Of Google, Capitalism and Omid Kordestani

There was an interesting internal discussion today which centered on the fact that at $300/share, everyone's favorite Google is valued roughly at $70 Billion/USD. This is more than GM and Disney combined, measured by GDP an independent naiton of Google-astan (or Googlia) would rank in the top 50 wealthiest nations on earth.

The question is whether such a rich valuation is justified; as everyones favorite Jeremy Grantham recently noted “If profit margins aren't mean-reverting, then capitalism is broken.”

Well, there is a tidbit of what insiders of Google actually think about the situation. Mr. Omed Kordestani, a senior VP of stuff at Google, has recently (June) sold almost 43% of his internal stock. And cleared cool $259 million for doing whatever the senior VP's of stuff are doing.

Unlike the general investing public which tends to actually purchase their stock on the open market, insiders such as Mr. Kordestani are given said stock options from the big black magick hat, out of the thin air they come and into the frenzied markets they go. No personal funds of Mr. Kordestani are involved, nor does he have to take any particular risks, except for obviously the risk of not selling out.

$259 Million is a great vote of confidence in the company, its direction, valuation and serves as a hint of what smooth market operators think of capitalism. It ain't broken. It is merely full of hot air and will come down crashing, similar to countless other dot-has-beens.


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On iPod: Tomorrow Doesn't Matter Tonight 3:44 Jefferson Airplane Hits (CD 2) Rock 1 2/19/2005 10:54 AM

Tracking Armenian DNA: Part 2

My test results finally came back. Here is my full DNA profile:

Main Haplogroup: R1B M343
STR's
Location Number

1. DYS393 12
2. DYS19 15
3. DYS391 11
4. DYS439 13
5. DYS389-1 13
6. DYS389-2 15
7. DYS388 12
8. DYS390 25
9. DYS426 12
10. DYS385a 11
11. DYS385b 14
12. DYS392 14

What does this mean ? Well, according tto the report R1B is the main European lineage, some 70% of men in England are R1b. In parts of Spain and Ireland that number exceeds 90 percent.
However, there are many sub-lineages within R1B that are yet to be defined.

From what I understood the R1B is split into 2 main groups based on the DYS393 marker. These two groups waited out the last big European glacier at opposite ends of the Mediterranean (Iberia and Anatolia.) Iberia group predominantly has 13 at DYS393 whereas the Anatolia group has 12.

There is a study on Anatolian Haplogroups called Excavating Y-chromosome haplotype strata in Anatolia; according to this study the most frequent haplotype in Armenia (Weale et al. 2001) is R1a1-M17 and it is also the most common type in Turkey.

Some of interesting tidbits from this and another paper, appropriately named Armenian Y chromosome haplotypes reveal strong regional structure within a single ethno-national group

• Most Armenians, Georgians and Greeks are genetically very close (most Greeks (22.8% Greeks/14.3% Macedonian Greeks) belong to J-M172 and its subclades which is associated with Neolithic population movements

• Armenians are about 25% J - M172 , Georgians are about 85% J - 172

• Armenian genetic patterns suggest a high degree of genetic isolation in the mountainous southern and eastern regions, while in the northern, central and western regions there has been greater mixture with populations from neighbouring countries.
  

• Georgia, to the north of Armenia, also appears genetically more distinct, suggesting that in the past Trans-Caucasia may have acted as a genetic barrier.

My particular lineage is not very common Armenian, based on the number of samples available. As a matter of fact, based on Anatolian patterns data, it is not common in Turkey also.
This suggests that either the turks succeeded in wiping out my family lineage back in 1915 or that there isn't enough data available yet to properly track the genotypes.

I will hold off with the conclusion untill there are more samples available for research.

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On iPod: Tea For Two 3:19 Fats Waller Piano Solos (1929-1941) (CD02) Jazz Piano

Tag: Armenia
Subject: Armenian DNA