Of Women and Toads

John Steinbeck made an animal connection for mens behaviours in 'Of Mice and Men', so the question is 'What do the Cane toads of Australia and the women pioneer settlers of the old Canadian and American frontiers have in common?'

I'll bet you haven't guessed, so I'll tell you its the fertility (or fecundity) of each wave of settlers ... yes apparently scientists and researchers have managed to link these two apparently disparate topics, with some detailed analysis of the well kept marriage and birth records of the French settlers of Canada (which go back to the 17th century), to show that women who were first to settle in a new land had more children and grandchildren than those who followed later.


French Candian Settlers with high birth rates

Now why this is a surprise to anyone beats me, anyone in Europe watching immigrants arrive in the last 35 yrs will have noted that they have larger families than the natives, and similarly in the US, the Latino immigrants into the USA have larger families than the natives, but in most cases their children have smaller families as each generation reproduces until they reach the norm for that area.

The main difference between this casual observation, and the research findings, is that they managed to show that woman who arrived as part of the first wave of immigration into an area had 15% more children than those who arrived a generation later ..... apparently pioneering woman married younger and benefited from scooping up the best local resources, and their daughters inherited their mother's higher rate of fertility. They then showed that women who came with the later immigration wave that arrived 30 years afterwards, did not exhibit the same fertility rates as the first wave and their offspring.

The Hatfields were a fertile pioneer settler clan in the Tug valley.
Who famously clashed with the similar McCoy clan.

So how have they managed to link this analysis, with the menace of the outback (I have posted on these creatures on more than one occasion), the cane toad, and thus allowed me to also link this post with them?

Well apparently, scientists have observed that the cane toads at the edge of their range have bigger front legs and stronger back legs; making it easier for them to invade new areas. Then when these pioneer cane toads at the frontiers breed, their offspring also inherit these bigger and stronger limbs. However, other cane toads who migrate into these areas after the first wave, don't exhibit these physical attributes.


Fertile Cane Toads - doing what they do best

Apparently this effect was not unexpected, but no one until now had been able to show this phenomenon operating in human populations .... the point of all this research (if there is one) is that families at the front of the wave of migration contributed more to the contemporary gene pool, than those that were slower to arrive and this explains why pockets of certain rare genetic diseases carried by the first settlers still exhibit in some areas to this day (so now you know!). 

Butt of all Jokes

Once again, to the surprise of no one apart from Pakistani cricket fans, the corruption of its favourite sport, and the blindness of it sports institutions has been exposed to the world. This time (and there have been numerous other occasions), it was the fact that bookies had corrupted their cricketer's to the extent that they were bowling 'no balls', and performing other activities to the order of gambling syndicates, during test matches.

I have posted before on these events, and I even predicted that 'The Pakistani cricket team are poison to the world game, but such is the fear of 'losing the subcontinent's' money in a split, that I won't be surprised if they bury this event, and after some bans (which will be overturned a few months later), business as usual will resume' .... and I wasn't far wrong.

The sentences were not very long, with former Pakistan cricket captain Salman Butt jailed for 30 months, Mohammad Asif, 28, jailed for one year, and bowler Mohammad Amir, 19, was sentenced to six months. And all of them got a 'five year bans' from cricket by the International Cricket Council, with all three appealing against their suspensions. The families claim that they are all innocent .... as you might expect (although Amir admitted his guilt).

The guilty Three - but there were others implicated

But the Pakistan Cricket Board said the conviction of the players was "a sad day for Pakistan cricket".... they forgot to add the word 'again' . Sadly as usual, most of the Pakistani fans blame everyone except their own society (they couldn't blame the US, Zionists and Israel) so they blamed India and 'the West'. Here's one typical comment reported by the BBC .... Zahim, a 'cricket fan' who was eating outside Lahore's 'Gaddafi Stadium', said "The West just wants to destroy the image of Pakistan"  and he went on to add for good measure that " I think the Indians are involved too. We need to get to the real truth"  (yes really, 'Gaddafi Stadium' ), a statement which tells you a lot about Pakistan, and its disengagement from reality. By the 'real truth'  Zahim the idiot means that its all a 'conspiracy' by everyone but the Pakistani's involved. 

The Usual Violent Response

The sad thing from my point of view is that for some reason, all this has to be played out in the UK and at the expense of the UK taxpayers, because Pakistan is too corrupt to even be able to bring the trials, let alone get to the truth .... there are 100 million Zahim's in the land of the pure.

Freedom of Speech v Freedom of Religion

The petrol bombing of the French satirical magazine 'Charlie Hebdo' in Paris, for daring to portray the creator of the self-styled 'religion of peace' (or 'religion of surrender' as it should be properly described in English), on its covers, says all you need to know about its followers.

Different Countries, Different Targets, Same Intended Result - Intimidation

The important point about this event was made by the editor-in-chief of the magazine, Stephane Charbonnier, who said Islam should not be excluded from 'freedom of the press' to comment in the West. He said: "If we can poke fun at everything in France, if we can talk about anything in France apart from Islam, or the consequences of Islamism, that is annoying."

He bravely added that "This is the first time we have been physically attacked, but we won't let it get to us". We shall wait and see .....

China's Economy

With all the talk of the Euro powers (Germany and France), asking for the Chinese to bail out the Euro, we need to look more closely at the Chinese economy and to put things in perspective.
 

Super Economy or Trade Dependent?

 
For all China's dramatic economic rise, its economy still accounts for less than 10% of global GDP at present, while the developed nations of Europe and America make up nearly 50%.

 

The "Yankee" Dollar

Its a sign of the strange times that we live in, that the US dollar is still weak against the crumbling Euro.


"Half A Dollar" in slang terms

I only remark on this because when I was kid, we used to think of the British "Pound" as worth four US dollars. and we even used the term a "half dollar" for a 'half crown' and the crown was sometimes called a "dollar" ... this was obviously pre-decimal days in the UK, when there were 20 Shillings to the Pound, a Crown was 5 Shillings, and therefore a Half Crown was 'Half a Dollar' .....