Romeo & Julietsky? Bronze Age embracing skeletons discovered in Southern Russia

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Archaeologists near the town of Krasny Sulin in the Rostov region have discovered two skeletons believed to be from around 2,000 BC. The human remains were found lying face to face — judging by the structure of the bones the bodies are thought to be males. After anthropologists determine the sex and it is indeed two males — this has never been seen before.

Protect net neutrality

One of the reasons that an equal Internet threatens the Plutocrats is that it prevents them from lying to and manipulating the public. The growing democratized citizen’s media and direct communication through social media allow us to share information directly outside of the control of the corporate-militarist propaganda machine.

The citizen’s media has been instrumental in exposing the lies about the Israeli attack on Gaza. As Dylan Byers writes, the citizen’s media allows people to share stories directly and

“Corporate media representatives on the ground also respond quickly on social media sometimes getting themselves into controversy. If the network reacts and removes the journalist it creates an immediate reaction that spreads rapidly through the social media and undermines the credibility of the media outlet.”

The world continues to send the message to Israel to stop the attack and to the US to stop supporting it. The Internet is a fundamental tool in the struggle for justice. There are ongoing efforts to control the Internet and restrict access.

Give Me a Job!

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Busker and Fishmonger Sherika Sherard singing a new song to inspire those looking for a job: Give Me a Job!

Recorded and published under permission from the artist

Serj Tankian: New ways

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Serj Tankian has teamed up with dance producer Benny Benassi on a new track which is now available to stream. The System Of A Down frontman lends his vocal skills to the song Shooting Helicopters, which came about when the two met in 2013 and agreed to work together.

Benassi says he is a long-time admirer of Tankian’s vocal prowess and adds that the pair spent six months refining the track.

Benassi adds: “The idea of bringing Serj’s vocal style into our musical environment was a real challenge. As soon as I started experimenting with the music under the vocals, I was immediately struck by the atmosphere of the song which is decidedly different from most things you here at the festivals I play at and unlike anything we’ve done so far, ourselves.

“I started playing embryonic versions out, especially as a set opener and the effect was devastating. We kept working on the music until we were 100% satisfied. I’d like to thank Serj for being part of this. Respect.”

Tankian is also lined up to appear on another dance track. He is among a number of rock stars set to guest on the next album by top DJ Avicii. He is joining Green Day’s Billie Joe Armstrong and Mike Einzinger of Incubus on the record, according to Pulse Of Radio.

Einziger also worked on Avicii’s last album and tells DancingAstronaut: “We spoke for a few hours and made a plan to write songs together and the very first thing that happened when we worked together is we wrote Wake Me Up. That was our first attempt at writing music together, which is crazy looking back at it.

“He’s someone who’s very opinionated and knows what they like and don’t like, and that’s really important, a good thing right off the bat. We wrote a few new songs together. We did one together with Billie Joe of Green Day. That one’s really exciting.”

Rolling Stone reports that Avicii has also recorded with Coldplay’s Chris Martin and Jon Bon Jovi for the new project.

Why do dogs have such short lives?

Here’s what dogs look like, when they’re not bred to conform to human expectations

Notice the:

• Long snouts. For breathing, panting and eating. Shorten the snout, and you get squished teeth, reduced heat tolerance and breathing problems.
• Broad skulls. For brains. Several modern breeds have been reduced to what Temple Grandin calls “brainless icepicks”. Reducing brain size doesn’t just make animals stupid, it also contributes to neurological issues that can kill them.
• Pointy ears. They don’t get ear infections. Make them floppy, and you create a nice environment for pathogenic bacteria.
• Strong hips. They’re for walking and running. Breed them into a cool-looking German Shepherd slouch and you’ll get hip dysplasia.
• Slender, lithe forms. Carrying extra weight puts increased wear-and-tear on all body systems.

Lifespan in general is determined by trade-offs between survival and reproduction. Wolves, the ancestors of dogs, can live 15-20 years*, roughly twice as long as comparable-sized dogs. They start breeding in the wild no younger than 2 years. They need to form pairs and establish a territory before breeding. Older wolves will often have help raising their pups from older juveniles who have not managed to mate or find territories.

In contrast, most dogs can breed from 6-12 months of age, and they don’t benefit from having territories, pair bonds or packs. Whereas wolves breed until they die, dog breeders will usually retire older females. So the whole life history of dogs is shifted to more of a “live-fast-die-young” style compared with wolves. On top of that, artificial selection and inbreeding have created huge problems for dogs.

Striving to breed to an idealized “type” while ignoring basic physiological necessities doesn’t create a robust organism. That’s how we get tortured monstrosities like English Bulldogs, who can barely breathe without snorting and whose pups must be cut out of the mother’s womb because she can no longer deliver them. Even seemingly harmless traits often bring a higher probability of serious health problems. White fur, for example, is often accompanied by neurological deficits ranging from subtle behavioural abnormalities, to deafness or even early death.

Generally speaking, working dogs have sustained longer lifespans because they’re required to be physically fit to do their jobs. Show dogs are mostly just required to meet peculiar aesthetic requirements and be easily managed. The lethargy resulting from chronic health problems is actually a positive for champions who dominate the gene pool, even if it shortens their lives. (It’s a bit like foot-binding, whose victims were prized as wives for their passive and mild behaviour, which resulted from being crippled and in constant pain).

Loss of genetic diversity also shortens lifespans. In a healthy population, essentially all individuals have several defective genes, but each defective gene is rare in the population as a whole. Each individual holds two copies of each gene, so in a randomly mating population, it’s rare for an individual to have two defective copies. Usually, as long as the individual has at least one good copy, it will be fine.

Health problems only arise when an individual has two defective copies. But when the population experiences a genetic bottleneck — that is, only a few individuals get to breed — any defects they have will spread to a large proportion of the population. That means that when these individuals mate, a large proportion of their offspring will carry two copies of the genetic defect and therefore be unhealthy.

Unfortunately, for the last century or so, dog breeders have actively pursued a misguided strategy of purifying breeds by demonizing cross-breeding and allowing only “champions” to breed. I recall reading somewhere that the entire Standard Poodle population consists of effectively about 7 dogs. Health-wise, this is terrible. You can’t eliminate all the subtle genetic problems that plague breeds by selective breeding. They arise faster than you can purge them.

Whilst some of the more severe defects have been reduced by conscientious breeders who test their dogs before breeding, this selective breeding further narrows the gene pool, and has thus promoted many more defective genes that cause mild reductions in health and lifespan. We can’t test for these defects, and consequently they are now prevalent throughout most non-working breeds.

The statistic refers to the lifespan of wolves in captivity, not in the wild. Since we’re talking about dogs in captivity, this is generally the relevant comparison. But that might seem to contradict the evolutionary argument, which is that a tradeoff is shifted away from survival and toward reproduction in dogs. Here it gets tricky. Evolution doesn’t care for the dead. 

The tradeoff between survival and reproduction only applies to individuals who have reached reproductive age. It doesn’t matter how many die before breeding, or how long those doomed juveniles lived. From the point of view of lifespan evolution, it’s almost like they never really existed. 

Most statistics on lifespan, however, even if they exclude pup mortality, don’t exclude non-reproductive individuals. In wolves, the only reproductive individuals are highly successful and mature, dominant mated pairs, and they can have a long tenure as pack leaders. 

Half of all wolves die in puppyhood, and even fewer establish packs and territories. But those few leaders can monopolise the gene pool for many years. So selection keeps the wolf lifespan long (in terms of age-related disease) because for the elite breeders, it can be, even if it isn’t for the average wolf. Published stats on wild wolf lifespan don’t reflect this.

Is it possible that an alien civilization has completely different mathematics than ours?

An alien civilization could have a completely different mathematics than ours – they could have differing ideas about infinity, Godel’s theorem, linearity and time, and counting, to mention a few.

With no experience of ET mathematicians, we haven’t got much to go on. But, let’s take a look at a few of the ways ET maths could take different approaches from ours, or be hard for us to understand.

This is meant as no more than a light hearted exploration of these ideas, and if it stimulates some interesting thoughts, I’ve more than done my job.

Is it possible that an alien civilization has completely different mathematics than ours?

What a wonderful world :-)

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The UN’s new report on global warming is the most terrifying yet

The UN’s New Report On Global Warming Is The Most Terrifying Yet

A draft of a new UN report on climate was leaked and it shows devastating climate impact: decreased grain production, rising sea levels, devastating heat waves, torrential rain and other climate extremes are already being felt.  Another report indicates the world’s two largest ice sheets are melting faster than ever. Despite alarms from scientists for decades, political actions are inadequate.

Political leadership of the last two decades will go down in history as failing to face reality and put in place effective policy.  The first Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report (IPCC) was issued in 1988. Since the 1997 Kyoto Climate Summit, we have emitted as much carbon dioxide as was emitted in the prior 236 years. Because of the impact of short-term pollutants like methane gas (aka ‘natural’ gas) government policy may actually be making climate change worse, than if nothing had been at all.

But climate change activists also need to take some responsibility. It is not enough to stop the northern portion of the KXL pipeline, already the southern portion and existing pipelines are enough to bring Alberta Tar Sands to the Gulf; and now Enbridge has found a way to go forward without getting approval from the Obama administration.  We need to be more clear and aggressive, e.g. when it comes to tar sands, the excavation needs to be stopped in Alberta, Utah and Alabama.

The People’s Climate March is less than a month away on September 21 and other plans are developing around the march. A big weekend march does not change policy. We need to be clear in understanding the issues and putting forth demands – as a united movement because climate connects us all – that will actually solve the problem. Those are the goals of the Climate Convergence on September 19 and 20. There will also be direct actions at the UN Climate Summit. People need to understand the deep corruption at the UN, which is allied with corporate interests and dominated by the United States. Join the Popular Resistance contingent in the Climate Convergence hub of the march where we will call out the corruption and the need for a people-powered movement to take action.

The climate movement also needs to look honestly at some big green environmental groups that continue to take money from climate polluters like fracking corporations and then use their reputations to advocate for them. These groups are not allies of climate justice but allied to their self-preservation at the cost of the planet. At the same time, those in the anti-fracking movement need to be welcomed as part of the solution because they advocate a ban on fracking, not its regulation.

The climate justice battle is part of corporate challenges on many fronts. For example the ongoing attack on water in Detroit, where people are fighting back; or in Baltimore where a corporation is moving to privatize water.  Or, the ongoing effort to push the most expensive energy source, nuclear, where horrible environmental impacts are not recognized, as in this effort in Australia where they want to dump nuclear waste on Indigenous land. Or, in the United States where Fukushima’s are waiting to happen because of earthquake faults near nuclear plants or the poorly designed General Electric plants like the ones that failed in Japan.

Rather than the destructive ‘all of the above’ energy strategy of the Obama administration, the US needs to urgently move toward a carbon-free, nuclear-free energy economy. There is a solar revolution underway despite lousy government policy, but it needs to advance much more quickly. The oil first strategy of Obama creates additional problems as in oil trains being more important than food trains, so food rots.

 

Good Night, and Good Luck

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After turning an invitation for important dialogue and debate into a trashy troll performance, Ukraine Today stated RT pulled the plug on the channel’s executive producer during a live interview. Not only is it a lie but there’s video to prove it.

In the Now listened carefully to the “attack” and didn’t drop the live feed from Ukraine Today’s studio but went back to it and showed a banner put up which read “Russia Today Stop Lie”-we also forgave the grammar mistake.

“In the Now” with RT’s Senior Political correspondent Anissa Naouai is the first dedicated nightly Primetime show to air live out of our Moscow headquarters. Host Anissa Naouai has worked in the field for almost a decade and has reported from over 80 cities across the globe.

Now from Monday to Thursday viewers can enjoy fresh, honest, and hard-hitting news coverage on some of the world’s most pressing issues with one of RT’s most experienced journalists . We’ll put the spotlight on stories you’ll never hear on mainstream networks or even in RT’s daily news bulletins. “In the Now” – 10pm Moscow, 7pm London, 2pm New York.

EXCLUSIVE: MP George Galloway’s FIRST interview after he was beaten in broad daylight in London

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George Galloway, British MP and the supporter of Palestine was attacked by a man, dressed in a Israeli Force T-shirt. Despite the pain, Galloway spoke to Anissa Naouai ‘In The Now’.