Thursday, July 30, 2015

Breaking news: 2.6%, baby!

A few weeks ago I sent a saliva sample to be analyzed for genetic information. A few minutes ago I've received the initial results - more detailed analysis is coming in the next few weeks.
I have to say, the results are a bit uninteresting in their uniformity and don't hold any major surprises or mysteries. Or do they?

I do wonder what's this 0.1% unassigned. Martian?
The above is the most speculative analysis of the results so far. A more conservative estimate put it at around 84% Ashkenazi, 14% broadly European and 1.1% unassigned. Being only 0.2% Middle Eastern is rather interesting and that 0.1% East Asian is also most curious. It couldn't have been too many contributes and probably a very long time ago, but still.

What I was also very interested to find, and am admittedly rather proud of, was that my genes are 2.6% Neanderthal (the European average is 2.7%).




Distant cousins everywhere! Useful for couch surfing on the next trip

Tuesday, July 7, 2015

Chapter 2: the grind and the refined - No one is Fa

I thought about writing this post before; in fact, I may have. It's difficult to say for certain these days.
I'm involved in a few cases that one of them, it is deemed, is important enough as to invoke a wide state of panic. I and others have dedicated many hours and days to it and will continue to until its inevitable resolution (or dissipation; like I said, it's hard to say). This means, of course, back to the sleep disrupted nights of old, having strange dreams and basically being tired to the bones.

But what is "Fa", you may wonder? Wikipedia will explain it better, but what I remember of it from university (because, really, memory of things is more important than the facts of those things, right?) is that it is a kind of a model. It was used by the ancient Mohists, my favorite school of old Chinese philosophy as a tool, to demonstrate and to think logically by analogy. One of the models or concepts that should be emulated is the Ren, the idealized or higher person.

Taking it to its simplistic extremes, it is having a person as a role model. However, it's demonstrated repeatedly that no one person is perfect and can be used as a role model for everyone, for all situations, for all times and experiences. Everyone is flawed. Even if that person was not flawed somehow, odds are that you and your perception are.

Can people be trusted then? How can we learn from something that we know to be wrong? The obvious answer is that we have no "real" choice. We can try to learn from many different sources many different things and hope that somehow we'll get the "right" idea. We need to assume nothing, and strip away our misconceptions. But, in the end, the truth is unknowable, and all we can get is increasingly educated guesses.

This has deviated significantly from what I wanted to say. I am tired and suspect my kitchen is haunted (the microwave turns itself on in odd hours).