Posts by Bart Janssen
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Hard News: Who else forgot to get married?, in reply to ChrisW,
only a small number
hmmm ok more humans stayed in Africa than left Africa at that time. But vastly more humans existing now derive from those that left. So the majority of humans, not just Europeans, have some trace of neanderthalensis.
As for return flow - that's very very difficult to assess - because of the very diversity that remains in Africa. The problem is that we don't have the results in yet from all the recent sequencing of African populations. Personally it wouldn't surprise me to find a lot of neanderthalensis traces in African populations as well. But it could be true that they never stooped that low :).
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Hard News: Who else forgot to get married?, in reply to ChrisW,
vast majority of humanity (H.s.sapiens) and its genome that stayed home in Africa
I think the vast majority of humanity did not stay in Africa. Vastly more humans left Africa and colonised the rest of the planet than stayed. All of Asia, the Americas and Europe were colonised by those that left Africa and blended with neanderthalensis along the way. So it's not a Euro-centric interpretation at all.
But your point I presume is that only those that travelled north would have mixed their genes. As far as I know the studies haven't looked into whether any of the extant African populations retain evidence of blending. It is worth noting that those that left Africa probably also went back and mixed their genes back into the African populations. It's also worth noting that neanderthalensis probably raomed much further South and only moved North as H. sapiens sapiens displaced them.
All that said *I am not an expert* in the field I just skim read the recent papers on the neanderthalensis' genome.
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Hard News: Who else forgot to get married?, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
There are no full-blooded humans left either. Interesting how stupid the statement is that way round.
I wonder whether H. sapiens sapiens and H.sapiens neanderthalensis had to deal with this shit too while they were busy blending their genomes (yes genetic evidence shows they did interbreed).
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Hard News: Who else forgot to get married?, in reply to Nat,
the family tree
And this is the bit I don’t get. Your family tree is a genetic legacy not a tree of names. It doesn’t matter what you are called you are still genetically related to your ancestors and decendants regardless of what they call each other. Theoretically my family name ends with my brother’s daughters but it certainly doesn’t end the genetic line.
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Southerly: Getting There is Half the Fun, in reply to Geoff Lealand,
being designated as an ‘alien’
There were times when I was quite happy with the assumption that I was not from the same planet as those people - to be fair we were living in Texas at that time.
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Hard News: Who else forgot to get married?, in reply to Russell Brown,
Our first-born is Jimmy Rae Brown
Except for the expectation that he will be a blues guitarist.
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Hard News: Who else forgot to get married?, in reply to B Jones,
I don’t recall a single one I’ve attended which included ...
Neither have I, but I strongly suspect, actually I'm damned certain, that my sample is biased. I just don't get invited to standard relious wedding because none of my friends are that way inclined.
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Hard News: Who else forgot to get married?, in reply to Emma Hart,
I don't understand this.
Surely it's just a choice. It may just appeal to some folks to bind their names with their beloved in the same way they have bound their lives. What is odd is that it is almost always only one way and almost never do you hear of a couple creating a new surname of their own (which I kind of think would be cool).
It seems to me that if you are choosing to share so many parts of your life you could just as easily want to share a name.
Of course as a man it is never expected that I change my name and in our case it would have been silly to have either of us mess up our publication record by changing names. But I can see why some folks do want to change their name.
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Southerly: Getting There is Half the Fun, in reply to Lucy Stewart,
Oh, the I94.
Reminds me of the time we were post-docing in Texas. We wanted to do the cross border thing into one of the Mexican border towns with my father-not-in-law. So we did everything right got all our paperwork sorted before the trip, took an organised (approved) bus tour and made sure the border patrol were happy with us when we left the US. On the way back in we carefully got all our paperwork and passports sorted for the inevitable inspection and expected grilling as we came back into the US ... We happened to be in the back of the bus when the immigration officer got onto the bus and shouted "Any non-US citizens?" We put our hands up and shouted back "Yes, we're New Zealanders" and waved our black passports, stuffed with forms. The officer looked at us, and looked at the packed bus between us and him and shouted "fine", and promptly got off the bus and waved us through.
It seems immigration is entirely dependent on how tired the particular officer is on the day.
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Southerly: Getting There is Half the Fun, in reply to Danielle,
dislike for Denver
I kind of like Denver. I think it's nice the way they are doing their bit to encourage exercise by making sure that your outgoing gate is as far as possible from your arrival gate.
Our worst timing experience was transiting through Mexico city, we couldn't read the signage (not their fault) but standing in the very long immigration queue (hoping it was the correct queue) watching the minutes tick towards the departure time of our connecting flight was very stressfull. We cleared immigration with enough time for me to sprint to the gate and beg them to hold the door open while my partner caught up.
It does seem that fitness training before international travel is a good idea.