Rants, Raves, and Rhetoric v4

Tag: genes

  • TED Talk: How language transformed humanity

    Language is our genes talking; getting things that it wants. … Social learning is visual theft.

  • Passing the Sniff Test

    I found a discussion over brunch entertaining. Apparently women sniffed teeshirts worn 2 days by males. Women preferred the shirts belonging to genetically dissimilar men. These are the good men because they ensure better MHCs in offspring. Unfortunately, the women on oral contraceptives preferred genetically similar men. Yeah. The latter women would prefer their brother,…

  • Smart Boys

    George and I talked about this some last night. Nature vs Nurture… I tend to think of both as bottlenecks for human development. The debate about which does more to me makes as much sense as debating which is better for a web application: Apache or MySQL? Both are involved and affect the end results.…

  • Melungeon

    Mom dropped me a note last night. She ran across the word melungeon while doing some genealogy research. It describes someone who is of European, African, and Native American descent. It was popular in the Appalachian Mountains and similar in use to Mulatto in being a negative term. I haven’t talked about this much on…

  • Binary

    Right v wrong. White v black. 0 v 1. With all that I am, I am a maybe. Decision-Making: When up against a deadline, I’ll make a quick judgment and run with it. When I have time, I will mull over the possibilities infintitum. Why make a decision when no one wants a decision yet?…

  • What About Mixed People?

    These companies use mitochondrial DNA to trace one’s genetic lineage. So, they take a sample from my mitochondria (which I got from my mom) and compare it to samples that have been taken from mitochondria samples found in their database to match it. Well, my mom’s mom has lots of English and Scottish ancestry. So…