hey, who's got the chips?
I, for one, am proud that my ancestors were utter and complete libertines. My great-great-great-grandmother probably fucked one of your ancestors, and good on her for it. It has, in all probability (literally), made me and my offspring (well, the single spring is sprung, but the argument works for just him and me[yes, "me" in this case,objective, is correct]) much hardier genetically.
Yay to past whores and scoundrels! Everybody find someone who doesn't look like you and fuck 'em.
David Marjanović wrote...
"The only reproductively isolated group of humans ever were the inhabitants of Easter Island for about 400 years."
The aboriginal Tasmanians were isolated for what is generally agreed to be around 10,000 years, so you are out by a factor of 25 (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tasmanian_aboriginals).
Everybody find someone who doesn't look like you and fuck 'em.
Luckily for my wife, mission accomplished.
Lucky for me, too.
What a fascinating conversation, though. My mom was raised in England from Irish parents, and it don't mean a thing. My dad has lots of stuff going on. My wife is Chinese.
I was hoping our kids would turn out darker than they did, but, alas, they have to wear lots of sunscreen too. And they are way, way smarter than I was at their age.
I attribute that to something else covered today: Theosophy. Yup, I went to a Waldorf school. What a waste of money that was. When people talk about Moby Dick, well, we didn't read much at Waldorf. Worst school ever.
I actually felt a twinge of jealousy reading this. x.x
MikeM: A fellow Waldorf survivor? I was lucky. They asked me to leave halfway through "first grade" because at age 7, my reading habits (including Jules Verne and J. R. R. Tolkien) made them concerned that I "wasn't properly reincarnated into my body." You might find this site useful/interesting.
well myers, maybe you should check out 'blood of the isles'.
"the episodes of group migration into the British Isles were remarkably few between the Norman Conquest of 1066 and the beginning of modern mass immigration after 1945: the French Huguenot refugees, the modest flow of Ashkenazi Jews, and a few others. Nevertheless, in recent years the politically-correct elites on both sides of the Atlantic have begun to promote the improbable contention that Britain has always been a land of immigration. Ironically, just as this has become an article of faith, genetic evidence has begun to pile up about how profoundly wrong it is. Not only did immigration after 1066 play a vanishingly small role in the makeup of the offshore islanders, but even the famous invasions of previous millennia--Normans, Vikings, Anglo-Saxons, and Romans--merely added a fairly minor overlay to the prehistoric gene pool. The family trees of the English, Scottish, Welsh, and Irish are overwhelmingly indigenous to the British Isles since far back into prehistoric times. The title of Sykes' first chapter, "Twelve Thousand Years of Solitude," summarizes this finding. The "average settlement dates" in the Isles for the ancestors of modern British and Irish people, he estimates, were around 8,000 years ago."
http://www.vdare.com/sailer/070415_diverse.htm
a self-immolation. wait, what?
And his credentials are? I don't have time to check up on all his links, but reading their FAQ page and position statements, this doesn't seem like a remotely credible source, though it does provide an amusing corroboration of previous accusations that you and those like you "give every indication of being dilletantes who happened to stumble upon a book or resource that validates their racism, creationism, or climate change denialism."
(Wikipedia on [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vdare]the website[/url] and [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Sailer]author[/url] of his source, for whatever that's worth).
Azkyroth, remembering which medium he's writing in this time:
Basically, this seems to be an intensely partisan site and individual, advocating a position (race predicts intelligence, etc.) that has been, in general form, so intensely afflicted with observer and confirmation bias, and innumerable, blithely ignored confounding factors, that it's become a running joke. Do better, plsthx.
Spare yourself the pain Azkyroth, I've flicked through the site and my head nearly exploded with teh stupid it emitted. My favourite bit was the area where you could "report an illegal". Anywhere I see the words "white" and "nationalist" in the same sentence I get nervy.
"...but even the famous invasions of previous millennia--Normans, Vikings, Anglo-Saxons, and Romans--merely added a fairly minor overlay to the prehistoric gene pool"
Wow. Now that's one big, misleadig pile of horseshit.
Of course the invasions of the British Isles by the Normans, Vikings etc. didn't do much to change the prehistoric gene pool - because everybody in the whole of bloody Europe comes from the same prehistoric genepool. There just isn't any way that you can determine if somebody is from Denmark, England, Europe or Italy just by looking at their genes.
...but then, being super-special and pureblood feels so good, doesn't it?
*headsmack* And that was supposed to read "Denmark, England, Germany or Italy"...
God, would you ever shut up about religion and creationism. You're the worst creationist of the lot, your attack on James Watson recently put you firmly in the leftist race-creationist camp.
What does that have to do with the title post? Honestly, if I were a mod, I'd delete that and all comments pertaining to it just to shift the focus back onto the original subject.
Where does this idea that Britain will spend millions on getting Ms Gibbons out of gaol come from? I know consuls and ambassadors are paid a lot, but I doubt a few weeks of their time amounts to "millions".
"Yorkshire clan linked to Africa"
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/6293333.stm
Summary: Y-chromosome haplogroup A1 is extremely rare, having previously been found in only 25 people worldwide, all West African. An additional 7 people turned up- in Yorkshire. All of them were native-born Brits, with no knowledge of any African ancestry, who shared a common ancestor in the 1700s. Speculation is that this rare Y-chromosome was introduced via the Romans (who recruited from Africa) or via the slave trade. Since then, another African Y-chromosome group has turned up in a different British lineage.
Purebred Brits indeed- like my lovely little mutt cats.
It's not the T&E that would drain the treasury - it's the ransom. That's the thinking, anyway.
NelC: They will pay millions as a ransom in slightly prettier language.
What is wrong with being outbred? Geneticists knew decades ago that hybrids frequently show "vigor", enhancements in fitness. This is why double hybrid corn is planted and why mutt dogs are considered the most intelligent. The stereotypes that hillbillys from isolated locations are inbred and dumb has a grain of truth in it. It is recommended that you do not marry your sister, mother, or cousin.
The USA has been a melting pot for so long, that many or most citizens are wildly mixed. Last I heard, we were the world leader is science and the last superpower. Although we are on a slide right now, the Bushes are a good example of ethnic inbreeding.
Speaking as a current inhabitant of Britain, whose ancestors include Huguenots, English, Scots, Irish and at least one Pole that I know of, who was born in South Africa, and with an Asian wife, I find it hilarious that andromeda actually claimed that the British are genetically isolated. Citing white-supremacist websites completed the death spiral on that one.
Someone doesn't understand that 8,000 years is a pitifully small amount of time.
You may be able to genetically distinguish "british Isle" genes, whatever that means,
but the markers are unimportant. There's no developmental difference between continental europeans and "islanders". Is there? Show us the evidence.
Islamic fanatics are what fundamentalist christians seek to be like - utterly devoted to their religion, believing in it without the slightest trace of doubt, working the Word of God into every area of their lives both personal and public. They are unable to see the simularity though, because they are able to focus only on the differences.
Oh, we will be paying millions, will we? Can we leave the moral outrage on that until and if it actually happens? The true facts are shocking enough, goodness knows, we don't have to make stuff up.
My plush octopuses are named Xenu and Ocho. What's wrong with---?
Oh, shit. I think there's Scientologists at my door.
Good point -- I did forget about them --, but has any research on this been done?
Good point also about the Sentinelese; they clearly are isolated, but nobody knows since when.
To be fair, it does work with twenty Hungarians. Not with one Hungarian, though.
Yes, but they never cease. Humans fuck, almost like bonobos. Which is why all human variance is clinal.
The only reproductively isolated group of humans ever were the inhabitants of Easter Island for about 400 years. It would make a lot more sense to divide humanity into two races, Native Easter Islander and Everyone Else, than any other scheme that has ever been advanced (and dozens, if not hundreds, of contradictory schemes have been proposed, and often religiously believed in).
Good point -- I did forget about them --, but has any research on this been done?
Good point also about the Sentinelese; they clearly are isolated, but nobody knows since when.
To be fair, it does work with twenty Hungarians. Not with one Hungarian, though.