Well, I’ve had worse flu. But I have never had tonsillitis ( secondary) before. On Saturday morning it was so bad I couldn’t even swallow my own saliva for about 12 hours and I had to go to an emergency clinic – I looked so ill they didn’t make me wait more than 5 minutes either- I’m now on the most vile tasting liquid antibiotics. But at least a mouthful of cold water doesn’t feel like I’m swallowing broken glass.

One thing I’ve noticed is that recovery from Swine flu isn’t a nice simple ’slowly getting better’ process. All three of us suffering in the house have had phases where we get better, but the next day our temperature is up again and we have to go back to bed. Mr Mathilda is currently pretty unwell and in bed, possibly because it didn’t occur to him that he needed to eat for the past couple of days (when he was better and I was in bed- men).

He never gets sick, which is the  main reason I know its flu and not me being paranoid. If he’s in bed with a fever and aches its a real illness. So far the only uninfected family member is the girl. A small part of me hopes she’ll catch it so it will be one less thing to worry about in case it turns nastier later in the season- but its made us all pretty miserable so I’m just happy she’s well right now. At the moment I’m okay for light housework but my muscles and joints just ache terribly and  get dizzy and weak (this is five days in-started on Wednesday, now its Monday). I don’t think he’ll be back at work for the rest of the week. The boy is still coughing.

And where did we catch it from? We caught it off the kids next door. I am pretty pissed at their mum, she knew the kids had been ill recently but she still let them come around and didn’t warn me. Which was particularly irresponsible because both my husband and I are in high risk groups (we get a seasonal flu jab) – thanks honey.

One thing I’m suspicious of is the sudden apparent lack of deaths from it in the news. One week there were over 100,000 infections, but only a couple of deaths mentioned- which seems bizarrely low compared to everywhere else. One thing I also noticed on another news program was how the minister skipped away from the issue of how many healthy people die from normal seasonal flu every year- I guess that’s not something they want the public to get panicky over.

Anyway- on the bright side- what with the boy being sick and then us, I haven’t  really eaten anything much in the past ten days and I appear to have lost about 7 lbs.

I was a very unhappy parent for a while- he came down with a high fever on Thursday, and this went through to Monday morning, and finally its Tuesday afternoon and he’s almost back to a normal body temperature. So I can now start eating  and sleeping again (stress).

It has not been a fun experience. Fortunately the Tamiflu isn’t too hard to get hold of, and this means it’s one less thing to worry about this winter (he and the husband have both had it). My main gripe is that it’s been impossible to get hold of NHS direct for medical advice- I had to resort to calling a paramedic I know for a check up. Turns out my son had a prickly heat rash from the fever, thank you Dave. What will happen when flu season really starts in earnest and there are masses more  sick people trying to dial for advice? People will start calling out the doctors and calling 999 if they can’t get through on the phone for basic advice. Poor planning on the part of the NHS.

A few months ago, after re-reading Keita’s work on the Lucotte Y chr paper, I spotted the single biggest ‘elephant in the room’ fact about modern Egyptians… they aren’t Arabs. 

Arabs, with monotonous regularity, have J y chromosomes, where as Egyptians have African A, B and E at about 70%, with most of their other Eurasian Y chr like T (K2) and R1, I, R1b etc, having been in Africa so long that they can be seen as far south as Somali and in the Fulbe and men of Cameroon (at 90% at times). I worked out overall about 10% of Egyptian male ancestry dates back to the historic period. The mummy DNAshows there’s probably been a lot more movement than that from black women into Africa, as North African ancient remains from the Guanches to the Egyptians are overwhelmingly Eurasian in origin fro maternal ancestry, but are about 1/4 black now.

I then bothered to compared this to a list of African tribes, like the Amhara, Beja, Nubians, Hausa, Ouldeme- and it turns out that modern Egyptians have more specifically African male ancestry than about half of the ethnic groups in the Sudan, Ethiopia and Cameroon. When asked how can Egyptians be invading Arabs/Persians whatever when they have less Eurasian Y chromosomes than the Amhara and Beja and most of Cameroon….there’s been nothing but a resounding silence from my Afronaut pals. LOL. I’m assuming they are going to claim the invading armies were all women There’s  a fairly epic silence coming from Egyptsearch on this matter. Guys?

Not one Afronazi I’ve challenged on this has ever responded, they all start spouting insults and scuttle off.

Anyone reading this who is curious- black Africans in the Arab slave era 14 million, Europeans about 1.5 million. The current maternal DNA in North Africa is mainly near Eastern and not European in origin- so that bullshit about the Moors being black until white female European slaves whitened them up is also provably not true from the DNA of modern North Africans.

Bite me Rastawire…

And so finally ends the saga of my screwed up electric bill. They admitted (after a year and a half) that someone messed up the records when they changed computer systems, which led to them overcharging us by about £800. It took me about 20 phone calls and a lot of patience, but one staff member finally laid all our records out and realised that the amounts didn’t add up (after I pointed out they must have some record of our cash payments from the post office in their computer).

What annoyed me was that it took so long, and for the first ten or so phone calls they treated me like I was trying to defraud them of cash, then they threatened me with legal action. They tried to say I’d agreed I was in the wrong  (er no) and that I’d agreed to pay the back payments (definitely no)… I’m relieved its all over but still pretty pissy about the whole thing. God bless the nice man who sorted it out and apologised and said I didn’t have to hurry paying back the sum we did owe as the whole thing was their fault to start with.

What with half term, me being sick and then the girl having an ear infection I haven’t had time to study lately. I’ve missed all the good bits and peices on the western desert DNA, latest study of Guanche DNA from Las Palma.

I have been doing some thinking into Afro Asaitic while I’ve been sunk in my slump. Like how impossible Ehret’s (and others) ancient ages are for it are. The Neolithic farmers had to have a language, and it’s expansion (using Bantu as a model) matches the spread of the neolithic Y chromosomes into central Africa. Observing this, and I can buy that early Indo European languages come from the same area as Semitic, and Dravidian too. Much as I shy away from the concept of Nostratic, I can see how some ancient  langauge from Turkey Iran could have spread out to form these three groups.

I’m having a fun time with the Afronauts on youtube. Very annoyed at the DNA information on Egyptians being made easily available to the world at large. Always calling Egyptians theiving Arabs is a bit hard when they’ve less Arabian Y chromsomes than most East African tribes and more African Y chromosomes than Cameroon. So most of them are reduced to sending the standard abuse package with zero fact content. I’d still like to know how come Africans invented agriculture with entirely Turkish/Iranian crops and animals. I’ve not had a good answer for that one either. LOL.

Nothing interesting- trust me.

I’ve hardly been on MAB for the last three weeks. A combination of the MS flaring up, school holidays and the girl developing an acute ear infection topped off with the boy demanding to play non-stop Sonic the hedgehog. I have managed to finish the J reference page against all odds this week. Discovering I can use the windows media player also played a small part.

Recently I had a good look through the Wikipedia Egyptians page and was amused to see it had been’Afro’d’ which I corrected, although I didn’t put in all the references in I should have. The number of outright lies I saw on it were shocking. It claimed the Lucotte study only showed upper Egyptians having African Y chromosomes… mega fib. It also had a couple of Clyde Winters special half truths- claiming that one study grouped Egyptians with Nilotic Africans before Europeans- (with modernEgyptians being the closest to the ancient; I’ve read it). Its the level of lying that irritates. To warp the truth that well you have to be very familiar with what the studies really say and crop them extremely tightly. For example- I know for a fact that Egyptians have on average fewer Arabian J1 Y chromosomes than many Ethiopian tribes and black Sudanese tribes (Egyptians 9% vs Amhara 33% ) which makes the touting of Ethiopians/Bejas as ‘pure’ Africans and the real Egyptians and Egyptians as thieving Arab invadersmassively hypocritical – and stupidly illogical.

The doing the mt/y DNA break down of Egypt really helped to understand the population movements. As far as I can tell in lower Egypt only about 15% of the male population is due to historical input from Eurasia. Most eyeopening was the Dakleh study that showed there had been a much bigger overall input from Sub Saharan Africa over the past two thousand years, which was probably due to the slave trade. So if anything the average Egyptian is half a shade darker, as the historic maternal input from Africa (20% overall) is about twice the Eurasian historic input. I’ll save that one for a special-occasion argument.

I sill have no decent line of BS from any of the Afrocentrists that buzz me as to haw a population that shows less Arabian input than half of East Africa magically changed from black to ‘Arab’ while having only about 5% overall historic Arab  ancestry (mt DNA is less) and about twice as much input from black Africans.

I did however see one guy say I’d banned him a dozen times under different names (Youtube) for not being able to handle his facts and argument- which was news to me as I think I’ve banned about four people tops and mainly it was for obscene spam (some guy last year), repetitive stupidity and abuse (Dana Marniche/Don Blake) and one guy, GKLoiusville, who as yet hasn’t managed to get past my spam filter more than once because of  bad language.  I suspected… 50 rabid online Afrocentrists online  equal five nutjobs in their momma’s basements with multiple accounts.

I’ve been sent the same piece of cut and paste crap five times in two weeks. I suspect most of the people who send it two me aren’t actually familiar with the material; it just looks good (it’s a very well polished lie with genuine studies referenced in extremely misleading ways) if you aren’t familiar with  the material it ‘quotes’. I’m going to give it a proper shredding sometime soon. The only piece of text it claims to quote that I’m not familiar with I can know debunk now I know the skin tests can’t distinguish between olive and Negro skin tones. So Clyde and Mr Man had better brace themselves.

I’m keeping an eye on the Swine flu in America to get a guide to the mortality rate. So far (the toddler was Mexican) it’s about 1/1000, and it doesn’t seem to spread very quickly for an influenza virus. To which I can only say- I hope it stays that way and I hope they manage to knock out a viable vaccine by our flu season. I hope this kicks the arse of the world into realising just how vulnerable we are to these kind of infections now with our densely populated cities and germ filled jet planes flying it every new virus around the world in a day. A fast method of creating and distributing vaccines is going to become a vital part of the worlds survival.

I’m almost through with the collection Egyptian genetics page. One of the most interesting thing after digging through Luis’s  2004 study that I can hardly find any Y chr traceable to historical population movement- all the EurasianY chr (G, T, J) are showing up with a particularly huge time depth in Egypt, only j2 and R1b seem fo show up with with a Neolithic entry date. A side issue is that I’ve also noticed something about the Somali study- some M81 (which is Egyptian in origin) which could really only be as a trace of a population movement from N>S in the Neolithic. The Somalis are looking like an expansion of Cushitic Ethiopian pastoralists that dates to about 5k ago.

I’ve finally got my head around Keita’s odd terminology. Once you grasp that his tropical Africans are groups that have a major amount of Eurasian ancestry (Ethiopians, Somalis) and understanding that these groups expanded from the Nubia area once upon a time – his placing of Badarians in this category is actually makes sense. His description of the Badari as a group makes more sense and associating them with the racial block of Ethiopians, Somalia nd Nubians is actually pretty accurate, although I’m still going toharp on about his ridiculous typo with the Badarian hair description.

Of modern upper Egyptians; there seems to have been a movement from north to south in the early dynasties, but other than that there doesn’t seem to have been any input into upper Egypt at all after that, except possibly a little extra sub Saharan maternal ancestry from the slave trade (suggested by the Dakleh study) or some S>N population movements in the Sahara. This also makes more sense of his lower Egyptians as being halfway between his ‘tropical African’ and European- since this pretty much describes the genetic make up of modern Lower Egyptians.

On a personal note.. I’ve discovered the windows movie maker.. Yay! I feel like making a movie.

The first time I’ve got near the computer in a couple of days- I shudder to think how many comments I have waiting for me- I normally average about 20 a day and I haven’t been on MAB since Friday, so I’m expecting about 100 or more to wade through. I do try to respond to them all. I shall be doing a lot less blogging while the kids are around for the next two weeks.

I finally foundthat study with the Somali mitochondrial DNA in it, and a few other titbits. I’ve discovered if you can’t find it on Google, Altavista is the next stop, and I’ve added it to my bookmarks.

Rather surprisingly the Somali mt DNA came out as 46% Eurasian. Assuming M1 and m78 are inherently mixed parentage markers to start with, this may mean that Somalis have as much as or even slightly more Eurasian ancestry than Ethiopians (less later Bantu added in) something that will truly give the ES members a major stroppy. I’m reserving judgement until I see a lot more detail on them. It would explain their hair too.

The day out in Canterbury with the kids went surprisingly well. She didn’t chuck a strop for a change. But the McDonalds in Canterbury is minging, and I won’t be going in there again and I don’t care how much the kids whine. It’s grubby and dreary; ick. Pizza Hut here we come.

A vaguely depressing day. My hearts been messing about (I have a murmur as well as MS) and I’ve been a bit low on energy. Still, I’ve managed to do some gardening and cook dinner.

The girl’s being a bit of a nightmare today. She’s had two major hissy fits already, the last one being the worst as it was about me being ill, which she just doesn’t get. I’ve been trying to explain to her why I sometimes can’t come on days out because I’m ill. She just blames me for being ill. Very depressing. We’ve planned a day out to Canterbury. I never look forward to days out partly because they are real tests of endurance for me, but mainly because she is usually a total cow. The boy’s an angel, but she has tantrums over the clothes, the food… everything. She’s a nightmare when she’s home. A perfect student, but not the dream daughter. There’s something of a power struggle going on.

On a lighter note – we watched Zack and Miri make a porno. Kevin Smith is back on form, and it may be his best yet. After the OTT wordy dialogue from Dogma, the return to ass-based humour was a real improvement. Not one for the kiddies. Jason looked pretty healthy too.I must be on the same wavelength as Kevin Smith because I came up with ‘Star Whores’ as the name of the sci-fi porno too. I think I may have seen a few minutes of Deep Space 69 long ago…

I think the only Kevin Smith film I haven’t watched so far is Jersey girl. Big fans of the Askewniverse in this household. The old man has the books and the comics too. I married a fanboy.

I’ma bit off blogging at the moment- I’m only averaging one entry every other day at the moment. Lack of inspiration mainly…I’m like Dr House with out a case, I’m a bit lost without a research subject to drive me. I’m currently trying to track down DNA studies from mummies.. I may have to start annoying professionals with emails. I’m also trying to assemble the Y chromosome info from Egypt into an understandable form for my own reference. The overall foreign input from non dynastic people seems to be pretty minimal, I’ll run it past some of the forum members for a critique before I post it.

Funniest moment on the forum this week was when Bass proved he couldn’t read a dendrogram.. LOL.

And yet again another round of  ’she’s a pleasure to teach’ and ‘I wish they were all like her’, and neat exercise books filled with rows of green ticks and impossibly neat handwriting. No I’m not bragging, that’s just the way the girl is. Some of her poetry I’d be happy to see from a teenager.. ‘a flutter of talk’ is one line that springs to mind, not bad for seven at all. She’s written some nice blank verse that I’ll put on the blog at the end of the year when I get her books home. I suspect her future involves creative writing. I’d just like to say that I never push her at school- anyone who does that isn’t doing their kid any favours. She’s just naturally bookish, and I give her space and resources to do what she wants. As far as I can tell she’s about two years ahead- most of the friends she brings home are a couple of years older than her as well.

We had the boy’s PTM chat on the same day. Apparently he’s very advanced with his numbers, but can be very quietly and likes to play alone at times. Why playing alone is an issue I’ll never understand. Like being introverted is an illness or a problem. Last time I checked the higher the IQ the more introverted a person is likely to be, so I’m not worried if he’s not yelling his head off at the other kids. I’m also not worried about the hours he spends on the X box. Whoever claims that electronic games stop kids exercising hasn’t watched my three year old pogo-ing up and down in from of the TV for an hour straight while he plays.

I suppose I’d better get on with thehousework now. I really should have called MAB the ‘not doing the ironing’ blog.