CDarwin

Does being of the same religion and ethnicity as Osama Bin Laden and saying "American should burn for its transgressions against ..." really make a person that much more likely to commit a violent act than being of any other religion or ethnicity and saying the same thing? I suppose the likelihood increases very slightly, but is that enough to justify the special effort of involving authorities if you wouldn't do this for members of other groups?

Anyone want to talk about how this might affect McCain's choice now? Joe Biden is a pretty formidable guy as a statesman and politician. I would be skiddish about choosing someone relatively inexperienced on the national stage to go up against Biden in a debate, or just to contrast with him. On the other hand, since Obama went older, will McCain want to go younger?

70,000 is a little short. I think most paleoanthropologists would go with 200,000 these days, what with the genetic evidence and the early fossil discoveries like Omo I/II and all. Still not a great deal compared with a billion, though, I'll allow. As for what we'll be then... Well, probably long extinct, and our descendants too. The chances of any one species leaving a chain of descendants that long seems vanishingly small. I do think that we as a species will leave ancestors, though, being as widespread and resilient as we are. We tend to confuse the fragility of human civilization with the fragility of the human species sometimes. Yes, a nuclear winter would be pretty much it for our great global society, but humans as a species have survived much worse in small groups. What would happen in a civilization-ending scenario is the isolation of little pockets of humanity under enormous selection pressure to cope with the new environments. That's a perfect recipe for speciation. Humanity as we know it might well birth lots of new, little humanities that outlast it by millennia.

Aha! Sweet vindication. This will finally console all the embittered Biden supporters and end this feud that has been tearing the Democratic Party apart. (joke) But, yeah, Biden makes a good, if safe, choice. He's almost the perfect balance. Obama is an 'other'; Biden is your really rich great uncle. Obama is from the Pacific Southwest; Biden is from the Atlantic Northeast. Obama young, Biden old; Obama black, Biden white as is humanly possible; Obama the brash newcomer, Biden the elder statesman. And he's generally popular with the sorts of working class voters which Obama has had some troubles with. Biden's selection would look beyond just the crass and dubious notion that a running mate can win the swing state of his birth (Delaware was obviously never going to be hotly contested) to how his particular appeal can affect the campaign nationally.

Joe Biden can still be Secretary of State. Aside, isn't that a pretty crappy bumper sticker? It looks like it could be from the Dole/Kemp campaign? I thought Obama was modern media savvier than that.

Aha! Second fan. So, that's Sayonara in the 'real' world. Interesting.

Right, this law doesn't proscribe that all doctors everywhere have to perform artificial inseminations on demand to whoever does it? If you don't want to have to inseminate lesbians, don't set up to perform inseminations. Am I missing something?

There's never been a civil war before, though. The army just takes over. And, as I said, the control over the nuclear arsenal never really shifts. The army always maintains that. Fears about unsecured nuclear weapons in Pakistan have always seemed a bit overblown to me. The army isn't giving those up, Pakistan doesn't have many anyway. It'd be much easier to get one in say, Russia. Now, nuclear knowledge is a different issue, obviously.

Well, most precisely the army has nukes. Since control of them never really shifts, them being in power or not being in power doesn't seem to change the threat Pakistan's nuclear arsenal poses to anyone. Musharraf wasn't just a Bush cronie, though. He was a reasonably effective leader, especially economically, who instigated some important liberal reforms as well. But most importantly, he had the enormous loyalty of the army. With him out of the government, well, like I said, the army is suddenly disenfranchised from power. That's not going to help anyone deal with the fundamentalists.

Eugenics and social Darwinism aren't strictly the same thing. Social Darwinism (I really wish they'd call it Spencerism or something and not besmirch poor Darwin, but I guess is name is more adjectivable) is the belief that the most fit societies, and most fit members of societies, will succeed over all others, and that this is natural and inevitable. Essentially, it's an argument against social action. Eugenics is quite the opposite. It's a very dramatic social action initiative.

Now the Army has no investment in the system or incentive to cooperate with the civilian government. There'll be another coup, within the decade, I would wager you any number or rupees you'd like.

Experience in the Senate gives you the big advantage of an understanding it's institutional functionings. Former governors often experience a lot of difficulty with Congress because they aren't used to such a strong and active legislative branch. That was Carter's problem.

Well, much of it is a case of degree. Many social animals will exert some energy towards caring for the infirm and less able among them. A Vervet monkey might adopt an orphan of another mother, dolphins might protect an injured member of the pack. Humans take this social responsibility to a particular extreme, and are also very capable at it. Some of it is kin selection: it pays you genetically take care of your relatives because they share many of your genes. Some of it might be the the 'misfiring' of instincts suited to other purposes, like caring for other group member's children because of instincts evolved to cause you to take care of your own. Or, more controversially, it could be group selection. The theory goes that groups which have cooperative, altruistic members will do better than those with entirely Machiavellian members, thus altruistic behavior in a group setting is selected for. Neanderthals, by the way, also almost certainly cared for their old, as is evidenced by extremely arthritic and toothless specimens like the old man from La-Chappelle aux Saints, who couldn't possibly have survived to the level of infirmity he achieved without a being supported by a benevolent group. Basically, you're favorable enough. If you weren't you would never reproduce. Evolution can't do any better than that. You can't say that 'dooms' us because obviously weren't doing just fine at propagating ourselves even with cancers and heart disease and genetic syndromes. Perhaps the genes that contribute (or cause) those things will become vital in the future. Or perhaps they will become so disadvantageous they will be scrubbed away by selection. Either way, there's no dooming.

I'd forgotten Lyndon Johnson was the majority leader. So that makes it even more striking. It might have something to do with the history of Tennessee politics. By mid-century, the state was just emerging from the dominance of the Memphis Crump machine, which Kefauver and Gore helped destroy. Crump died in the 50s, but he had backed Strom Thurmond in his Dixiecrat run, so opposition to the Southern Manifesto may have been part of both men's opposition to Crump (maybe, I don't really know). Tennessee's governor at the time was also a racial moderate, and the state trended that way, so it may have just been that. Alot of Texans didn't sign either, you'll note, so there must be something in that state too. I wonder if the percentage of African Americans in a state might mean anything. I'm not quite sure on the numbers for Tennessee and Texas (or what they were in the 1960s), but I'm almost positive they're lower than say, South Carolina or Mississippi. That was the primary fear of white Southerners during the Reconstruction, that the freed slaves would be so electorally powerful they could 'take over' Southern states.

Does anyone know which three Southern senators didn't sign on to the Southern Manifesto (drafted by Strom Thurmond in opposition to Brown v Board)? Two were from one state. It's not strictly on topic to the discussion of Barack Obama, but I think it's an interesting bit of trivia, especially because I'm not totally sure of the reason it was these three or those two states. There might be some deep kernel of truth buried in there that will shed reams of light on Obama's likely fate in the South.

I've been mildly surprised actually with how much critical attention Obama's 'plight' in the the South and especially in the Appalachians has gotten. I mean, have we forgotten the man's a Democrat? I live in a county that hasn't elected a Democrat to anything but constable since Reconstruction. With the periodic exception of West Virginia, from union support, Democrats just don't win Appalachia, even back when they did the rest of the South. Barack Obama probably does have more of a problem than Democrats before him because he's more obviously an 'other,' so people are suspicious and skeptical, but I seriously doubt he's going to fail to bring in a single electoral vote that Kerry or Gore got because of his Appalachian problem. With the exception of West Virginia, no state has nearly a majority of its population in the mountains. The fact is, he can win North Carolina without Mayberry. Oh, and I wonder where that guy they interviewed lives. The Andy Griffith Show comes on at 5:30 here too.

Except that culture is dynamic and unpredictable in its effects. I doesn't seem that it can be just one set part of the puzzle. The problem isn't pinning down the genetics, it's pinning down the social effects. Start with the biological trait, dancing. How you dance will be cultural, we'll say. But there might also be a why you dance, which would also be cultural, and effect how you dance. Then there's when you dance, if you dance singly in a group, and all of these cultural decisions will effect the behavior of dancing. And none of those decisions are final or determinative. Some individuals will take their own cultural experiences (perhaps some have a greater affinity for American rap music that the rest of the group, or what-ever) and that too will effect their dancing. But I guess I'm beginning to see what you mean. I just don't understand genetics enough to know how to mathemetize all of that, but I suppose it cane be done. With complex behaviors with multiple biological and cultural motives like dancing or say, voting, it must get daunting, though.

What I've read about that paper (haven't read it, I admit) it seems to me like they just defined "conservative" or "liberal" as a certain set of personality traits, then found the genetic basis of those personality traits. Doesn't seem that earth-shattering to me, and the obvious weak-point is there association of character traits with political orientation. But, haven't read the real paper. I do like the idea of sticking it to political scientists, who do rely way too much on untested 18th century philosophical concepts. And I think you missed my point when you talked about heredity. Let's take dancing, for example. The existence of dancing is practically a cultural universal, so we can safely say it has a biological basis. But how do you measure variation of dancing in any quantitative way? It not only varies culturally, in set styles, but individually through different interpretations. And what influences interpretation? Culture again. That was really my point. When you have culture mediating biology, then culture mediating the mediation of biology, how can you put a percentage on the relative influence of the two on a behavior?

I think it is worth pointing out here that in the rush to declare a new cold war, Georgia has basically got away completely internationally with trying to violently bring a region that had declared it's wish for independence (ah, self-determination, the most unevenly applied Western ideal in history) under central control. The only country that's called them on it is, of course, Russia. *shrugs* It doesn't excuse Russia's excessive, and transparently Machiavellian, response, but the (especially American) media's coverage of this thing has been horrid. For example: Russia did not invade S. Ossetia. I've heard that way too much. Russia was already in S. Ossetia on a peacekeeping mission, Georgia invaded it. The Russians reinforced their troops there and then invaded Georgia. And Russia did not invade Czechoslovakia. The Soviet Union (and Warsaw Pact) did, which Georgia was a part of. The leader of the Soviet Union at that time? A Ukrainian. Yet Neil Cavuto gets on the video with Sakashvili and lets him cite that as a famous example of Russian aggression. It seems like a nit-picky point, but the Soviet Union really was something different that simply "Russia." In fact, organizationally, the Russian Soviet Federal Socialist Republic was intentionally kept the weakest of the Soviet Socialist Republics, because the Communist Party feared that if anyone would challenge its authority, it would be a Russian political leader (and look who it ended up being, President of the RSFSR Boris Yeltsin). What the Communist Party did, it did for its own reasons, not Russia's, and there were always Georgians right at the highest levels of power in that Party, just as there were citizens of almost every SSR. (No one would care to recall Josef Dzhugashvili, would they? Or you might know him as Joseph Stalin.)

Miller and Levine's Biology is something of a standard, and I remember to be really good. It's the first textbook I took to reading for fun. It's a high school book, though.

I would be seriously surprised if Russia did the same thing it's done in Georgia in Eastern Europe, though. The two places are just so different, both in Western perception and in Russian. The European Union would feel threatened if Russia incurred into Eastern Europe, and so would NATO, which no one really does if Georgia gets splatted. And Poland the Ukraine aren't the source of the deep, existential insecurity that the Caucuses hold for Russians. They see that region as loose thread that if pulled will unravel the whole Federation. On a practical side, Eastern Europe is also just a much tougher nut to crack. The Russian military was already heavily deployed in the area of Georgia; it has been since the First Chechen War. That's how they were able to intervene as quickly as they did without needing to go through a lengthy mobilization. The military structures in the Russian West are much less ready for a fast deployment. And the Ukraine and former WP states are just much stronger than Georgia. Belarus is about the only place in Europe that Russia could probably roll into without serious repercussions, and it's ruled by a fawningly pro-Russian (and wildly popular) despot, Alexandr Lukashenko.

50/50 is more than inexact, though, it's totally artificial. You can't really put percentages on effects on human behavior, because 'nature' and 'nurture' involve different things. Biology provides tendencies, predispositions, and broad limits, while culture is an enormous force that not only involves discreet behaviors (like the thumbs up), but mediates biology, all experience, and even itself. So it's papaya and breadfruit, just a bit. Simple behaviors like facial expressions are relatively easy to say "oh, that's biological," but complex behaviors, not so much. And even with the smile, are there not subtle cultural differences that affect its meaning as well? In some circumstances in some cultures, smiling can be considered inappropriate or aggressive, where in others it would be perfectly normal.

It's not terribly accurate, though. I hate to play Russian apologist, but the Georgians did 'start this' with their incursion into S. Ossetia, and that's where the majority of casualties have taken place. It's not clear how many of those casualties would have been averted if the Georgians had just been allowed to duke it out with the S. Ossetian forces and the Russians had withdrawn their troops and not sent in any more, but I don't doubt the number would still have been high. As I somewhat expected would happen, Russia is getting treated a bit unfairly in Western perceptions over this. Russia's actions were bad because they over-reacted and threatened Georgia's sovereignty (disproportionate response, the term Bush used, is a good phrase), not because they are responsible for the conflict in the first place (or only in a very long-term, indirect sense). As long as Georgia found the idea of independent S. Ossetia and Abkazhia unacceptable, this was going to happen. There's not much Bush could have done about that. And I don't think NATO should have incurred just to protect Saakashvili from his own stupidity.

Has Russia been ethnically cleansed? Or wait, has the thread been? Ah, I get it. Clever, clever.

They could have done a lot more though, like knocking out Saakashvili completely and installing a pro-Russian puppet, like they've got in Belarus. If international pressure hadn't been in the balance, I have no doubt they would have. Did you see the Russian and Georgian air-pistol shooters hugging? That was pretty neat.