Month: August 2011

A reader writes:

You quoted a reader who wrote, wrongly:

It's more complicated than population of humans at one point diminished to a point where all humans now living are in fact descended from just one woman in the  population, dubbed "mitochondrial Eve."  This does not mean that we are all descended from the "first woman," just that we are all descended from the "same woman."  Some Jews and Christians who are not literalists will nonetheless take this as a comforting affirmation of the reality of our common humanity, as will some secular humanists.  At any rate, it is what it is, an emerging scientific fact.

This is a really silly interpretation of a coalescent date for a genetic locus. It is NOT true that "mitochondrial Eve" means that the population size of our ancestors fell to the point where we all have but a single female ancestor. What actually happens is that in all populations, of whatever size, some individuals leave no or few descendants, while other individuals leave many.

Barring new mutations, each generation would lose a certain amount of its pre-existing genetic diversity and, with enough time, all of the pre-existing genetic diversity is lost and all individuals would carry just one of the pre-existing genetic variants. This is what happened in the case of "mitochondrial Eve," enough time has gone by that all of the other mitochondrial DNA variants present more than 200,000 years ago have disappeared except for one. The only reason we don't actually all now have the same mitochondrial DNA is that during this interval there have been many mutations occurring. So over time, the diversity that had existed is lost, while new mutations generate new diversity within the remaining lineages.

The size of the population can affect how quickly this all happens, and how much diversity a population can "hold on to" but the fact that mtDNA coalesces to a single ancestral "Eve" does not indicate by itself that past populations were particularly small 200,000 years ago. Furthermore, there is also a "Y-chromosome Adam" due to the same process: all living male Y chromosomes can be traced back to a single copy. Not only that, but every one of the 3 billion other base pairs in the genome that is biparentally transmitted can also be traced back to a different common ancestor. So there are very many different "Adams" and "Eves" who were the sources of the "ancestral" copies from which all current diversity is derived, for each of these loci. 

These many Adams and Eves  may go back to many different points in the past (since the variants are lost and mutations occurs in a somewhat random manner), and there is nothing special about these many many Adams and Eves, they just happened to be the individuals in the past who carried a copy of that particular bit of DNA that was left after all the other lineages for that locus were lost by random processes. Further, if the living humans carrying the most divergent sequence at a given gene die without reproducing, then the most common recent ancestor of that gene become a different human who lived later in time who represents the ancestral variant common to the diminished diversity present in future humans. For example, when Neanderthals were still alive, our common "mitochondrial Eve" was a woman who lived more than 500,000 year ago. The minute that the last Neanderthal died some 30,000 years ago, the designation "mitochondrial Eve" shifted to a different woman who lived 200,000 years ago.

Think about it in the sense that there may be nothing special about the oldest tree in a forest other than by chance it is the one that has survived the longest without getting destroyed by fire, pests, etc. And if that tree gets destroyed, then there will be a different oldest tree, one that germinated more recently in time. But the fact that we can identify an oldest tree in the forest does not mean that there were not many other trees around when the tree that is currently oldest first germinated.

Another expert weighs in:

As a population geneticist, let me clear up the confusion over "mitochondrial Eve." Animals have two kinds of DNA. Nuclear DNA is what we normally think of when we think of DNA. It is the stuff that makes up chromosomes, and it is the source of virtually all of our genetic information – humans have about 3 billion base pairs (i.e. As, Ts, Gs, and Cs) of nuclear DNA. However, our mitochondria, the cell organelles responsible for providing the cell with power, have a small bit of their own DNA – about 16,000 base pairs.

It is true that we can trace the origin of all human mitochondrial DNA back to a common mitochondrial ancestor around 200,000 years ago. However, this is simply the common ancestor of our mitochondrial DNA – a far cry from the common ancestor of all of DNA. All of our other genes would trace back to their own common gene ancestors (most of them much farther back in time). Thus, it is erroneous to claim that the individual carrying our common mitochondrial ancestor was THE common ancestor of humans.

To help clarify the fallacy, imagine a hypothetical person named Joe traced the gene responsible for his hairy ears back to his paternal grandfather. It would be erroneous to claim the paternal grandfather as THE ancestor of Joe. Joe had four grandparents that each contributed aspects of his genome. In the same way, "mitochondrial Eve" contributed the mitochondrial DNA to all humans alive today. However, the mitochondrial genome is a very small part of human DNA, and we know that many thousands of other individuals contributed other aspects of our current genetic diversity. Thus, genetics, in no way, supports a literal Adam or a literal Eve. And I say this as a Christian.

(Image of mitochondria via MIT)

Adam Ozimek's eyes widen after finding an incredible example of financial illiteracy.

A story out of Seattle that strains the limits of the topic at hand:

Prayers, forgiveness and heartbreak echoed through a King County courtroom Friday as the friends and loved ones of Teresa Butz addressed Isaiah Kalebu, the man who raped and killed her in her South Park home two years ago. Afterward, Kalebu was sentenced to prison for life without parole for that crime and for the rape and attempted murder of Butz's partner, Jennifer Hopper. Hopper, who barely survived being raped and repeatedly stabbed that night, faced Kalebu and told him, "I do not hate you."

"I realize there is nothing I can say to you because I did beg you for my life and she begged you for her life," Hopper said, staring at Kalebu as he leaned back, expressionless, in a restraint chair. "I'm so sorry for whatever it is in your life that brought you to this. I am glad that you will never be able to hurt anyone else again."

Eli Sanders was also in the courtroom:

[Jim Butz, one of Teresa's brothers,] turned to Kalebu. "I don’t know you, and you don’t know me, and we’re just two human beings, and I don't know your back story" Jim Butz said. He quoted from Romans, spoke of everyone falling short of what's expected of them. "I’ve prayed for you every day since this happened," he concluded. "I hope I see you in heaven. I’m serious."

Kalebu responded: "I’ll be there… God bless.”

The ACLU's newest infographic on our prison system compares New York to Indiana:

Adam Serwer captions:

Most criminologists will acknowledge that incarceration does have an impact on crime rates but that given the sheer number of people in prison the U.S. has long passed the point of diminishing returns.

Kevin Williamson counters Krugman:

What, indeed, does population growth have to do with job growth? Professor Krugman is half correct here — but intentionally only half correct: A booming population leads to growth in jobs. But there is another half to that equation: A booming economy, and the jobs that go with it, leads to population growth. Texas has added millions of people and millions of jobs in the past decade; New York, and many other struggling states, added virtually none of either. And it is not about the weather or other non-economic factors: People are not leaving California for Texas because Houston has a more pleasant climate (try it in August), or leaving New York because of the superior cultural amenities to be found in Nacogdoches and Lubbock. People are moving from the collapsing states into the expanding states because there is work to be had, and opportunity.

Ryan Avent forms another version of this argument. Chait also sees economic success but doesn't think it says much about Perry's competence:

[E]ven if it were true that Texas thrived because Perry poached business from California, this hardly provides us with a blueprint for national policy. Begger-thy-neighbor policies aren't a formula for national success. There are only so many jobs we could poach from Canada or Mexico. It's always going to be easier to get a business to move across state lines than international lines.

Today on the Dish, the heart of Tea Party movement proved to be religious fundamentalism, fueled by racial and cultural panic, and Obama meep-meeped the GOP by playing weak. Andrew wanted Obama to chastise Perry's weak apology, and listened to the rage on the left. The right revved up the backlash against Rick Perry, even though he could actually claim the undefeated title and Jacob Stokes weighed Perry's cred as a neocon versus as a tea partier. Perry's comment could neutralize Bernanke's pro-Republican leanings, Rove wasn't impressed, while Perry could turn out to be too liberal for today's GOP. According to a reader, Perry wasn't personally complicit in Cameron Todd Willingham’s execution, Steve Benen and Bernstein urged the legacy media to realize not all presidents are old white guys, and Chait tried to balance the crazy-electability pendulum in the GOP. Brad Schaeffer urged Sarah Palin to quit hogging the spotlight, Ben Smith had a hunch she was going to run, and even Jennifer Rubin may have turned against her. Rick Santorum missed the freedom our founders experienced, Ron Paul got hurt by his own claptrap, and Ricky Martin threatened Bachmann's argument that gays are enslaved. Scott Galupo raged against the GOP's reverse class warfare, and if social security is a Ponzi scheme then so is most insurance.

Andrew wondered how Murdoch could survive an obstruction of justice, and readers grappled with God's forgiveness. Iraq's violence would continue whether we stayed or not, we traced Saudi support of the revolution in Syria, and London's riots proved the inefficacy of the UK's CCTV cameras. Germany's economy teetered, Norm Geras contemplated Irish pride, and the madness of the Libyan intervention continues. Michael Weiss chastised the rumor-mongerers surrounding the Arab Spring, bearded South Asians shaved before flights, and Israeli and Palestinian were fairly recent identity constructs.

The Dish was working on an Android app as well, science finally discovered bisexuals exist, readers picked apart Original Sin and mitochondrial Eve, and Star Trek forever changed one reader's reaction to intolerance and sexual equality. Abercrombie offered to pay The Situation not to wear their clothes, readers appreciated Holden Caulfield but didn't consider him a hero, and grandmothers could master Tetris. Dissent of the day here, chart of the day here, VFYW here, MHB here, and FOTD here.

–Z.P.

The Carnegie Council For Ethics And International Affairs has just published a roundtable assessing the Libyan intervention and its impact on the Responsibility to Protect (RToP) doctrine. From James Pattison's contribution:

The dangers of regime change are generally greater than that of humanitarian intervention: a larger number of innocent individuals are likely to be killed; the potential for instability in neighboring regions is greater; and the costs of intervening in terms of the intervening soldiers' lives may be much higher, given the likely need for a significant deployment of ground troops. Given these harms, the bar for permissible regime change should be much higher than that for humanitarian intervention. This is because an exceptionally grave situation—more serious than that is required for humanitarian intervention to be permissible—is necessary to allow room for sufficient good to be done to outweigh these harms. I would argue that this bar is unlikely to have been met in Libya. Although the Qaddafi regime is brutal and oppressive, forcible regime change can all too often do more harm than good, as the war in Iraq has shown.

And it would have been nice if the American people had even been informed about this illegal war beforehand or consulted immediately thereafter. Jennifer Welsh worries about the disjunction between rhetoric and means:

At the time of writing, NATO's Operation Unified Protector has flown more than 8,000 air raids over Libya. Increasingly, the judgment that the current military strategy may not do the job is gaining strength, leading individual members of the coalition to send military advisors to Benghazi (in the case of the United Kingdom) or hold talks with rebel leaders about the possibility of financial and military assistance (in the case of the United States). In the near term, these concerns will likely lead to a widening of targets to include infrastructure that is believed to be crucial to the regime's survival—a move already favored by the head of the British armed forces. But as time goes on, the debate may become reminiscent of a particular phase in the Kosovo campaign of 1999, when commentators began to argue that only troops on the ground could achieve NATO's objectives.

Full roundtable here.

(Photo: Libyan rebel fighters patrol the streets of the residential area of the oil rich port of Brega on August 15, 2011, as battles between rebel forces and those loyal to Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi continue west of the town. By Gianluigi Guercia/AFP/Getty Images)

A reader writes:

Regarding the reactions to Catcher in the Rye, I read it for the first time at the age of 40 and loved it. I thought it was a cruelly funny and spot-on portrait of whiny, self-absorbed, vaguely creepy teenagers. Caulfield's lack of self-awareness is beautifully rendered. There's an unforgettable scene where he's clearly bouncing off the walls in an anxious, jealous rage and he's totally unaware of it, reporting his mental state as merely "nervous." He soon physically attacks the boy that's inspiring his jealousy, and has no idea why he's doing it. It rang true for me. That whole element of being in the middle of a temper tantrum while thinking that you're in control, with no understanding of the forces that are pushing you around, the sullen confusion, the desperate half-formed ambitions, that's what being a teenager is, or was to me anyway.

I was shocked to learn that everyone else saw Caulfield as some kind of hero.

Like Humbert Humbert you're supposed to understand him, and see the world through his eyes, and be a little bit horrified afterwards, but you're not supposed to perceive him as a hero. Am I the only reader who was genuinely afraid that he was going to deliberately do some kind of physical or grave emotional harm to his sweet, adoring little sister there at the end? Is this mostly just a function of the age at which you're first exposed to the novel? Since everyone except me read it in high school, were they just blind to the fact that Caulfield is a jackass in a typically teenager way?

Another writes:

I use to hate Holden for the same reason Perrotta and Rosen point to: annoying, whiny, self-pitying. But over time I began to feel sympathetic for the boy who never had a chance to mourn the death of his little brother, who never felt like he could genuinely express himself, who acted phony nine times out of ten but projected his anger at himself onto the world around him. The real kicker is that in high school, the semester after reading Catcher in the Rye, we were assigned to read Perrotta's Bad Haircut.

What surprises me most about Perrotta's statement – besides the lack of empathy for a kid in crisis as he attempts to hold onto anything around him and protect his sister from the pain he feels – is how similar Perrotta's main character in Bad Haircut is to Holden. Buddy, like Holden, is an observer to the world as opposed to an active participant ("You're a spectator. You're happy to stand around and watch," Buddy's coach says). Both Holden and Buddy are writers. Both act out violently (Buddy out of peer pressure, Holden out of grief/frustration). Both just want to fit in.

Holden is just so buried underneath his own grief he can't bear to put on the masks that society asks us to wear when we are grieving and are still forced to interact with people. Both blow things way out of proportion (as is appropriate for a novel from the perspective of a teenager). Both are disappointed by their earliest sexual exploits. Both feel alone. Both see adults for the flawed beings they are. We only see Holden really in December 1949, whereas Buddy grows throughout the '70s. Both are quintessentially teenage boys, but beyond their gender, they are on that cusp of young adulthood and have to grapple with the cards life has dealt to them. 

So as someone who has written a book from the teenage boy's perspective, and clearly demonstrated his ability to treat the intricacies of that age group's mentality without undo nostalgia or over-dramatization, I'm a little shocked Perrotta doesn't admire Salinger for having created one of the most memorable teenage voices in all of American literary history.

Lisa McInerney is happy to be Irish. This kindles Norm Geras' interest:

The question is this: how can one be proud or glad of one's identity without implying the judgement that 'your' people – Irish, Jews, Italians, whoever – are better than other people? Suppose you thought that the group you belonged to was worse than everyone else. How could you be glad to belong there? And if they were neither worse nor better but just different, what would be the source of your comparative feeling that belonging to this group was especially good?

(Photo by Nick Gray)

A few readers push back against the others. One writes:

We hear sometimes about how Social Security is self-sufficient; that's how those benefits Jilani is talking about are "guaranteed".  Progressives like Nancy Pelosi and Barney Frank parrot the line all the time, as do the people trying to protect working-class folks from fear-mongering and (in Josh Marshall's words) bamboozlement.  Part of the premise of that, of course, is that we have a crapload of money already paid into the system. You remember Al Gore and his lockbox, don't you, the "social security trust fund?" that makes the program totally, in no way a Ponzi scheme?  Yeah, about that …

Something that went under the radar during the debt ceiling negotiations was Obama (and Timothy Geithner) telling people that, if we default, the government will have to stop issuing Social Security checks.

When?  After all, we have $2.6 trillion in that trust fund thing, right?  So the SSA can just mail out checks for years.  Well, no.  According to Geihner and Obama, those checks would stop coming … August 2nd.  As in, the moment we default.  As in, that trust fund has an approximate value of … what's the word I'm looking for? … oh yeah – Nothing. 

So, how long do we get the benefits we've already paid for, if the program ceases to bring in later entrants? Well, we don't. So I don't think "guaranteed benefits" means what Jilani thinks it means.

The other:

Social Security is not guaranteed.  Sorry to have to demolish a liberal shibboleth. Over 50 years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that workers have no legally binding contractual rights to their Social Security benefits, and that those benefits can be cut or even eliminated at any time, regardless of how much the worker has paid in to the system. See  Flemming v. Nestor, 363 U.S. 603 (1960).

How can that possibly be, you may ask, if we've been paying into the system our whole working lives?  In truth, Social Security contributions are not insurance premiums.  They are simply taxes, like any other taxes, and the benefits are just a form of appropriated spending, no different than farm price supports, for example, that can be eliminated at any time. In other words, if Congress decides to abolish Social Security tomorrow, workers have no legal recourse whatsoever. As the Supreme Court explained in Fleming:

To engraft upon the Social Security system a concept of 'accrued property rights' would deprive it of the flexibility and boldness in adjustment to ever-changing conditions which it demands.  . . . It was doubtless out of an awareness of the need for such flexibility that Congress included in the original [Social Security] Act, and has since retained, a clause expressly reserving to it '[t]he right to alter, amend, or repeal any provision' of the Act. 1104, 49 Stat. 648, 42 U.S.C. 1304. That provision makes express what is implicit in the institutional needs of the program."

I dare say that a private insurance company that sold a retirement product while nurturing the belief that customer benefits were guaranteed, when in fact they were not, would be guilty of fraud.  Why does it cease to be fraud when the government is doing it?