The Daily Parker

Politics, Weather, Photography, and the Dog

More confirmation about dog origins

NPR reported this morning that dogs likely descended from Israeli wolves:

To come up with their results, [UCLA researcher Robert] Wayne and his colleagues studied DNA from more than 200 wild gray wolves. "We looked at wolf populations in Europe, the Middle East and East Asia and from China," he says. In each case, they sought out and found genetic markers that were unique to these different wolf populations. So, for example, there were some markers that were only found in Chinese wolves, and others only found in Middle Eastern wolves.

Then they analyzed DNA from more than 900 dogs from 85 breeds, and looked to see which of the wolf markers dogs most closely resembled. It turns out that most dogs shared markers unique to Middle Eastern wolves, although there were some dog breeds that were closer to other wolf populations.

"Many wolf populations may have contributed to the genomic diversity of dogs, but the dominant signal comes from the Middle East," says Wayne. The new research appears in the journal Nature.

Finally: a solid explanation of why Parker wears a yarmulke.

Happy Pi Day

In the U.S., today is 3.14. The rest of the world will celebrate Pi Day when we have 14 months in a year, because most places write dates "14/3". So we'll just have to wait until International Pi Month in March 2014.

Too bad most of us slept through 3.14 1:59:26...and then lost an hour of sleep 34 seconds later.

Yes, I'm a nerd.

Last video from Delhi

I mentioned that the traffic and chaos in Delhi just seems to work most of the time. Sometimes, however—as when 60 bicycle rickshaws try to make a right turn through traffic at the same time—it doesn't:

I'm curious what everyone is saying...though I can guess.

Return to the beginning

Diane has joined me in London for a couple of days, and since this is her first time here, I thought it important to take her to the #1 Touristy London Thing of All: the Tower Bridge. The reader may recall that the City re-painted the bridge over the summer, so large parts of it had tarps draped over it while we had our first residence. Well, the painters have finished the bridge approaches:

Here's the "before" picture, in August:

Note also that the temperature fell a bit between the first and second photos. Strange how that happens in six months. In fact, it started snowing shortly after I took the top one, which explains why we've returned to the hotel a bit. We'll come back when it's warmer.

Another walk around Delhi

Apparently, Chandni Chowk (चाँदनी चौक) is closed Fridays in observance of the Islamic Sabbath. The formal shopping center, anyway. I'm willing to bet the actual street and neighborhood of the same name remained open this afternoon, but I could not convince my auto-rickshaw driver to take me there. I couldn't seem to break the language and cultural barriers separating him from an understanding that I just wanted to walk around without actually going in anywhere. In fact, I spent a lot of time this afternoon trying to convince people—mostly taxi and auto-rickshaw drivers, surprise—that my entire purpose was to walk around in Delhi without a fixed destination.

So, I let the guy take me to a carpet shop, and after spending a couple of minutes getting hard-sell from the salespeople inside I left. Wouldn't you know, the driver thoughtfully waited for me outside, and followed me down the street suggesting all manner of temples and shops he would happily take me to.

At some point he gave up, and let me take photos in peace. Here follows a quorum:

In New York people say you can get anything you want, any time of day. New York hasn't got anything on Delhi's entrepreneurs:

Continuing the walk:

One out of two isn't bad:

This I can't quite interpret. I think it means, put your green and red garbage in the green can, and put your blue garbage in the blue can. This leaves me curious where the yellow, teal, and chartreuse garbage goes:

Our residency ends tomorrow afternoon, and with the exception of the post-residency party and the trip out to the airport (Sunday morning at 4:30), I may not have another opportunity to leave the hotel. That's too bad. I hope we have a more open schedule when we go to Shanghai in April.

I will make it a priority to return to India in the next few years. Next time I'll do more of the tourist stuff.

Delhi residency, day 2

Hypotheticals in class can lead to cognitive dissonance if you think too hard on them. Today, for example, Ian invented the cell phone and admitted taking bribes, Ryan paid a high price for his seat in class, Elena punched Bob for trying to steal hers, and Nathan's wife spoke through him. All this after Bob and Kacie counted M&Ms for us.

Best not to dwell.

Instead, here are two more photos from yesterday's trip to the Red Fort:

Inside:

Much Stats homework tonight; more photos tomorrow.

Old Delhi tour

They loaded us up on buses and drove us to the Red Fort and Old Delhi this afternoon. First stop, the Red Fort:

Within the Red Fort grounds are a number of buildings, including the Diwan-i-Am, or audience chamber:

Also the Khas Mahal:

We then snagged about three dozen of the now-happiest rickshaw drivers in the city, and went to the Jama Masijd mosque. (I mostly took short videos on this trip, which I hope to upload to YouTube when I return to the U.S.) Then there was the bus ride back to the hotel, which reminded me, in a way, of the Kennedy Expressway...with pedestrians, goats, stray dogs (always), and live chickens:

Tomorrow we're in class just about all day, so I may not have any new photos until later in the week.