On Whiteness Studies

First one White nationalist commenter attacked me for supporting Whiteness Studies. According to him, it's nothing but anti-White propaganda. Then I offered an explanation for what I meant here:

Actually I endorse Whiteness Studies in a way. First of all, I want to reject the vast majority of this nutty discipline.

It's filled with contempt for Whites, race-denying nonsense conflated with obsession with race (tell me how that makes sense?!), White groveling, self-abjection and guilt admission and obsession in the face of an implied superiority of non-Whites. In short, it's like modern anti-racism taken to a Mad Magazine extreme of absurdity.

But there is an aspect of Whiteness Studies where the Whites in it sit around and analyze how they themselves are racist against non-Whites and resolve to try to get rid of their racism. And a lot of them have acknowledged that it is going to be a lifetime battle, and some say that they may never be over it.

I kind of like the notion that we all have racist parts of ourselves and that those of us who are better at least work to try to reduce or get rid of our racist feelings.

In anti-racist insane America, you realize that it is a mortal sin to admit that you have ever experienced even the slightest, tiniest, most infinitesimal trace of racism, especially if you are White. Ask around to just about anyone, and they will tell you that not only do they lack the tiniest hint of racism in even the deepest recesses of their soul, but that they have been anti-racist pristine for their entire lives.

Admit to having 1% racism in your 99% anti-racist soul, or that you ever uttered a racist word or thought a racist thought, and be prepared for verbal lashings or deadly stares. Such is the madness of anti-racist America in 2008, and I do applaud Whiteness Studies for their honesty.

Whew! How's that for an outrageous and provocative thing to say? To which a commenter, also a White nationalist but not particularly racist, Uncle Milton, counters:

I went to the blog of the guy named Tom who described either your posts on Black crime or the comments as racist bilge which led me to a "Whiteness" website that was filled with false statements such as Whites commit the highest number of serial murders (nope , per capita it's Blacks..) or that White middle class people have the highest rates of suicide. (nope, tragically it's native Americans..)

Most of what I have seen of Whiteness Studies is self-hating or a rehashing of stereotypes. Everyday I am in an environment where I am a minority (at my work, the majority of my colleagues are Asian..) and generally I have no problems with them since they tend to be civil and competent. However in the past when I have been forced to live or work around an environment that is a majority Black then I have been quite unhappy.

Am I a racist in need of Whiteness studies or perhaps am I reacting to repeat acts of violence towards me (accompanied by verbal epithets such as White Mutha Fucka), theft, and name calling that called attention to the color of my skin?

This commenter exemplifies something that I might call guilty racism. I think he has some racist feelings towards Blacks, but he doesn't really feel good about them deep down inside. Hold on tight now, because we are getting into some religious and spiritual issues here, specifically Christian.

I'm now going to a Catholic Church and I just love it. One of the things that I love about it is the guilt. Guilt is actually a very debilitating thing, but I've been living with it my whole life, so it's very important to me, if even in an awful way.

I think that guilt is badly stigmatized. Guilty types are considered to be criminals, rapists, child molesters, and killers. Nothing is further from the truth. Antisocials are extremely violent and feel no guilt and obsessives, as one example, are the most nonviolent people on Earth and feel tremendous guilt.

The more guilt, the less violence. The more criminality, violence and antisocial behavior and activity, the less guilt. Real simple. All other things being equal, you should feel relaxed with a guilty type. Maybe they aren't any fun, but they probably won't hurt you. Alas, too many find the allure of the guiltless antisocial too delicious to pass up.

One thing I love about Catholicism is that they understood this truism long ago. The people always coming into confession all the time had never even done anything wrong, and were confessing about nothing at all. The best people were confessing the most. The worst people were never showing up at all.

It's still this way, even in psychologists' offices. Yet clinicians don't seem to get it either. Many clinicians can't even seem to reliably spot antisocials. If we train our clinicians to spot anyone, it ought to be antisocials.

Clinicians continue to confuse the worst people on Earth with the best people. This is a very interesting area of human nature, where even the best experts with most degrees and study seem to fail us. One wonders if some simple rural types somewhere would be wiser.

I've got to have a place in my heart for the guilty racist. When you go to White racist fora, you see lots of Whites on there who have had a lot of really bad experiences with minorities, in particular with Blacks.

Many are saying that they just want to wash their hands of Blacks altogether and get away from them. They want a divorce and no more troubles. A part of me feels for these folks. You get hurt, and you want to stay away. Such a perseverative human response.

I guess I'm a Catholic at heart. If you are a racist, just go right ahead and be one. Feel proud about it like 95% of them do. But there is a part of me that says that if you sin, at least feel bad about it. And racism, in my book, is a sin.

A Christian may sin, but if he feels guilt about sin, he gets +1 from me. If he resolves to stop sinning and tries to stop, then there's nothing more that he can do. At that point, one wonders if the person is even a sinner.

This is where Whiteness Studies, in all of its stupidity, insanity and idiocy, is beautiful. It had to have been thought up by a Catholic. Whiteness Studies is full of Whites who acknowledge that they have racist tendencies, but resolve to dedicate the rest of their lives to absolving them and purging them.

Who cannot love a sinner who has the nerve and courage to confess to the world and then try to go on the straight and narrow? That is Christianity in an essence.

An admission of guilt and sin is a beautiful thing to this Christian.

The world is full of those who pronounce moral purity. This has become the litmus test of our day. Moral purity in regard to race is an acid test of our times. It's hard to find a young person nowadays, or often anyone, who will admit to ever harboring the measliest racist sentiment. Oh how pure they are.

Purity, especially the probably dishonest kind, is as oppressive as smog. We are all peculiar mixtures of good and bad. We do good, and we should be proud, we do bad, and at the very least, we should feel bad.

Racism on an individual level is sinful simply because each and every individual should be evaluated on their own self-worth and nothing else. Disliking or shunning someone of one race who you would easily associate with if they were another race has got to be wrong, wrong, wrong. Dislike of groups collectively or from a distance is often perfectly reasonable and expression of self-preservation.

No, Unc doesn't need Whiteness Studies. No one does. You're a free agent and you can feel what you will. But if you want to recognize racism and combat it in yourself, you'll always get a cheer and a hug from me.

Note: Readers should carefully read the Commenting Rules before commenting to avoid having their comments edited or deleted and to avoid being banned from the site.

The Peopling of India

Originally, this was part of an older post called New Cavalli-Sforza Gene Maps, but I figured this part of it anyway is better off in a separate post all of its own. Besides, I need a peopling of India post, and I already had it, but it was part of this stoned-out, drunken rambling called New Cavalli-Sforza Gene Maps, so I vivisected the old one and made a nice, clean new one with an explanatory title.

The peopling of India is a mystery. As my Indian doctor told me, India is as old as dirt. There are various narratives in India, but none of them make any sense, as usual.

Hindus believe something like that Hindus have always been in India, so if you say anything scientifically different, the Hindu fundamentalist boneheads are going to freak out and probably even threaten you. Wonderful people, and surely as stupid as any Christian or Muslim fundamentalist anywhere.

Within India, there is a lot of debate about whether or not there was an Aryan invasion that conquered the indigenous Dravidians, relegated them to the South of India, and imposed a ferociously racist Hindu caste system on the darker Dravidians - with Whiter Brahmins and higher castes being on top and darker Dravidian types being put in the lower castes.

Actually, caste in India is quite complex. High caste Indians from South India are often quite dark, and lower caste Indians from the North can be quite light. However, there is a general tendency for higher castes to be lighter skinned. In particular, for Indian women, Whiter has always been better, and Indian women have been trying to lighten their skins for as long as anyone can remember.

It is also interesting that, although inter-caste marriage was supposedly forbidden and enforced with serious penalties, the Brahmins have been getting progressively darker down through the centuries. Gee, how did that happen? Race mixing! Horror of horrors!

The Aryan Invasion theory is actually most popular with Dalits or untouchables. Supposedly they had a paradise down there until these evil White Aryans invaded and imposed evil caste Hinduism on the natives. In truth, Hinduism may be as old as India itself.

Surely, it seems to date back before any Aryan invasion. It seems to be the case that the Aryans may have superimposed caste on native Indian Hinduism though, and caste probably did not exist in the original religion.

The Aryan Invasion theory is also popular with White nationalists, see they see it as normal that Whiter folks should declare themselves superior to, and treat like shit, darker folks. The notion that there are two separate races in India, darker, inferior Dravidians and Whiter, superior Aryans is often added to this. In truth, all Indians are best seen as one coherent group.

An interesting collection of Northern Pakistani types, who resemble in type the Northern Indians such as Punjabis. The guy on the left, I swear, could be a Greek fisherman and the guy with the slicked-back hair could easily be an Italian. The fellow on the right and the one on the second to left are more classic North Indid types.


I think it's pretty hilarious that so many White nationalist morons say that this kid is not White. With a constricted mindset like that, WN is doomed for sure. Look real hard at this kid and tell me he's not White. This is a Pashtun kid (with a non-human kid on his shoulders) from northern Pakistan - specifically, the area where the Pakistani Taliban and Al Qaeda leadership is thought to be hiding.


She's not White? Says who? Says White nationalists, that's who. Another interesting Pashtun from northwest Pakistan. This is where you find the most European-looking types in the area. They live in Afghanistan and Pakistan, with the greatest concentration in Nuristan, Kunar, Dir and Chitral. This girl could easily be an Italian.


A young Pakistani Pashtun girl with her little sister. I understand that these women are quite beautiful, but in this region, they go into purdah, or isolation, at puberty, and pretty much no one ever gets to see them anymore. They probably spend most of their time after that in a burka or some other stupid bag thing. Too bad. Nowadays, these poor girls are going to even have a hard time going to school.


An Afghan man from Chitral, where the most European types can be found. Take off the turban, put him on any street in America, and he's just another White dude. I think that bin Laden may be hiding in the area of Chitral and across the border in Kunar and Nuristan, though Dir in Pakistan is the best bet of all.


Yes, a red-haired Pashtun. I think this guy is from Afghanistan. Pashtuns describe themselves as Aryans, and say that they are the base that the European Whites came from. No one really knows, but the White European type that we know today probably came into existence with the spread of Indo-European across the continent 8,000 years ago.

White skin only shows up in Europe 9,000 years ago, and at 11,000 years ago, Europeans look something like Middle Easterners, so maybe the Aryans were the original Europeans. Who knows. Unfortunately, Hitler's Nazi regime was roaming around in these parts searching for the original White man or original Aryan or whatever.

Hence the word Aryan, mangled by Nazis to idiotically mean Nordic, has fallen into disgrace. But it deftly describes all of these North Indid types we are looking at in this section.


Another Afghan Pashtun. Unfortunately, it is the Pashtuns who are leading the insurgency against the US in Afghanistan.

Interestingly, the Brahmins themselves have totally rejected this theory lately, so if someone vociferously rejects the Aryan invasion theory, they are probably high-castes or Hindu fundamentalists. The motivation is unsure, but they seem to be denying that caste is a bad thing or that it was imposed by evil invaders.

This is often leavened with dollops of caste is a good thing, or caste is normal, or caste hardly exists anymore talk, or other pro-caste propaganda. I have yet to meet a high-caste Indian who will denounce caste. If you ever meet one, please introduce them to me.

Recent research on the question is difficult, but there is a suggestion that an Aryan invasion may have occurred. Although all Indians are one major ethnic group, higher castes seem more related to Europeans and lower castes seem more related to Asians. There is also a northwest - southeast cline, with those towards the northwest being more European and those towards the southeast becoming more Asian.

Nevertheless, the best evidence is that Indians are a coherent race (they cluster together on genetic tests and there is no way to winnow out Aryans and Dravidians via genes) and they have been evolving, more or less in situ, with few outside inputs, for a good 15-20,000 years. Let's call it 17,000 years. Where did the Indians come from prior to 17,000 years ago? Evidence suggests the Middle East.

What is interesting about this theory is that we know that Indians look like Aborigines until about 8,000 years ago, when they begin to transition to Caucasians. So does this mean that the proto-Indians of the Middle East were Australoid types? You tell me. Racially, peoples of either the Middle East or Europe are poorly known at such an early date.

Indians and Dravidians are outside Caucasoids (but not by much) on the Cavalli-Sforza genetic chart below, but we have to lump them into one of the big three, so to Caucasians they go.

Fig. 1:
Click to enlarge and view. As you can see on this Cavalli-Sforza gene chart of the human race, Indians are just a bit outside Caucasians. It is true that Indians on some charts are the most divergent Caucasians of all. We may use this to deduce that Indians may be, along with Berbers, some of the most ancient Caucasian stocks on Earth.

After all, the European racial type is only known from about 9,000 years ago or so. Just prior, they seem to have resembled Middle Easterners and way back, they have had dark skin and resembled Masai or Tutsis from Central Africa. On many genetic charts, Indians of both the northwest and the southeast tend to ride the divide between Asians and Caucasians very closely.

So, while Indians are Caucasians for sure, they are starting to get towards Asians. North Indians such as Punjabis have 10-15% recent Asian genes to boot.

There are some ancient peoples in India who may represent the earliest Indians of all. Most Indians probably don't want to believe this, as these folks are tribals who, while outside the caste system, are widely discriminated against.

This map shows the location of many of the obscure tribes described below that may be remnants of the first Indians. This old map uses racial classifications that are no longer used today. It is written in a foreign language, possibly German. Although it sounds creepy today, German scientists did a lot of good work involving the races of man in the early part of the 20th Century.

The notion that any investigation of race may lead to the Nazi catastrophe has curtailed most such research today, but intrepid folks like yours truly continue to venture forth where fools fear to tread.


Nagas of NE Asia, thought to be perhaps the original people of the area. The guy on the right looks Papuan, for Chrissake (Or does he?), while the guy on the left looks sort of SE Asian, but not quite. I put the Naga into a Tibetan Northeast Indian Race within Southeast Asians, but the situation is confused as to whether or not they should be lumped in with Tibetans or split off. If they were early Indian Australoids, they then bred in heavily with Tibetan types and got genetically swamped.


A nice looking young Naga girl. She almost looks Amerindian, especially Central American Amerindian, but that's just convergence. Maybe a hint of SE Asian?

Indian Caucasians are clearly some of the most ancient existing Caucasians, except for the Kalash.

Kalash woman with her two girls in Pakistan. The Kalash are so diverse that they form an entire split in the Caucasian Race. In other words, among Caucasians, there are Kalash in one race and all Kalash in another vast race. I do not know what this means, but I am thinking that the Kalash may be one of the oldest Caucasians in existence due to their extreme genetic distance.


More Kalash. A woman and her son. The general theory is that the Kalash came from the Caucasus. If the Kalash indeed are the remnants of the most ancient Caucasians, the origin in the Caucasus is interesting because the Caucasus plays a major role in the formation of the Caucasian race as a nexus.

Other major nexuses are India, the Middle East and North Africa. Cavalli-Sforza suggests that the oldest Caucasians were two parts Asian and one part Black, this going back 40-45,000 years in Southern Russia (=Caucasus?). It is interesting to note that many Kalash have some Asian features. My theory is that the two Asian parts of the proto-Caucasians were Ainu types and the one Black part was a Masai-Tutsi type, but hey, I'm guessing.

There is evidence that Indians go back 44-63,000 years in India. Going back that far, they probably looked something like Aborigines, but no one is sure. The people along the coast were probably Negrito types.

The Garwhalis of far northern India. These people look a lot like the Kalash and may also be a very ancient Caucasian stock, this one probably from the Caucasus itself, which is where the mysterious Kalash arose. Some of these girls could walk down a street in a European city and no one would bat an eye. They could be Spaniards, Greeks, Albanians or Italians, but I am guessing. I could not place the Garwhalis into any race.


Nagas of Northeast India. Thought to be possibly be a remnant of the original people of Northeast India. They have a lot of Asian admixture. This one looks Tibetan. Genetically, they cluster with Tibetans.


More strange Naga people. The Naga have been fighting for a separate state for a long time now called Nagaland, and I support that struggle 100%. India has no right to any of NE India. India, go away.

The Indian proto-Caucasians seem to have bred in somewhat with Australoid types in India, but this is not at all clear except in the case of Tamils, who share skull affinities with Australoids. The general theory is that Indian skulls look like Aborigines from 8,000-40,000 years ago. Up until 5,000 years ago, Indians are quite muscular (robust), but then they become more gracile.

There are skulls going back 35,000 years in Sri Lanka, and more in Uttar Pradesh going back 45,000 years. According to one theory, Australia may have been settled from India. Tamil skulls do look Australoid, and resemble Papuans, Andamans, Senoi and Semang. There are stone tools in Sri Lanka dating back 22,000 years that are similar to the tools in Australia and Indonesia.

It is thought that these tools in the latter two countries came from India. The Veddas are the original peoples of Sri Lanka and predate the Tamils and Sinhalese, both of whom came about 2,000 years ago. However, in contrast to the India to Aborigine Theory, Vedda skulls do not currently cluster with Aborigine skulls, nor do Andaman Islander skulls (Bulbek)

Do look at many of the photos of Indians on this page who may be related to the original Australoids, possibly Negritos, of India.

A Yanadi boy peddling a canoe by the shore of the Indian Ocean in India. Some say Yanadis are the remains of the original Australoid inhabitants of India. The Yanadi live in coastal SE India.


An odd looking Nord Indid Banjara - Lambadi - Gypsy speaking a North Indian dialect This woman is from Karnatiman, which is somewhere in India. Maybe the ancient proto-Caucasians of 20,000 years ago in India looked like this.

I do not think we see much left genetically of the original Indian Australoids.

Yanadi boys in India. As you can see, some look a lot like Aborigines. Fascinating.


A Yanadi girl from India. This photo was taken from a Black nationalist site where they were screaming about how these people are ancient Blacks. Party all you want over your fantasy. She is more Aborigine than anything else, if you look very closely. For the Black appearance, more convergence. Lots of folks of various races look Black, or Negroid. So what. Doesn't prove relation.

Black or Negroid appearance, like Caucasoid phenotype or appearance, is probably just another endpoint for recent human facial evolution. Many races may end up either Negroid or Caucasoid appearing on a micro level.

The ancient Australoids of India now genetically and even (except in the case of the Tamils) anthropologically look like the neighboring Caucasian groups; we may be able to see older traces, but probably just that - traces. See these photos for those traces.

Super-commenter Joe Stickler calls these folks Indo-Melanids and calls them are proto-morphers (sort of anthropological shape-shifters). He notes that they are strongly stabilized and that they are certainly not Australoids.

A Gond boy from the Gond scheduled tribe in India. More aborigine appearance. The Gonds are thought to be the remains of the original Australoids of India. The Gonds are members of the South Indian Race along with the Munda, the Bhil, the Marathi, the Rajbanshi, the Oraon, the Parji, the Kolami-Naiki, the Chenchu-Reddi, the Konda, the Kolya, the West Bengal Brahmins and the Parsi. Gonds live in Central India.

Joe Stickler* describes this boy as intermediate between Indo Melanid and Veddoid. He is actually fairly standardized. Note the Asiatic eyes.


A Vedda man from India. The Veddoids are thought to be one of the endpoints of Negrito evolution, in this case the remains of the original Indians. Veddoid Tamils do resemble Negritos, Papuans, the Senoi, the Semang and the Andaman Islanders and others in skulls. However, Vedda skulls do not resemble Aborigine skulls.

I swear I know a Chicano guy who looks a lot like this.


A Mardia Gond male from India. He could well be a descendant of an original Indian Negrito group. Note the very primitive hunter-gatherer lifestyle. The Mardia reside in Central India, south of the Gonds.

Indians have been evolving in situ, pretty much, without a lot of outside inputs, for about 17,000 years.

An Australoid looking man, or possibly a very early ancient Caucasian from India. Very interesting type.

The people of India are pretty closely related to each other, and form a compact and fairly unified group.

Che Guevara himself or any hippie from the 1960's in the US, right in India. Interesting phenotype.

The Indian proto-Caucasians probably came from the Middle East to India about 20,000 years ago.

A very modern Caucasian looking woman from Rajasthan in the West of India. Going West, Indians get more modern Caucasian-looking. The ring must mean marriage.

Originally, the Indian proto-Caucasians may have looked like Arabs, but this is not known.

A very beautiful Indian woman. This woman could easily be an Italian, if you ask me. A very interesting looking phenotype. She looks hot. Commenter Joe Stickler describes her as a North Indid - Graci-Indid type.

There were Australoid types present in the Indian subcontinent when these new Caucasian people came to India 20,000 years BP, and they looked like Australian Aborigines.

A Santal man from another scheduled tribe in India. The Santal are also thought to be a remnant of the original people of India. The Santal live in NE India, north of Bangladesh near Assam.


Another odd looking tribal woman, this one from Goa. The ring through the nose thing must be a sign of being a married woman. Once again, I look and think, ancient Caucasian, but who knows. There is somewhat of an Amerindian appearance, but this is more synchronicity. This is another Nord Indid Banjara - Lambadi - Gypsy speaking a North Indian dialect.

The Indian Australoids were bred out or genetically swamped by the Caucasians from the Middle East and they have now just merged into Indian Caucasians.

Oraon women in Orissa. Another scheduled tribe thought related to the original Indians. Note the Negroid or possibly Negrito appearance. The Oraon are members of the South Indian Race described above. The Oraon live in NE India, west of Bangladesh near the state of West Bengal.


Very happy Irular kids in India. Once again, I think I am seeing some kids that look like Aborigines in this photo. Another possible remnant of the first Indians. The Irular are members of the South Dravidian Race, along with the Sinhalese, the Lambada, the Izhava, the Kurumba, the Nayar, the Toda, the Kota, the Malayaraya and the Tamils. This race, along with the South Indian Race, are probably the remains of the earliest Indians.

The Irulars live in the far south of India, southwest of the Yanadi.


More Irulars of far southern India. The Irulars are a scheduled tribe and hence are subject to affirmative action measures, which are quite controversial in India. They are very dark-skinned, as you can see.


A Malid Panyer woman from India. Blacks love to claim these folk, but really the connection is probably to the Aborigines of Australia. Big difference. Or she could well be the remains of the Indian Negritos. In fact, early racial scholars Eickstedt put them and the Gonds in with the Negritos of the Andaman Islands. The Malids live in far southwestern India, near the state of Karnataka and west of the Irular. Joe Stickler* describes Malids as a mostly unspecialized and primitive Veddoid type.


A very primitive-looking Kanikar man with a loincloth and a bow and arrow. Note the woolly hair typical of Veddoids. The face seems to have an Australoid appearance also. Early racial scholars classed these people as Negrito types. Probably among the remains of the first Indians. The Kanikar reside at the very southern tip of India. Joe Stickler* describes Kanikars as a mostly unspecialized and primitive Veddoid type.


A Panya Gond woman, probably one of the remains of the first humans to populate India. Note the woolly hair and Negrito appearance. Gonds reside in central India. Joe Stickler* describes Panyas as a mostly unspecialized and primitive Veddoid type.

Indians are also one of the most diverse Caucasian groups, as they tend to ride on the edge between Asians and Whites all the way through, from Punjabi in the north to Tamil in the South.

A Chenchu woman in India, another possible remnant of the ancient Indians. They are also in the South Indian Race. The Chenchu reside in Southern India, mostly north and west of the Yanadi. Joe Stickler* describes this woman as a strongly stabilized Indo-Melanid type with some Veddoid influence.


Chenchu kids, from a scheduled tribes in South India. Scheduled tribes are completely outside of the caste system, whatever that means.


A beautiful North Indian girl. As you can see, folks in the North can also be quite dark. India is a mysterious continent.

*A Sri Lankan commenter on the site with extensive knowledge of Indian racial types.

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Why Are Filipinos So Dark?

If they hardly have any Negrito genes, that is. If so, what explains their dark skin?

From a question in the comments.

I've been over this on the blog before, but since hardly anyone knows about this stuff, we may as well go over it again. The commenter asks, if Filipinos only have .02-.11% Negrito genes (and only in certain tribes that have been tested), why are Filipinos so dark?

The suggestion here is the common popular anthropological notion that Filipinos are part Negrito. The truth is that Filipinos have few Negrito genes, but Negritos have lots of Filipino genes. That is because the Filipinos simply swamped the Negritos genetically.

Various Filipino tribes have been surveyed and the Negrito percentage is given at .02-.11%. I am not sure if that means that the average Filipino or tribal has that much Negrito genes, or if that many Filipinos have Negrito genes. It is often difficult to tell with these studies. Filipinos are no darker than Lao, Thai, Khmer, many Southern Chinese groups and types, and Indonesians.

All of the Austronesians are dark. The Austronesians are the Filipinos, the Indonesians, the coastal New Guineans, the Polynesians and the Micronesians. Also Malays appear to have some unknown Austronesian element. There is also some Austronesian in the Vietnamese and the Khmer. All of these are in whole or in part Austronesians.

One of the biggest lies around is that all of these SE Asian groups are part Australoid. In particular, Chinese are very fond of this notion. It is true that many Indonesians are partly Australoid of unknown origin, probably Papuan. The Indonesians closer to the Philippines and Malaysia are much more Austronesian. Getting towards New Guinea, we see a lot more Melanesian introgression.

In the case of the Filipinos, the big lie is that Filipinos are very heavily inbred with Negritos. This is not true, and there is no evidence of it. However, some Filipinos are part Negrito. You can recognize them because they are noticeably darker and they tend to have woolly or frizzy hair like Negritos. It was common knowledge 100 years ago that Filipinos had little Negrito in them, and most Filipinos know this to this day.

In between, somehow the notion among amateur anthropologists got started that Filipinos are heavily Negrito. The Filipino group is very closely related to the Ami aboriginals of Taiwan (download the paper that proves that on this site here) and the Guangdong Southern Chinese from around Hong Kong. In fact, this group is so taut that I lumped it into a race called the South China Sea Race, with those three groups included.

Filipinos are, for all intents and purposes, a Chinese people, even though they live outside of China. Some commenters have hollered about this, saying that Filipinos look nothing like Southern Chinese. Well, that may be so, but looks deceive. In genes, they are remarkably close, and nowadays we prove relation by genes.

The vast majority of Filipinos came from an outward ocean voyage by the Taiwanese Ami aborigines about 2,200 years ago that ended up in the Philippines. This was part of the Lapita culture. About 900 years ago, a large infusion of Southern Chinese came to the Philippines, but only 20% of Filipinos have significant Chinese genes.

Much fewer have significant amounts of Spanish genes. The Filipino mestizo is largely a myth, though Filipino politics and especially the entertainment industry is heavily populated by mestizos. Even in the Philippines, Whiter is apparently better.

Why are Filipinos so dark? The Philippines lies from 0 to 20 degrees in latitude. Let us look at the nations in at that latitude and who the indigenous people are.

In that latitude range, we find northern Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, southern Burma, South India, Sri Lanka, Oman, Yemen, far southern Arabia, Somalia, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Djibouti, Sudan, Chad, Central African Republic, Cameroon, Niger, Burkina Faso, Nigeria, Benin, Ghana, Cote d' Ivorie, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea, Guinea Bissau, Mali, Mauritania, Senegal, Gambia, the Guyanas, all of the Caribbean except Cuba, Venezuela, Colombia, all of Central America except Mexico, Hawaii and the Mariana Islands.

If you notice, almost all of these countries are populated by indigenous people with pretty dark skin. Dark skin is selected for in hot climates because otherwise UV rays will destroy folic acid stores in the woman's body, which will cause a lot of birth defects. There may also be a protective effect for sunburn and melanoma, but this is uncertain.

UV radiation chart along with zones of skin color. Zone 1 has the darkest skin of all. Note that the Philippines is in Zone 1. Zone 2, which includes Italians and Spaniards, has skin that tans easily. Zone 3 contains light skin that enables residents to absorb as much Vitamin D as possible from the sun due to lack of sunlight at higher latitudes.

So it's not just latitude, but it's also intensity of UV radiation. UV radiation is extremely intense in Africa, so Africans have some of the darkest skin of all. Pale, light or white skin is nothing special or superior. It is simply an evolutionary adaptation to low levels of sunlight. Melanin went off the skin in order to pick up as much Vitamin D as possible. Otherwise, people had Vitamin D deficiencies.

Almost all native peoples at latitudes like that have pretty dark skin. The only exception is the Vietnamese, and they have only been there for 2,200 years or so, being products of a massive movement of Southern Chinese into the area around that time. Anyway, a lot of Vietnamese are relatively dark.

So the dark skin of Filipinos is to be expected, and there is no need to postulate Negrito genetic ingression. Filipinos aren't really that dark anyway. A lot of native peoples at that latitude are a lot darker than Filipinos.

Some Australoid genes related to Papuans have been found in Malays, Southern Chinese and coastal Vietnamese, but the numbers are very small. So really Southern Chinese need to be quiet about SE Asians being heavily Australoid. It's not true, and they have a few of those genes anyway.

Keep in mind that the question of Negrito genes in any SE Asians is somewhat academic. After all, all of SE Asia was populated mostly by Negrito Australoid types until about 5,000 years ago or so, at which point they fully transitioned into the types that we see today.

NE Asians were also Ainu aborigine Australoid types until 9,000 years ago, when they fully completed progression into the Mongoloid types that we know today.

Negrito types were generalized throughout Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia until 2,000-3,000 years ago, when they were rapidly displaced by movements from South China. They were also generalized through Thailand and Malaysia until about 5,000 years ago, when they were largely replaced by movements from Taiwan and South China.

They have only survived in large numbers in the Philippines, but that is merely accidental.

So, in the background of all SE Asians is a Negrito, and in the background of all NE Asians is an aborigine Ainu type.

References

Jablonski, N. and Chaplin, G. (2000) The Evolution of Human Skin Coloration. Journal of Human Evolution.

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Genocide in Australia

Looks like it was way worse than the genocide of the Amerindians in the US. The wiping out of the Amerindians was done mostly by disease. The much-repeated story of blankets poisoned with smallpox apparently occurred in once, back East.

There was a large poisoning of maybe 200-300 Amerindians in the Shasta area of California in the 1800's, and there was a massacre of 200-300 Amerindians near Eureka at the same time. California was actually one of the worst places of all. There was an all-out war against the Amerindians here.

I spent months going over old newspaper archives in a library as part of work I did for an Indian tribe here in the Sierras (now doing great with a casino).

In the 1850's and 1860's, the California Indians were fighting back. The governor himself was making wild proclamations about how this war a war of one race against another, a war that had to lead to the extinction of one or the other.

For 15-20 years or so, it was more or less legal to kill any Indian you wanted in the Sierras and Northern California and for any reason. You could rape an Indian woman too if you want to, and take an Indian child captive. All of this was more or less legal.

Of course this was taking place against the backdrop of the utterly insane mass criminality and homicide of the California Gold Rush, a crime wave the likes of which the state has never even come close to seeing since.

Too many young unmarried men, hardly any women, few to no families, lots of money in the form of gold, little law enforcement, all the ingredients were there. The law that existed was a brutal one, and men were hanged right and left in the Gold Rush for all sorts of things, but preying on Indians was not one of them.

On Sundays, the men would all go to church, then they would head back to the camps to drink, take drugs, steal, fight, kill and just in general act like animals.

There were regular hangings at the camps, and these were well-attended. Folks would go watch the hangings, then head back to camp to commit more crimes later that evening. Sometimes, even capital punishment just doesn't cut it. Recall the stories of the pickpockets that roamed through the crowds in England at the hangings. This was when pickpocketing was a capital offense.

Until 1870 or so, an Indian in this part of the state kept his head down and his mouth shut and hoped to stay alive. Epidemics and disease took their toll. By 1890, 95% of the Indian population on the Central Sierra Nevada foothills was dead.

That's interesting to folks who insist that genetic change in humans takes a long time. Not necessarily, when something happens that kills 95% of a group, and the survivors have some characteristic that enabled them to survive, you can get some pretty extensive genetic changes pretty quickly.

Those who tally such things say that ultimately, Whites killed 7,000 Indians and Indians killed about 11,000 Whites. It's true, the Indians were could be brutal and women and children were at times killed, but they also often kidnapped them and made them members of the tribe.

There are a couple of stories in my family about encounters with Indians. These all stem from one line of my family, who actually came over with the first invaders on the Second Ship of the Mayflower.

Sometime in the 1640's in Massachusetts, Indians attacked the village where all the men were off hunting. They rounded up the women and children and prepared to set fire to them.

Some of the women started singing a pretty song, and the Indians stopped to listen. Well, this was long enough for the menfolk to return, chase off the Indians and save the day. Two of my ancestors were in that group, a woman and her young child.

Later, in late 1700's Virginia, one of my relatives was taken captive by Indians with his friend. They made them run the gauntlet, a popular thing that Indians liked to do with captured Whites. As you ran the gauntlet, the Indians beat on you.

Well, the friend was apparently killed in this process. My ancestor, though, when prodded to run the gauntlet, started jumping around and squawking like a chicken. The Indians all started laughing and decided he did not have to run the gauntlet.

I'm not sure if it's the same story, but one of my ancestors at one point was either captured by Indians or joined them. This in late 1700's Virginia again. His family just gave him up for dead. Well, 10 years later, the son returns home, about 30 years old, and he's walking up to his father's house all dressed like an Indian.

His father got out his gun and was ready to shoot his own son until he recognized him. Back in those days, if an Indian was coming onto your property, you shot him.

My family goes back to 1600's Virginia and it's said that if you can trace your line back that far, you have a 50% chance of being related to Pocahontas. So there may be a bit of Amerindian (less than 1%) in me after all.

The first two stories are probably apocryphal.

If you notice the themes: clever Whites use their ingenuity (and common human nature) to fool the Indians by disarming them and appealing to their sensibilities for comedy and appreciation of music. As the Indian is a barbarian savage in both tales, at the same time, he is a fellow human, revealed by his ability to appreciate a clever joke or a beautiful song.

At the end of the day, there is really no way to figure out if such stories are true or not. But they got passed down through the family for years for a reason that is at once egotistical and at the same time a warning: our line is a clever line, able to cheat death by our wits. Remember this, and use this lesson in the close calls you may experience in your own dangerous times.

The treatment of the Aborigines looks like a real genocide. There were sterilization attempts, deliberate attempts at "breeding them out", mass imprisonments for minor infractions, infantilization throughout life by being confined to child-care like institutions where even their shit had to pass muster.

In these homes, both sexes experienced mass sex abuse, and this went on for decades. Single women were not allowed to have sex, and males were punished for being a "menace to White women". Half-breeds were taken away to be raised by Whites, and many Aboriginal children were stolen from their families. There was a conscious attempt to make this race fade into history.

There are not many full-blooded Aboriginals left. There are not that many in cities, and most are in remote areas. They still have very serious problems, but they are hardly any kind of threat to the rest of Australians in any way. At the moment, alcohol and drugs are the worst problems, and fetal alcohol syndrome is epidemic among them. The damaged children are petty criminals and find it hard to function on their own.

When the Whites first showed up, Aboriginals were waging their own war of extinction on the Negritos of Australia, who may have been there even before the Aborigines showed.

The Negritos are the first people out of Africa 70,000 years ago, who moved along the Indian Ocean to SE Asia, leaving trace populations (or relatives) behind (possibly) in Yemen, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, the Andaman Islands, Malaysia, the Philippines and New Guinea.

The journey taken by early man out of Africa 70,000 years ago. As you can see, one line goes to Australia. Negritos, not Aborigines, were probably the first people in Australia.

The first Whites witnessed Aborigines hunting Negritos the way man would hunt wild animals. They were killed just for the pleasure of it, and because they were small.

Early investigations revealed and photographed some relict populations in Southwest Queensland around Brisbane, Gold Coast, Tin Can Bay, Fraser Island, Blue Lake National Park, Gympie, Tewantin, Cooloola National Park, Tiaro, and the general area of the Mary River. There was another large population in Northeastern Queensland around Cairns and Cape York. Tasmanians also seem to have had Negrito characteristics.

A photo of Australian Negritos from the Cairns rainforest, taken in 1890, found by Tindale in 1937. He went looking for some Negritos in the area and found a few of them. I haven't seen any genetic studies on these people, since there are few if any of them left, but studies did seem to show that like most Negritos, they are most closely related genetically to the people around them, in this case, the Aborigines.

Native Tasmanians are now apparently extinct. They were also hunted like animals for decades.

The people that we commonly know as Aborigines (or at least one group called Carpentarians named for the Gulf of Carpentaria in Northern Australia) seem to have come much later from Southern India (and seem related to the Veddoids) and largely replaced the Negritos, a genocide that was in its final phases when the Whites showed up.

Indo-Melanid Yanadi boys in Southern India. Note the resemblance with Aborigines. Unfortunately, cranial studies do not show a relationship with Veddoid types and Aborigines. However, genes did seem to show a link a while back. Nevertheless, cranially and surely genetically, these Yanadis are Caucasians.

They may be some of the most ancient Caucasians of them all. It's fascinating to think that the Aborigines as we know them are the original people, but were actually later arrivals from India and the Pacific Rim respectively.

The Carpentarians showed up about 15,000 years ago, were darker and had little body hair.

A classic Aborigine, probably a cross between an Ainu type and an early South Indian type. These types were generalized across India and SE Asia about 24,000 years ago.

Another group, called Murrayians, are apparently related to the Ainu, and arrived 20,000 years ago. The Ainu are thought to be the remnants of the original people of Northern Asia. They were stocky, wavy-haired, hairy, and fairly light-skinned.

A photo of Ainu Yasli Adam in traditional garb. I love this photo. Note that he could be mistaken for an Aborigine or a Caucasian. Anthropological studies suggest that Ainu types showed up in Australia about 20,000 years ago. There seems to be evidence of them in Thailand around 16,000 years ago, and about this time they went to Japan to form a very early Japanese culture called the Jomonese. There is a suggestion that proto-Jomonese people were also in Thailand around this time.

At the same time, the Americas were being populated by types that best resemble the Ainu. These are the Paleoindians, and the Amerindians today are no relation, no matter how much they scream. The famous Kennewick Man is also a Paleoindian most closely related to an Ainu or a Maori. He only appears Caucasian because the Ainu types do look Caucasian. However, in facial structure, they are Australoid, and genetically, they are Asians.

Complete moron White nationalists claim that Kennewick Man is a White Man, and this proves that Whites were here before Amerindians, and therefore the whole continent is ours. Stupid or what? I'm going to do a whole post taking these clowns to task over this. In traditional early anthropology of the Philippines, a group called the proto-Malay is postulated.

They arrived after the Negritos and after an Australoid group called Sakais, who seem to resemble Veddoids or the Senoi of Malaysia. The proto-Malay are described as short and very hairy. A hairy Asian sounds like an Ainu, and indeed, there were Jomon types in Thailand, and Ainu types may have settled Australia 20,000 years ago, and the Americas 12,000 years ago.

In short, Ainu types were on the move around the Pacific Rim from 12-20,000 years ago, and may even have settled in the Philippines. This is real cutting-edge stuff here and I am totally going out on a limb. Feel free to dive in.

An Australian fossil called Kow Swamp from 20,000 YBP curiously looks more like Homo Erectus than Homo Sapiens.

The Negritos were least advanced, then the Murrayians, then the Carpentarians.

Tindale and Birdsell did the best work on the peopling of Australia long ago and much of it stands to this day. In between the 1960's saw such idiocies as pan-Aboriginalism, which mandated that all Aborigines had to come from a single source.

Ridiculous theories postulated Negritos not as ancient remnants of the first modern humans in their regions, but as the result of microevolution (in particular, to living in a rain forest) and evolutionary drift.

This same scenario plays out in Africa, where Bantus kill Pygmies just for the fun of it, and take special pleasure in eating them. This old habit has come back with the horrible civil war in Zaire that has killed 5 million people.

In the Philippines, Negritos have been murdered by settlers for their land for decades now, with few legal consequences. The remainder are a defeated people, their lands stolen by Filipinos, working for Filipinos on their former lands as agricultural labor, living in squatter villages, families falling apart, riven by alcohol, dope and even pornography.

A full-grown Ati woman. The Ati, a Philippines Negrito group, live on Panay Island, where they number about 1,500. The Filipinos have been stealing their land and killing them when they resist for decades now, and the government could care less. The Negritos of the Philippines are starting to look like a defeated race.

On the Andaman Islands, most of the Negritos have gone extinct due to disease. The few remainders, for some odd reason, are afflicted with very low fertility, that is, the women seem to be unable to bear children. Is this nature's way of marking the extinction of a race?

Andaman Islands Negritos. Contact with advanced civilization is fatal to them. They have some immunity to malaria, but none to Hepatitis, venereal diseases or even the common cold or the flu. They quickly succumb to venereal disease, violent crime, beggary, and sloth upon contact with modern civilization.

There is a group on the Sentinel Islands that attacks all researchers who come near. Indian nationalist fuckheads keep sending expeditions to "bring them into civilization" but every Andamans group that has come to the modern world has been destroyed. Long may the Sentinelese prosper in the Paleolithic glory.

I actually think these Stone Age chicks are kinda cute. Hell with modern woman anyway. Every one I meet wants to know my net worth. Think these babes care? Hell with Late Capitalism, how do I get me one of these Negrito chicks anyway?

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Mariposa County and Madera County Fires

The state of California is currently undergoing its worst fire crisis in history. There are 330 wildfires burning in the state. We are still early in the fire season.

At the moment, the temperature is 90 degrees in Coarsegold.

The Big Sur Fire is still a pretty big deal, especially on its northeast end. Awesome coverage of that fire is on the Firefighter Blog. Even better is SurFire2008.org.

All told, these 11 fires on the Sierra National Forest burned 3,825 acres in late June and early July. All of the fires are controlled and mop-up and rehabilitation is ongoing. As of 2 PM July 3, there have been 20 injuries, three moderate and 17 minor, from the Oliver fire, but not one structure has been burned.

Oliver Fire:The cost of this fire has grown to 12.2 million. It was contained on July 5. Right now, the focus is on damage assessment and repair.

I toured the area of the Oliver Fire on July 3. There is not much to see. A bit of smoke can be seen from the Chowchilla River Bridge on Highway 49. You can also see some dead trees if you look closely.

I went up Chowchilla Mountain Road past Ponderosa Basin. Where the road turns to dirt, I drove until it is no longer maintained. Past the end of road maintenance, you can see where the firefighters were starting backfires and cutting down some of the thick brush and small trees. There, you can see the fire on the opposing mountain to the north of the road. It's burning, but not much.

The fire does not appear to have ever gotten close to Chowchilla Mountain Road, at least the portion that I drove. Whereas Ponderosa Basin was well-cleared of vegetation, that part of Chowchilla Mountain Road was incredibly overgrown with live oak, manzanita, Ponderosa Pine and God knows what else.

I then drove down Aurora Court (map). This dirt road was really terrible and was barely even drivable in a regular car. I finally turned around after a mile or so. You could see the fire burning on Crow Peak (map) to the north. At one point, the fire seemed to have burned down to Aurora Court itself.

On the slope opposite, it was still thickly forested, but the trees were brown instead of green because they burned. Actually, a number of the large trees will survive the burn and grow back.

A great deal of underbrush, including berry bushes and oaks, especially Black Oaks, will grow in the aftermath. Around here, wildlife use this type of underbrush quite a bit, and Black Oaks seem to be declining due to excessively thick evergreens, as Black Oaks need some sunlight to grow until they get tall enough.

This was not a fire that denuded slopes. They often don't in the Sierra Nevada because the vegetation is so thick, there is a lot of precipitation and the fires do not tend to burn extremely hot.

At the moment, there were mostly inmate crews working on the fire. These are minimum security prisoners from California prisons who have five years or less on their sentences and in general they are not a problem. They are paid $1/hour to fight fires, which is much more than they usually make. They're all volunteers, and they love to do this work.

Further, after their sentences are over, many go on to work for the CDF fire crews. California's prisons are full and overflowing. It is important for former inmates returning to society to have employment available to them.

I know a lot of young men around Madera who are on probation or have adult felonies on their records. They are finding it almost impossible to find work. It's understandable to punish people for being convicted of crimes. I've been convicted of a couple of misdemeanors myself.

Whether people need to be punished beyond their sentences is a good subject for debate. If we don't let them work, they just turn to sloth, beggary, crime and a sociopathic mindset.

Next I drove over to Jerseydale. You cannot see any of the fire burning in that area, although it is very beautiful.


Silver Knob Fire: This fire is 100% contained. The fire burned 570 acres.


Westfall Fire: This fire is 100% contained. The final tally on this fire was 105 acres burned. I toured the area of this fire from the road that turns off Highway 41 to the west just before Miami Mountain Road. Along the road to the north, you can see evidence of this fire.

It did not burn very hot, and mostly just burned along the ground and scorched some trees. Most if not all of the trees will survive. Even most of the manzanita bushes that burned were not killed, so this was not a hot fire at all. I drove for 2-3 miles west to where the road becomes almost undriveable in a passenger car, and then turned around. There are some really spectacular views to the south on this road.


The Star Fire near Star Lakes burned 400 acres and was contained on July 4.

The Chiquito Fire burned 54 acres and is 100% contained.


The Poison Fire burned 1 acre and is contained.


The Gagg Fire burned 1 acre is out.


The remaining four fires have been contained.


The Oliver Fire or the Oliver Creek Fire (formerly the Aurora Fire) burned on Chowchilla Mountain. The Oliver Fire burned north of Ponderosa Basin at about 3,300-6,500 feet in mixed brush and Ponderosa Pine forest in Mariposa County.

Chowchilla Mountain had not burned in 20 years and there have been very few fires there in the past 50 years. This has caused a huge amount of fuel to build up.

Here is a link to a pretty cool online scanner called the Central California Fire Feed that supposedly has very up-to-date fire information on it. It will play in an I Tunes Player. I wasn't able to get anything useful out of it.

A photo of the Oliver Fire burning around 7 PM June 23. Photo credit John Walker/Fresno Bee. That is the home of Joe and Yuki Carbaugh, and can easily be seen from the Highway 49 bridge. That home is on Harris Cutoff Road, which is one Hell of a crappy dirt road (I just drove it yesterday evening).

The Westfall Fire was located near Westfall Ranger Station on Highway 41 at about 5,000 feet in the mixed conifer forest. That's on the Madera-Mariposa County line.

The Silver Knob Fire burned near the Silver Knob (a 5,300 foot mountain west of Sugar Pine, northeast of Nipinawasee and just off Miami Mountain Road). It burned near a community called Cedarbrook.

Spectacular view of one of the fires apparently burning in heavy timber somewhere in Mariposa County.

Oakhurst Fires

          Acres  Acres+  %increase

12AM   6-23  105    ---     ---

1PM    6-23  240    135     128%

2PM    6-24  1490   1250    438%

845PM  6-24  1890   400     79%

7PM    6-25  2545   655     35%

9PM    6-26  2942   397     16%

9AM    6-27  2992   50      2%

7PM    6-28  3270   278     9%

845AM  6-30  3775   505     15%

---    7-5   3775   0       0%





Westfall Fire (100% contained)

        Acres  Acres+  %increase

12AM 6-23  30     --      --

1PM  6-23  40     10      33%

9AM  6-25  50     10      25%

7PM  6-25  105    55      110%



Oliver Fire (100% contained)

         Acres Acres+  %increase

12AM   6-23 75    ---     ---

1PM    6-23 200   125     166%

2PM    6-24 1000  800     400%

8PM    6-24 1400  400     40%

7PM    6-25 2000  600     43%

7:30PM 6-26 2200  200     10%

7PM    6-28 2306  106     5%

8:45AM 6-30 2789  483     21%

---    7-5  2789  0       0%



Silver Knob Fire (100% contained)

       Acres  Acres+  %increase

5:30PM 6-23 300    ---     ---

2PM    6-24 400    100     33%

9AM    6-25 480    80      20%

9PM    6-26 480    0       0%

9AM    6-27 570    90      19%



Star Fire (100% contained)

         Acres  Acres+  %increase

2PM    6-24 30     ---     ---

9AM    6-25 45     15      50%

9PM    6-26 200    155     440%

9AM    6-27 160    -40     -20%

6PM    6-28 330    170     106%

9AM    6-30 350    20      6%

---    7-4  350    0       0%





Chiquito Fire (100% contained)

      Acres  Acres+  %increase

9AM 6-25 10     ---     ---

9AM 6-26 52     42      320%

9AM 6-29 54     2       4%

The fires were sparked by dry lighting storms that struck all over the northern half of the state on Saturday amidst record-breaking high temperatures.

The local creek here where I stay sometimes, Oak Creek, went dry on the third week of June. That's about 5 weeks early. It usually goes dry at the beginning of August.

Another view of a typical Oak Creek prefab. A whole lot of these homes are up for sale now, but it seems like nobody is buying. You have to pay $500/month to a homeowners' association, so in a way, it's like you're still renting.


This is what the homes in Oak Creek look like. This pic appears to have been taken in the rain. It rains about 20 inches a year here. This is where I stay when I come to the area.


Oak Creek Village as they were building it. There is quite a bit of wildlife around here. I have seen a bobcat near Oak Creek itself and others have seen a mountain lion around here. There are killdeer and California kingsnakes. Recently, I saw what appeared to be a sharp-shinned hawk attack and kill an acorn woodpecker right near where I was staying. The other woodpeckers mobbed the hawk as it carried away the member of their colony.

Even Coarsegold Creek is dry in much of its course in Coarsegold at the moment. That's awfully strange for the start of summer. Usually it goes dry in late summer to early fall.

Coarsegold Creek. Not sure where this was taken, but it was probably taken somewhere nearby. The terrain here, at 2,200 feet, is pretty much Interior Like Oak Woodland at least on the shady side of the hills. On the dry side, it is more of an open oak savanna.

<View of the smoke from the three large fires burning in the area. Even a relatively small fire can put out quite a bit of smoke if it burning trees and brush.

We're totally used to fires out here in California. I tell my friends in other parts of the country or world about them and they get all freaked out. If your own house isn't going to burn down or you're not going to get burned up yourself, it's no worries. Actually, they're kind of exciting.

One thing that is interesting is that fires create their own weather. For instance, there will be no wind at all, and then you drive over by the fire and there's a bit of a breeze whipping around. The fire is actually creating that wind by itself. Another thing is you really should not get too close to these fires.

I was watching one in Hacienda Heights, California, in 1989. The fire was burning really fast down this chaparral-covered hillside. Then these animals started running out of the brush, one by one! It was a trip to watch them. They'd run out of the brush and then there would be a crowd of people and they would not know what to do.

First a deer came careening out, and then another one. Then a woodrat came running out. That's a furry wild rat that lives in the brush - it's nothing like a dirty city rat at all. It builds huge nests out of brush and everything you could possibly think of, and that's where it lives. That's where the word pack rat comes from, because these rats will grab just about anything weird and stick in their stick houses.

Then a little deer mouse came running out. That's a wild mouse with huge ears that lives in the woods - it's nothing like the pests in your house at all. I've captured them when my cat caught them. Just put on a pair of surgical gloves and pick it up by the tail and put it on your hand. Then you can examine it or measure it or whatever.

If it was really messed up, I just gave it back to the cat, otherwise, I let it go. Then wash your hands afterwards and throw the gloves in hot soapy water, because can carry weird diseases.

Anyway, then this owl starts circling around in the middle of the day! That's the first time I've ever seen a Great Horned Owl in broad daylight, but I guess they figure a lot of rodents are going to come running out of the brush.

Then the fire starting getting closer. Well, at that point, look up in the air. You will see these damned embers flying around, often great big ones. They will start landing all around you and catching stuff on fire. I guess if they land on you, they burn you. These things actually fly like 100 yards or so ahead of the fire and some are big as banana peels.

At that point, you really need to get the Hell out and you're probably going to get a forced evac anyway.

This time of the year, you can look out at the Central Valley any day and see fires burning from somewhere in Central and Southern California. The smoke from a fire looks different from smog, so you can tell where the fires are. It's not scary or anything; it's just normal.

I do have a feeling that this is going to be a long, hot summer though in terms of fires. No way is it supposed to be this bad at the start of summer. Are you kidding? Jesus, I wonder what September will be like?