Evolution and Pashtun nationalism...

[Baygham]

....................................
I agree, but no matter what your personal beliefs are, nationalism proves to be a farce.

At lunch today, (yes I know it is ramadan), I ordered lamb chops in reduced red wine sauce. I offered my friend one (reluctantly) which was declined. People in america are not fond of lamb, I had realized long time ago. Ever wonder why?

Is there a gene for lamb chops that pashtoons carry and is deficient in Americans? The answer is no.

Our fascination with lamb is a shared memory, when do we eat lamb, at festive times, at times of plenty, at times of happiness. It is not just the taste of lamb meat in your mouth but the whole memory of all previous experiences that are linked to previous tastings of Lamb. As most of these events are social, it becomes a cultural experience and soon a phenomenon.

Finally a day comes, that you are starring at a strange menu in a strange place and all you wish for is some lamb, even if it tastes so much different, may be it will stir those sweet memories of before.

When you have others that share such unique experiences in life, you call them kin, and an even larger kinship is your nationality. Being in love with your nationality is to cherish a happy festive moment of our shared happiness and wishing for many more such moments in the future.

[Levanaye Zalmaye]

.

[شمله ور خراساني]

At lunch today, (yes I know it is ramadan), I ordered lamb chops in reduced red wine sauce. I offered my friend one (reluctantly) which was declined. People in america are not fond of lamb, I had realized long time ago. Ever wonder why?

Is there a gene for lamb chops that pashtoons carry and is deficient in Americans? The answer is no.

Our fascination with lamb is a shared memory, when do we eat lamb, at festive times, at times of plenty, at times of happiness. It is not just the taste of lamb meat in your mouth but the whole memory of all previous experiences that are linked to previous tastings of Lamb. As most of these events are social, it becomes a cultural experience and soon a phenomenon.

Finally a day comes, that you are starring at a strange menu in a strange place and all you wish for is some lamb, even if it tastes so much different, may be it will stir those sweet memories of before.

When you have others that share such unique experiences in life, you call them kin, and an even larger kinship is your nationality. Being in love with your nationality is to cherish a happy festive moment of our shared happiness and wishing for many more such moments in the future.

But one could say that your love for lamb and wine might be totally random.

because 99% of Pashtuns are staunch Muslims who fact during Ramadan. Even when they travel, they don't brake their fast. And religion is an intrinsic part of Pashtun identity and customs.

So how come you are attacking Islam on a forum which is populated by fellow Pashtun Nationalists?

[Baygham]

But one could say that your love for lamb and wine might be totally random.

because 99% of Pashtuns are staunch Muslims who fact during Ramadan. Even when they travel, they don't brake their fast. And religion is an intrinsic part of Pashtun identity and customs.

So how come you are attacking Islam on a forum which is populated by fellow Pashtun Nationalists?

one could say a lot of things, I agree; you want me to say something about my random love for salafi quisine.

Yes the staunch muslims of pakhtunkhwa I forgot about that. Reminds me of a time, some years back, when I met a friend during ramadan at a funeral in pakhtunland. We were high in the backcountry, he a urbanized pashtun, from peshwar, recently engaged to someone from our neck of the woods.

His first shock came, when in broad day light the dead womens son asked the 'melmanaa' if they were hungry, those that shook there head in the affirmitive, quietly went to the back and filled their tanks, later he got a second shock when on seeing the, cutt (bed with corpse) traditionally carried by all faithfull, he jumped up and ran to give it a 'oogaa' (shoulder) as it is considered 'sawab'. After seeing no one else do it, he came back to the chairs and said, nothing. I could sense his unease so told him, calm down man, these peaple are relaxed about these things, they dont worry too much about this and that.

wrora sangar, nobody in my village knew how to offer a proper prayer, let alone fast properly and I am not talking centuries ago, I am talking only 30-40 years ago. Only the khans kept parda (like the hindu nobility) and that too as a public statement, the majority in the village cared less. Ask your elders they will tell you about how staunch your forefathers were.

And religion is an intrinsic part of Pashtun identity and customs.

But which religion, Growing up, I dont remember a single salafi in my village, except a homosexual tableeghay cousin, twenty some years ago. And no body beat him up only because he was our cousin.

Now 30-35 years ago, they were less than 1%. How can you call salafi/wahabi islamic practices as an intrinsic part of pashtun identity and customs, when they did not even exist only 35 years ago. Remember pashtoon is thousand of years old phenomenon.

You can only call it a trend. Funded by those that wishes to and benefits from, our destruction. By destroying our pashtun identity and our tolerant customs and replacing them with salafi inspired bedouin hatred.

Calling your version as islam does not make it the islam my and your forefathers practiced. Even the qadianis call there stuff islam, so you calling salafi-toxicity islam does not make it that islam. If you are man enough kindly share what sect of Islam did your grandfather practice and how staunch was he on salafi/wahabi rituals.

[PFgulalai]

Exactly! How can you postulate that in a stochastic process the random variable in an infinite array of genetic code can produce a homeodomain that determines segmentation properly, how probable is it according to mathematics? A minor misplacement of letters in the genetic code of a homeodomain and you will end up having your eyes in your buttocks and you finger nails in your ears!

Yes I know it has to do with bioinformatics and that is exactly why I presented it using a class with array generation methods and random variate function, please go ahead and explain its cellular automata according to probability.

private void addGenes(Gene a_gene) {
Gene[] genes = new Gene[m_geneArray.length + 1];
life.arraycopy(m_geneArray, 0, genes, 0, m_geneArray.length);
genes[m_geneArray.length] = a_gene;
m_geneArray = genes;
}

private void alleleMethod(a_superAllele) {
if (m_geneArray.length < 1) {

return;
}
Object[] a = (Object[]) a_superAllele;
if (a.length != m_geneArray.length) {
throw new IllegalArgumentException("Record length, " + a.length
+ " not equal to "
+ m_genes.length);
}
for (int i = 0; i < m_genes.length; i++) {
m_genes.setAllele(a);
}
}

private void randomMutation(final int a_index, final double a_percentage) {

if (a_index < m_immutableVector.length) {
if (m_immutableVector[a_index] != null) {
synchronized (m_immutableVector) {
if (m_immutableVector[a_index].contains(this)) {
return;
}
}
}
} .

Another deliberate misunderstanding similar to intelligent designers aka creationists to claim that evolution happens by "chance"!!

What is the meaning of a stochastic event in evolution of homeodomain in metazoan organisms? "A stochastic event" or " a random chance" certainly has a role in evolution of the homeodomain, but only to provide the required "genetic variations" in order to set the stage for the natural selection to play its role. Note that the evolution of homeodomain did not occur with one or two stochastic events. Infact thousands (thousands because of the millions of basepairs) of such events--gene duplications and mutations--would happen to result in the development of one phylogenetically conserved region, but not all those events led to the synthesis of present structural domain of homebox. For the ancestor of highly conserved and ubiquitous DNA element like homeobox, it was important to evolve large number of HOX genes to make the development of diverse and complex structures possible. Only those genetic variations which served to be "beneficial" or "useful" and played a vital role in the reproductive fitness of the organisms were maintained in the conserved region whereas the rest of "useless" or "lethal" were eliminated. For example, by mapping the gene clusters of copies of HOX genes from different animals, you would see "important" variations at the nucleotide levels of fruit fly, human, mouse etc. This is due to the structural complexity of the humans compared to the fruit fly. In order for humans to evolve as better species, the HOX genes had to select different types of genetic variations than the one chosen for fruit fly because of the differences between the requirements of two organisms. During this entire process, any lethal mutation will result in the elimination of genes from the gene pool eventually, since the organism with lethal mutation would not survive.This results in the accumulation of more beneficial mutations in HOX genes (or evolution) which makes organism reproductively fit in its population. In sum, in a gene pool of deleterious mutations if few beneficial mutations tend to improve the overall adaptation of the oraganism with enhance biological characteristics, the frequency of the beneficial mutations is increased further through natural selection in order to develop into a more "fit" phenotype.

Oh,and no cellular automata models...I keep things simple for my understanding...Hence, my equation for the evolution of homeodomain on the basis of theory of evolution:


HDE= NRSH (RGVM,RUM)


Homeodomain evolution= HDE
Non-random selection of homeodomain=NRSH
Random genetic variations in ancestral metazoan=RGVM
Rest of the eumetazoans=RUM

Which means evolution of the homedomain of present form of homedomain is the non-random selection of random variation in the eumetazaon ancestors. While it is very easy to develop a mathematical model to turn evolution into a random event, biologically (and practically in lab and in the world of organisms!!!) it is a non-random event.In general, genetic variation such as mutation is a rare event marked by low probability of occurrence. For instance, the rate of forward mutation is more common (nealry a factor of 10) than the rate of backward mutations. Such mutational rates could be measured by the site-directed mutagenesis through experimentation and then the analysis of the nucleotide sequences through bioninformatics.

Coming to your question of particular mutational event leading to misplacement of eyes on buttocks:
Let's say the specific gene for eyes is "E" and occupies locus HD on the choromosome 7. All the existing allels (x) for the trait "E" becomes HDx, where x is an integer 1,2,3....x , representing the various alleles for E. A random mutation "R" haappens and is integrated as a single allele copy to the HD. The new heterozygous genotype is HDxHDr. In the next filial generation, HdxHDm mates with the homoygous HDxHDx with the half probability of the inheritance of the mutant allele on to the next generation. That is, there is 50% chance that the mutant allele is inherited and 50% chance that it is not inherited. If the new allele for eyes placement on buttocks "R" confers more advantage to the fly in its environment, the natural selection will help in the gradual evolution of flies with eyes on buttocks phenotypes. NOTE that it is not some intelligent design thing as advocated by Stephen Meyer. In order for this phenotype to become intergrated in the subsequent population, it has to be genetically integrated into the genome (must not be lost even if the number of progeny increases), meaning that it has to be transferred into subsequent filial generations.Furthermore, the new mutation should help in the overall reproductive fitness of the "eyes-on-buttocks flies" to make it a dominant phenotype over the rest of population with the inheritance of the HD locus having R allele.

For understanding the meaning of "probability" in biological sense (yes, there is a HUGE difference between the interpretation and usage of the term in biological sense and that of pure mathematical/statistics/CS), please study the concept of Population Genetics and Evolutionay Biology.

I have not brought God into this debate, besides the question here is of science and not of religious belief. Even if those scientists are Christians, Jews or Sabians that doesn't matter because they are making their arguments based on science, not scripture! Infact, they are using the exact same methodology as Darwin himself to deduce ID .If you ever get some spare time read a book called The Privilaged Planet, its authors are outright atheists but they admit that ID is more factual than E. .

Only if the scientific community could accept the "myth" of science by Intelligent designers. The ID people, including the staunch atheists (that you have alluded to), are yet to come up with their original research work to prove their theories.You see in science you have to prove your hypothesis (ID) by falsifying the counter hypothesis (E). If ever the ID folks will present the results of one single experiment to prove their theory of Intelligent Design. We don't just talk in Science, we prove it. The truth as of today is that evolution has proved its plausibility both in theory and practice, whereas ID has failed so far. I am not making some random claim, go and find one comprehensive study by Stephen Meyer (for your own enlightenment) where he has scientifically proven Intelligent design. Mind you,it is general understanding in today's world that ID unequivocally stems from creationism.

I agree, but no matter what your personal beliefs are, nationalism proves to be a farce.

Okay, I diasgree with you. We both are happy now!

[Roshina]

Intelligent Design has never made sense to me. What is so logical, so rational about it? That "Oh, look -- there's a watch. Now where did it come from? ... hmm... It HAS to have been made by SOMEONE, right?"? But then, who made that someone who designed that watch? Or is that an illogical question to ask because that something is not created? What? How do we decide where this chain of A created B created C created D . . . breaks? And why there necessarily? Why not at A created B, or even just A?

[Levanaye Zalmaye]

You're right, gilrie... Oh... sorry, a thousand million apologies!

ID is all about defending Christianity in America. That's why they go straight to the beginning and then find themselves in trouble when it comes to refuting all the evidence of evolution.

Do we remember the names of the organizations that opposed Galileo, Kepler, Hypatia or Gideon Mantell (dinosaur man)? ID will soon be forgotten just like them.

[akbarkhan]

At lunch today, (yes I know it is ramadan), I ordered lamb chops in reduced red wine sauce. I offered my friend one (reluctantly) which was declined. People in america are not fond of lamb, I had realized long time ago. Ever wonder why?

Is there a gene for lamb chops that pashtoons carry and is deficient in Americans? The answer is no.

Our fascination with lamb is a shared memory, when do we eat lamb, at festive times, at times of plenty, at times of happiness. It is not just the taste of lamb meat in your mouth but the whole memory of all previous experiences that are linked to previous tastings of Lamb. As most of these events are social, it becomes a cultural experience and soon a phenomenon.

Finally a day comes, that you are starring at a strange menu in a strange place and all you wish for is some lamb, even if it tastes so much different, may be it will stir those sweet memories of before.

When you have others that share such unique experiences in life, you call them kin, and an even larger kinship is your nationality. Being in love with your nationality is to cherish a happy festive moment of our shared happiness and wishing for many more such moments in the future.

Talk about science, not sentiments and emotions.

[akbarkhan]

Another deliberate misunderstanding similar to intelligent designers aka creationists to claim that evolution happens by "chance"!!

What is the meaning of a stochastic event in evolution of homeodomain in metazoan organisms? "A stochastic event" or " a random chance" certainly has a role in evolution of the homeodomain, but only to provide the required "genetic variations" in order to set the stage for the natural selection to play its role.

Note that the evolution of homeodomain did not occur with one or two stochastic events. Infact thousands (thousands because of the millions of basepairs) of such events--gene duplications and mutations--would happen to result in the development of one phylogenetically conserved region, but not all those events led to the synthesis of present structural domain of homebox. For the ancestor of highly conserved and ubiquitous DNA element like homeobox, it was important to evolve large number of HOX genes to make the development of diverse and complex structures possible. Only those genetic variations which served to be "beneficial" or "useful" and played a vital role in the reproductive fitness of the organisms were maintained in the conserved region whereas the rest of "useless" or "lethal" were eliminated. For example, by mapping the gene clusters of copies of HOX genes from different animals, you would see "important" variations at the nucleotide levels of fruit fly, human, mouse etc. This is due to the structural complexity of the humans compared to the fruit fly. In order for humans to evolve as better species, the HOX genes had to select different types of genetic variations than the one chosen for fruit fly because of the differences between the requirements of two organisms. During this entire process, any lethal mutation will result in the elimination of genes from the gene pool eventually, since the organism with lethal mutation would not survive.This results in the accumulation of more beneficial mutations in HOX genes (or evolution) which makes organism reproductively fit in its population. In sum, in a gene pool of deleterious mutations if few beneficial mutations tend to improve the overall adaptation of the oraganism with enhance biological characteristics, the frequency of the beneficial mutations is increased further through natural selection in order to develop into a more "fit" phenotype.

Oh,and no cellular automata models...I keep things simple for my understanding...Hence, my equation for the evolution of homeodomain on the basis of theory of evolution:

For understanding the meaning of "probability" in biological sense (yes, there is a HUGE difference between the interpretation and usage of the term in biological sense and that of pure mathematical/statistics/CS), please study the concept of Population Genetics and Evolutionay Biology.

Nonsense! Ever bothered to actually code it? Genetic variation would mean difference in code signature! Each time a stochastic event takes place it would produce a different hash! Because you have to mutate each allele (bit) with probability (pmutation), count number of mutations using derived probability of 1 or more mutations on subject chromosome, flipping to see if you get one, if so, doing it, flipping again, continuing until DON'T get one, for reasonable mutation rates!

void
mutation(child)
unsigned *child;

{
int mut_locus, wordnumber, bitinword;
unsigned int mask;

int i;
static float p_anymuts;
static double local_pmutation;

if(local_pmutation != pmutation) {
local_pmutation = pmutation;
if (local_pmutation >= 1.0) {
fprintf(stderr, "\n *** output .\n");
exit(-1);
}
p_anymuts = 1.0
- (float)pow((double)(1.0 - pmutation), (double)lchrom);
}
if (p_anymuts < 0.8) {
while(flip(p_anymuts)) {
mut_locus = rnd(0, (lchrom - 1));
wordnumber = mut_locus/UINTSIZE;
bitinword = mut_locus%UINTSIZE;
mask = 1 << bitinword;
child[wordnumber] ^= mask;
nmutation++;
}
}
else {

for (i=0;i<numfields;i++) {
if (flip(pmutation)) {
wordnumber = i/UINTSIZE;
bitinword = i%UINTSIZE;
mask = 1 << bitinword;
child[wordnumber] ^= mask;
nmutation++;
}
}

}
}

void
field_mutation(child)
unsigned *child;

{
int mut_field, allele, new_allele, i;

static float p_anymuts;
static double local_pmutation;

if(local_pmutation != pmutation) {
local_pmutation = pmutation;
if (local_pmutation >= 1.0) {
fprintf(stderr, "\n*** output .\n");
exit(-1);
}
p_anymuts = 1.0
- (float)pow((double)(1.0 - pmutation), (double)numfields);
}
if (p_anymuts < 0.8) {
while(flip(p_anymuts)) {
mut_field = rnd(0, (numfields - 1));
allele = getfield(mut_field, numfields, child);
while ((new_allele = rnd(0, field_sizes[mut_field] - 1)) == allele) {
}
putfield(mut_field, numfields, new_allele, child);

nmutation++;
}
}
else {
for (i=0;i<numfields;i++) {
if (flip(pmutation)) {
allele = getfield(i, numfields, child);
while ((new_allele = rnd(0, field_sizes[i] - 1)) == allele) {
}
putfield(i, numfields, new_allele, child);

nmutation++;
}
}
}
}


It is one thing to read text books, its another to actually experiment and simulate!

[PFgulalai]

Nonsense! Ever bothered to actually code it? Genetic variation would mean difference in code signature! Each time a stochastic event takes place it would produce a different hash! Because you have to mutate each allele (bit) with probability (pmutation), count number of mutations using derived probability of 1 or more mutations on subject chromosome, flipping to see if you get one, if so, doing it, flipping again, continuing until DON'T get one, for reasonable mutation rates!

void
mutation(child)
unsigned *child;

{
int mut_locus, wordnumber, bitinword;
unsigned int mask;

int i;
static float p_anymuts;
static double local_pmutation;

if(local_pmutation != pmutation) {
local_pmutation = pmutation;
if (local_pmutation >= 1.0) {
fprintf(stderr, "\n *** output .\n");
exit(-1);
}
p_anymuts = 1.0
- (float)pow((double)(1.0 - pmutation), (double)lchrom);
}
if (p_anymuts < 0.8) {
while(flip(p_anymuts)) {
mut_locus = rnd(0, (lchrom - 1));
wordnumber = mut_locus/UINTSIZE;
bitinword = mut_locus%UINTSIZE;
mask = 1 << bitinword;
child[wordnumber] ^= mask;
nmutation++;
}
}
else {

for (i=0;i<numfields;i++) {
if (flip(pmutation)) {
wordnumber = i/UINTSIZE;
bitinword = i%UINTSIZE;
mask = 1 << bitinword;
child[wordnumber] ^= mask;
nmutation++;
}
}

}
}

void
field_mutation(child)
unsigned *child;

{
int mut_field, allele, new_allele, i;

static float p_anymuts;
static double local_pmutation;

if(local_pmutation != pmutation) {
local_pmutation = pmutation;
if (local_pmutation >= 1.0) {
fprintf(stderr, "\n*** output .\n");
exit(-1);
}
p_anymuts = 1.0
- (float)pow((double)(1.0 - pmutation), (double)numfields);
}
if (p_anymuts < 0.8) {
while(flip(p_anymuts)) {
mut_field = rnd(0, (numfields - 1));
allele = getfield(mut_field, numfields, child);
while ((new_allele = rnd(0, field_sizes[mut_field] - 1)) == allele) {
}
putfield(mut_field, numfields, new_allele, child);

nmutation++;
}
}
else {
for (i=0;i<numfields;i++) {
if (flip(pmutation)) {
allele = getfield(i, numfields, child);
while ((new_allele = rnd(0, field_sizes[i] - 1)) == allele) {
}
putfield(i, numfields, new_allele, child);

nmutation++;
}
}
}
}


It is one thing to read text books, its another to actually experiment and simulate!

*YAWN* I don't do SIMULATIONS like you.As a scientist, I take all kind of crap including flies, mice, bacteria, viruses,etc., and mutate them through a technique known as mutagenesis which utilizes a variety of mutagens/carcinogens. After this I publish my results in peer-reviewd scientific journals, and my publications have authentic experimental results approved by the scientific community, not some theoretical stuff.This is the difference between my approach and that of Stephen Meyer,lol.
You see, mathematical/CS/Statistical algorithms are important in biology but out of thousands, only few would be able to explain the real-life phenomena of biology.Even if we use them, we have to perform actual experiments to to make SENSE of the algorithm!!!Therefore,I personally prefer to do things in REAL not just theoretically like above.Anyway, we are off-topic now so I will stop it here.

[Roshina]

It is one thing to read text books, its another to actually experiment and simulate!

You bet. Which ones do you usually do? Rather, do you do either?

[akbarkhan]

You see, mathematical/CS/Statistical algorithms are important in biology but out of thousands, only few would be able to explain the real-life phenomena of biology.Even if we use them, we have to perform actual experiments to to make SENSE of the algorithm!!!Therefore,I personally prefer to do things in REAL not just theoretically like above.Anyway, we are off-topic now so I will stop it here.

You need abit of schooling little girl, variation of the algorithm I have pointed out is being used in all leading bioinformatic research labs - if you were into evolutionary biology you would have known that and would have recognized the algorithm right from the very start! In short, the very scientists that you sing atheist hymns for use modified version of what I have pointed out!

[akbarkhan]

You bet. Which ones do you usually do? Rather, do you do either?

I am not here to tell the world what my credentials are or that "I have dedicated X years of my life to this or that" but lets just say that at the time when I was working for xerox parc you probably didn't know where to excrete.

[amna.]

If human beings descend from a common ancestry through evolution then what is the point of nationalism? As in, if your forefathers were monkeys, were they Pashtun monkeys or just monkeys? If they were all just monkeys then how logical is the idea of monkey nationalism?

This is a genuine question, if you have constructive input please contribute else find another discussion.

Akbar Khan lala. I understand all your arguments so far and if you do not mind I just have a question. I have a hard time finding the relationship between evolution and nationalism. I admit that I am no where near as educated as you are in this topic. I just want to learn the correlation for my own purposes. This is why I come to this website, to learn from educated people like you.

Thanks.

[PFgulalai]

You need abit of schooling little girl,!

LITTLE GIRL NA DAA ASMAAN SAR!!! UKHWAA DEKHWA DE SHORO KAREE DEE.BEHAVE YOURSELF.GO AND LEARN SOME MANNERS FIRST AND THEN WE WILL TALK. I AM NOT AT ALL INTERESTED IN TALKING TO A SEXIST LIKE YOU!! WHAT YOU THINK OF YOURSELF? THE TOPIC OF YOUR ARGUMENT DID NOT DESERVE EVEN A SINGLE REPLY FROM US CONSIDERING THE ILLOGICAL CORRELATION THAT YOU WANTED TO DRAW, YET WE DID PARTICIPATE.BUT WHAT HAVE YOU BEEN DOING SO FAR? ACT LIKE A GROWN-UP, STOP THROWING TANTRUMS THAT YOU HAVE BEEN DOING AND DO PROPER DISCUSSION.

variation of the algorithm I have pointed out is being used in all leading bioinformatic research labs - if you were into evolutionary biology you would have known that and would have recognized the algorithm right from the very start! In short, the very scientists that you sing atheist hymns for use modified version of what I have pointed out!

Hahahaha..Who the hell told you that I am interested in proving myself to you as evolutionary biologist?*raised eyebrow* With that you just proved that you live in a chronic state of delusive contentment. I don't know thousands of algorithms simply because there is no need for me to know them. I don't know thousands of languages and performing arts.BUT HEY!HEY! FYI, I have been able to find the ancestry of 3 viruses, 2 mice, and one alga in just two years. No algorithm can mutate gene for me in lab. Eventually, I have to slice the DNA myself to do it.You understand it, good.If not, God help you!

P.S. Sorry to tell you that you failed miserably even as pseudoscientist :P