A daily series, Connect! Unite! Act! seeks to create face-to-face networks in each congressional district. Groups regularly socialize but also get out the vote, support candidates and engage in other local political actions that help our progressive movement grow and exert influence on the powers-that-be. Visit us at Daily Kos every morning at 7:30 A.M. Pacific Time to see how you can get involved. The comment thread is fun and light-hearted, but we're serious about moving the progressive political agenda forward.
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If you'd like to join a group, click on a point and a box will pop up showing contact links.
If you'd like to start a group, contact navajo for instructions.
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What all makes you who you are?
I was inspired to write about this today due to something that was going around the internet the past few days. Then I saw Meteor Blades write about it in Midday Open Thread yesterday. That sussed it. I decided to write about it in today's CUA.
We all know about the nurture vs. nature dichotomy in determining who we are. Is who you are mostly determined by your inherited genes or from your experiences growing up? I'll tell you my opinion, which is only that. I believe our basic temperament and physical health comes from the genes we inherit. It's like a piece of marble. Experience then sculpts and shapes it.
From what I've seen 60% or more of who you ultimately end up being is determined by one thing: were you loved, cherished and nurtured as a child. It seems to be the delineator which mostly establishes how our life flows for us more than anything else.
OK, that's all in the realm of psychology and has to do with the nurture aspect of who we are. What about the nature part of who we are... the "marble" that then gets sculpted by life's experiences?
In seventh grade science we all learned about Gregory Mendel and his peas. He was figuring out the concept of genetics using peas with different colored flowers, different heights, different shaped seeds, etc. He cross pollinated them to see what happened. He discovered there were dominant traits and recessive traits. The results he came up with were pretty straight forward.
If one pea had two copies of the dominant gene and the other pea had one dominant and one recessive gene, say the gene that coded for flower color, the offspring should turn out 75% like the dominant parent's genes and 25% like the parent who carried the recessive gene.
But he didn't know about genes. He saw the pattern that happened, repeatedly.
More after the orange strands of DNA intermingling
Latest Updates on Regional Meet-Up News Can Be Found Below the Orange Group Hug.
Well, that's mostly true when dealing with plants, but not always. It gets much stranger when dealing with animals. Mendel's model of inheritance ruled the day until we were able to really understand the genomes of DNA and genes which has truly only happened since the 1970's. That's where things got weird.
Back when I was taking courses like biochemistry, microbiology and pathophysiology just happened to coincide with the time genome stuff was really coming on board. And with that something fishy started showing up. For instance when you breed a cow with a bull, according to the Mendel model, 50% of the genes of the offspring should come from each parent with dominant bits cancelling out recessive bits. When they were finally able to check the genomes of the parents and the offspring individually, they discovered it really doesn't work out that way. In some cases more than 75% of the offspring's genes being expressed came from one parent. Weird. After studying it more it became apparent offspring aren't an even 50-50 when it comes to what they inherit from their parents.
We've all seen this in children born of the same parents. One child will look more like dad and another will look more like mom. In smileycreeks' family (she's one of eight children) they talk about which side of the family each child came from as in, "you're a Hunt" (her mom's side).
Charles Darwin believed the environment an animal experienced caused evolution in the species that was passed down to offspring. Let's just say at the time it was very controversial. A prevailing argument against it was, even if it were true, it would take millions of years to happen. Charles thought otherwise and believed evolution could occur much more quickly.
Well, later we learned Charles was actually right. There can be genetic changes that occur in just one generation. If parents have very intense experiences, their offspring can inherit mutated DNA. A lot of this understanding came from studying people after the end of WWII in Europe.
When the Germans bombed London over and over, folks went into bomb shelters. Women who were pregnant released stress hormones repeatedly. This changed the amniotic fluid which affected the fetus, primarily in temperament, but times of high stress in a community also affected the numbers of each sex of children born. It turns out that in situations like this, fewer baby boys will be born compared to girls.
In mammals, female is the blueprint. Males are mutants. So why does a lot of stress during pregnancy change the normal ratio of girls and boys being born?
One line of thinking is the Y chromosome is weaker than the X chromosome and so stress hormones being released repeatedly makes it too hard for male fetuses to make it. Another theory is that war and destruction is so common (essentially the experience of every single generation since humans have been here), that more girls are born because there will have to be an increase in babies to make up for the loss of life in the tribe. You need more women to have more future babies.
After a 1944 Dutch famine, children born to those who lived through it were smaller and so where their children, even though they'd gotten enough to eat. They also had glucose intolerance. It took two full generations to rectify the genetic changes caused by famine.
The Holocaust caused such intense trauma for those who survived it that their offspring were genetically altered and so are their children as well.
This type of mutation is called epigenetic inheritance. It's really not fully understood how this happens. The DNA sequence itself doesn't change, but alterations to it occur (mostly -CH3 groups get added to the DNA in what's called DNA methylation).
Here are some links for those who might want more depth:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/...
http://www.nature.com/...
https://en.wikipedia.org/...
http://qz.com/...
Who are you? What were all the factors that went into making you?
Let's Build Communities!
Our team is here to provide support and guidance to new and existing volunteer leaders of each regional and state group, helping them with recruiting, organizing and executing social and action events.
We invite you to join in this effort to build our community. There are many ways to pitch in.
If there isn't a group to join near you, please start one.
Instructions on HOW TO FORM A NEW DAILY KOS GROUP
List of All Existing Meatspace Groups
Where the Kogs Are: Index/Directory of the 130+ Localized Daily Kos Groups
THINK GLOBALLY, ACT LOCALLY
Colorado: Wednesdays, 6:00 PM Mountain
Michigan: Wednesdays, 6:00 PM Eastern
North Carolina: Sundays, 1:00 PM Eastern
Washington: Sundays, 3:30 PM Pacific
Event Organizers! Please contact wink from Netrootsradio.com by KosMail to schedule airtime with them to live broadcast the date of your Event. Wink & Justice will then promote it on The After Show radio program!
Wednesday, August 26th
Houston Kos Meet-up
TIME: 7:00 PM
LOCATION: Barry's Pizza
6003 Richmond Avenue • Houston
ORGANIZER: Send Chrislove a kosmail to attend
RSVPs:
1. Chrislove
2. Blood
3. Delilah
4. suesue
5. jmbar2
6. cosette
7. htowngenie
8. JJR1971
9. scott5js
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Maybees:
suesue daughter
suesue son-in-law
Blood guest
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Latest diary: Houston Area Kossacks: Meetup Scheduled for Wednesday, August 26
Saturday, September 26th
Dallas Kos Meet-up
TIME: Noon
LOCATION: Ojeda's Mexican Restaurant
4617 Maple Avenue • Dallas
ORGANIZER: Send Andy T a kosmail to attend
RSVPs:
1. Andy T
2. Catte Nappe
3.
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Maybees: |
Latest diary: Dallas Kossacks Round Up and Meet-Up!
Saturday, September 26, 2015
Daily Kos Connects Asheville
LOCATION: US Cellular Center in the Banquet Hall
87 Haywood Street • Asheville, North Carolina
Grow our network, unite our progressive communities, help win elections!
Join us for a day of progressive strategizing and camaraderie with Big Orange flavor. In a day-long seminar, learn how our Connect! Unite! Act! team used the Daily Kos forum to help affect change in North Carolina state politics. Participants will focus on organizing from the ground up. You'll also get a chance to meet the blog's founder, Markos Moulitsas and some Daily Kos writers, such as Joan McCarter, Meteor Blades, Denise Oliver-Velez and others.
8:00 AM - Registration and continental breakfast
9:00 AM - Presentations, panels and Q&A's begin
Noon - Free lunch provided
1:00 PM - More presentations, panels and Q&A's
5:00 PM - After party at nearby Lexington Avenue Brewery, 39 North Lexington Avenue. You'll need a wristband from the day event to get in.
$30 registration fee required for Saturday's events
Seating is limited to 200.
Parking at US Cellular
Pre-Events:
Friday, September 25, 2015
12:30 PM - 2:30 PM
Location TBD
Rev. William Barber II, president of the NC NAACP, will welcome Daily Kos to Asheville and speak about the Moral Monday Movement • No charge for this event
Friday, September 25, 2015
5:30 - 8:30 PM
No-Host Mixer, The Bywater, 796 Riverside Drive
(2.5 miles from hotel and US Cellular)
Post-Event:
Sunday, September 27, 2015
9:00 AM - 11:00 AM
No-Host Brunch, Crowne Plaza, 1 Resort Drive,
Overlook Restaurant
Logistics:
Hotel providing the best rate:
Crowne Plaza, 1 Resort Drive
Double-bed rooms available:
Thursday, 09/24/15 - $129.00 plus 11% tax
Friday, 09/25/15 - $209.00 plus 11% tax
Saturday, 09/26/15 - $209.00 plus 11% tax
Reservations: 888-211-7755
Mention KOS as the group code.
Hotel Airport Shuttle cost:
14.5 miles from AVL Airport
Hotel Shuttle to/from AVL Airport $20 per person, each way.
Flight details must be provided to hotel 72 hours in advance notice for arrivals, 24-hour notice for departures.
Hotel Shuttle to US Cellular $5 per person, round-trip
Drop-off location is 0.2 mile walk from US Cellular
Questions? Need a scholarship? Send me a kosmail.
navajo's Last Minute Trip to DC
by navajo ♥ for Connect! Unite! Act!
Here are two photos of the readers who took up a last minute invitation to join navajo for dinner or drinks, many thanks, what a pleasure to meet them all in real life!
Reston, VA - Thursday, August 13, 2015
L-R: Diana in NoVa, JamieG in Md, Elizabeth Amy Miller, Edward Adams, NinthElegy and navajo
Washington, D.C. - Saturday, August 15, 2015
L-R: navajo, mollyd, Edward Adams and mimi
by navajo ♥ for Connect! Unite! Act!
Outstanding leadership in Colorado forced Daily Kos to make a personal appearance.
We had a terrific event in Denver on Sunday, July 26th with 50 readers of Daily Kos. Read the details about it
here.
A special thanks to Leftcandid and ColoTim for leading the Daily Kos Denver group! Leftcandid spent several hours after the event inputting all the email addresses collected. These two are determined and that's why we made this trip happen!
If you'd like to join Denver Kos, please kosmail Leftcandid.
The following evening, Monday, July 27th, we had 30 readers attend. Read the details about it
here.
Another very successful event, great food, drink and conversation! We both gots lots of hearty handshakes and thank yous.
If you'd like to join Pikes Peak Region Kos, please kosmail thanatokephaloides.
Durango, which is 314 miles from Colorado Springs, was our final destination. Our early evening venue was the beautiful home of
nzanne and her husband. It was very generous of them to host. We had 32 Durangotangs attend.
What a pleasure to visit beautiful Durango! A special thanks to Thinking Fella for setting such a great example of leadership by winning a seat with his local Democratic Party Executive Committee! Yes! Go Local!
Durango had the largest collection of readers with user names:
L-R: Thinking Fella, mnguitar, COMTNGRL, Meteor Blades, nzanne,
Gary Norton, navajo, Merry Light and Warkman
If you'd like to join Four Corners Kos, please kosmail Thinking Fella.
The entire state of Colorado has almost 50,000 subscribers to our Daily Kos emails. We can't wait to tap into that more. We've got a lot of organizing ahead of us for Colorado. Leaders, please step up!
We've declared this road trip a great success and look forward to doing some more around the country. It's important to unite entire states in addition to cities and towns. I hope you'll contribute in some way to this effort.
by AndyT ♥ for Dallas Kossacks
AndyT had his largest event ever, 28 people in Dallas! Here's one photo:
Please visit AndyT's diary for many MORE photos! Enjoy! You can still REC it. You can join Dallas Kossacks by sending a Kosmail to AndyT.
by ZenTrainer ♥ for Nashville KosKats
Clockwise from bottom right: Anonymous L, Anonymous M,
Patrick is Lucky, Zen Trainer's water, Jon Sitzman, Al Fondy
You can join Nashville KosKats by sending a Kosmail to ZenTrainer.
by GreyHawk ♥ for Boston Kossacks
Mad Mary, CwV, a snapshot via his blog of gmoke, GreyHawk, HawkWife, Knockbally
You can join Boston Kossacks by sending a Kosmail to GreyHawk.
by Sara R ♥ for Koscadia
L-R: ozsea1, also mom of 5 (hiding), winglion, Faye, pdxteacher, quill, Sara R & AK Bear
You can join Koscadia by sending a Kosmail to Sara R.
navajo maintains the above event list. Kosmail her if you have any diaries
about your event or if you have changes or additions.
EVERYONE is welcome, tell us what you're working on,
share your show and tell, vent, whatever you want.
This is an open thread. Nothing is off topic.