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In Florida there’s a guy named Tom Robin­son, and he’s freak­ing related to Genghis Khan. Well, maybe he is.

Or so says some out­fit out of Eng­land called Oxford Ances­tors. They’re a firm that is pio­neer­ing a bur­geon­ing field called “bioar­chae­ol­ogy”. It all sounds very sus­pect, espe­cially given what Oxford Uni­ver­sity geneti­cist Bryan Sykes, the founder of Oxford Ances­tors says.

Oxford Ances­tors, founded in 2001, offers DNA test­ing to peo­ple who want to test their genetic lineage.

Sykes believes that humanity’s com­mon ances­try can be traced through DNA. In 1994, he linked a woman in Britain and a frozen 5,000-year-old corpse found in the Tyrolean Alps, all through their com­mon DNA.

From the AP -

Sykes’ 2001 book “The Seven Daugh­ters of Eve” claimed that 95 per­cent of Euro­peans are descended from seven tribal matri­archs — he dubbed them Ursula, Xenia, Helena, Velda, Tara, Katrine and Jas­mine — who lived between 10,000 and 45,000 years ago. He also believes most Euro­peans can trace their descent to “Five Sons of Adam,” and offers tests to iden­tify these pater­nal ances­tral clans by map­ping pat­terns of DNA within the Y chro­mo­some, the genetic mate­r­ial handed down from fathers to sons that changes lit­tle over generations.

Pub­lished in an arti­cle in the Amer­i­can Jour­nal of Human Genet­ics in 2003, research sug­gested that 16 to 17 mil­lion men, most in Cen­tral Asia, shared a form of the Y chro­mo­some that indi­cates a com­mon ancestor.

Sykes says that the obvi­ous can­di­date for this is Genghis Khan, who con­quered almost all of Asia and fathered many chil­dren in the process. Of course, there isn’t any actual tis­sue from the Mon­gol ruler — whose tomb has never been found — the tests are based on an assess­ment of probabilities.

“This is cir­cum­stan­tial evi­dence but it is very good evi­dence,” said Sykes. “I think it does mean that peo­ple who carry this chro­mo­some are direct patri­lin­eal descen­dants of Genghis Khan.” How this chro­mo­some came to be so promi­nent was that when he con­quered new ter­ri­tory Genghis Khan would kill the men and rou­tinely insem­i­nate all the women.”

Now, this totally sounds like BS. But what I found fun­nier than the expla­na­tion about how this man was related to Khan was his response in find­ing out he was related to the con­queror. Again, from the AP -

“My first impres­sion was, ‘Oh no, who is it?’ imag­in­ing it was Adolf Hitler or some­thing like that,” said Robin­son, 48. “So I was actu­ally pleas­antly surprised.”

Now, I know Adolph Hitler was respon­si­ble for the deaths of mil­lions, but Khan wasn’t much bet­ter. He took over the Asi­atic con­ti­nent, and, accord­ing to Jack Weath­er­ford, author of “Genghis Khan and the Mak­ing of the Mod­ern World“, the death toll esti­mate caused by Khan was roughly 15 mil­lion peo­ple over 5 years of conquest.

HOLY MOLY! A REAL WORKING LASER GUN! WHOOOOOOOOHOOOOOOOOOOOO!!

I need to go change my pants now.

Here’s the story –

The US Air Force has unveiled its first hand-held laser weapon that gives secu­rity forces a non-lethal option for con­trol­ling crowds and pro­tect­ing areas like check­points, accord­ing to ser­vice officials.

While only in pro­to­type form and years away from field­ing, the weapon, known as the Per­son­nel Halt­ing and Stim­u­la­tion Response (PHaSR) sys­tem, holds great promise, they said.

The PHaSR is about the same size and weight of a fully loaded M60 machine gun – around 9 kg – but shoots a low-power beam of laser light instead of bul­lets. The light it gen­er­ates is capa­ble of tem­porar­ily impair­ing an individual’s vision, much like the dis­ori­ent­ing glare one sees when look­ing into the sun, said the officials.

Upon com­ple­tion of test­ing, one pro­to­type will be handed over to the Depart­ment of Defense’s Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Direc­torate (JNLWD) and the sec­ond to the National Insti­tute of Jus­tice (NIJ): the law enforce­ment arm of the US Depart­ment of Jus­tice. Both organ­i­sa­tions sup­port the pro­gramme, with the lat­ter inter­ested in its civil applications.

A sheet made from nan­otubes, tiny car­bon tubes only a few times big­ger than atoms with remark­able strength and elec­tronic prop­er­ties. In today’s edi­tion of the jour­nal Sci­ence, how­ever, sci­en­tists from the Uni­ver­sity of Texas and Australia’s Com­mon­wealth Sci­en­tific and Indus­trial Research Orga­ni­za­tion report the cre­ation of industry-ready sheets of mate­ri­als made from nan­otubes. Nan­otubes are tiny car­bon tubes with remark­able strength that are only a few times wider than atoms. They can also act as the semi­con­duc­tors found in mod­ern electronics.

Sci­ence
The same sheet, emit­ting polar­ized light after the volt­age is applied through incan­des­cent heating.

“This is fun­da­men­tally a new mate­r­ial,” says team leader Ray Baugh­man of the Uni­ver­sity of Texas at Dal­las in Richardson.

• Self-supporting, trans­par­ent and stronger than steel or high-strength plas­tics, the sheets are flex­i­ble and can be heated to emit light.

• A square mile of the thinnest sheets, about 2-millionths-of-an-inch thick, would weigh only about 170 pounds.

• In lab tests, the sheets demon­strated solar cell capa­bil­i­ties, using sun­light to pro­duce electricity.

Niger­ian pres­i­dent Oluse­gun Obasanjo said that Nige­ria would have astro­nauts in space within the next 15 years.

Hmm. Okay.

More…

He said the feat was achiev­able if the momen­tum of cur­rent devel­op­ment drive was sus­tained. “In 15 to 25 years, we will put Nige­ria into space. We will get there. It is not as unat­tain­able as it looks. And we have to do it. For if we are going to make progress, we are going to make it on the basis of com­mit­ment, ser­vice and sac­ri­fice. And we are not going to be found want­ing. We must not be found want­ing. We are mak­ing efforts not to lag behind. We are not where we would want to be. But we must con­sis­tently and cumu­la­tively indus­tri­alise. And to do this, infra­struc­ture is a must. We just can­not do with­out it. Whether it is in terms of road, rail, energy or water. These are non-negotiable. Because of money, we may not be able to do every­thing at same speed and same time,” Obasanjo said.

Great. Within 25 years it’s not going to be just the US and Chi­nese with Space Peace Plat­forms of Death, it’ll also be the freak­ing Nigerians!

Have a happy Monday!