Famous person found to have ordinary genetic history

It’s only about 200 years old, pulling a DNA sequence out of a hair sample is a piece of cake. So Beethoven’s DNA has been sequenced. He even gave permission!

In 1802, German composer Ludwig van Beethoven wrote a heart-wrenching letter to his brothers, describing the deafness that forced him to “live like an exile” and yearn for death. Beethoven kept going for another 25 years, propelled by his music, but he begged them to have his hearing loss studied and publicized, so that “so far as possible, the world may be reconciled to me after my death.”

Two centuries later, a team of international researchers has answered that plea by sequencing Beethoven’s DNA, preserved in locks of his hair that collaborators and fans collected as treasured keepsakes.

The central ailment of Beethoven’s life was his hearing loss, which began in his mid-20s. He also suffered from debilitating gastrointestinal symptoms and attacks of jaundice. An autopsy revealed that he had cirrhosis of the liver, pancreatitis and a swollen spleen. Medical biographers have debated what killed him and whether his liver disease was the result of excessive drinking or some other cause.

There are limits to what you can do with DNA. They found no genetic evidence for his hearing loss. They did find signs of a susceptibility to liver disease, and that he had hepatitis B. There is absolutely no indication of a genetic source for his musical talent. I’d go so far as to say it is silly to select a 19th century person for a genetic analysis on the basis of musical ability, which is mostly going to be due to circumstance, rather than intrinsic nature (there may be exceptions, like the heritability of perfect pitch, but even that is pretty wobbly.

They did discover something that ol’ Ludwig Van would not have anticipated and probably wouldn’t want advertized.

The analysis also yielded a surprise: Beethoven’s Y chromosome didn’t match those from living relatives. The common relative they all share was Aert van Beethoven, who lived in the 16th century. Somewhere in the seven generations between Aert and Ludwig van Beethoven, a woman in the family tree had a child with an unknown man, and Beethoven seems to be a descendant of that pairing.

We’ve probably all got evidence of ancestral indiscretions in our genes, though, so that shouldn’t reflect on Beethoven, or on his unidentified female ancestor.

Extremism leads to more extremism

Answers in Genesis isn’t just that annoying collection of stupid people and con artists anymore — they’re embracing hate and bigotry as fervently as they have ignorance, and it’s getting worse. Dan makes an interesting discovery while trying to track down the source of some recent hateful articles on the AiG website.

What’s curious is that AiG is trying to hide the source — there are these articles that are currently anonymous, but the Wayback Machine reveals that they were initially posted under the byline “Harry F. Sanders, III”. Why is AiG actively trying to conceal the authorship? And further, “Harry F. Sanders, III” is itself a pseudonym for someone named “Emory Moynagh” (probably also a pseudonym) who had a YouTube channel (now deleted) called “In His Image”, where he was an extremist antisemitic conspiracy theorists. And now AiG is trying to launder his history while giving him a bigger platform to peddle that extremism. Also interesting: AiG is taking a very hard line on their version of creationism, letting all those other creationist organizations know they are heretics and blasphemers. Ken Ham’s ego is totally in charge, I imagine he considers himself a modern-day patriarch who must chastise all those who deviate from his dogma.

This is a common problem in authoritarian worldviews, you know. We’re witnessing a predictable acceleration as AiG fully embraces its cult nature. It’s only going to get more feverish and vicious.

If you’d rather not listen to a 14 minute video, here’s the conclusion:

Ken Ham is going all-in on the culture war
And he’s decided to go all-in against other YECs
He’s enlisted Harry F. Sanders, III/Emory Moynagh as the primary author of this series
Harry/Emory has a history of articulating extreme positions, including borderline incitements of violence, antisemitism, and conspiracies
This is dangerous and irresponsible, especially considering Ham and AiG’s recent aggression towards the LGBT+ community and the trend of right-wing violence

Feature, or bug?

I wonder what their CEO thinks of this statistic: Antisemitism on Twitter has more than doubled since Elon Musk took over. I’d want to do something about that, if I were in charge, but maybe the billionaire thinks it’s a good thing.

In the days after Elon Musk took over Twitter in October 2022, the social media platform saw a “surge in hateful conduct,” which its then safety chief put down to a “focused, short-term trolling campaign.” New research suggests that when it comes to antisemitism, it was anything but.

Rather, antisemitic tweets have more than doubled over the months since Musk took charge, according to research that I and colleagues at tech firm CASM Technology and the Institute for Strategic Dialogue think tank conducted. Between June and October 26, 2022, the day before Twitter’s acquisition by Musk, there was a weekly average of 6,204 tweets deemed “plausibly antisemitic”—that is, where at least one reasonable interpretation of the tweet falls within the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of the term as “a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred towards Jews.”

Personally, I don’t understand how anyone can fear and hate a particular ethnicity, or maybe all ethnicities other than their own. Do these people just sit around seething about the existence of Jewish people, people they probably don’t even know? Do they need a scapegoat for their own problems? Have they considered that maybe it’s their own brain that is screwed up, and that they should get therapy?

Here’s another thing I don’t understand.

Antisemitic tweets directed at Jewish investor and philanthropist George Soros warranted its own category. He was mentioned more than any other person in our data, over 19,000 times, with tweets claiming he was a member of a hidden globalist, Jewish, or “Nazi” world order.

One would think there should be little confusion about whether someone is Jewish or Nazi. Those seem to be mutually antagonistic categories.

Also, I can go days to months without even thinking of George Soros, he has so little influence on me. The only time I am reminded of his existence is when some antisemitic weirdo tells me I’m his puppet.

Never ever read your email

I’m in trouble now. I was late reading some official email, and learned (was reminded) yesterday that I have to submit my annual report describing what I’ve been doing for the past year. The report is due on 20 March…oh. Yesterday.

You’d think I’d learn. This has been a bureaucratic ritual every year for 23 years, and I should learn to expect it. First comes my birthday, which is OK; then comes my wedding anniversary, which is very nice; then comes spring break, which is excellent; and then…darkness descends on my consciousness, and my brain averts away from the cursed next step of administrative paperwork.

OK. I’ve pulled up the form on my computer. Now I have to go through my old records and remind myself of what I did in 2022. Then I have to justify my existence, despite the howling void at my core telling me that I don’t deserve to live and nothing I have ever done matters.

I’ll get it done today somehow.

Florida of the North!

“We prize and our rights our liberties we will maintain”? What? No wonder Iowa is screwed up.

The Washington Post noticed. Even as Minnesota has been progressing and enacting common sense legislation to improve the life of its citizens, our neighbor to the South, Iowa, has been going insane.

Republicans in the Iowa legislature, empowered by the state’s recent “red wave,” have embarked on an ambitious new agenda that includes a costly school choice bill and legislation targeting the LGBTQ community, a historic divergence from Iowa’s history as a civil rights bastion.

Even as teens draped in rainbow flags crowded into the Capitol rotunda chanting “We say gay” on March 8, Iowa lawmakers quickly passed three bills related to gay and transgender rights, culminating with a measure to ban gender-affirming care for transgender youth that is awaiting Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds’s signature.

The votes were not only emphatic but were also a sharp reversal for the state: Iowa has veered so far to the right in recent years that its political landscape is virtually unrecognizable from the centrist place that chose Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012 and was one of the earliest states in the country to affirm same-sex marriage. A joke among statehouse reporters is that Iowa is becoming the “Florida of the North” — without the beaches.

Once you let Republicans get a toe-hold in your state, they start screaming and fostering a climate of hatred and paranoia that takes over, and next thing you know you’re getting compared to Florida. I don’t understand this transformation myself, but somehow, working class people in Iowa have absorbed a lot of Republican propaganda and have gotten the idea that Trump was a hero.

Political analysts in the state say that Iowa’s swing has solidified over the past seven years as reliably Democratic working-class voters abandoned the party in favor of Donald Trump’s message, and the state’s large percentage of independent voters also moved toward the Republicans.

Trump’s message? What the fuck is Trump’s message? And why does it appeal to anyone? The article doesn’t say. If that “message” is represented by Governor Kim Reynolds, well yuck — it’s all hate and ignorance.

At a February appearance at a raucous town hall co-sponsored by Moms for Liberty — the Florida-based group that has campaigned for book bans across the country — Reynolds celebrated her school choice victory and portrayed herself both as a grandma of 11 and a warrior against the “radical left.”

“They think patriotism is racist and pornographic library books are education,” Reynolds said, speaking over shouting protesters and supporters chanting “U.S.A., U.S.A.” “They believe that the content of our character is less important than the color of our skin. They believe that children should be encouraged to pick their gender and the parents, well, they’re just in the way.”

Love how the one thing Republicans have stolen from Martin Luther King Jr. is that one line, and they’ve twisted it to support their assertion that white people are discriminated against. She’s got everything backwards, though: Republicans think racism is patriotism and education is pornography.

Not my spring, yet

I get these nice postcards, including a poem, from Theo Nelson every quarter, and I thought I’d share this one because it’s an interesting contrast.

I wish my region looked something like that right now. Instead, it was -16°C yesterday, and my yard is fenced in with 1.5 meters of accumulated snow. There is no color but black, shades of gray, and blinding white. Spring ain’t springing yet.

So this is what happens when you put the Democrats in charge

Minnesota has a Democratic governor and a Democratic house, and that means…children get fed.

Kids and parents in Minnesota won’t have to worry about affording school meals thanks to a new law that guarantees free school meals for all children in the state.

Gov. Tim Walz (D) signed the bill into law Friday to cheers and hugs from some of the kids who will benefit from the program.

The new law provides free breakfast and lunch for all K-12 students, regardless of their parents’ income.

In case you were wondering what the benefits of helping kids might be, here’s an explanation.

One study published in 2020 looked at the adoption of universal school meals in middle schools in New York City that occurred in different years for different schools. The researchers focused on changes in test scores for individual students followed over time. They paid special attention to the comparison of students previously eligible for free meals due to their family’s low income status versus those students who were not previously being offered free meals.

After each school started to offer free meals to all students, test scores increased in both English and math. While test scores went up for both low-income students and those who were not from low-income households, the students who were not previously eligible for free meals benefited more. The gains in test scores for the students whose families had higher incomes or were missing out on free meals due to problems with certifying eligibility was estimated to represent six to 10 weeks of learning.

Another examination of data from NYC found an improvement in attendance for kindergartners once all students were offered free meals.

More recently, a 2022 study looked at the adoption of universal free meals by school districts across the U.S. Using district-level test scores rather than test scores on individual students, the author also found that the decision to offer universal free school meals was followed by an increase in math scores. A comparison of districts with high levels of poverty to those with lower poverty levels found that the math score gains were greater in districts that had fewer students from low-income households. In other words, school districts with fewer low-income students experienced the greatest improvements in math scores.

What happens if you put Republicans in charge? They deny the problem and do nothing.

The bill drew the ire of Republican state Sen. Steve Drazkowski, who argued Tuesday that “hunger is a relative term” in his opposition to feeding kids.

“I have yet to meet a person in Minnesota that is hungry,” Drazkowski said on the Senate floor in St. Paul before voting against the legislation. “I have yet to meet a person in Minnesota that says they don’t have access to enough food to eat.”

I think that says more about the elite circles he moves in than anything about the state of the citizenry. Why isn’t everyone eating cake?

By the way, Minnesota also allowed immigrants, all immigrants, to get a driver’s license, which is sensible, good news for everyone who uses our roads and highways.

A bill to allow unauthorized immigrants to obtain a driver’s license without showing proof of legal residence was passed by the Minnesota House of Representatives on Monday.

The “Driver’s Licenses for All” bill passed in the House by a vote of 69-60.

If you keep Republicans out of power, you’ll get all kinds of nice incremental improvements to your life.

Pinker is embarrassing

Seriously, dude? Steven Pinker is peddling NFTs now?

On March 14th at 7pm ET, thought leader and Harvard professor Steven Pinker will release digital collectibles of his famous idea that “Free speech is fundamental”.

These collectibles will guarantee recurrent access to intimate group video calls with Pinker to discuss this topic for the next several years.

Two tiers will be available: the gold collectible, which is unique and grants the buyer the right to co-host the calls with Pinker, will be priced at $50,000; the standard collectibles, which are limited to 30 items and grant the buyers the right to access those video calls and ask questions to Pinker at the end, will be priced at 0.2 Ethereum (~$300).

The NFTs will be available for purchase on the Polemix NFT platform. Holders of the NFTs can expect to book their first call with Pinker as soon as two weeks following their purchase; thus receiving utility for the NFTs shortly after.

HIS famous idea that “Free speech is fundamental”? And all it is is a picture of Pinker with the words “free speech is fundamental” printed on it? Here you go, I’ll save you $50,000, although I can’t provide the phone call.

My first thought: this has to be a joke, a satirical web page made to poke fun at the self-importance of these IDW gomers.

It’s not. Pinker himself promoted it.

Jesus. It is a big joke, a joke named Pinker.

Except…apparently they’ve already sold out. Maybe humanity is the joke.

A distinction without any meaning

Biologists have managed to reprogram stem cells taken from a male mouse into female oocytes, then fertilized them with sperm from another male mouse, and produced healthy offspring — that is, they’ve made mice with two fathers. This is an expected, incremental advance in stem cell research, and not surprising at all.

The creationists at Answers in Genesis are made somewhat uncomfortable about this, since it violates their fantasies about the rigidity of sex determination, and recruited their tame in-house crank with a Ph.D., Nathaniel Jeanson to write a rationalization for them. It’s pathetic. He correctly summarizes the basics of the procedure, but then his brain falls out.

He decides that what he just described didn’t happen.

But can two adult males (mice, in this case) have their cells reprogrammed to produce eggs? Don’t males normally produce sperm, not eggs? How can offspring be produced from “two dads”?

In short, they can’t.

But that’s what the experiment did: they reprogrammed cells from adult males to produce eggs. His little essay described exactly what they did, which was that. How does he suddenly backtrack on everything?

For two males to reproduce, you have to first convert the cells from one of the males into female cells. And no, I’m not talking science fiction. This is what the researchers actually did.

They first reprogrammed cells from both male mice back to an embryonic state. At this stage of the process, the cells were all still male—possessing both an X chromosome and a Y chromosome. Then they waited for cells from one of the males to lose their male genetic material—the Y chromosome.4 At this stage, these genetically deficient cells now possessed only a single X chromosome, no Y chromosome.

These genetically deficient cells were poor candidates for producing eggs. To produce eggs, you need cells that have two X chromosomes. Consequently, as a next step, the researchers chemically induced these genetically deficient cells to return to a “normal” genetic state. They chemically forced them to have two chromosomes again—to realize an XX (rather than XY) chromosome state.

Effectively, they deleted the genetic instructions for “male” from one line of reprogrammed male cells, turning them genetically into female cells. Voilà, now they could produce eggs.

Yes? They took cells from a male mouse and turned them into female cells that could differentiate into eggs. They produced offspring from two dads. In short, they can.

It’s only been done in mice, and it’s a long, long way to being repeatable in humans, but this is exactly the procedure two gay men could use to have children together. Jeanson wants to argue, though, that the male mice did not have children — instead, he produced a “daughter,” a single cell, that then produced offspring.

By the way, if this strikes you as impossible, consider the fact that adult males regularly produce females. Dads have sons and daughters. Normally, these females (daughters) are produced with the help of a woman. In this study of two “dad” mice, the female “offspring” were produced in the culture dish—in a process that, in some respects, resembles the process of cloning.

So, no, two “dads” did not sire offspring together. Instead, using new genetic tools and tricks, researchers bypassed the normal process of reproduction to turn male cells into female cells and then joined the resulting sperm and egg.

Thus, even these researchers could not circumvent the biological realities for gender that God hardwired into creation from the beginning. They just went about the process of reproduction in a more perverse way.

By this goofy reasoning, no adult is a parent — we only produce spermatogonia/oogonia, single celled precursors to gametes, that are the actual parents, and mommies can be nothing but a transient single-celled stage on the way to making a zygote. Those “hardwired” “biological realities” seem to be entirely circumventable, although only with considerable technical finagling. Or, if you prefer, we could argue that his god has incorporated some remarkable flexibility in how sex develops.

I mean, seriously, two daddy mice did have offspring together. That’s the simple blunt reality of this result.

Get used to it.