Better than thumbscrews or the rack

From Reuters via CNN:

A Texas woman convicted of neglecting her two horses will get only bread and water for the first three days of a 30-day jail sentence, a judge said Tuesday.

Excuse me?

From Wonkette:

Just when we thought we wouldn’t actually learn anything from all this Reagan coverage, Chris Matthews gives us a real history lesson. Vamping a bit between MSNBC correspondents’ interviews of Stepford Republicans, Matthews noted that, thanks to all of Reagan’s war movies, “He seemed understand the experience of the Greatest Generation better than the guys who were actually in battle could.”

One more thing on genealogy

Steve Olson is the author of The Royal We, an article in The Atlantic in May 2002, which claims: “The mathematical study of genealogy indicates that everyone in the world is descended from Nefertiti and Confucius, and everyone of European ancestry is descended from Muhammad and Charlemagne.”

Who’s your daddy?

According to Steve Olson, Mapping Human History, “Medical students are taught that 5 to 10 percent of the fathers identified on birth certificates are not the true biological fathers.” Genetic studies confirm this number. “[N]onpaternity tends to be higher for first-born and last-born children.”

Think of the lines

“Adding up the numbers, approximately 81 billion modern humans have lived altogether. For every person alive today, twelve have died. If people really go to heaven after death, then the afterworld is a crowded place.”

Steve Olson, Mapping Human History

Mapping Human History

NewMexiKen spent this afternoon reading Steve Olson’s Mapping Human History: Discovering the Past through Our Genes (2002). The book is informative and interesting, though it gives the vague impression of articles strung together. Some items of interest:

Every single one of the 6 billion people on the planet today is descended from the small group of anatomically modern humans who once lived in eastern Africa. The group occasionally came close to extinction, but it never died out completely, and eventually it began to expand. By about 100,000 years ago, modern humans had moved north along the Nile Valley and across the Sinai Peninsula into the Middle East. More than 60,000 years ago they made their way along the coastlines of India and southeastern Asia and sailed to Australia. About 40,000 years ago, modern humans moved from northeastern Africa into Europe and from southeastern Asia into eastern Asia. Finally, sometime more than 10,000 years ago, they made their way along a wide plain joining Siberia and Alaska and spread down the length of North and South America. (Page 3)

In comparing the DNA sequences of people from many locations around the world, geneticists have been able to measure the genetic differences between individuals and between groups. What they have found is that about 85 percent of the total amount of genetic variation in humans occurs within groups and only 15 percent between groups. In other words, most genetic variants occur in all human populations. Geneticists have to look hard to find variants concentrated in specific groups.

The pattern is quite different in other large mammals. Among elephants of eastern and southern Africa, 40 percent of the total genetic differences occurs between groups. For the gray wolves of North America, group differences account for 75 percent of the total genetic variation. Most conservation biologists hold that group genetic differences have to exceed 25 to 30 percent for a single species to divided into subspecies or races. By this measure, human races do not exist. (Page 63)

Partial zero-emission vehicles

From Dan Neil in the Los Angeles Times:

In some atmospheric conditions — a brown day in San Bernardino, for instance — PZEV vehicles actually clean the air, which is to say, their emissions are cleaner than the air sucked into the engine.

In terms of noxious emissions, your spouse pollutes more than a PZEV.

Despite automakers’ long and litigious assertions to the contrary, they have been able to develop the compliant technologies. There are currently more than 30 PZEV vehicles on the market (visit http://www.driveclean.ca.gov ), including BMW’s 3-Series cars and wagon, Honda’s Accord, Subaru’s suite of Legacy cars and wagons, and Volvo’s big V70 wagon — not exactly hair shirts of eco-martyrdom.

So let’s hear it for big government. Had California not used its enormous leverage in the marketplace — the state is the biggest vehicle market in the country — the automakers would not have been motivated to develop the engineering that will, now that it is available, become integrated into the larger vehicle market. California’s zero-emissions mandate has been adopted, with some variation, in the “green states” of Maine, New York, Vermont and Massachusetts. Why, clean air is spreading like a prairie fire.

Donald Duck…

is 70 today. He debuted in the Disney Silly Symphony cartoon “The Wise Little Hen” on this date in 1934. (Donald Duck is one of three Disney characters with an “official” birthday. The others are Mickey and Minnie, who debuted on November 18, 1928.)

Donald Duck actually appeared in more theatrical cartoons than Mickey Mouse — 128. Donald’s middle name is Fauntleroy.

But the trivia question of the day is, who was Huey, Dewey and Louie’s mother?
 
 

Cole Porter…

was born in Peru, Indiana, on this date in 1891. The following is from the web site for the PBS series American Masters:

“Birds do it. Bees do it. Even educated fleas do it. Let’s do it, let’s fall in love.”

“Night and Day,” “I Get A Kick Out of You,” “You’re the Top,” “Begin the Beguine,” “My Heart Belongs to Daddy” — some of the cleverest, funniest, and most romantic songs ever written came from the pen of Cole Porter. He was unmatched as a tunesmith, and his Broadway musicals — from “Kiss Me Kate” and “Anything Goes” to “Silk Stockings” and “Can Can” — set the standards of style and wit to which today’s composers and lyricists aspire.

Night and Day was one of NPR’s 100 most important American musical works of the 20th century. Listen to the NPR report on the great Cole Porter song [Real Audio].

Lester William Polfus…

was born on this date in 1915. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as Les Paul.

The name Les Paul is synonymous with the electric guitar. As a player, inventor and recording artist, Paul has been an innovator from the early years of his life. Born Lester William Polfus in 1915 in Waukesha, Wisconsin, Paul built his first crystal radio at age nine - which was about the time he first picked up a guitar. By age 13 he was performing semi-professionally as a country-music guitarist and working diligently on sound-related inventions. In 1941, Paul built his first solid-body electric guitar, and he continued to make refinements to his prototype throughout the decade. He also worked on refining the technology of sound, developing revolutionary engineering techniques such as close miking, echo delay and multitracking. All the while he busied himself as a bandleader who could play both jazz and country music.

His career as a musician nearly came to an end in 1948, when a near-fatal car accident shattered his right arm and elbow. However, he instructed the surgeons to set his arm at an angle that would allow him to cradle and pick the guitar. Paul subsequently made his mark as a jazz-pop musician extraordinaire, recording as a duo with his wife, singer Colleen Summers (a.k.a. Mary Ford). Their biggest hits included “How High the Moon” (1951) and “Vaya Con Dios” (1953), both reaching #1. The recordings of Les Paul and Mary Ford are noteworthy for Paul’s pioneering use of overdubbing - i.e., layering guitar parts one atop another, a technique also referred to as multitracking or “sound on sound” recording. The results were bright, bubbly and a little otherworldly - just the sort of music you might expect from an inventor with an ear for the future.

In 1952, Les Paul introduced the first eight-track tape recorder (designed by Paul and marketed by Ampex) and, more significantly for the future of rock and roll, launched the solid-body electric guitar that bears his name. Built and marketed by Gibson, with continuous advances and refinements from Paul in such areas as low-impedance pickup technology, the Les Paul guitar became a staple instrument among discerning rock guitarists. This list of musicians associated with the Gibson Les Paul include Jeff Beck, Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page, Duane Allman and Mike Bloomfield. Over the ensuing decades, Paul himself has remained active, cutting a Grammy-winning album of instrumental duets with Chet Atkins, Chester and Lester in 1977, performing at New York jazz clubs, and continuing to indulge his inventor’s curiosity in a basement workshop at his home in Mahwah, New Jersey.

Timing

“NOW MIGHT be a good time for Luke Walton to give Britney Spears a call.”

T.J. Simers in the Los Angeles Times

Sounds the Detroit Pistons didn’t want to hear

“The postgame interview room moderator announcing ‘Luke Walton will be next.’ ”

J.A. Adande in the Los Angeles Times

Best line of the day, so far

Headline in the Detroit Free Press, referring to last night’s win by the Lakers:
THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK

See the Freep front page [pdf].