Recently, a geneticist at Oxford University, Dr. Chris Tyler-Smith, and geneticists from China and central Asia took blood samples from populations living in regions near the former Mongol empire, and they studied the Y chromosomes. These are useful in establishing lineage because Y chormosomes continue from father to son. Dr. Tyler Smith and his colleagues found that an anomalously large number of the Y chromosomes carried a genetic signature indicating descent from a common ancestor about a thousand years ago. The scientists theorized that the ancestor was Genghis Khan (or, more exactly, an eleventh-century ancestor of Genghis Khan). About eight per cent of all males in the region studied, or sixteen million men, possess this chromosome signature. That’s a half per cent of the world’s population. It is possible, therefore, that more than thirty-two million people in the world are descended from Genghis Khan.

— from Ian Frazier’s story “Invaders,” in the April 25th New Yorker.

More on Genghis Khan, playa, from the Guardian.

I don’t know how this is so fascinating, but dagnabit, I couldn’t stop reading. It’s a blog about how to rock homelessness.

I’m sitting here in my temperature-regulated apartment, eight feet away from my washer and dryer, twelve feet from a hot shower and two feet from my bed. I imagine stowing away in my car for the night on a residential street, hoping no thieves or police disturb my sleep. I imagine waking up, driving to an unfamiliar gym, and feigning interest in a new membership for the hope of free access to the bathing facilities. There’s a perverse twinge of romance in all of this. Or is it perverse?

It is a well kept secret that homelessness can be freedom and comfort can attend it. The secret is well kept because revealing that you are homeless in this society is dangerous. There is stigma. There are even laws prohibiting it. Imagine that. There are laws against being homeless. Let me say that one more time. There are laws against being homeless.

I don’t know if you can help reading this site and wondering if you could do it. Then again, I could also be really strange.

Let me give you an example of a successful bloodless conflict. I was packing up a storage unit one day, and I had only that day to finish. In the same facility a man was screaming at his soon-to-be-ex-wife on a cell phone, and creating an atmosphere that I found intolerable. I decided to stop this guy from yelling. I yelled at him forcefully, Hey! Shut the hell up!

Well, predictably this brought the man’s wrath toward me. He started yelling at me and making aggressive gestures, and at that moment I did something he could not have expected. I submitted. I wimped out. I apologized and said I should mind my own business. I backed down.

Now, the soon-to-be-ex-wife was no longer on the phone, so he couldn’t yell at her. He had no way to yell at me, or continue to bring a fight to me, because I had backed down. He grumbled and muttered and hurled a few insults at me, but he stopped yelling and I got back to work in blissful quiet. Understanding the nature of winning, the precise goals I was trying to achieve, allowed me to give my opponent the illusion that he won while I got everything I wanted.

And no one got hurt. Always seek the scenario in which no one gets hurt.

This is my new favorite thing. Also see: The Daily Show’s GayWatch. (Via my 2nd favorite thing.)

Having just fired off two ranty e-mails to Robin, I thought I’d just go ahead and take the rants public. My beef was these three reports/manifestos/speeches that have been setting the hearts of the likes of Jay Rosen and Jeff Jarvis all a-flutter.

If you haven’t read them, they all make essentially the same point — old-school journalism’s in trouble. Shorter Merrill Brown: Young people don’t read newspapers. Shorter Tim Porter: And it’s the fault of backwards-thinking journalists. Shorter Rupert Murdoch: No, seriously. Young people like never read newspapers.

I’ll take my rantings past the jump, so you can continue unassaulted, if you so prefer.

Read more…

As we await the posting of Robin’s 24-Hour Comic — entitled M — we can tide ourselves over with actual jpeg evidence that Saheli‘s gone insane. In a good way, natch.

Updated to say: ToastyKen is totally right.

I finally gave in and looked at Processing.org, the programming language for artists, and spent a good few hours today agape at the beauty and creativity on display in the exhibitions. Then I encountered Moovl, which stopped me in my tracks.

Remember the Soda Constructor? Well, they’ve taken that and made it mindblowing.

Moovl applies the laws of physics to your doodles. Remember that Gamespy article about Spore, Will Wright’s new game? The article describes character creation in Spore thusly:

The 3D version of the creature editor was amazing, in that the creature was totally configurable. You could stretch and pull and tug or fatten it any way you liked, almost like working with clay. More importantly, you could add functional elements, like heads, mouths, eyes, tails, fins, claws, even legs and feet. Wright proceeded to add not two, but three legs to his creature. Then he let it loose.

Now, suddenly, his creature could walk. And he did so — he walked right out of the sea and onto the land. This incredible moment in the history of evolution was made even more remarkable by the technology behind it: the game had figured out, procedurally, how a creature would walk if it had three legs (it was a kind of lopsided gait, if you’re curious, with three steps: left, right, then middle.) No 3D modeler created the creature, and no 3D animator was required to make it move around — it was all created out of a gamer’s whim and a computer program smart enough to make it work.

Moovl can basically do that. Not in 3D, but it’s cool enough in 2D that I don’t mind that right now. Draw a hilariously simple doodle of a three-legged blob, train three of the feet to move, and voila, you’ve got a creature.

The official site is targeted to children, and the examples there aren’t very inspiring, even though the applet’s slightly better. I prefer the pared-down version and its examples over at Processing, especially “lovehurts” and “fistycuffs.”

Part of what’s amazing to me is how much those simple doodles in motion seem to suggest narratives. The story and the interactivity unite in these very logical rules and relationships which you have the power to build on or alter.

Something tells me that’s going to be the storytelling model that ultimately turns video games inside out.

Read more…

I was going to post a link to Steven Johnson’s excellent NYT Magazine article called “Watching TV Makes You Smarter.” Now I’ll up the ante by also posting a link to a thought experiment on his blog where he asks what today’s video game detractors would have said if video games had come before books. Both well worth reading.

Want to redesign NYTimes.com? (Via Matt Haughey’s blog.)

That is all. (Via.)

Kevin is the latest to call my attention to a story that’s been roiling the gay blogosphere. Microsoft, long beloved of gays for its progressive partnership policies, done did us wrong (in the eyes of many) by “withdrawing its support for a state bill that would have barred discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.”

Thing is, this isn’t a straightforward “cruel, giant corporation screws oppressed minority” story. This is more like “giant corporation declines to back legislation preventing cruel majority from screwing oppressed minority,” which makes it a bit murkier in my view. Why?

As gay MeFite dirtynumbangelboy points out in the related MetaFilter thread, progressives usually decry corporate muddling in politics. That MS is stepping out of the legislative fray rather than throwing its dirty corporate weight around should give us cheer, right?

While I don’t know that there are any progressives out there who want corporations to have no voice in civil affairs, I do think this is a matter best decided by the Washington state legislature, not Microsoft. A solid, coherent progressive strategy on this front might be to say, “Oh, so you’re withdrawing your voice on legislation now? How about you dial down your attacks on some of these antitrust laws then?” I have a sneaky suspicion that using this to rally for Microsoft’s greater withdrawal from public affairs would have a more positive effect than excoriating them for dooming this bill.

It’s not Microsoft’s fault that employers can still discriminate against gays in Washington, it’s the fault of the legislature. Let’s not forget that.