Richard the Third

[amateur51]

An awful lot of people fell for Tony Blair, didn't they?

Well, after thirteen years of Thatcher & Major, can you blame them for falling for 'Things Can Only Get Better'?

[MrGongGong]

Well, after thirteen years of Thatcher & Major, can you blame them for falling for 'Things Can Only Get Better'? ;whistle:

not his greatest work IMV

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDkVS-AN4NU

[gurnemanz]

A headline in my paper suggests that the discovery of the eminent skeleton will make Leicester a popular tourist destination.... A trifle optimistic?

[amateur51]

A headline in my paper suggests that the discovery of the eminent skeleton will make Leicester a popular tourist destination.... A trifle optimistic?

There's a cracking Wetherspoons and a gay pub that does Karaoke on Tuesdays and .....

[MrGongGong]

A headline in my paper suggests that the discovery of the eminent skeleton will make Leicester a popular tourist destination.... A trifle optimistic?

I'm a big fan of Leicester
Great curry (the best Dosa's outside Tooting)
Great music (DMU & De Montfort Hall)
Some wonderful buildings (Peacock Cafe for a start)
Great market
until recently the greatest prog record shop in the universe

what's not to love ?

and gay pub that does Karaoke on Tuesdays

which combined with the electroacoustic festival at DMU makes it a perfect destination

[teamsaint]

The Space Centre.
decent sport.
That festival with the Oysterband, (though that got moved I think).

[MrGongGong]

This place

http://www.cafebruxelles.net/

[Nick Armstrong]

This place

http://www.cafebruxelles.net/

Astonishing.

Plus it's at the heart of some of the best place and street names in the country:

Kirkby Muxloe
Barton-in-the-Beans
Frisby-on-the-Wreake
Newtown Unthank
Flesh Hovel Lane
Raw Dykes
Butthole Lane
Along The Bottom

[teamsaint]

Astonishing.

Plus it's at the heart of some of the best place and street names in the country:

Kirkby Muxloe
Barton-in-the-Beans
Frisby-on-the-Wreake
Newtown Unthank
Flesh Hovel Lane
Raw Dykes
Butthole Lane
Along The Bottom

Surely made up over a leisurely lunch....in Carlton Scroop?

[Nick Armstrong]

Surely made up over a leisurely lunch....in Carlton Scroop?

All true, me duck! ('cept the lunch bit)

[teamsaint]

All true, me duck! ('cept the lunch bit)

interesting expression that...I have heard some convoluted things about it coming from French , (Medoc?), but personally, I think it refers , in fact, to ducks.
"Ta Duckie." Like your own little bit of the East Midlands if you use it regularly !!

[Petrushka]

Astonishing.

Plus it's at the heart of some of the best place and street names in the country:

Kirkby Muxloe
Barton-in-the-Beans
Frisby-on-the-Wreake
Newtown Unthank
Flesh Hovel Lane
Raw Dykes
Butthole Lane
Along The Bottom

I have close friends who live not a million miles away from Barton-in-the-Beans and when I used to work with the female half of the couple we had many a laugh at some of the place names thereabouts. I was near there a fortnight ago.

[Nick Armstrong]

interesting expression that...I have heard some convoluted things about it coming from French , (Medoc?), but personally, I think it refers , in fact, to ducks.
"Ta Duckie." Like your own little bit of the East Midlands if you use it regularly !!

"Me duck" is a phrase from my Nottingham roots, heard in many a shop.

"Duckie" has a slightly different connotation...

[Mr Pee]

You didn't read the article did you? It has to be all colour and movement with you

And there we are, sadly; the usual insulting deprecation.

I did read the article, and it contains nothing whatsoever that is relevant.

[Pabmusic]

There is an article in The Guardian about the form of DNA they were testing, mitochondria, which is not the same as the main DNA. I will not attempt to elaborate, being no scientist!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2013/feb/04/richard-iii-skeleton-bone-dna?intcmp=239

However, given what the article says about the DNA probably not being conclusive, I still believe that given the location, the wounds and the curvature of the spine that this is certainly Richard III. Also, it appears the skeleton has a very slight, effeminate, frame which also fits into historical descriptions of him. I would agree, as mentioned upthread, that he should be buried according to Roman Catholic rites (I think this has been done being when other pre-reformation skeletons have been disinterred and reburied on consecrated ground?) I have not as yet seen the C4 programme.

Mitochondria are really interesting things. They're part of ourselves, found in every eukaryotic cell (i.e.: most of them) in our bodies, but are actually believed to have originally been parasitic proto-bacteria that formed the closest possible symbiotic relationship with the host organism to create the eukaryotic cell in the first place. Without the energy they brought to the party, our ancestors could never have become as complex (and large) as they did. This was all well (well) over a billion years ago. They have a separate supply of DNA from the main batch that's carried in the cell, and the mitochondrial DNA comes only from the mother (that's because the eggs contain eukaryotic cells and the sperms don't). We can trace the mitochondrial DNA back over 200,000 years to a very small group (13 or fewer) of females in Africa. They weren't the first humans, of course, just the ones whose bloodlines didn't go extinct.

The reason that mitochondrial DNA isn't so useful for identification is that it's not 'stereoscopic' - it comes from only one parent, so there isn't a second line that intersects to pinpoint an origin. What the results mean so far is that the skeleton is from the same female line as the two known descendants of Richard III. There are two other types of DNA - what you could call 'general' DNA (the overwhelming majority of it) that carries exactly half its information from each parent) and Y-chromosome DNA, which carries information only from the father. It is the analysis of the general DNA that will allow identification to take place, because the 'stereoscoping' will be possible.