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HOW BIG IS YOUR GENOME?

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GENES

(According to Earth “scientists”), genes are the fundamental units of inheritance in living organisms. Together, they hold all the information necessary to reproduce a given organism and to pass on genetic traits to its offspring.

Biologists have long debated what constitutes a gene in molecular terms but one useful definition is a region of DNA that carries that code necessary to make a molecular chain called a polypeptide. These chains link together to form proteins and so are the bricks and mortar out of which all organism are constructed.

Given this crucial role, it is no surprise that an ongoing goal in biology is to work out the total number of protein-coding genes necessary to construct a given organism. Biologists think the yeast genome contains about 5300 coding genes and a nematode worm genome contains about 20,470.

But the number for humans has been the subject of constant revision since biologists first began the task of estimating them in the 1960s. Then, they believed humans could have as many as 2 million protein-coding genes. But by the time the human genome project began in the late 1990s, the highest estimates put the number at 100,000 and the number has continued to shrink.

That’s an interesting result that is partly a reflection of the state of genomics. The human genome is by no means fully defined and biologists are still in the process of refining their gene models and withdrawing genes in the process.

Indeed, in the most recent update of the genome release, geneticists have withdrawn 328 of the 2000 genes that Ezkurdia, Tress and co identify as potentially non-coding.

And on this evidence, the human genome is set to get smaller still. “Our evidence suggests that the final number of true protein coding genes in the reference genome may lie closer to 19,000 than to 20,000.”

Which means that humans have fewer protein-coding genes even than nematode worms.

Geneticists long ago debunked the idea that more complex organisms require more genes. The water flea, for example, has 31,000 genes, the most in any animal, while the organism with the largest genome is thought to be the Paris jabonica, a rare flowering plant native to Japan.

The fact that the human genome is so parsimonious raises an interesting question. What exactly is it about the human genome that gives rise to our staggering complexity, in the brain for example, compared to other animals such as monkeys, worms or even water fleas?

A good answer to that question will win prizes!

Ref: arxiv.org/abs/1312.7111 : The Shrinking Human Protein Coding Complement: Are There Fewer Than 20,000

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SKULL & BONES

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The most famous secret society in America, Skull and Bones was co-founded at Yale in 1832 by the father of a future president and has come to signify everything that attracts and repulses the public about “The Elite.”  Rumor has it that Yale junior class members are tapped for membership each fall by some measure of leadership, influence and breeding.Among the business titans, poets, politicians and three US Presidents that are rumored to be members, we’ve picked out the honor roll.

William Howard Taft – Class of 1878

William Howard Taft - Class of 1878

Image: Yale University Archives

Our 27th, and fattest (fun fact), President was known to his college buddies as “Big Lub,” and was the first “Bonesman” ever to reach The Oval Office.Frankly, young Mr. Taft would probably had a rather easy time getting into the club…

His father, and one-time Attorney General, Alphonso Taft, co-founded Skull and Bones as a Yale student in 1832.

Amos Alonzo Stagg – Class of 1888

Amos Alonzo Stagg - Class of 1888

Image: Yale University Archives

Yale’s greatest football player of all-time (apologies to Calvin Hill), Stagg practically invented the modern game and is still the only man to be elected into both the Pro Football and Pro Basketball Halls of Fame.It can only be assumed that being the most gifted jock in Yale’s history had some bearing on Mr. Stagg’s being chosen to join Skull and Bones.

William Averill Harriman – Class of 1913

William Averill Harriman - Class of 1913

Image: Yale University Archives

The future Governor of New York and Presidential candidate was clearly a man who liked his time at Yale…Immediately after inheriting the largest fortune in The United States from his railroad baron father upon his graduation, Harriman took a job as Yale’s crew coach and stuck around New Haven.

No doubt the man his fellow Bonesmen referred to Averill as “Thor,” continued to enjoy himself around town as Yale celebrity before moving on to his many future successes.

Archibald MacLeish – Class of 1915

Archibald MacLeish - Class of 1915

Image: Yale University Archives

Before living in Paris amongst “The Lost Generation” of Hemingway, Pound and Fitzgerald, while honing a poetic voice that would yield three Pulitzer Prizes, MacLeish was a Yale Graduate and a member of Skull and Bones.It would seem that MacLeish, like most Bonesmen, was chosen less for his brains and more than his connections…

“Archie’s” father was an Illinois dry goods dealer, and his mother was a college professor, a rare combination of parentage and geography for the Bonesmen of his day.

Prescott Bush – Class of 1916

Prescott Bush - Class of 1916

Image: Yale University Archives

If you thought “Dubya” was a wild man in his college years, you should have met his grand-daddy.Prescott, the future Senator from Connecticut, was apparently a real “cut-up” who, along with some other Bonesmen, is believed to have dug up and absconded with the skull of the legendary Native American warrior Geronimo during World War I.

Legend has it that Geronimo’s head is still inside Skull and Bones HQ, known as “The Tomb,” at 64 High Street in New Haven.

Robert Lovett – Class of 1918

Robert Lovett - Class of 1918

Image: Yale University Archives

Harry Truman’s Secretary of War and the man whom many have called “The Architect of The Cold War” was the consummate Bonesman insider.Along with sharing a membership timeline with Prescott Bush, Lovett was also friendly with fellow Bonesman Harvey Hollister Bundy, who served with Lovett in Truman’s War Cabinet and was the father of future Bonesman McGeorge Bundy.

Henry Luce – Class of 1920

Henry Luce - Class of 1920

Image: Yale University Archives

The man who went on to found and publish Time Magazine was first an editor of The Yale Daily News. He was also a man that fellow Bonesmen referred to as “Baal,” an apparent reference to a mythological, ancient, Aramaic demon. The mind boggles at the implications.

Potter Stewart – Class of 1936

Potter Stewart - Class of 1936

Image: Yale University Archives

The son of a Midwestern Congressman, Stewart went on to be an editor of The Yale Law Review, after being a member of Skull and Bones during his undergraduate days.But it was perhaps much later in life that Mr. Potter was of greatest assistance to Bonesmen of the future…

As an Associate Justice of The Supreme Court in 1965, Mr. Potter wrote a dissent in Griswold v. Connecticut, setting the stage for the future legalization of the sales of contraceptives in The Nutmeg State, no doubt bringing great relief to the young gentlemen inside “The Tomb.”

McGeorge Bundy – Class of 1940

McGeorge Bundy - Class of 1940

Image: Yale University Archives

Before becoming one of JFK’s “Wise Men,” Bundy was another Bonesman with a long family lineage of getting “Tapped” for the society.  But, if the lore surrounding Skull and Bones has any veracity, he was apparently a man with a personality all his own, one that led his pals to nickname him “Odin.”

George Herbert Walker Bush – Class of 1948

George Herbert Walker Bush - Class of 1948

Image: Skull and Bones Yearbook, 1948

The second ever Bonesman to be elected President, “41” was also a fighter pilot in WWII, Ambassador to “Red China” and Director of the CIA.  His training at Skull and Bones must have been invaluable in the career he made out of keeping safe the secrets of state.

William F. Buckley Jr. – Class 0f 1950

William F. Buckley Jr. - Class 0f 1950

Image: LiveJournal

It would have been pretty painful for the man who came to symbolize the most conservative brand of American elitism NOT to have been “Tapped” for Skull and Bones. Luckily, he was, or they would most likely never have heard the end of it.

John F. Kerry – Class of 1966

John F. Kerry - Class of 1966

Image: Yale University Archives

The now senior Senator from Massachusetts was only a college Junior when he was “Tapped” as a Bonesman after a childhood spent abroad with his diplomat father.  Kerry’s period of membership as an on-campus Bonesman just missed intersecting with a man he would come to challenge for the presidency in 2004..

George W. Bush – Class of 1968

George W. Bush - Class of 1968

Image: Media Library – Yale Whiffenpoofs

“W” was a man who’s family was synonymous with Skull and Bones by the time he arrived on Yale’s campus as a Freshman, but it has been whispered that many thought his family would agree to his not being “Tapped” as George was a rather… “distractable” young man.  But after joining up with the family club, joining the cheerleading team and generally raising hell, “W” ended up as the third Bonesman to occupy the office of the President.

Stephen A. Schwarzman – Class of 1969

Stephen A. Schwarzman - Class of 1969

Class photo unavailable

He was tapped only a year behind George W. Bush and came to prominence under the future president’s administration when his Blackstone Investments hedge fund group went public in 2007.  The SEC filings for Blackstone’s IPO revealed that Schwarzman had made an average of $1 million per day for the fiscal year ending in December 2006.

Austan Goolsbee – Class of 1991

Austan Goolsbee - Class of 1991

Goolsbee represents the newest generation of Bonesman on the list. The Texan-born economist was presumably tapped in 1989 while studying for his BA in Economics and performing with the Yale improve troupe “Just Add Water.”  At 41, he is one of the youngest Chairmen of The Council of Economic Advisor’s in the history of The White House, a building that has been staffed and led by a more than a few members of the society, and one can assume will be for many years to come.

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PROPAGANDA AS PUBLIC MIND CONTROL

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Edward Louis Bernays ( November 22, 1891 − March 9, 1995) was an Austrian-American pioneer in the field of public relations and propaganda, referred to in his obituary as “the father of public relations.” Bernays was named one of the 100 most influential Americans of the 20th century by Life. He was the subject of a full length biography by Larry Tye called The Father of Spin (1999) and later an award-winning 2002 documentary for the BBC by Adam Curtis called The Century of the Self.

His best-known campaigns include a 1929 effort to promote female smoking by branding cigarettes as feminist “Torches of Freedom“, and his work for the United Fruit Company in the 1950s, connected with the CIA-orchestrated overthrow of the democratically elected Guatemalan government in 1954. He worked for dozens of major American corporations including Procter & Gamble and General Electric, and for government agencies, politicians, and non-profit organizations.

Edward Bernays was born to a Jewish family, the son of Ely Bernays and Anna (Freud) Bernays. His great-grandfather was Isaac Bernays, chief rabbi of Hamburg. Bernays was a “double nephew” of Viennese psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud—by virtue of his mother, Freud’s sister, and of his father’s sister, Martha Bernays Freud, who married Sigmund.

Of his many books, Crystallizing Public Opinion (1923) and Propaganda (1928) gained special attention as early efforts to define and theorize the field of public relations. Citing works of writers such as Gustave Le Bon, Wilfred Trotter, Walter Lippmann, and Sigmund Freud (his own double uncle), he described the masses as irrational and subject to herd instinct—and outlined how skilled practitioners could use crowd psychology and psychoanalysis to control them in desirable ways.

READ MORE ~ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays

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WHAT IF ALIENS BEHAVE LIKE US?

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Once in awhile I read some cutesy, Pollyanna-ish story about how wonderful it will be when we finally make contact with an “alien intelligence” or “extraterrestrial visitors” from another star system.  Wouldn’t that be lovely?  We could all sit down and have a nice chat about our respective cultures.  Or, perhaps we can invite them over for tea and show them our photo albums of our vacations and the grandkids.  Lovely, just lovely.  Right?

Well, let’s just hope they don’t look like the photos below!  Furthermore, let’s hope they don’t treat us like we’ve treated each other during the history of Earth.  Take Columbus, for example: he and his men raped, murdered and enslaved every native citizen they found in Haiti when they landed in the “New World”.  The British Empire massacred and enslaved millions of Africans.  The Romans Emperors invaded, stole, raped, pillages, plundered and massacred millions of Europeans.  The Catholic Church murdered millions of “infidels” just because they didn’t share the same philosophy of “love and understanding” as the Pope.  International oil companies (using their government armies) invade, murder and steal land to secure gas and oil rights all over the world.  International Bankers force millions into poverty and starvation to personal financial gain.  It never stops.

So, the question is this:  What if aliens turn out to behave like us?  (It’s a rhetorical question…).

ALIEN TAKING A LUNCH BREAK AT THE “EARTH CAFE”.  WHO’S FOR LUNCH?

A TYPICAL EXTRATERRESTRIAL “EXPLORER”