A genetic study by the Genographic Project suggests that the human species split in two about 150,000 years ago. It’s uncertain why but one guess is that “arid conditions” between eastern and southern Africa separated the populations for perhaps as much as 100, 000 years. This means that there may have been two species up until as relatively recently as 40, 000 years ago.

We don’t know how long it takes for hominids to fission off into separate species, but clearly they were separated for a very long time, says Dr Spencer Wells, director of the Genographic Project.

I wonder what would happen if there was a split today. Some scientists, like Lee Silver insists that it will eventually happen through different forms of reproduction technologies. Those who can afford it will give their kids the new enhanced gene variants that make them smarter, while the rest will remain more or less as we are today. Poor sods.

Another scenario is that it will happen much faster because some mad scientist like Panos Zavos will set out to split the species to achieve herostratic immortality. And if he succeded, what would The Others be like? Would they see us as their enemies? Would they lurk in the shadows while secretly aspire for world domination? Now there is an idea for a sci-fi/thriller…

As I mindlessly sunk down in front of the television the other day, zapping through the channels I found a really nasty show on MTV: The X Effect. It’s a reality show where a former couple get to live toghether again whilst being spied on by their current partners. The whole idea is to see if this arrangement can cause a breakup between the two couples. In the episode I saw the the ex-couple girl wanted to stay with her current boyfriend but after he had seen her showing affection for her ex he didn’t want her anymore. Like Dorothy Parker once said: what fresh hell is this?

Most of these shows have one common feature: they put a person in the spotlight and then hurt or humiliate him or her in some way. Although modern reality shows have only been around since the late 1990s they have already been linked to a number of suicides and attempted suicides and other suspicious deaths:

• 1997: Sanisa Savija throws himself in front of a train after being eliminated from the Swedish edition of Survivor.

• 2005: Najai Turpin, shoots himself in the head shortly after appearing on The Contender.

• 2005: Carina Stephenson killes herself six months after appearing on The Colony.

• 2005: Danny Bonaduce (childhood actor in The Partridge Family) slits his wrists after participating in a show called Breaking Bonaduce (mission accomplished, I guess) but survives.

• 2005: TV producer Melanie Bell throws herself of the Stratosphere Hotel in Las Vegas. Although being a producer, the experimental show required her to be a participant as well.

• 2007: Cheryl Kosewicz kills herself after being eliminated from the show Pirate Master.

• 2007: Nathan Clutter jumpes off a tower after being on Paradise Hotel.

• 2007: Rachel Brown dies from a gunshot wound in her home (cause of death still under investigation) about a year after competing in Hells Kitchen.

It’s only what I found searching the net a few minutes. So, this is probably far from all deaths, especially since the networks that air the shows also provide the news. For instance, Fox who air Paradise Hotel insisted that Clutter died in a climbing accident, but the police thought otherwise.

You could argue that the contenders were unstable to begin with, but I think that is all the more reason not to put them through these sinister games. In the 1960s and 1970s similar experiments were conducted by social psychologists, but they are no longer considered ethical. But you can still torture a consenting adult for the sake of entertainment. Where is the logic in that?

And where are all the moralists when you need them? The Parents Television Council rarely complain about reality shows, and when they do it’s usually about foul language or nudity. Sadism is no big issue for them.

But most of all, shame on Douglas Tirola, Liz Gateley, Tony DiSanto and MTV for producing crap like The X Effect.

A hot shot university professor and anti capital punishment activist, David Gale (Kevin Spacey), is arrested for a murder and ironically ends up on death row himself. Yes, it does sound like a silly premise, and I had my doubts, but The life of David Gale turned out to be a pleasant surprise.

The protagonist Bitsey Bloom (Cate Winslet) is a reporter who interviews Gale just days before his execution. As she hears his story she begins to doubt that he is the man responsible for murdering his fellow activist and longtime friend  Constance Harrraway (Laura Linney). And so the quest for the truth commences.

The actors all do a good job, especially Laura Linney, who seems to succeed in every movie she is in. Sometimes I wonder if she is too good for the egos of some directors. Woody Allen, Steven Spielberg, Stanley Kubrick, Ang Lee, Martin Scorsese and so on, none of the really prestigious directors have done a single movie with her. Given her exceptional talent that is a bit odd. I guess they don’t want people to say: “Wow, another great Laura Linney movie.”

Anyhoo, the genre of the film is drama-thriller, a mix that often fails in that either the drama or the suspense takes overhand. This one keeps a nice balance right till the end. And that usually makes for a good movie. Just think of films like The Silence of the Lambs, Mildred Pierce or The Night of the Hunter. This one isn’t quite in that league but it isn’t that far off.

Despite the theme it’s not a political film; it just uses the death penalty as a vehicle to tell an interesting story. The plot has several interesting twist and turns and there isn’t a dull moment, its the sort of craftmanship that reminds me of some of Hitchcock’s movies. And like any really good movie it has very little of loud music, special effects or fancy camera work – just old fashion storytelling.

The only thing that annoyed me a bit was the recurring music from Puccini’s opera Turandot, presumably because of its preoccupation with executions. Although it is Puccini’s best opera, this high culture reference is only pretentious and does nothing for the movie. But now I’m being picky.

Swedes are as a rule a nonviolent people. Our murder rate is low in comparison with most other countries. As far as I know there has only been one spree-killer and no school shootings. And no serial killers, at least if you exclude robberers. Until now that is.

Earlier this month that the ten year old girl Engla Juncosa-Höglund went missing. It was pure luck that a witness who was testing a newly bought camera took a picture of the girl riding her bicycle and shortly thereafter another picture of a car, which turned out to be owned by a known sex offender by the name of Anders Eklund. Later he confessed to killing her as well as a 31-year old woman in 2000.

Most likely he has killed more people but he is only confessing to these, most likely because of forensic evidence linking him to the murders. But there are several unsolved murders that have been attributed to a man called Thomas Quick. In the early 1990s he was by many regarded as our first serial killer. Then it became clear that there was no forensic evidence and no witnesses, and that people who knew him all thougt he was an attention seeking pathological liar.

Police say they are now looking into “all relevant unsolved murders and missing person cases” to see if Eklund can be linked to any other murders. But the murders that Quick confessed don’t fall into this category. All cases where Quick was the prime suspect are now terminated and unofficially considered solved. The police wont touch them; they are desperately hoping that people will forget about the Quick scandal. Some who made their careers on Quick are very influential today, most notably Christer van der Kwast, former senior prosecutor and presently the nations anti-corruption chief. Kwast was convinced that Quick was telling the truth after he witnessed Quick reenacting one of his murders in a cellar (not the actual murder scene).

It wouldn’t surprise me if Eklund is out in a few years. Because he’s got leverage, or he can pretend he has it. He only has to hint that he, and not Quick, is the real serial killer to make a lot of influential people within the police authorities start sweating. Quick confessed to 30 killings but only stood trial in six or seven. That’s over 20 unsolved murders because everyone involved was fooled by sly halfwit like Quick. And a lot of public embarrasment. It will be interesting to see what happens.

According to the always informative Fat Knowledge, there may in just a few years be In Vitro Meat economically competitive with traditionally produced meat on the market. This is great news for the environment since livestock production means extensive deforestation as well as emissions of greenhouse gases, the latter accounting for a massive 18 percent of the global warming effects.

The big question is whether anyone will eat it. Hardcore vegans will probably not, since it still involves exploiting animals which, no matter how humanely it’s done, is always a no-no for them. And some regular meat eaters may dismiss it because of the inevitable differences in taste and texture.

Personally, I don’t think I could eat it. I’m so weaned from meat now I’d probably throw up if I tried. Besides, meat regardless of how it’s produced will still contain a lot of energy that builds up around your midsection unless you exercise a lot. But if you’re going to eat meat anyway, the in vitro version is the humane and environmentally friendly choice. And until it’s on the market there is always tofu and other soy-based substitutes.

I’ve always been interested in science but I’ve never understood why some sci-guys hate christianity so much. I was reminded of this when I read Jonah Goldbergs article in LA Times regarding the Darwin fish, a parody of the Jesus fish that many put as a bumper sticker on their cars. The Darwin fish has the word Darwin or Evolve in it.

I suppose some supporters of science and modernity imagined that religion would just evaporate in the face of rational thought sometime during the 20^th century. And when that didn’t happen they became horribly frustrated and in need to vent their anger on someone.

But why not target all religions? Is christianity more scientifically incorrect than the other world religions? No, but it isn’t politically correct to bash jews or hindus, and bashing muslims is downright dangerous. Ergo christians. How sad, lame and impotent is that?

Games are popular models for social behavior among economists, philosophers and social scientists. Recently Benedikt Herrman at the University of Nottingham has revealed that the so-called Public Goods Game is played differently in countries like Saudi Arabia, Oman and Belarus than in the West.

So what exactly is the game about? A fuller description is right here but the gist of it is this: All players can choose how much money they put in a collective kitty, and then all players get back a certain amount proportionate to how much they all invested. If everybody puts in the maximum to the kitty they all make a good profit. But if some freeloader puts in less or even nothing he still makes a profit at the expense of the others. Which tends to make others less inclined to invest their money. You can also punish other players (usually freeloaders). It costs a little money to punish someone, but it costs even more to be punished.

What Herrman found out was that cooperation worked better in the western nations. In the Middle East and Belarus so-called anti-social punishment, punishing someone who is not a freeloader, was a common problem. I find this result interesting but at the same time hard to interpret. In the blogpost (can’t access the original) it is suggested that it is democracy and market economy that makes westerners cooperate better. One commentator, Herbert Gintis of the Sante Fe Institute, says: “The success of democratic market societies may depend critically upon moral virtues as well as material interests, so the depiction of civil society as the sphere of ‘naked self-interest’ is radically incorrect.”

I’m not so sure about that. It could equally well be religion, history, culture. But it seems to me that this game does tell us that equality (to a certain point) fosters cooperation. If it modeled a democratic market economy (or any other society for that matter) a little better, the players would not start with the same amount of money, rules wouldn’t apply equally. For some the punishing fee would be insignificant and for others it would be half their assets. Most likely they would not cooperate as well and their collective wealth would plummet. This conclusion is certainly in line with the fact that wealthy countries tend to be more economically equal than others (with the USA as the one big exception).

But rather than seeing the obvious Gintis comes up with a murky hypothesis of democratic markets moral superiority. Which begs the question: Why do morally superior countries emit more CO2 per capita than others?

A girl working at McDonalds was so frightened when she encountered a “little person” in the restaurant she screamed and ran away. She later said that she has a phobia of little people.

But the little guy in question, Ethan Wade, does not accept this explanation.

How could you compare the fear of a snake and spider to a human being? That makes no sense to me. I’ve seen kids kind of react like that. Understandable. But grown adults to act like that? That’s just not acceptable.

Wade says he isn’t looking to sue anyone but wants the staff at the restaurant to undergo “disability awareness training”.

I’m thinking maybe it is Wade who needs this training and not the employee. I’m sure most people know of dwarfs and that dwarfism is a disability – but Wade seems completely unaware that some people have a phobia for little people. It’s called nanosophobia.

I have always had this irrational fear of little people. I don’t scream or run away if I see a dwarf, but if they get too close I feel intense discomfort. Thankfully, I rarely bump into any of them, but once I was in an elevator with another guy and just as the doors were about to close a dwarf ran in. I then realized that if I had been alone in the elevator I would probably have lost it completely.

At that time the dwarf reacted just like Mr Wade. For some reason he couldn’t see my distress but glared at me like I was making fun of him or something, when all I wanted was to get the hell out of there.

Yesterday dutch member of parliament Geert Wilders released his controversial film “Fitna” (Strife) on Liveleak.com. It features qoutes from the Quoran alongside pictures of terrorist attacks, decapitations and speeches by muslim extremists. Not a very subtle contribution to the debate on islam and terrrorist. If you’re the least bit sensitive avoid it altogether, you’ll not miss anything.

As expected there has been demonstrations against the film in the muslim world, even before its release. But there hasn’t been any strong reactions form the muslim community so far, although this may come later as it did with the Danish cartoons.

But the reactions from the Dutch government is one of cowardice and escapism. Wilders could not get his film aired by any TV stations and even had problems finding a Internet publisher – clearly a crisis for freedom of speech. In this situation Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende comments that “we regret that Mr. Wilders has released this film.We believe it serves no other purpose than to cause offense.” Foreign Minister Maxine Verhagen called it “irresponsible”.

Sucking up to those who threaten free speech is not a way of protecting it. The only decent comment from the Dutch government would have been: “Mr Wilders is free to speak his mind. We are not film critics.” The European Union has also issued a statement saying that freedom of speech “should be exercised in a spirit of respect for religious and other beliefs and convictions”. Or in plain english: “Please don’t hurt us, it was Mr Wilders idea.”

And as the conflicts with muslims increase the dutch are emigrating. A recent survey shows that the portion of the population who seriously consider emigrating have increased from 26 to 38 percent in the last two years.

I don’t know how to fix this problem, but I’m pretty sure being submissive or trying to escape is not the solution.

Big deal that Hillary Clinton “misspoke” about being under gun fire on her arrival in Bosnia? Yes it is. Lying is a big deal, especially in this case. The meaning of the word “misspeak” is “to speak or pronounce incorrectly” or “to speak mistakenly, inappropriately, or rashly”, at least according to this online dictionary. Here is the exact quote:

I remember landing under sniper fire. There was supposed to be some kind of a greeting ceremony at the airport, but instead we just ran with our heads down to get into the vehicles to get to our base.

There is no way she used the words inappropriately – it’s a very clear statement. And it’s not anatomically possible to pronounce it so wrong that the qoute above can originally have refered to a normal reception at an airport. So she misspoke nothing.

The whole story was made up, and when her lie was exposed she made a second lie about misspeaking to cover the first one up. I think that says a lot about her character. At least her husband said he was sorry, once he had been caught lying about his relationship with Monica Lewinsky.