Our Cousin Spade

VanIsle

VanIsle

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Nov 12, 2008
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I'm sure many of you have noticed Spade often signs "cousin Spade". Spade goes by the premise that all of us on earth are related to each other. Therefore, we are all cousins. I thought some of you may have some thoughts of your own regarding our relationship to each other. I'm assuming that Spade thinks of his wife as an extremely distant cousin but very close relative.;-) I'm with Spade. I like to think that no matter our colour or creed, we all stemmed from two.
 
O

Outta here

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Jul 8, 2005
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I have to admit, I did wonder, and I appreciate the explanation about Cousin Spade. I would have to agree - our shared humanity does indeed make us all related. Not gonna comment on the dysfunctional family we all seem to have created though :p
 
karrie

karrie

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I've gotten quite used to everyone being called cousins when it comes to First Nations people, and just assumed Spade was Native.
 
Tyr

Tyr

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Cousin Spade


 
L Gilbert

L Gilbert

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Technically speaking: biblically we are all related as we descended from Adam and Eve, other religions may have similar views to this.
Scientifically I think it is highly probable that there was more than one origin for humanity.
 
L Gilbert

L Gilbert

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Spade said:
There are five reasons why I use "cousin."

Reason #1
A scientific reason - mitochondrial Eve.
BBC - h2g2 - Mitochondrial Eve - An Explanation - A703199
Click to expand...
Key word in the first paragraph is "idea"
Mitochondrial Eve represents one of the most poorly understood scientific ideas .......
Click to expand...
and then later .....
And this is where the confusion sets in. A single organism can't populate a planet (arguments about amoeba aside). The evidence didn't suggest a single woman living in isolation from members of her own species. What it suggested was a genetic bottleneck – a period in human history when the population was so small that the genetic expressions of a single woman could have an impact on all humans living on the planet today.
Click to expand...
So much for the "idea" of creation.
 
petros

petros

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Nov 21, 2008
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Quoting Spade There are five reasons why I use "cousin."

Reason #1
A scientific reason - mitochondrial Eve.
BBC - h2g2 - Mitochondrial Eve - An Explanation - A703199
​
Key word in the first paragraph is "idea"
Quote: Mitochondrial Eve represents one of the most poorly understood scientific ideas .......
​
and then later .....
Quote: And this is where the confusion sets in. A single organism can't populate a planet (arguments about amoeba aside). The evidence didn't suggest a single woman living in isolation from members of her own species. What it suggested was a genetic bottleneck – a period in human history when the population was so small that the genetic expressions of a single woman could have an impact on all humans living on the planet today.
​
So much for the "idea" of creation.
Click to expand...
Mycellium rules this planet and probably many many others. If it ever took revenge we'd be toast in days.​
 
Spade

Spade

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Nov 18, 2008
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Reason #2
For my mathematician* cousins:
I had two parents; but so did you!
And, 4 grandparents, 8 great grandparents, 16 great great grandparents, and so on.
2, 4, 8, 16, ... a geometric progression.
Go back 1000 years or 40 generations (assuming 25 years per generation)
That's 2^40 ancestors alive 1000 years ago.
But, 2^40 is about 1 099 511 628 000.
Hah! There weren't over a trillion people alive on Earth 1000 years ago - neither my ancestors nor yours.
It is a much, much smaller web of interrelationships. We indeed are cousins and not as long as 1000 years ago.

* "A mathematician is a blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat which isn't there." -- Charles Robert
 
L Gilbert

L Gilbert

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Spade said:
Reason #2
For my mathematician* cousins:
I had two parents; but so did you!
And, 4 grandparents, 8 great grandparents, 16 great great grandparents, and so on.
2, 4, 8, 16, ... a geometric progression.
Go back 1000 years or 40 generations (assuming 25 years per generation)
That's 2^40 ancestors alive 1000 years ago.
But, 2^40 is about 1 099 511 628 000.
Hah! There weren't over a trillion people alive on Earth 1000 years ago - neither my ancestors nor yours.
It is a much, much smaller web of interrelationships. We indeed are cousins and not as long as 1000 years ago.

* "A mathematician is a blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat which isn't there." -- Charles Robert
Click to expand...
lol Yes, but you forgot that some of us had the SAME parents. My wife's sisters and her had the same two parents, for instance. :D
 
Tyr

Tyr

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The Six degrees of Seperation

Six degrees of separation (also referred to as the "Human Web") refers to the idea that, if a person is one step away from each person they know and two steps away from each person who is known by one of the people they know, then everyone is no more than six "steps" away from each person on Earth. The easier way to understand this is that person A only needs a maximum of five people in between to connect to person B.(Supposing person A and B don't know each other.)



 
Spade

Spade

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L Gilbert said:
lol Yes, but you forgot that some of us had the SAME parents. My wife's sisters and her had the same two parents, for instance. :D
Click to expand...

Hey, L. Gilbert, are you my estranged brother!

Ahh, "My wife's sisters and her had the same two parents, for instance" reinforces the idea of an inter-relational web. However, I am going vertically in the progression, not laterally!

And, so, the first two reasons dispense with race (a social not a genetic construct), ethnic or national purity (Nonsense, check out a Brit). I have family on every inhabited continent and of every "race" and "colour." But then, so do you, cousin! So do you!

Reason #3 is much more relevant to me, however. More later.
 
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