An innovative use for DNA science

Are the Taliban descended from ancient Israelites?

The Jerusalem Post reports:

Are the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan descendants of an Israelite tribe that migrated across Asia after it was exiled over 2,700 years ago?

This intriguing question has been asked by a variety of scholars, theologians, anthropologists and pundits over the years, but has remained somewhere between the realms of amateur speculation and serious academic research.

But now, for the first time, the government has shown official interest, with the Foreign Ministry providing a scholarship to an Indian scientist to come to the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa and determine whether or not the tribe that provides the hard core of today's Taliban has a blood link to any of the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel, and specifically to the tribe of Efraim.

Shahnaz Ali, a senior research fellow at the National Institute of Immunohaematology, Mumbai, has joined the Technion to study the blood samples that she collected from Afridi Pathans in Malihabad, in the Lucknow district, Uttar Pradesh state, India, to check their putative Israelite origin.

She's be doing genetic testing on the samples. If the theory pans out, I somehow can't imagine the Taliban being impressed. In fact, I thought the Israeli Government might be funding it just to annoy them.

But, it's possible that a historical link might be capable of good, and indeed at the end of the article, one researcher thinks this is the point:

Navras welcomed Shahnaz's research grant. "It's a great news that now my research would be analyzed scientifically," he said on his blog.

"I don't know what would be the outcome of the DNA analysis, but it would provide us a direction to resolve the complex issue. I also hope that such effort will have positive ramifications and will bring the Muslims and Jews close and enable them to forget historical animosity," Navras wrote

So it may be a case of government funded DNA research for peace. Neat.

Confirming what we knew

Boys will be boys when it comes to toys - life - 08 January 2010 - New Scientist

Seedy Sydney

I don't often find myself in agreement with Miranda Devine lately, but I reckon she's pretty right about the always slightly seedy atmosphere around the southern end of George Street.

Other big cities like New York apparently manage to push out the sex shops and general depressing sleaze from their entertainment areas, but somehow Sydney seems never to have quite managed that. (Mind you, it's been some years since I visited, but later this year I'll be there for a few days.)

Movies that jump the technological shark

I just saw the second half of the 2005 Jodie Foster movie "Flightplan". I knew the set up, and was curious to see the explanation for where the missing kid had disappeared on the plane.

I hadn't realised that the script would solve that problem by pretending that a plane somewhat resembling the new Airbus A 380 would have absolutely cavernous amounts of open space both above and below the passenger decks. It was so ridiculous, this internal design of the aircraft, that the movie just plummeted into a black hole of implausibility so overwhelming that I found it impossible to believe that any viewer could have found it engaging. Do people really think the hidden nooks and crannies on a passenger plane look something like a standing inside a Zeppelin?

Looking at the summaries of reviews at Rottentomatoes, it would seem that critic Mark Ramsey similarly found this the defining feature of the film:

It's an obscenely big plane. "Where is my daughter?!" asks Jodie. "Did you search the plane's tennis courts? The plane's new ballpark? Get me this plane's governor! NOW!

It's not often that technological ludicrousness ruins a movie for me. I mean, I'm not one of those people who likes to be overly analytical and worry about the fact that in Star Wars we can hear an explosion in space, or some such. Sometimes things are a bit silly and laughable but are sort of dramatically right, and you don't come away thinking that movie was ruined. But other times, that just doesn't work, and I can think of 2 movies in which technological silliness smacked me in the face so hard I could no longer enjoy it:

GoldenEye: no it wasn't the laser in a watch. Yes, ridiculous I know, but impossibly powerful gadgets had been in many of the Bond films for many years and I can overlook them. What I couldn't forgive was the absolutely 100% gold-plated absurd idea that a satellite weapon would have to be controlled by an antenna the size of the Arecibo Observatory, (of course, it was the Arecibo Observatory used in the film,) which also had to be hidden in a fake lake! I mean, even in 1995, satellite telephones were already in use with small laptop sized antennas, and even smaller handsets were in the pipeline. The satellite in question was not orbiting Pluto, for crying out loud; to use EMP it had to be in low earth orbit, not even geosynchronous orbit. What an inexcusably weak excuse for getting an interesting location into a movie. Didn't anyone point out this made no technological sense at all?

For some reason, it seems that every few months my mind goes back to GoldenEye and how annoyed I was at this incredibly stupid plot point. Maybe therapy is called for. Send me money someone, I will put it to good use.

Armageddon: to the best of my knowledge, this is by far the biggest collection of stupid, wrong, or improbable space science stuff ever assembled into one loud movie. Too many things wrong to possibly list. As Phil Plait wrote:

Here's the short version: "Armageddon" got some astronomy right. For example, there is an asteroid in the movie, and asteroids do indeed exist. And then there was... um... well, you know... um. Okay, so that was about all they got right.

Any reader with a different favourite example of a silly bit of technology that ruined a movie, you are welcome to share.

Planetary disaster averted

No, a nearby supernova won’t wipe us out | Bad Astronomy | Discover Magazine

The Daily Telegraph and The Sun both reported this was a relatively immanent danger to the Earth. As it wasn't picked up by more reliable sources, I suspected there might be less to the story than first appeared. Seems I was right, even if it wasn't the papers' fault

Prat blog

For those of you who just can't get enough of the only TV show host ever to urinate on his shirt and wrap it around his head, (he was feeling a touch hot at the time, and an application of warm urine apparently helps,) I've just discovered that "Bear" Grylls has his own, not frequently updated, blog.

He's significantly more annoying than Steve Irwin, who at least kept his unnecessary wildlife interventions to simply annoying them; not eating them. (That's assuming you can believe anything at all on "Man vs Wild". For all I know, every animal he eats raw may have followed him into the wilderness in an icebox.)

Worse still, it seems from his blog that he was appointed "Chief Scout" in England last year. That would put me off encouraging a child to the organisation.

Every time I see the show and the mention of him being ex-SAS, I just imagine a bunch of groans from the soldiers who used to serve with him. "That prat again...!"

Unnatural selection

Brow Beat : Beauty, American Beauty: Sam Mendes Directs James Bond

Slate has some mildly amusing fun with the announcement that Sam Mendes (!) is in talks to direct the next James Bond.

Presumably, this may at least mean that we don't get a repeat of the hypershakes and hyper-editing of Quantum of Solace. (My son saw some of it on TV recently and said, quite unprompted by his Dad, "it's too fast". Smart boy.)

However, whether it will also mean a Bondian mid-life or sexual identity crisis is another matter.

Things change slowly in the Middle East

Nearly a year ago to the day, I posted about how Egypt's blockade of Gaza attracts almost no attention from media critics of Israel. I see from this article that the blockade continues, and Egypt is working on ways to make the border even more secure.

Meanwhile, what happened to the Christmas hope that Shalit was about to be released? Oh. Still under consideration.

The magic plastic e readers

BBC News - Plastic Logic e-reader aims to challenge Kindle

The Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas is apparently packed full of new e-readers this year, and the flexible plastic screen one shown in the video at the above link does look very cool, except that its odd squarish dimensions (while great for a genuine newspaper reading experience) looks a tad too large to safely carry in your briefcase.

The Skiff reader looks like the nearest rival to Plastic Logic, but no one knows how much it will cost.

And cost is a pretty significant issue.

Very, very nerd news

Japanese Live Action Star Blazers (Space Battleship Yamato) Trailer

I didn't know they were making a live action version of Space Battleship Yamato in Japan. They've released a teaser trailer for it that you can see at the above link.

I wasn't a huge fan of the cartoon, but it was of interest.

In even worse Muslim/Christian news:

Egyptians riot after 7 killed in church attack

Three gunmen in a car sprayed automatic gunfire into a crowd leaving a church in the town of Naga Hamadi. The lead attacker is identified as a Muslim...

Police suspect that the Wednesday night attack was in retaliation to a rape of a Muslim girl by a Christian man in the same town two months ago. Muslim inhabitants of the town had rioted for days last November and attacked Christian properties there after the rape, according to local reports.

Fighting over the name of God

Malaysia Says It will Appeal 'Allah' Ruling - WSJ.com

A fight is going on in Malaysia over a Catholic Malay language newspaper's court win against a government ban on its use of the word "Allah" for God. According to the above article:

The Arab word Allah has been used by Malay-speaking Christians for centuries, much as it is used by Christians in Arabic-speaking countries or in Indonesia, where, like Malaysia, the concept of a single deity was introduced by Arabic-speaking traders. Rev. Lawrence Andrew, editor of the Herald, says there's no other appropriate term for God in Malay.

The paper had a pretty good case:

The church's Herald newspaper filed a lawsuit in 2007 challenging a government ban on it using the word Allah as a translation for God, complaining that the prohibition discriminated against Malay-speaking indigenous tribes who converted to Christianity decades ago.

The newspaper has a circulation of about 14,000 and is available only in Catholic churches, although some Muslims have complained that it is possible to look up Malay-language material using the term Allah on the Herald's Web site.

Muslim activists mobilized almost as soon as the High Court's verdict was delivered. The National Union of Malaysian Muslim Students contended that Christian missionaries using the word Allah could trick Muslims into leaving their faith, and the influential Malaysian Islamic Youth Movement said it plans a demonstration against the verdict in Kuala Lumpur on Jan. 8.

The Malay-language Utusan Malaysia newspaper reported that the influential mufti of northern Perak state, Harussani Zakaria, called the verdict "an insult to Muslims in this country."

Some Muslim groups are planning protests for tomorrow. All pretty amazing, really.

UPDATE: a bit of church burning in KL overnight.

And a bit more on the background of the use of the word "Allah" by Christianity appeared in the Jakarta Post article on the arson attack:

Many Muslims in Malysia have refused to accept the argument that "Allah" is an Arabic word that predates Islam, and that it is used by Christians in countries such as Egypt, Syria, Lebanon and Indonesia regularly in their worship.

Can't they parachute in Karen Armstrong to sort this all out?

Very odd

Cellphone radiation is good for Alzheimer's mice

Regular exposure to an electromagnetic field identical to the ones produced by mobile phones seems to improve memory in mice with symptoms of Alzheimer's disease...

To the researchers' surprise, the memory of both normal and transgenic mice exposed to the electromagnetic field (EMF) seemed better by the end of the experiment than that of a control group of mice that were not irradiated.

Arendash speculates that radiation might increase the electrical activity of neurons, which could in turn improve the brain's ability to form memories. An experiment in 2000 found that if people were exposed to an EMF equivalent to mobile-phone radiation before they went to bed, their brain activity during sleep increased....

They found that the brains of transgenic mice that had been exposed to the EMF from two months old did not contain as many plaques as transgenic control mice of the same age that had not been exposed to the EMF.

What's more, in the older transgenic mice, which had already developed brain plaques before the experiment began, the EMF exposure seemed to have broken up and shrunken the plaques. Arendash say he doesn't know how the EMF could do this.

That's a very surprising finding, and as the article says, it would have to be replicated to be sure the effect is real.

Never liked Wimps

BBC News - Dark matter 'beach ball' unveiled

This article talks about the inferred shape of the presumed dark matter around the Milky Way. It seems it's not like a round ball, but a squashed one.

This is why I've never felt that WIMPS (Weakly Interacting Massive Particles) seemed like a good explanation. I mean, if they exist, why do they form squashed ball halos around galaxies in the first place? If they are weakly interacting with normal matter, why don't they exist in just a more or less random clumpiness right through the universe? I don't know that I have ever read much that addresses that issue.

As for large clumps of normal matter forming dark matter, that's always seemed kind of unlikely too, according to my gut reaction.

That's why the idea that there is something wrong with our understanding of gravity has always seemed to me to be just as likely, but MOND theories don't seem to be advancing much.

Poor Japan?

TigerHawk has an interesting post about Japan's debt problems.

The comments are worth reading too.

Not cold everywhere

BBC - Richard Black's Earth Watch: Arctic roots of 'upside-down' weather

That's interesting. According to Richard Black, while much of the Northern Hemisphere is having an unusually cold winter, some parts that are normally very cold aren't.

A very unusual talent

Frogs' secret disposal system revealed : Nature News

Plant thorns, spiny insects and even radio transmitters don't stick around for long inside tree frogs. Researchers have discovered that these amphibians can absorb foreign objects from their body cavities into their bladders and excrete them through urination.

Would be a good party trick if a human could do it.

Law, science and black holes

There's a very detailed and carefully argued article by a US Assistant Professor of Law about the LHC and safety concerns available at arXiv. (It would seem the article is to appear in the Tennessee Law Review, but I can't see if Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit fame, who is a Tennessee Law Professor, has noted it yet.)

It's very long, and I have only looked through the first half, but it seems very careful and accurate in its summary of the history of the scientific debate over its safety.

It even covers the concerns of Rainer Plaga, and agrees with my view that they never seem to have been adequately addressed.

The arXiv blog summary of the article is here. Both it and the original article are well worth a read.

UPDATE: hey, I've been Instapundit-ed! Thanks, and welcome all. There's a lot of old posts here about the LHC and black holes, but sadly you have to use the somewhat erratic search function to find them. (Why can't Google perfect search within the very blogs it owns?)

Sex in Malaysia, Part 2

Malaysian Polygamy Club Draws Criticism - NYTimes.com

Yesterday I posted about unfortunate young Malaysian couples getting a knock on their hotel room door from the Islamic "morality police" and facing charges.

Proving it's a land of contrasts, I suppose, is the above article about the increase in Islamic polygamy in the same country. One of the wives interviewed says:

“Men are by nature polygamous,” said Dr. Rohaya, Mr. Ikram’s third wife, flanked by the other three women and Mr. Ikram for an interview on a recent morning. The women were dressed in ankle-length skirts, their hair covered by tudungs, the Malaysian term for headscarf. “We hear of many men having the ‘other woman,’ affairs and prostitution because for men, one woman is not enough. Polygamy is a way to overcome social ills such as this.”

Well, only for those rich enough to provide support for the additional wives, one suspects.

However, it is interesting to note that further down in the article, one critic of the system points out that:

...she knew some well-educated, financially independent women in Kuala Lumpur, including business executives and lawyers, who had chosen to become second or third wives.

“Usually they marry late, they do a second or third degree, they put off marriage until later and they find it difficult to find an unmarried man,” she said. “One of them said ‘all the good men are either married or gay.”’

The women of Sydney who have the same complaint could have their predicament cured by some radical changes in the Marriage Act, then.

And if polygamy were allowed here, but only by men taking on wives richer than themselves, maybe even I could be persuaded of its benefits. :)

Nerd grief

The fall-out from Doctor Who

Caitlin Moran's description of her and her daughter's shared devastation at David Tennant's departure from Dr Who is pretty funny:

Dora and I did a good fifteen minutes of mother/daughter nerd-mourning together - crying whilst flicking through Doctor Who Magazine and saying "Oh that's a good Ood still". Then Dora progressed into the "anger" stage of bereavement: at one point shouting, "Tom Baker managed seven years - WHY COULDN'T DAVID?"

I didn't know she even knew who Tom Baker was. At that point I realised that whilst I was walking wounded, she was metaphorically doing a geek haemmorhage. As Dora lay on the floor, moaning, "WHY did he have to GO?", Pete had a moment of genius, and downloaded a Doctor Who audiobook, read out by Tennant. Comforted by the prospect of there being at least one more David Tennant adventure to be had, Dora finally fell asleep listening to it - AT SODDING 11.30PM