This story is beyond sad — Mexican Hero’s Family Killed. When are we north of the border going to take responsibility for some of what is happening south of the border because we like illegal Mexican imports so much?
The Last Living American Veteran of WWI is 108-years-old. He was 16 when he enlisted. There’s a 10-minute video interview.
Dan Neil doesn’t think much of Tiger Woods or professional golf. A sample:
My take-away is simply this: Sponsors, run. It doesn’t matter if you’re backing Davis Love III or Ernie Els or Vijay Singh; save your money. Honda, Deutsche Bank, MasterCard, Shell, make a break for it. For the immediate future, the branding opportunities of professional golf have been utterly vacated by l’affair d’tigre. Tiger Woods was and is the sum and whole of the game. He was and is the purest, most unalloyed product of the sport and culture of golf. And when all that is golf was cooked in fate’s crucible and poured down this young man’s gullet, the result was the perfect player who hasn’t breathed an honest breath in years, a jerk — Joe Francis with a 400-yard drive. Tiger’s failure is golf’s summary bankruptcy and indictment.
Camelot fell when Lancelot sinned against the realm. Same deal here.
Gawker tells liberals to shut up. A sample:
Remember when Bush attempted to negotiate an international climate deal, pass a jobs-focused economic stimulus, reform the nation’s health care industry, and come up with a hopefully coherent plan to end the Afghanistan war in one year? And remember how his attempts at all those things were stymied by an uncooperative and undemocratic Senate, but he still managed to make real and tangible gains on each of them? Oh, no, you probably don’t remember that because it was a joke we were making about how you have lost all sense of perspective.
Emily Yoffe explains Why, exactly, our brothers and sisters drive us so crazy.
Evolutionary behaviorists are trying to understand why it is that the emotional connection, and conflicts, between siblings can last a lifetime. The prevailing theory is that it all comes down to math. With our nearest relatives—each parent, our full-siblings, and our children, we share 50 percent of our novel genes. This overlap, and gap, helps explain the continual cycle of family love and conflict.
There’s more. BTW, don’t we share 100% of our genes with our siblings? What am I missing here?
Katherine Boehret of The Mossberg Solution explains what Windows users need to know when they switch to Mac. You might want to save this for when you switch. You will, you know?
Oh, and you can get a pretty good deal on a Saab right now. But consider this first —
Every year on Dec. 24 at 3 p.m., half of Sweden sits down in front of the television for a family viewing of the 1958 Walt Disney Presents Christmas special, “From All of Us to All of You.” Or as it is known in Sverige, Kalle Anka och hans vänner önskar God Jul: “Donald Duck and his friends wish you a Merry Christmas.”
We don’t share 100% of our genes with anyone, not even with an identical twin, thanks to human genetic variation. You each get 50% from mom and 50% from dad, but you and your brother get different combinations. See?
Joffe writes: “With our nearest relatives—each parent, our full-siblings, and our children, we share 50 percent of our novel genes.”
I realize it’s my obtuse gene at work here, but I still don’t think our gene-relationship is the same with our parents and our kids as it is with our full-siblings. I got genes from each of my parents. I gave genes to each of my children.
My siblings and I though, while we may have gotten a different mix, each got half from Mom and half from Dad. We share the same pool 100%.
Maybe I’m not understanding what you don’t understand.
Let’s say
Dad = A, B, C, D.
Mom = Q, R, S, T.
I (might) = A, B, R, S.
My brother (might) = B, D, R, T.
I’m 50% Mom, 50% Dad. So is my brother. My brother and I overlap 50%, but also have a 50% gap.
Maybe it should say “at least 50%.”
OK. That made the light bulb go off–I understand the disconnect.
I read a little about this yesterday. We have 25,000 genes (that’s the current best estimate). We, and each of our full-siblings, get them from two sources, our father and our mother.
The best explanation was that the 25,000 decisions — Dad’s gene or Mom’s gene — are statistically like flipping a coin. And if you flip a coin 25,000 times you are very likely to get nearly half heads and half tails. It might not be exact, it might be 12,600 from Dad and 12,400 from Mom, or 12,450 from Dad and 12,550 from Mom, but for each of us it is pretty close to 50%.