Oh , We've got pretty good treatments for helminths, plus an entire part of our immune system devoted to their suppression. Quit being such a bit baby, Chuck.
You should really be freaking out about viral hemorrhagic disease, guess which one you can pick up in Texas?
DNA analysis shows that that is Richard III in the parking lot. Yay!
But! The analysis also shows possible evidence of infidelity! The DNA passed down on the maternal side matches living relatives, but not on the paternal side.
The first article I read said he was also blond with blue eyes, like a true Plantagenet. If only he'd been tall and a road whore, the people of England would have adored him.
I don't know what it is about a tall, blond Plantagenet king that makes the English go all weak in the knees, but it never seems to fail. I expect if William starts spending too much money and sleeping around he'll become the most popular British monarch in centuries.
__________________
"freedom to differ is not limited to things that do not matter much. That would be a mere shadow of freedom. The test of its substance is the right to differ as to things that touch the heart of the existing order."
- Justice Robert Jackson, West Virginia State Board of Ed. v. Barnette
DNA analysis shows that that is Richard III in the parking lot. Yay!
But! The analysis also shows possible evidence of infidelity! The DNA passed down on the maternal side matches living relatives, but not on the paternal side.
Oh, big whoop. Like that is any surprise.
Is everybody here sure that the two current princes are full brothers?
Prince Andrew looks way different than Charles or Edward. Prince Philip was away abroad at the time Andrew was conceived - so it seems even our Queen couldn't be trusted.
That sort of thing is more common than most people realize. Or, perhaps, more common than most people want to realize.
And we've known this for decades.
It all started back in the 1940s, with studies that were designed to see how blood-type patterns were inherited. One such study, conducted in New York City, concluded that approximately 10% of the children tested could not have been fathered by the husbands of their mothers. [Note that this was done using blood-type matching, which is a much less precise method than genetic testing. The real numbers would have been higher.]
Further studies have found some interesting patterns. For one thing, it varies by income group. The common perception is that infidelity is more common in wealthier couples, but genetic testing doesn't seem to bear that out -- at least, up to a point. Robin Baker has estimated that overall, 10% of fathers are raising children that they think are theirs but are not. But, based on the results of genetic testing, he estimates that the number rises to 30% in low-income families. In higher-income families, the estimate is only 2%. It's a bit more complicated when you look at the highest-income families.
Before you take these numbers too seriously, though, there are some important considerations. That 10% average is probably too high. Why?
Well, who goes to a lab for a paternity test? Typically, this happens only when there's some reason to suspect that the "father" of a child isn't the actual father.
Kermyt G. Anderson did a metastudy not too long ago, in which he analyzed the results of numerous other paternity studies. But what he did differently is that he divided the subjects into two groups. The first group consisted of couples in which the men had "few or no" doubts that the children in question were theirs. That would encompass the results of studies in which the researchers were looking for inheritance patterns, for example, and were not specifically testing for paternity. In those studies, according to Anderson, only 1.7% of the children tested turned out to be fathered by someone other than the mother's husband.
The second group consisted of couples in which the men had "low confidence" that the children in question were theirs. These were typically studies looking at the results of paternity testing. Well, if you're having "your" kid's genes tested to see who the father is, then more or less by definition, you have "low confidence" that you're the father.
In any event, in those studies -- studies in which the putative father had "low confidence" that he was really the father -- some 30% of the children turned out to be sired by someone other than the man married to the mother.
It does get a bit more complicated, however. According to at least one study, a study in which people were interviewed anonymously regarding whether or not they had cheated on their spouses, rates of sexual infidelity in the highest income brackets were substantially higher than in other income brackets. [They didn't test to find out how many of the children in the richest households were sired by someone other than their putative fathers.] The researchers concluded that sexual infidelity among the rich is relatively common -- perhaps, the researchers concluded, because if you're rich, you have a lot more opportunities to cheat on your spouse than does a poor or middle-class person.
Anyway, long story short: infidelity exists, and we've known this for decades. A significant percentage of the people walking around today were fathered by someone other than the person they thought was their father. That is not exactly news.
The good news: if you're reasonably sure the kid in question is yours, then (s)he almost-certainly is, so relax.
__________________
“The greatest way to live with honor in this world is to be what we pretend to be.”
-- Socrates
Last edited by The Lone Ranger; 12-16-2014 at 05:50 PM.
So, I ordered this on Saturday. A friend shared it on my feed and I just had to have one.
__________________
"freedom to differ is not limited to things that do not matter much. That would be a mere shadow of freedom. The test of its substance is the right to differ as to things that touch the heart of the existing order."
- Justice Robert Jackson, West Virginia State Board of Ed. v. Barnette
That's some pretty pronounced scoliosis. Lots of people have scoliosis without even knowing it, but Richard's scoliosis was sufficiently severe that it would have been very obvious to anyone who saw him. It was sufficiently severe that he probably had some difficulty in breathing.
Quote:
Originally Posted by The Lone Ranger
Quite a few of the vertebrae show very clear deformities, which would have been due to the asymmetrical pressures placed upon them by Richard's spinal deformity. It probably wouldn't have been debilitating, but the spinal curvature is sufficiently pronounced that I suspect he had some breathing difficulty, at the very least.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Kael
So, given the spacing for the sake of not damaging the bones, how accurate is the spinal curve in the picture? It certainly seems like it would have been at least a little debilitating, and very noticeable, if it really curved that much. I'm no medical professional, but I believe the technical term would be "Dayum!"
TLR, you called it, man. Secrets of the Dead had a phenomenal episode in which experts studied Richard's bones to assess his capabilities. A young man who happens to be a War of the Roses re-enactor and who has scoliosis of similar degree and curvature shape to Richard's volunteered to be put through his paces. Difficulty breathing was an immediate problem during a standard stress test.
What blew my mind the most was that many of his challenges were actually mitigated once he was in armour and mounted on a warhorse. He was forced into a posture that made fighting much easier than it had been when he was training in regular clothes on the ground. My kingdom for a horse is no fucking joke.
Shameful injustice. It'll be on Netflix eventually, but it's relatively new so it'll be a while. Do you get PBS on the TV where you are? If so, it may be On Demand.
And Richard III and Vald the Impaler were contemporaries.
Did I mentioned that a couple weeks ago, without planning to, I watched the Louis Jourdan Dracula and the BBC Shakespeare Richard III in one week. Both iconic, life-changing villain performances of my adolescence in the span of six days. It felt gloriously self-indulgent.
__________________
"freedom to differ is not limited to things that do not matter much. That would be a mere shadow of freedom. The test of its substance is the right to differ as to things that touch the heart of the existing order."
- Justice Robert Jackson, West Virginia State Board of Ed. v. Barnette
Today Richard III's remains carried in the coffin his Canadian 17 times great-grand nephew made will travel in a cortege from the University of Leicester to Leicester Cathedral. The coffin will be taken on a route with stops relevant to the last days of his life, then through the city center to the church where a service of Compline will be held.
Dammit! I was driving across the Pennsylvania and Ohio turnpikes and completely missed it. I need to time my travels better.
__________________
"freedom to differ is not limited to things that do not matter much. That would be a mere shadow of freedom. The test of its substance is the right to differ as to things that touch the heart of the existing order."
- Justice Robert Jackson, West Virginia State Board of Ed. v. Barnette