The Egyptian Method

Since we just had "The Sri Lanka Option", I thought I'd give you something in a similar vein: here, instead of violent insurgency control, we have democratic uprising control.

In case you haven't heard, Egypt has been having a popular uprising against their President Mubarak. The people clamor for democracy (otherwise fondly known as "mob rule"), and when the people clamor, things go either violent or Ghandi's involved. And Ghandi was shot by one of his supporters...but I digress.

In Egypt, though, things haven't quite gotten to the "shooting young people in the street" crazy yet, but as a way of thwarting the young people's ability to communicate, the Mubarak supporters in the regime have shut off the Internet and shut down the wireless communication infrastructure. I love that they turned the Internet off, like they have a switch...but in a place with telecommunication is still pretty much state controlled, it is probably that easy, to simply shut down cable feed at key access points.

The fact that young people are rising up against Hosni Mubarak and demanding democracy is good news for us and George Dubya since, with Egypt having the highest Arabic population in the world, it would show that Arabs and democracy can do alright together, which is something "the Dub" felt very strongly about.

Football Notes

Since my URL has the name "caliboy" in it, one may get the idea of how I see myself. There were two other caliboys playing today for a chance to get to American football's Super Bowl, the championship game.

One, my boy Aaron Rodgers from Chico, won his game, and is taking the Green Bay Packers to the big show.

The second, Mark Sanchez from Los Angeles, has yet to get on the field, is playing against the Pittsburgh Steelers, and one of my least favorite quarterbacks, Big Ben.

I'm rooting(rooted) for both of them...

Pennsauken, New Jersey

Pennsauken is one of the "First Suburbs"; one of the first residential areas directly outside of southern Jersey's metropolis Camden (itself a satellite of Philly) that lured young newly returning veterans and their wives and babies out from the bustling city and into plots with backyards and picket fences.

The suburbs were a white creation for white people. Over time, the black middle class gained enough prestige and money to move out of the cities, and into the closest ring of suburbs, of which Pennsauken counts. The fabled "First Suburbs" began to see white-flight, a phenomena where white families move to further rings of suburbia once a black family buys a home on their block. Sadly, a fact of life in this country is that an incorporated township with a population that is less than half white loses home value from before minorities moved in.

Concerned white citizens in Pennsauken, upset by their white neighbors leaving the area, started to hold meetings with their black and Asian neighbors in an effort to create a multi culturally inviting town, and, through advertisements and other initiatives, have grown and raised their home values back to their pre-flight numbers.

Also, they've lured white home buyers back, becoming one of the very few townships that experienced white-flight and then reversed it.

I think it's pretty cool that when progressive citizens watch their neighbors act short-sighted, they go out of their way to make their neighborhood into the open minded place they felt it was.

The Sri Lanka Option

As legend has it, in the 520s BCE, in the city of Singur in what is now the Indian state of West Bengal, near the Bangladesh border, one Prince Vijaya was exiled. He traveled quite a distance by water craft to the island of Sri Lanka, and with him brought seven-hundred people. Over time, the initial intermarriages of those original colonizers with the locals gave rise to what today we call the Sinhalese ("lion people"). (In an aside, Singur, the home of Vijaya, has sometimes been written as Singappur, which means "Lion City", and, not coincidentally, sounds very much like one modern city-state of today, Singapore, which unsurprisingly, means "Lion City", even though there were never any lions there, and what they saw were most likely tigers...)

The Sinhalese are what you call people from Sri Lanka. They make up 74% of the population of the island, have a language close to other Indo-Aryan family members from north-western India, and are intensely Buddhist.

There had been a long and violent insurgency being waged in Sri Lanka by the Tamil, an ethnic minority from the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, the state on the side of the Indian peninsula that faces Sri Lanka. The Tamil are Hindu and Dravidian.

A few things have to be said, just to make some sense of a complicated few millennia of human migration, history, and an abundance of ethnic and religious tension: Siddhartha, the "founder" of Buddhism, was originally a Hindu. The Dravidian were the original inhabitants of the Indian sub-continent, and physically tend to be relatively short and relatively dark-skinned. In one of human history's major human migrations, the Indo-Aryans pushed into the Indian subcontinent and waged many wars, settled many lands, and inter-married with many Dravidians, shaping overtime what we in America, with our short attention spans, consider the "Indian ethnicity". Aryans tend physically to be taller and lighter-skinned. Think Kumar and his father in Harold and Kumar go to White Castle as examples of one of each.

So, the Sinhalese, the folks of Sri Lanka, are originally from an area far away, while their insurgents, the Tamil Tigers, as they were known, were most likely closer genetically to the Veddac people who intermarried with the exiled prince in the first place. The southern Indian states tend to be more Dravidian than Aryan, and vice-versa in the north, with Pakistan having little Dravidian presence.

Okay...the point up until now, besides a bit of background, was to notice that I used the past-tense for the insurgency ("...had been a long and violent..." and "...as they were known...").

Sri Lanka is the first modern nation to successfully stamp out a violent and suicide-bomber fueled insurgency. They accomplished that with what has come to be called, almost admiringly in military circles, "the Sri Lanka option."

What their army did was to corral the remnants of the main fighting force and push them off into the forrest. There were about three-hundred-thousand civilians with the fifteen-thousand strong rebel army. Now comes the clever part: they picked large clearings and declared them fire-free zones, and that the civilians should go there for safety. Once those areas were full the next day, they bombed the hell out of them, killing as many people as possible.

This worked rather well, but there was still a stubborn group sending suicide bombers as surrenderers, still killing Sinhalese soldiers, so they came up with another clever plan. They used a British journalist to broker cease-fire deals, with the remaining fighters to show themselves waving white flags, the international symbol of surrender.

At every meeting spot where the fighters emerged flying white flags, the result was the same: the Sinhalese soldiers blasted as many as they could see.

I imagine the running sentiment in the brains of those Sinhalese soldiers was either: Your white flag is no match for my machine gun; or: Surrender? Well, fuck you very much.

Now, the army did take in plenty of civilians, "rescued hostages" they were labeled, and the Tigers were killing the civilians as they fled. The final killing grounds--a stretch of beach-- kept shrinking with each offensive from the military. Defender's of the Tamil Tigers call the entire operation genocide, while the Sri Lankan president thumped his chest triumphantly. You have a problem with us, his statement being paraphrased by me went, we dealt with terrorism in our home land while you (the UN) did nothing, just like you do nothing about Columbia and their constant flow of cocaine or Somalia and their exporting of piracy...

So, the Sri Lanka option is, apparently, to kill as many of them as you can, as fast as you can; collateral damage is just a calculated cost; and keep the damn journalists and human-rights watchdogs the hell away.

Can you argue with the results?

Is that any way to view this situation?

Can Rodney King ever be right, with his famous line, "Can't we all just get along?"

Healthcare Hypocrites

Some people might have seen something like this on my FaceBook page, but for those of you who haven't, this is interesting.

Whatever feelings you may have about Obama's healthcare reform, which was passed in both the House and Senate, you may have heard that republicans in the House are voting for it's repeal. You may applaud that, since as a republican, you must want those thirty-two million (32,000,000) previously uninsured people back to being one catastrophic illness or accident away from ultimate ruin. Seems a bit kooky to me, but hey...

If you think that move by the House republicans epitomizes what the "hip" crowd calls douchery, have no fear, since the Senate refuses to open debate about any repeal, and in general welcomes conversation, feeling that the discussion of the benefits of the reform can only strengthen people's belief in it's ultimate virtue.

Have you heard that the general population's opinions towards the healthcare reform bill have been steadily improving despite the crap spouted on cable news?

In any case, of those 236 House republicans, 97% have refused to opt-out of their own federally funded health insurance package. So, do us all a favor: TELL THEM TO BUY WHAT THEY SELL. If you, as a reader of this site, hate the healthcare reform and want it repealed, fine. I state then, that if that is the case, then you must call for your representative, if they happen to be one of those 97% GOPers in the House, to end their own affiliation with federal health insurance.

If, as I imagine the majority of readers of this (bleeding heart) site, you as a reader applaud the historical landmark legislation that Obama actually passed and signed into law, then you probably see this as more republican chicanery.

In either case, here's a link to the actual opt-out form you can print out and mail to them with a respectful request.

Video Link Dump

This is technically a blog post, but this is more like a collection spot for me, and others who do already enjoy or will soon enjoy the following videos. I'm tired of looking some of these up to show people, so I thought I'd just conveniently put them all on one spot.

The first was sent to me, via my mom, from my Uncle Dan's mom, Ida. It's a nature video of animals with dialogue voiceovers that show what they're really thinking. Very funny. Check it out here.

The second is the fake Help Wanted ad for the Mets. Oh man, it's funny as hell. If you like baseball, or the Mets, or hate the Mets, you'll definitely like it.

The third and fourth aren't for everyone. These are parody hip-hop videos that are very clever. I'd suggest checking them out if you like clever rhyming schemes, creative characters, and overall hilarity. Here's the first and here's the second.

Lastly, here's Xiao Xiao 3, the baddest-ass stick figure fighting flash-video ever made.

My New Hero: A Swiss Banker

What would be the chances that I would ever pick any banker as a hero?

Rudolf Elmer is the Swiss banker at the center of another Wikileaks controversy. This leak is a list of many famous actors' and politicians' financial records that show how they evade taxes, as often as possible, as much as possible. The person with access to this sensitive information, the person who handed it over to Wikileaks, is this Swiss banker, Rudolf Elmer.

When I heard this, I laughed, and said to myself that I like this guy Elmer. When you try and hide your cheating ways from authorities that all of us regular people deal with annually by utilizing foreign banks, I guess you never expect an avenging angel to spill your secrets to to the world.

That alone wasn't quite enough to put old Rudy up there for me. When I heard that he had been fired in 2002 from his position at a different bank in Switzerland for doing exactly the same thing, releasing sensitive information about tax cheats, that's when he became one of my new heros.

That's consistency, baby.

Three Stories from Europe

1) Divorce in the Low Countries

With the rise of a sense of a central government in Europe, regional identities have become stronger. Scots, Basque, even Catalan have seen a growth in their nationalism, or regionalism, as it were. This has effected the Flemish and the Walloons as well. One difference between the last two, the Flemish and the Walloons, is that they have the distinct ability to rip a country in half. Europe may be gaining a new country, as one might break into two, Flanders and Wallonia. It would have already happened if not for the child. And in this case, the child is also kind of the parent of the whole experiment.

Flanders is the Dutch speaking half, the newly powerful home to European tech companies and financial institutions, and Wallonia is the French half, the former industrial powerhouse that, like American manufacturing regions, is in a state of decay. The child, is the European Union's unofficial "capital", Brussels.

I'm talking abut Belgium, at least as it still exists. The breakup of this Low Country bodes poorly for Europe in general, and about the only thing trying to keep it together is Brussels itself. Belgium historically had been seen as the best blueprint for a completely united Europe: here are two separate ethnic and language groups able to find common ground and be successfully united, able to help each half when it was needed. When, in the mid 1800s, the north was a Dutch-speaking backwater, the south kept both afloat with the Industrial Revolution. Lately, with the rise in China's industry, the south is being propped up by the north.

In Belgium there are already two sets of bureaucracies, two sets of parliament, two sets of pop-stars and authors...the connections of the past are at their weakest, and both leaders of the respective French and Dutch political parties are calling for the dissolution.

2) Bailouts?

Last year the EU bailed out both Greece and Ireland, and this year the talk is about two more countries that need some bailout attention. Portugal is the first, and will probably get the nod soon enough. The second country is a little more complicated.

Spain is that country, and with the third largest economy in the EU, any post bailout problems would cause major havoc for all of Europe, and most likely the world's economy.

It was Germany that put the breaks on the Spanish bailout, wanting more time to study all angles. Being the largest by population and economy gives Germany that ability.

3) Bolshoi Petroleum?

Something occurred recently that has hurt British Petroleum's assets and appeal in their biggest market, America. I wonder what that could have been? Oh, yeah...toxifying the entire Gulf of Mexico for a thousand generations.

Sensing the coming financial ramifications, BP has signed an enormous deal with Russia's state-owned Rosneft. The deal will give BP access to Russian oil reserves in the Arctic Sea. This "strategic global alliance" will give Rosneft 5% of BP's shares and BP will get 9.5% of Rosneft's.

This has inspired an analyst to pine, "We should start calling it 'Bolshoi Petroleum'."

Only in Austin?

When we lived in New York, I would see things that would make me say "Only in New York," like the old man who drove up onto the sidewalk, came inside of the scaffolding, ran someone down, and then sped away...they had Mass plates, so go figure.

Corrie and I saw a cool thing the other day that I'm not sure I've seen before.



If you can't tell, that's a dude with his cat hanging out on his backpack. After talking to this gentleman we figured that he was probably passing through, as in has no permamnent lodging, and his cat is like his dog in that it provides company and entertainment.

I've seen people walking cats before, and someone once on the subway with their cat chilling on their lap, which is actually kind of like this guy, but still...

In case you're curious, I ran after the van that ran the guy over on the sidewalk, got his license plate number, and called 911. I told the officers I could pick the guy out from a lineup when they asked, though I never had to.

Two days later, I, the good citizen, was slammed onto the hood of a local police car in my ghetto neighborhood right as school was letting out and illegally searched just because I talked to some of my young black neighbors. The cops, in an unmarked car, thought I was buying pot from the boys. Their search of my person yielded proof of what I had been telling them, that I was just going to the bodega to buy paper towels for dinner.

Only in Brooklyn?

Return to Castle Hill

I wrote before about my discovery of Austin's former home of the Texas Military Institute in the Castle Hill neighborhood. Recently we made it back to 11th street, and looked a little closer.



I was hoping we could get up to the top of the tower. It had been said that it was quite accessible during the vacant times. These days are not those times. In any case, we enjoyed the view for a few minutes and pictures, and headed back to our off day errands.

The Austin skyline looks pretty cool from up here:



As does the capitol, with it's pink dome:



Also, to the north, UT's administration tower, the sight of Charles Whitman's sniper massacre in 1966.

For my Bibliophiles

Austin has a chain of bookstores called Half-Priced Books. Isn't that cool? I've thought so ever since we moved here. I used to ride one of the Dwyce bicycles over to the north-central location and just peruse. Once I found a 1964 edition of Pynchon's V., which was too sweet for my blood...also, it wasn't like it was a first edition or anything, and it was one of the heavily cut editions, about seventy pages shorter than the copy I have and read.

The other day while in the neighborhood of the same store, Corrie and I stopped by to find a very specific book for a belated Decemberween present. We've had a hell of a time finding this book, two obstacles we have are not knowing the title or the author. These problems are compounded by the book being published by a small press, if not self-published and self-peddled by the author themself.

While we couldn't really make headway our search for this particular book, I did find a rare copy of Billy Lee Brammer's The Gay Place, a collection of three novels all set in Austin in the fifties starring Gov. Arthur "Goddam" Fenstemaker, a brash character study of Brammer's good buddy LBJ. The book has been called a twin to All the King's Men in it's importance as an American political novel.

The other find on this particular trip was, in a word, spectacular.



I've been looking up some facts on this copy. It was a first paperback edition. The first hardback edition was released on January 1st, 1973. This edition was released in Febuary of 1973. The section breaks are set differently, and it's cool to see the original. I've seen a first hardbound edition, with original dustcover, for $2500, and one like the copy I just found I've seen for $200. I don't plan on selling, of course. The gentleman who checked me out at Half-Priced Books said, "wow. You're lucky to get this. These copies never last a week."

Now my Pynchon shelf has gone from this:



To this:

Booming Texas?

One winter ago when Corrie and I moved here to Austin from Brooklyn, Texas, as a state economy, was doing plenty better than the national average. In fact, along with Oklahoma, it had been adding jobs and building houses consistently during the downturn that forced so many states' home building sector to stagnate as well as the frightening overall job slough.

Texas was an attractive place for young professionals to relocate. There were not just jobs, but well paying technical jobs. Homes are cheap.

During this recent midterm election campaign if you were unfortunate enough to be exposed to our incumbent governor Rick Perry's political ads, you'd hear about how the Texas state government under Perry had squirreled away eight billion dollars to fend off whatever budget crunch might befall the great state of Texas.

Two things Perry failed to mention in those commercials were: 1) that the eight billion dollars was federal cash he had vowed not to accept; and 2) the "balanced budget" of Perry's gov't is going to have a fifteen billion dollar deficit ("balancing the budget" was a claim in his voice from the ad).

Texas doesn't have a state income tax, which is ballyhooed as a wonderful thing by working class folks from both parties. Unfortunately, those damn state income taxes help states weather tough economic cycles, and the rare states without income taxes have to rely more heavily on sales tax and property taxes. Relying on sales tax for revenue, which Texas is prone to do, is risky, and is more of a boom or bust scenario.

It took a little while, but it seems the downturn might have finally caught up with Texas. With so many people though, and a wide variety of tech, oil, and light industry work, I would guess that it won't be ravaged in the same manner as former manufacturing bases like the Rust Belt.

Homes are still cheap, but job creation has slowed to a crawl, and people keep moving here. It's bound to get interesting.

Hanging on the Wall

When we arrived at my Auntie Peg and Uncle Dan's in Santa Monica for the winter fest holiday, I saw a child's crayon drawing of Santa Claus on the wall. I thought it looked kinda cool, and ascribed it to either Mike or Liz, my cousins whose parents live there.

Later I was informed that it was a drawing that I had made as a very little boy, and that they put it up most Christmases. Upon hearing that I knew I needed to take a picture and put it up here. I almost changed my profile picture here to the drawing.



My sister-in-law has a childhood drawing of hers laminated and on a wall in our apartment here, much to her horror and embarassment everytime she sees it. You shouldn't feel that way about kiddie artifacts. They become more important the older you get.

So...Where's All that Oil?

Are we to believe that all our oil that BP spilled into the Gulf has magically disappeared, been assimilated or dispersed fully, or eaten by oil-eating bacteria? Bacteria that eats petroleum? That sounds pretty bad in and of itself.

Is it really possible to unleash more than two-hundred million gallons of oil into an area and expect the ecosystem to equalize almost immediately?

Oh, I get it: our fabulous type of gorilla that thrives on snakemeat will simply freeze to death come winter. It's just that simple.

My Creative Process

Not every artists works in the same fashion. Just recently I wrote a story for a writing contest. I didn't win or place, and I was pretty sure that that could have been the case when I submitted it. I was excited to try and put something new together, and felt that with the limited time I had to put towards it, the final result would most likely be unpolished and/or a collection of bad cliches.

I had an interesting hook, sort of, but cliche won the day and the work was mostly hack. What can one really expect with probably a total less than three hours spent on something? I don't feel bad though, because sometimes you just need to jolt yourself, just do anything to get yourself in the mood for creative work. This blog takes far less creative attention.

Here is a picture of a tack board over our computer desk with small sheets of paper tacked onto it. Each sheet has a description of a scene that I was writing for the story.



A gentleman I've spoken with about writing asked what the difference between writers and regular people was. His answer: writers write.

For the Irish Whiskey Fan

My father-in-law gave me a bottle of John L. Sullivan Irish Whiskey for the Decemberween gift-giving holiday. Being a fan of Jameson Irish Whiskey, I was interested in trying it.

It was truly a fantastic and smooth whiskey, and my thanks go out. For anyone reading this who enjoys a nip of the Jameson every once in a while, drop a few extra bucks once on a bottle of John L. Sullivan, and you won't be disappointed.

Too Old for this "Injury"

For the Decemberween gift-giving bonanza I procured a Nintendo Wii for Corrie, who'd wanted to try out the Wii Fit, a video game about yoga and exercise. While we haven't picked up a Fit set yet, the Wii has proven very entertaining. The one I got was the red colored special Mario 25th Anniversary edition version. It came with the "New Super Mario Bros. Wii" game, a basic remake of the original Super Mario Bros. game from, um, 25 years ago.

We've both been playing it somewhat, and after a while I've noticed that my left thumb has been a little sore. Feeling sheepish, I've exclaimed that "I'm too old for this kind of injury".

Like all straight Mario games that Nintendo has put out, it is a simple yet very challenging game.

We've also enjoyed the included Wii Sports game, a pleasant way to spend a dreary afternoon.

"What's not to like?"

As I watch my boy Aaron Rodgers (any pro star from Chico I'll consider "my boy") try and take the Packers past the Philadelphia Eagles, I remember the Jets win last night on a last second field goal against the Indianapolis Colts. I was at my night job when word came back that the Jets had won.

Walking down the hallway, away from us, someone, disgusted, said, "I fucking hate the Jets!"

Walking opposite of this person a friend of mine named Blake smiled and shook his head. "How can you hate the Jets?" he started. "They play defense and run the ball. That's football. What's not to like?"

Gabby Giffords Shot in Tucson

In the first politically motivated shooting since Reagan was shot in 1986, yesterday, January 8th, a democratic congresswoman names Gabrielle Giffords was shot not in the head, mind you, but through the head by 22 year old white boy named Jared Lee Loughner. Jared stopped to reload and was tackled by a pair of bystanders.

A judge was one of the six people killed, John McCarthy Roll, out of twenty people shot.

I've read that Giffords was a rare democrat in Arizona, a lady who actually worked to strengthen laws that could give guys on the grounds patrolling the border legal teeth. She didn't sell scare tactics that gave the folks of Arizona the sense that their state was under attack from illegal immigrants, like some other politicians in the state. Those other politicians have convinced many Arizonan voters that contrary to the facts that Arizona is in danger, in danger from home invasions and "beheadings in the desert". These are ridiculous statements that Republicans use to whip up the stupids into a jingoist frenzy. Maybe this kid Loughner is one of those stupids. Maybe not. When someone like Sarah Palin puts out her "targeted list", and Giffords' district was targeted, under the auspices of bringing out the righty vote, and the targeted area is a picture of the district under cross-hairs, it seems like an irresponible move. Giffords herself has said, "they've got to realize that there are consequences to that action."

A lack of credibility and accountability exists on the right. If you get the bigots and the closed minded energized with rhetoric that's demonstrably false, you're not allowed to act surprised when those people act in the extreme. Of course you're allowed to mourn the victims of those atrocities, but you lose credibility through acting surprised.

Here we had a congresswoman who didn't use false scenarios and lies to do her work, work that strengthened laws for police officers and immigration patrols. Here we have a woman gunned down in broad daylight in the late morning of a Saturday.

Denisova: A Siberian Cave of Wonders

Corrie's younger cousin Richard, another guest at our Mexican wedding, is working on his Ph. D. in Biology. Before he moved on to that program, he was working with salamanders and was embroiled in the heated debate about "species". Generally different "species", when speaking of animals with obvious close similarities (nobody would argue about hippos vs giraffes vs lions), denotes different members of a specific genus which may have close--or not so close--physical similarities, but are unable to breed, or if they can produce an offspring, that it would be sterile. Think of a mule or a hinny. Richard studied enormous salamander colonies with hundreds of "species", entities normally recognized as different members of a genus, and sometimes even different genus, but they all interbred with each other, and all seemed to make viable offspring. A large writhing pile of humping salamanders, thirty-thousand deep. Spooky.

What does all this have to do with this cave in southern Siberia?



Many thousands of years ago, before that wooden stair system was installed, Denisova cave, as it's now known, was home to what are being called Denisovan hominids, a newly discovered line in the genus Homo.

It may be hard for us to understand, since today all we have is Homo sapian (I'm looking at you Sasquatch, a still hidden Homo habilus?), but at some point in the rather (geologically) recent past we had more than one specie of human. That's what it means to have more than one present member of Homo.

Depending on what evidence you believe is most accurate, eking out a life on this rock all at the same time were at least five different species of human: erectus, the oldest and most successful version (success defined in terms of years around); neandertalis, our close friends from those French caves who wrote songs and buried their dead; fiorenses, the pygmies from the Indonesian islands; our new Denisovan hominids; and ourselves, sapians.

Homo heidelbergensis might be the direct ancestor of both us and Neandertals.


Now, I've read many different discussions about the lineage of human beings, some with different branches with erectus coming out of Africa very early (for humans) and making it all the way to the far east and southern far east, another branch for neandertalis leaving Africa and settling in Europe, another branch slightly later for sapians, leaving Africa and heading everywhere. A different perspective suggested maybe that it's all one line, that we're all descended from Homo erectus...

In any case, the studies into the mitochondrial DNA of the Denisovan human show that they diverged from Neandertals around 350,000 years ago. They put the split between them and modern humans at over a million years ago.

Still, what does this have to do with salamanders? I'll let somebody else say it:

"Through genetic comparisons Pääbo’s team found that some people from Melanesia — an assemblage of islands off Australia’s east coast, including New Guinea — share 4 to 6 percent of their genomes with the Denisovans. This probably indicates that the Denisovans interbred with anatomically modern humans despite the split between our lineages over a million years ago."

And, in a different article, about a slightly different subject, in this guy Pääbo’s own words:

"Comparisons of the Neandertal genome to the genomes of five present-day humans from different parts of the world identify a number of genomic regions that may have been affected by positive selection in ancestral modern humans, including genes involved in metabolism and in cognitive and skeletal development. We show that Neandertals shared more genetic variants with present-day humans in Eurasia than with present-day humans in sub-Saharan Africa, suggesting that gene flow from Neandertals into the ancestors of non-Africans occurred before the divergence of Eurasian groups from each other."

You might find some of that incredibly interesting or incredibly boring, and then skipping it. The main point to take from both of those passages is that Neandertals and Denisovans interbred with modern humans, and have passed along genetic information.

So a specie is, uh...um...jury might still be out on that.

I have some pictures that may constitute evidence corroborating the claim of genetic material passed from Denisovans and Neandertals into modern humans.

Here is a guy from Papua, one of the the recipients of Denisovan genetic material:



Here is a guy who's ancestors came from Germany, among other places, a place that had it's share of Nenadertals, and even gave them their name (along with heidelbergensis). Check out his large brow and prominent nose:



One last picture that I wish was larger, a sort of family line-up of humans, members of the genus Homo:

Boxing Day: Ravioli Fest

Boxing Day is the day after Christmas and is still celebrated in Canada, England, and various other former commonwealth nations. It derives its name from the act of opening boxes in the morning after Christmas. Okay...

At my Auntie Peg and Uncle Dan's on Boxing Day the tradtion is to make raviolis with the leftover crab from the Christmas Eve dinner feast (between my cousin Mike, Norm, and I...sheesh, we put a dent on some dungeness reserves) as well as the normal ricotta and spinach ravioli.

Corrie helped out and took on an important role as baller of the filling, a skill she's perfected with years of making tiny dough balls for ginger snap cookies.





We left later that evening, after getting to sample the wonderful ravioli. Our flight left from the Long Beach airport, and while en route my Uncle Dan gave us a histoy lesson on the development and growth of Los Angeles.

Thank you everyone for such a great trip.

Christmas Day: Big Hauls for Corrie and Dan

Corrie made out pretty good in gifts, only because she wanted only a few things and happened to get them all. My brother Dan, on the other hand, got a hand, so to say.

I was sitting on a couch late on the 25th, between my mom and my wife Corrie, talking with them and my buddy Norm, who was sitting across the coffee table from us and next to his wife, Holly, on a couch. We had been deep in some conversation, laughing and gesturing as we are wont, when almost simultaneously Norm and I looked (me to my left and he to his right) down to Dan, who had been sitting in a chair next to his girlfriend Lupita but now was no longer seated, but now was on one knee with a really nice shiny wooden box and a big grin on his face. Lupita was crying, Corrie was talking and I had her notice what was happening right over there. Soon she joined Lupita and Holly with teary eyes, and Norm and I congratulated Dan with hugs because Lupita said what we were all pretty sure she'd say.

Love you 'Pita. Welcome to the Family, sis.

Christmas Eve: Dolphins and Venice

My good buddy Norm and I had planned, from October on, to go swimming in the Pacific on Christmas Day while we were both visiting Santa Monica for the holidays. We both arrived on the 23rd, and because of weather forcasts, Friday the 24th seemed like the better opportunity for the dip.

There had been heavy rains leading up to our visit, and we were nervous that the beaches would be closed. There were no signs saying such things, so we braved the 60+ degree breezy air, put on our trunks, and jumped into the murky, frigid, debree filled ocean.

Having swam in the beaches surrounding San Luis, we knew that once your body numbs to the coldness, all will be well. Yeah, you might not be able to grip a baseball, but you can at least enjoy being pushed aound by the waves.

At one point Norm said, "Is that a whale?" I looked over to where he was pointing and saw a tiny fish flap above the wave. I was responding, "I don't think so" when he stated he saw a tail. A wave rolled in as he was saying that and it lifted us just enough for us to see above the next close wave. Between the two waves, eight to ten feet away, was a dorsal fin.

We both exclaimed whoas and wows, and as the next wave raised us again, less than a pair of seconds having passed, the fin was gone. Our eyes widened and we slowly retreated, trying to place the fin as either mammalian or shark. A moment of unease crept in as we discussed it and we moved closer to shore. We were in up to our nipples, a depth where you can feel like you're being affected by the ocean but also like you have some semblance of control over your circumstances. That depth, though, also makes you feel just a tiny bit vulnerable when you see a decent sized dorsal fin.

We made it back to shore with no problems after watching what seemed like more than a few fins from a safer distance, and contacted no dissentary from the run-off tainted water. We learned from our loved ones on shore that they'd watched an entire pod of dolphins swim slowly past, checking us and the surfers out as they traveled north.

Once shore side, we all took a walk down the beach to a place to grab a beer, and doing so, we walked through Venice Beach, an LA community that once had water filled canals. Those have since been filled in and paved over. The area, though, has tight controls on developmet, so the boardwalk is still a collection of head shops, tattoo and piercing parlors, bars, and patchouli smoke wafting along the outdoor zone. There aren't any high priced condos in Venice, a strange occurrance on a Los Angeles beachfront.

We did find, to our delight, that there were a few storefront doctors who, if you had any one of a number of symptoms that were listed on the wall, and the right amount of money, you could a prescription for medical marijuana.

What a world.

Happy Birthday Mike

Again a year peels off the rolls, the title to the number of rotations we've lived through ticks up by one, and we celebrate. My cousin Mike turns twenty-six today, and, as always, he remains one of my favorite people.



Love you cousin, have a happy birthday.

Hello 2011

Maybe now we star using "twenty" in the name of the year, like "twenty-eleven"...

We spent the December 25th gift festivities in Santa Monica, got to see all the great family out there. My mother, brothers, cousin, and auntie and uncle were all well and festive. I'll be breaking that down later with photographs and the like.

We've been playing with some cool gifts in the interim, and waiting for a phone call.

Happy New Year.