Her Work Provided Wonderful Source Material For Her Writing

Her work provided wonderful source material for her writing

I once met a special massuse

Who liked innuendo, obtuse,

Which she then set in rhyme.

And she told me one time,

"I'm the 'rent by the hour' Mother Goose!"

Keith Haring and his subway drawings

A breif history on the development of socialist communities within the democratic state of Israel

Before presenting the limerick, some background knowledge might be necessary:

Chalutz or Halutz - Hebrew: חָלוּץ‎‎, pl. halutzim), Hebrew for a pioneer. It may refer to early Jewish immigrants to Palestine, including Hovevei Zion and Bilu during the First Aliyah, which generally pre-date the founding of Zionism. 

Source: Wikipedia

Kibbutz -  noun, plural kib·but·zim [-boot-seem] 

(in Israel) a community settlement, usually agricultural,organized under collectivist principles*.

Source: Dictionary.com

* collectivist principles, meaning (basically) that everything was shared by all the kibbutz members. This ranged from the profit made by their crops, to dish duty, to living quarters, and even to child-rearing. As interesting as this may sound in theory, it was much more difficult in practice, and most current kibbutzim have become less strict about sharing absolutely everything, while remaining true to the original ideals.

~

With that in mind, please proceed to the following poem (all that buildup is going to kill the limerick, so for my sake, please set your expectations to "low and terrible")

~

Back in the day a Chalutz Decided to join a Kibbutz. He was unaware Among what they share Was a rash that they passed knockin' boots.

~

Also, in case I haven't already explained this limerick to death, "knocking boots" is a euphemism for sex. Apparently this is not common knowledge. 

"What kind of parent names their kid 'River Song'?" Amy pondered.

The framed, Park City, Utah, Banksy

~

A letter from a female to a male upon realizing they were left behind when their clan migrated (a poem I wrote earlier, but I thought would be funny in this context)

Neanderthals are dead.

Denisovans are too.

You're the only one left,

So I guess you'll do.

Sure, she’s a little weird looking. But after a few dozen fermented berries, you won’t care (Neanderthal woman reconstruction and photo by University of Zurich).

A paper published in Cell this week describes the results of whole-genome sequencing for five Africans from three hunter/gatherer tribes. The paper reports the discovery of “ancient DNA” sequences in all five Africans. The sequences are previously unknown in modern humans, including other modern Africans, and although the sequences are similar neither to modern humans nor to other human populations — such as Neanderthals — the paper’s authors say the DNA sequences most closely resemble Neanderthals.

One of the paper coauthors, U-Dub genomicist Joshua Akey, told the Washington Post that this was evidence a “sister species” of Neanderthals once roamed Africa (weird because Neanderthals are believed to have originated in Europe and their bones have never been found anywhere in Africa, and Neanderthals were not a species).

It’s not impossible that the gist of what Akey is saying is true — that some population of ancient Europeans went south into Africa and bred with local populations — but the evidence he and his colleagues present is not strong enough to support that claim.

I also disagree with the scientists calling the human source of these ancient DNA sequences a “sister species” of Neanderthals. That suggests the population from which these sequences came were European in origin. We don’t know that.

The New York Times article about the Cell paper is better.

At stake here is how modern humans came into being.

The old idea is that our ancestors originated in Africa, then migrated and replaced populations of human-like (but nonhuman) species wherever they ended up.

The newer, more accepted idea is that new humans (who originated in Africa) actually interbred with older humans wherever they went, and this melding of genes helped produce the world’s many unique groups of modern humans.

Despite what the Post and Times articles suggest, Neanderthals were not a separate species — they were human. And so too could the genetic sequences found in these Africans have come from another group of early humans, perhaps endemic to Africa, as yet unnamed, and roaming through and amidst populations of more modern humans, occasionally interbreeding and mixing new genes with old, old genes with new. Gene flow works both ways, after all.