CharonY

That is an excellent point. With English being the de facto lingua franca the anglosphere does have an advantage to begin with.

I try not to think too much about that line of reasoning. I am pretty sure that it will result in brain cancer.

An interesting take on the whole Muslims and enlightenment thing: Guardian. The article provides a timeline of modernization events. An interesting comparison one could do, from the perspective of enlightenment as a constitutional viewpoint is to contrast the development of Muslim-majority countries with e.g. African Christian-majority countries. Especially Iran in early 20th and Ottoman empire in the late 19th century would be interesting comparisons to their contemporaries. Again, it would be very shortsighted to try to understand the current geopoltical situation without its broader historic context. Unfortunately, that is not a format that is very conducive to internet (or other) fora of non-specialists. I do think it is important not to discuss a caricature of one's belief and take it as reality.

IIRC the Tamron SP90 is a macro, isn't it? They are typically quite sharp and rather, well not nice in the wrong/right light. Best to take a pic across the street and crop to taste ;p I would agree to that. But personally I would consider that more as a lie from the photographer's side, as he/she actively creates the image (both during shoot as well as post) rather than a lie of the camera (it does faithfully what its optics determines). One could say that all photography is a lie and it is about taking a moment out of context. In the end it is semantics and what one would like to define as the reference of the truth.

It depends on how you define lying, I think. Of course there will be various levels of distortions and it will not represent the real thing, but that is true for all types of sensing, including our eyes. And if you think of it that way, then all detection methods have some levels of lying built in, and the photographer only selects the type of lie. What the photograph can do is create an image (potentially with further software manipulation to remove lens distortions, color balance and similar effects) that mimics the image that is most similar to the image you would see with your eyes. But is that closer to the truth or just closer to the lie your eyes tell you? Edit: Severely cross posted.

I see what you mean. Just have not heard it referred to as dodging and burning. For the rest I will just say that I disagree that device is capable of lying, it will just produce data based on a given input and leave it at that (and even then you typically have to at least activate the device).

What is sad is that the same energy could have been spent to learn something. Instead it is used to deny knowledge.

Actually, I would say that the photographer lies, as he controls the elements that create the final impression. The camera just captures the light under the given settings. I do not quite understand the inserting body part thingy. With dodge and burn you just locally change exposure, how would you insert elements into a photo (do you mean as shadows?). Or am I misunderstanding something...?

Yeah things are a bit in flux. The amount of genetic information we can produce as increased massively over the last decade and sometimes we find things that indicate more recent relationships, but then one could also find rare variants that push the timeline further back.

Sorry, you do not understand photography. Shutter speed (among others) control for subject movement. Note that the motorcade is in focus and shows no motion blur. The lady is actually blurry, but it is likely because she is out of focus (i.e. the focus point is closer than the hyperfocal distance). It is not strong, but noticeable as everyone else around her are also starting to get out of focus. The right hand at least shows slight motion blur, but it is also going to move faster than the body during shifting. The hand in the foreground is almost sillier, the subjects are way out of focus (i.e. too close to the camera in this case) and also waving around. Motion blur is here exacerbated as it is close to the camera (or to put it differently, the hand moves through more distance across the frame for a given time). Both issues (out of focus, motion blur) contribute to that expected artifact.If they were headbanging, you would wonder why the people appear to have deformed heads. Considering the time it is likely that Kodachrome film was used (pretty much the dominating color film in the US market at that time, at least afaik). Either 25 or 64 (both daylight film). Assuming it was a somewhat sunny day the shot would be done typically with around 1/125th shutter speed and f-stop around f/8-f/16. At that speed small movement is certainly frozen, whereas only rapid ones can start to generate blur. Shifting body weight will be frozen. In the end this is a physics question, and you may want to read up on hyperfocal distance to understand when blur occurs and how shutter speed freezes motion.There are actually some means to guesstimate the distance, but I guess that would not really be very interesting at this point.

That is true. However, the common ancestor would always be in or at the same species boundary, assuming that the population has been around for sufficiently long. The most recent direct ancestor would be found sometime after that. Most calculations seem to estimate roughly 4-5k years under somewhat conservative assumptions, but I do not really know what the current consensus may be.

While we are admitting things, sorry for commenting before I actually watched the video. I really got the context wrong. Also my comment was directed against the first video. If he had said that we all have a high likelihood of finding our direct common ancestor by moving about 2-5k years back then it would have been less objectionable. Confucius is one much more likely candidate for reasons he pointed out (though I admit that I stopped listening a few minutes in). Although I am not sure whether he mentioned any genetic analyses of which I am not aware of. What delboy is missing is that migration at that precise time was not actual necessary for the spread, but extensive genetic exchange is likely to have happened via trading enterprises such as the silk road. One has to remember that one shared ancestor would merge lines at given point in the tree.

After listening in it appears that John is indeed right. Qualifying with the notion that he should have some illegitimate children somewhere and they will also have progeny sounds like severe backpedaling. The overall idea is right, tracing back long enough and we will find a common relative (and using some models it is actually not that long ago). But the example given and the way it is presented is sensationalist, to put it mildly. Also the argument seems backward, because we share common relatives you will have to demonstrate that the descendants are traceable to present time (as John asserted earlier). This has been done for Temujin, maybe Confucius but not for JC. In the former case (using the Y chromosal analyses) it indicates that about 0.5% of all men alive are his direct descendants. The timeline (~1000 years) is of course shorter than the other examples given in the video, but at least substantiated. Moon, are you sure he is scholar and that is area of research. Most researchers fee uncomfortable with that level of simplification.

I do not think that short of making a world-wide poll there is an easy way to directly measure desire. There will always a mix of circumstances including political and geographic situations (how close is it, how easy is it to obtain visa legally from your home country etc.), extreme situations like wars or catastrophes, economic situation (how much does it cost to immigrate, relative to the the money you earned in your home country) etc. However net migration is a decent indicator of the relative desirability within a sphere of influence, I would say, although some weighting would be necessary. Do you have numbers about illegal border crossing to the US from Canada, btw.?

Nope that is not how it works. If the research already has a forgone conclusion it will not be considered for funding. You need to test a novel hypothesis before it is even considered. The actual review is typically done by peers, not by the funding agencies, if we talk about public funding. Finally, dissemination of the information is the job of the researcher and not of the funding agencies nor of the referees, who will be busy with other things at this point.

To go back to op one thing that is interesting is the use of social media by Daesh/ISIS to propagate their atrocities. Obviously this seems to be part of a propaganda campaign, though I am wondering what or whether they have precise goals. To demonstrate and attract followers while concealing that they actually have not state building plan? In this context it is relevant to remember that in many wars, especially civil wars these levels are atrocities are not that rare. I still can remember the news stories of the war in former Yugoslavia. The difference was that it took some digging (in some cases, literally) to find the things that were done. The scope of the atrocities are quite a match (though precise numbers would are probably not easy to come by for the current conflict). As such, the savagery may not be unique, but the use for propaganda using modern technology is.

A number of random things that it could be relevant for would maybe be capillary membrane oxygenators for extracorporeal lung support, where leakages are an issue. I am not sure whether all systems have temp control, there still could be temperature drops during movement through the capillaries. Likewise it may also have influence on biocompatibility of other biomedical devices through which blood may pass? Another point could be analytic systems for blood analyses.

I have not seen that videos but assuming he had no children it means that line ends there and no current descendants can be traced to him. That is, a whole line gets eliminated and today's population will have to come from a different line. The longer the time scale (i.e. the earlier we set the starting point) the lower the likelihood that a line extends to modern times and remains separated from other lines. Under the theoretical caste systems lines would be separated but before that there are chances of converging lines, and the likelihood increases with each generation we go back (and we do not even need to stop at the species level, we could well go back to the common ancestors of modern humans and neanderthals, for example. Genetic evidence (such as mitochondrial eve) traces back to about 200k years ago. However, modeling approaches suggest that actual common ancestors of all modern human may be found as early as ~4k years back (Douglas et al, 2004 Nature 431: 562-566). edit: crossposted.

The second paper, which is unrelated to the first (which is a science news article) refers to a specific question. What is the time frame to have one binding site for a regulatory protein vanish and a new one rise. This is not about getting and fixing two mutations arbitrary mutations. The authors calculate a number of scenarios including types of selection. What they find specifically for humans is that the rise of a new binding sites takes about 60k years but that a coordinated mutation (one turning on and one turning off a binding site) is unlikely to occur (because of the long time frame needed). The quote does not really accurately reflect the paper and all (and cites the wrong year). Which I presume is source of the misunderstanding. It also should be noted that the paper specifically argues against errors of intelligent design proponents, which makes it even worse to misquote them.

Awesome read! Now I want a pet octopus (again). Also, I just realized that as overlords they would not need to be dark. They can just change color according to their mood!

This seems a bit romantic, doesn't it? Already the code of Ur-Nammu is quite intrusive. I am not familiar about the genesis of these texts, but I highly doubt it was a well-thought out, democratic process that everyone agreed on. At different times people believed different things to be important (e.g slavery or virginity or sorcery). That is reflected in how they were governed, plus historically few actually had choice in the way they were ruled. Absolute rulers were far more intrusive than governments nowadays, if they decided to. Instead of invoking a past that never was, wouldn't it be better to discuss the issue in abstract, modern terms?

I am not that sure about that. Geography will be a major concern as well as stability of neighboring countries. Moreover, many illegals are actually overstayers, thus the visa process may also affect how common illegal immigration is in a given country. Finally, the ease in which one can enter and stay in a given country will influence that. It is likely true that the US will be pretty high on any list, though. But also Syria for example (prior to the war) had a sizable population of refugees who entered illegally. This includes over a million refugees from Iraq after the US invasion. Conversely, in Canada the number seems fairly low (though I cannot find many reliable sources), but I presume that the majority will be overstayers, as it is kind of tricky to physically get into Canada (other than from the US).

Actually the issue here is an ethical one first. However, that does question the integrity of the author as a declaration would have been the usual procedure. The validity of the actual research has come under scrutiny due to a variety of different reasons as part of the usual scientific discussion (but which was not the core of the news segment).

Actually, among owners it is quite well known that this buggers are pretty good at escaping aquariums. And there are quite a few videos around showing them scuttling around between shallow puddles of water to hunt. For example : http://museumvictoria.com.au/about/mv-blog/nov-2011/octopus-on-dry-land/octopus-on-dry-land-video/ Once I learned a bit about them I found it hard to continue eating them. And I have not yet given up on creating an army of heavily armed octpuses/octopodes. I am not sure why DARPA did not fund that one.

I am thinking that it is common in many areas that are even vaguely applied (be it medical, biotech or engineering related). I guess more fundamental journals do not require it as much. But pretty much any biological/chemical journal I know requires a declaration (even if you just say there are none) That is important to note. It is not that he got 1.2 mills in his pocket. Assuming a base salary of 50k and another 25k for benefits it would pretty much just pay for him and a postdoc/student for the time frame. Imagine if he had to pay for experimental costs. Now, the real point is not that the industry swamps people with money, but rather that the situation (i.e. having to rely on soft money for financing your position) may make it very cheap for them to influence results. It is less of an issue if they draft a contract which states that the company has no influence on the publication of results. However, one can easily imagine that people relying on soft money are less inclined to anger their sole source of funding.