The First Americans

 
 
In an article published in this week's Nature, Heidi Ledford asks Who Were the First American?.

For decades many archaeologists have believed that the first Americans belonged to what is called the Clovis culture — hunter-gatherers who lived in parts of North America roughly 13,000 calendar years ago.

A new study counters this notion by showing that the Clovis culture is nearly 500 years younger than previously thought, and may have lasted for as little as 200 years. There is evidence of other cultures in the Americas well before this new date.

Wait a minute? I thought America was a Christian nation? Now we're told that it was founded by primtive stone age hunter-gatherers who weren't even as advanced as the Clovis culture?

Hmmm ... makes sense to me.

Can Your Dog Die of Chocolate?

 
Friday's Urban Legend: PARTLY TRUE

Will your dog die if it eats chocolate? No, not unless it eats a lot of chocolate. It's true that chocolate contains theobromine and in high doses this can be lethal to dogs. However, according to an article in Scientific American (Fact or Fiction: Chocolate Is Poisonous to Dogs) ...

A small dog should be belly-up after eating a handful M&M's, at least according to conventional wisdom. But watching "Moose," a friend's five-pound Chihuahua, race around a living room after his sweet snack makes one wonder: Is chocolate truly poisonous to dogs? ....

The hazard, however, is probably overblown, says Tim Hackett, a veterinarian at Colorado State University. Chocolate's danger to dogs depends on its quantity and quality. Large dogs can usually handle a small amount of chocolate whereas the same helping could cause problems for Moose and his pint-size kin....

Around every confection-centered holiday—Valentine's Day, Easter and Christmas—at least three or four dogs are hospitalized overnight in the animal medical center at Colorado State. But in 16 years as an emergency and critical care veterinarian, Hackett has seen just one dog die from chocolate poisoning, and he suspects it may have had an underlying disease that made it more vulnerable to chocolate's heart-racing effect.

It's probably better to be safe than sorry. If you have a dog then it's a good idea to remove all chocolate from the house. If you have a dog and a wife/girlfriend then you have to make a hard choice.

PZ Myers Slept Here

 
Milton is a small city not too far from where I live. Jennifer Smith of Runesmith's Canadian Content lives there. I've just discovered her blog.

On January 30th (the date is important) she wrote about Small Town Tax Dollars At Work. Apparently the powers that be in Milton decided it was time to replace the welcome sign.

The new sign is one of those fancy electronic pixel boards that can scroll text, blink on and off, simulate fireworks, and do all kinds of other cool effects. Unfortunately it’s only half the size of the old sign, making the glowing letters difficult to read from across the intersection. And even with the letters that small you still wouldn’t be able to fit in as much text as before.

This doesn’t look like it’s going to be a problem, though, since all the new sign has said since it went online a month ago is… ‘Happy New Year!’ Then the date. And the time. And the temperature. Then ‘Happy New Year!’ again.

I suppose we should just be grateful that it isn't blinking '12:00'.

Jennifer probably doesn't realize that Milton is famous because PZ Myers slept there in the summer of 2005.

Baghdad Burning

 
Would you like to read about the government of Iraq? You know, the one Dick Cheney props up as a beacon of freedom and democracy in the Middle East?

See Baghdad Burning, a blog written by an Iraqi woman.

As expected, Al Maliki is claiming the rape allegations are all lies. Apparently, his people simply asked the officers if they raped Sabrine Al Janabi and they said no. I'm so glad that's been cleared up.

[Hat Tip: Canadian Cynic]

Canadian Cynic

 
Check out Canadian Cynic.

Random thoughts from an unarmed (but reality-based) Canadian. These views are not necessarily the same views held by Canadians in general. But they should be.

More on "24" Torture

 
Steve Watson alerted me to a column on the CBC News website from last Monday. Heather Mallick discusses the torture scenes in "24" (see Less Torture in "24").

The column is wonderful. Here's are some excerpts.

Eventually I quit 24 cold turkey. It wasn't hard; I just couldn't take the same plot device 48 times. It's the "ticking time bomb" scenario where all of California will be deleted by a nuclear bomb unless Sutherland's Jack Bauer, the smartest agent in American counterterrorism, can torture the password out of an unnervingly calm, prescient Muslim madman about to destroy the American landmass with a team of three.

The problem, as Jane Mayer pointed out in the New Yorker this week, is that ticking time bombs almost never happen in real life. How embarrassing then that it occurs once a week every season of 24, which means 24 weeks of presenting the case that torture is necessary and indeed good.

It wasn't as easy for me to give up "24". I couldn't quit "cold turkey." In fact I still watch a bit of some episodes—at least until the torture starts.

Joel Surnow, the creator of the show, is a right-wing, torture-approving "patriot" who thrills to parties with Rush Limbaugh, Lynne Cheney, Karl Rove, Tony Snow et al. He's a strange, cold man who attended Beverly Hills High, a notoriously cruel collection of stars' and billionaires' children. Surnow's dad was a travelling carpet salesman. The family lived in a crappy apartment and Surnow slept on a cot. His schoolmates knew that.

Back to Orwell, who also once wrote "probably the greatest cruelty one can inflict on a child is to send it to school among children richer than itself." Orwell came out of school with a hatred of others' suffering, while taking a bleak enjoyment in his own. Surnow came out of school with a black heart.

I was at a fundraiser with the wonderful actress Shirley Douglas, whom I know and adore. Her face in profile is flat yet perfectly formed. She is a genuine beauty. Her mouth is the mouth all women should have. She is the daughter of Tommy Douglas, father of Medicare, and the man I thank when I stagger into emergency saying "Oooooh, it hurts." Good socialists all. She is the mother of Sutherland, who earns $10 million a year playing the torturer Bauer.

Sutherland is a left-wing dual-citizenship Canadian and a truly great actor. But he is the Republican Party's performing flea. Imagine that.

American Justice in Italy

 
Steve Watson was kind enough to supply me with two links that I otherwise would have missed. The first is to a column by Neil Macdonald on the CBC News website [Exceptions are U.S.]. Macdonald makes a point that Candians and Europeans are very familiar with; namely, the fact that America has little respect for the laws of other nations.

Here's the outline of the case. You'll have to read the rest of the column to see the outrage.

Nobody in the Italian government thought Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr was clean. The Italian police had for some time been building a case against the Islamic cleric for spreading extremism.

Prosecutors in Milan believed he was a jihadist who had fought in Afghanistan and Bosnia, and, further, that he was in Italy recruiting fighters for radical Islamic causes. They intended to bring him to trial.

But the Americans were watching, and they had no patience with the pace and procedures of Italian law enforcement.

On Feb. 17, 2003, a squad of agents grabbed Nasr off a Milan street as he walked to a nearby mosque. He was, allegedly, taken to the U.S. air force base in Aviano, Italy, and flown to Germany, from where he was transshipped to his native Egypt. There, prison and the tender mercies of Egyptian interrogators awaited.

Nasr says he was tortured during his four years behind bars. Given the Egyptian government's pitiless attitude toward the radical Muslim Brotherhood and its many affiliates, that is not a claim many people doubt. The Nasr case was, say critics of the Bush administration, yet another case of America quietly subcontracting torture to deal with its enemies.

But two things happened last week to move this case out of the shadows: An Egyptian court freed Nasr, saying his imprisonment was "unfounded." And in Italy, a democratic U.S. ally, a judge indicted 26 Americans, most of them agents of the CIA, for kidnapping the cleric. The spies will almost certainly be tried in absentia. They've all left the country.

Genetics of ABO Blood Types

Now that we understand the biochemistry behind the ABO blood types [ABO Blood Types] it's time to look at the genetics. Recall that the human ABO gene on chromosome 9 has three common variants of the gene. Different variants are called alleles. The A allele encodes N-acetylaminogalactosyltransferase and this enzyme makes the A antigen that confers blood type A. The B allele encodes a variant enzyme that makes B antigen and gives rise to blood type B. The O allele encodes a defective enzyme that doesn't make either antigen. In the absence of both A antigen and B antigen your blood type will be O.

Vestigial Structures Are Evidence of Evolution

 
Bill Dembski writes in Vestigial Structures by Design ....

Vestigial structures in biology are commonly cited as evidence for evolution, and it may well be that they did evolve. But if it is evidence of evolution, it is evolution in the wrong direction — it’s not the sort of function enhancing/innovating evolution that is supposed to give evolutionary theory its bite. Vestigial structures, after all, are structures that have lost their function. If all of evolution proceeded in this fashion, we’d quickly descend to a world of nonfunctionality.

Dear IDiot,

You can't have your cake and eat it too.

Either vestigial structures are evidence of evolution or they aren't. You don't get to pick and choose whatever fairy tale version of evolution you like whenever it takes your fancy. The fact that some whales have tiny pelvis bones and tiny legs buried deep under their skin tells us something about evolution. It tells us that whales are descended from ancestors that had hind limbs. The fossil record confirms this.

How does the wonderful scientific theory of Intelligent Design Creationism explain this?

Australia: Dick Loves You, He Really Loves you!

 
Cheney praises Howard's loyalty.

The alliance between Australia and America was strong because both nations worked at it and respected each other as equals, United States Vice-President Dick Cheney said today.

In a major speech to the Australian-American leadership dialogue in Sydney, Mr Cheney said the deep affinity between the countries had grown into a great alliance over time.

"Australia and America share an affinity that reaches to our souls," he said.

"Over time, that deep affinity has grown into a great alliance.

You must be so proud. He never says that about Canada.

Human ABO Gene

The human ABO gene encodes N-acetylgalactosaminyltransferase. This is the enzyme that determines the ABO blood types (see ABO Blood Types). This gene is found in all mammals, which makes it unfortunate that HUGO choose such a human-centered name [ABO Gene]. The gene will have a very different name in other species.

The GenBank website for this gene is GeneID=28. The ABO gene islocated at 9q34.1-q34.2 on chromosome 9. This is in approximately the same region as the HSPA5 gene but don't let that fool you. The genes are very far apart. [map]

There are many variants of this gene [OMIM 110300]. The DNA used in the human genome project came from people with different blood types so all three major variants (A, B, O) are present. Many of the other known variants have also been sequenced. You can look at the sequences in the Evidence Viewer on the Entrez Gene website [Evidence Viewer ABO Gene. Here's a bit of the sequence from the O allele and the A allele.

The nucleotide sequence of the O allele is shown at the top with the amino acid sequence. (It's hard to see at this scale. Go to the evidence viewer for a better view.) Note the presence of a single nucleotide deletion. This shifts the reading frame of the coding region so that it ends shortly after the deletion in a stop codon (*). The O allele produces a truncated defective protein.

The nucleotide sequence of the active gene (A allele) has a "G" (small red blob) at that position. The reading frame continues uninterrupted beyond the region shown and a functional enzyme is produced from this allele.

The ABO gene has seven exons, some of them are quite short. There are six introns and one of them is large so the total length of the gene is over twice as long as the length of the coding region.

Less Torture in "24"

 
We used to watch "24" every week but a couple of years ago we stopped because of the torture scenes. I just don't enjoy watching programs where people are tortured. Once or twice might be okay but it was getting to the point where every show had a scene where someone was tortured.

We weren't alone. Quite a few of our friends also stopped watching. It's not that we're opposed to violence on television—far from it. I think there's lot of shows where violence is quite appropriate and good entertainment. (I feel the same way about sex, by the way.) But I don't have to watch if I don't like it and I choose not to watch "24".

Gail Shister now reports in the Philadelphia Inquirer ['24' tamps down the torture] that the show is cutting back on the violence.

Fox's 24 will become less torturous, but not because the U.S. military, human rights groups and children's advocates want it to....

The decision to cut back on torture is driven by creativity, not criticism, according to Gordon. In its sixth season, 24 has become so torture-heavy that it borders on cliche, he says.

"What was once an extraordinary or exceptional moment is starting to feel a little trite. The idea of physical coercion or torture is no longer a novelty or surprise.

"It's not something that we, as writers, want to use as a crutch. We'd like to find other ways for Jack to get information out of suspects," says Gordon. "Our appetite has decreased. Personally, I think the audience may be tiring of it as well. My wife says it's too much."

"Cliché?" That's a strange word to use. The audience that I know hasn't gotten "tired" of torture. We've gotten disgusted by it.

I hope they stick to their promise. If they really are going to cut back on the torture (but not necessarily other violence) then I'll start watching again.

Jury Duty: Day #3

 
Dismissed at 9:50 AM. Services no longer required. "See you in three years!"

Wikipedia Bad - Conservapedia Good

 
Did you know that Wikipedia was anti-Christian and (gasp!) anti-American? Next thing they'll be telling us that it favors gays, drugs, and premarital sex. Not to worry. Help is at hand.

Conservapedia is a much-needed alternative to Wikipedia, which is increasingly anti-Christian and anti-American. On Wikipedia, many of the dates are provided in the anti-Christian "C.E." instead of "A.D.", which Conservapedia uses. Christianity receives no credit for the great advances and discoveries it inspired, such as those of the Renaissance. Read a list of many Examples of Bias in Wikipedia.

Conservapedia is an online resource and meeting place where we favor Christianity and America. Conservapedia has easy-to-use indexes to facilitate review of topics. You will much prefer using Conservapedia compared to Wikipedia if you want concise answers free of "political correctness".

We can all sleep better now, especially us furriners. Now we know where to go to learn about the real America.

Google Co-founder Shows His Ignorance

 
According to Reuters, Google co-founder Larry Page made a fool of himself in front of a bunch of scientists [ Google co-founder: Science needs entrepreneurs]. Here's what Reuters says,

Scientists need more entrepreneurial drive and could benefit by doing more to promote solutions to big human problems, Google Inc. co-founder Larry Page told a meeting of academic researchers.

I hope readers of this blog will recognize that Page isn't talking about science. He's talking about technology. It's sad that he doesn't know the difference.

[Hat Tip: Shelley Batts]