Wednesday, May 18, 2022

The Denisovans

Starting with Isaiah's THE WORLD TODAY JUST NUTS  "Hunter On The Table" from Monday.


dinner


Now I'm going to pull a Betty and take a look at the world of science.   A new discovery.  THE INSIDER offers the following bullet points:


  • A tooth found in a cave in Laos was found to be from an ancient human species called Denisovans.
  • The tooth, most likely a girl's, places the extinct humans in southeast Asia for the first time. 
  • This solves the mystery of how Denisovan genes are found in humans in southeast Asia today.


Jordan Mendoza (USA TODAY) reports:


The tooth of a young girl found in a cave in Laos has been revealed to belong to a group of prehistoric human relatives known as Denisovans, and the discovery is helping researchers better understand modern human evolution. 

Denisovans are relatively newly discovered human relative, as their remains were first discovered in a Siberian cave in northern Russia in 2010. More remains have been found since then, including bones at least 200,000 years old and a jawbone found in Tibet.

However the discovery of the tooth, a molar, in Laos is the first time Denisovans have been found in Southeast Asia, and provides a link to the modern humans who live in the area today. Their findings were published in the journal Nature Communications on Tuesday. 

"When we found the tooth, we were astonished because we weren’t looking for Denisovans or even anticipating this type of discovery," Laura Shackelford, co-author and paleoanthropologist at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, told USA TODAY via email.


Katie Hunt (CNN) adds:

Researchers believe the tooth belonged to a young female who lived at least 130,000 years ago and was likely a Denisovan – an enigmatic group of early humans first identified in 2010.    

The lower molar is the first fossil evidence placing Denisovans in Southeast Asia and may help untangle a puzzle that had long vexed experts in human evolution.   

       The only definitive Denisovan fossils have been found in North Asia – in the eponymous Denisova cave in Siberia’s Altai Mountains in Russia. Genetic evidence, however, has tied the archaic humans most closely to places much further south – in what’s now the Philippines, Papua New Guinea and Australia.

“This demonstrates that the Denisovans were likely present also in southern Asia. And it supports the results of geneticists who say that modern humans and the Denisovans might have met in Southeast Asia,” said study author Clément Zanolli, a researcher in paleoanthropology at CNRS, the French National Center for Scientific Research and the University of Bordeaux.

Archaeologists uncovered the tooth in a place known as Cobra Cave, 160 miles (260 kilometers) north of Laos’ capital, Vientiane, where excavations began in 2018. The study, which published in the journal Nature Communications on Tuesday, estimated the molar was between 131,000 and 164,000 years old, based on analysis of cave sediment, the dating of three animal bones found in the same layer, and the age of rock overlying the fossil.    



So that was interesting to me.  I hope to you as well.  I just wanted to do something different for a change.  

Now here's Graham Elwood.




And he's right.  Okay, we're going to watch the new episode of THE GOLDBERGS so let me post this.

Here's C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot:"


 Wednesday, May 18, 2022.  Efforts to punish and terrorize Julian Assange continue, efforts by US President Joe Biden, and muhc more.


US President Joe Biden continues to persecute Julian Assange for the 'crime' of journalism.  Julian exposed War Crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan.  For him to publish the truth about them, Chelsea Maning had to leak the truth to him.  The US government tried to destroy Chelsea before she ever arrived in court.  She was stripped naked and forced to stay that way in an effort to humiliate her.  zthe US government -- Joe was Vice President at this time -- insisted it was for her safety.  They were afraid she would kill herself, they insisted, so she couldn't have scrubs.  the lapdog media -- looking especially at you fake ass Jane Meyer who pretended to care about theses issues when Bully Boy bush occupied the White House -- played cumb and it was left to us to point out that scrubs don't have to be cloth, they also make paper scrubs.


This was part of an effort to destroy the person they had imprisoned.  They will come up with similar excuses to torture Julian should they get their hands on him.  XINHUA reports:



Hundreds of people gathered in front of the British Home Office on Tuesday to protest against the extradition of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to the US, denouncing it as politically motivated and a grave threat to freedom of press.

After Assange waged several rounds of appeal battle spanning months, Britain's Westminster Magistrate's Court issued a formal order in April to extradite him to the US to face espionage charges.

The case is now at the hands of British Home Secretary Priti Patel, who will decide whether to approve the extradition. Assange's legal team can make submissions before Wednesday to Patel explaining why Assange shouldn't be extradited.

On Tuesday, Assange's wife Stella Assange said on Twitter that a representation had been filed to Patel to block his extradition to the US.


Alan Jones n via YAHOO NEWS adds:


A human rights expert is urging the Government not to extradite WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to the United States, warning it would have a “chilling effect” on media freedom.

Dunja Mijatovic, the Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights, has written to Home Secretary Priti Patel, who is now considering whether the extradition can go ahead.

The commissioner said the wider human rights implications of extradition had not been adequately considered, adding that the indictment by the US raised important questions about the protection of those that publish classified information in the public interest.


From the Council of Europe website:


In a letter, published today, the Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights, Dunja Mijatović, called on UK Home Secretary Priti Patel not to extradite Julian Assange.

Writing in view of the impending decision on Mr Assange’s extradition, the Commissioner noted that the wider human rights implications of doing so had not yet been adequately considered in the extradition proceedings. She particularly highlighted that the indictment by the United States against Mr Assange raised important questions about the protection of those that publish classified information in the public interest, including information that exposes human rights violations. She concluded that allowing Mr Assange’s extradition on this basis would have a chilling effect on media freedom, and could ultimately hamper the press in performing its task as purveyor of information and public watchdog in democratic societies.



Joe Biden and the US government cannot be trusted to act in any humane manner.  Humane people don't try to terrorize journalists.  

The government that repeatedly sees so many prisoners die in custody cannot be trusted.  Along with the abuse they aimed at Chelsea Manning, there is the fact that they ran Abu Ghraib in Iraq.  Joe Bden was a sitting US senator at the time.


Are we really to trust that Joe won't torture Julian?  This is the man who said, when the torture at the US-run prison Abu Ghraib was exposed “probably would have done less damage to our image, and our legitimacy, and our motive had Iraqi prisoners been shot, like Saddam and other despots in that region do.”

That is the voice of someone to trust with another person's life?


Remember that Joe Biden postured and pretended on Abu Ghraidb.  And then he turned around, years later after blaiming it on Bully Boy Bush, and put a medal on Bully Boy Bush, made a point to publicly honor him.


We're going to trust that person?




Yesterday, Isaiah posted three THE WORLD TODAY JUST NUTS comics -- "Amber Under Cross," "Equal Time For Classy Amber" and and "Joe Biden Likes Some White Supremacists."  -- here's that last one.





Joe postures and preens and he has no problem with that.  He wants to stand in front of the cameras in Buffalo and pretend to care about people of color but he's given over $40 billion to Ukraine ?  The racism doesn't matter there?





I had an e-mail saying that I "just think you are so right about Ukraine.  You may not be.."  I may not be.  I am often wrong.  I do however make a point to listen to my gut.  It's not wrong.  Ukraine is a racist government and it's a Nazi government.  And it is so wrong for the US government to be supporting this and I can say that and be fine with that.  I know in my gut it's true.  And I know Ill be slammed for it.  I can live with that.  I know history is on my side.


Rebecca's "about a 'woke' warrior" was very amusing to read.    So the guy who tried to attack an ddestroy me in college is a 'woke warrior' today?  Not back in college, of course.  I called out his bad writing and his support for the araprtheid regime.  I called out his opinion expressed as fact that Nelson Mandela was imprisoned.


Today, he's a Woke Warrior for the left.  I wonder for how long?  I kept journalis -- I still do.  I have the piece he wrote and I have the letters he got people to write attacking me .  I've got a lot written and pasted in those journals.


I have nothing to lose today.  I stood up for Mandela, I stood up for equality.


He's the AOC buddy presenting himself as a woke warrior.


I wasn't afraid to call out apartheid and didn't regret it even though it resulted in an organized trashing of me that lasted a full semester.  


You think I'm afraid to take an opinion that's unpopular?  Nope.  It'ss the right opinion.  Don't say you support diversity and equality when your actions say you don't.  If you support people of color then you should be demanding that US tax dollars stop going to support a racist and homophobic government in Ukraine.




The following sites updated:


Posted by at