September 30, 2007

Neandertals in Siberia & Central Asia  permlink

Category: Evolution

I don't know if we should believe Svante Pääbo anymore, but his lab has some new findings re: Neandertal mtDNA:...

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Posted by Razib at 2:06 PM • 4 Comments

Good in the name of God  permlink

Category: Religion

I have to say, this Ian Buruma op-ed, Religion as a force for good, read my mind in relation to the events of the past few days. Another rebellion civil society against an autocracy coalescing around the predominant religion of...

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Posted by Razib at 10:28 AM • 5 Comments

September 29, 2007

Carl Zimmer on bloggingheads.tv  permlink

Category: Blog

Carl Zimmer is on bloggingheads.tv....

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Posted by Razib at 1:41 PM • 0 Comments

Atheists still more hated than Mormons & Muslims  permlink

Category: Religion

Pew has a new survey out, Public Expresses Mixed Views of Islam, Mormonism. The table to the left summarizes the most important points in the survey: Americans dislike Islam somewhat more than Mormonism, and they think Mormonism is a...

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Posted by Razib at 11:44 AM • 0 Comments

Important papers on recent human evolution  permlink

Category: Genetics

This post is more of a personal note...here are three papers that are really cool must reads: Williamson SH, Hubisz MJ, Clark AG, Payseur BA, Bustamante CD, et al. (2007) Localizing Recent Adaptive Evolution in the Human Genome. PLoS Genet 3(6): e90 doi:10.1371/journal.pgen.0030090 Voight...

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Posted by Razib at 4:08 AM • 3 Comments

September 28, 2007

Katz  permlink

Category: Blog

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Posted by Razib at 2:47 PM • 10 Comments

How the human species kept it together (?)  permlink

Category: Genetics

Yesterday I put up a post where I attempted to use a visual analogy for what I believe might be evolutionary forces operative over short periods of time that result in phenotypic diversification across populations with recent common ancestry. But...

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Posted by Razib at 10:29 AM • 2 Comments

September 27, 2007

How the human races got their stripes  permlink

Category: Genetics

In my post The new races of man I tried to offer a verbal exposition of my current thinking as to how and why human physical variation shows the patterns we see around us. In short, I believe that powerful...

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Posted by Razib at 5:53 PM • 9 Comments

September 26, 2007

Bangladesh not most corrupt!  permlink

Category: Culture

Here are the rankings for this year according to Transparency International....

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Posted by Razib at 2:49 PM • 0 Comments

A post-Christian America?  permlink

Category: Religion

Regular readers know that I often check in on the results from The Barna Group, an evangelical Christian polling outfit. On the one hand I think The Barna Group tends to be a bit alarmist (they have a very narrow...

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Posted by Razib at 9:49 AM • 37 Comments

September 25, 2007

Video of little "Michael Jackson"  permlink

Category: Blog

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Posted by Razib at 4:16 PM • 2 Comments

September 24, 2007

Why care about species extinctions?  permlink

Category: Evolution

The New Republic has a piece titled The Greatest Dying by Jerry Coyne & Hopi E. Hoekstra (see below the fold for how to read it for free if you don't have a TNR subscription). The piece covers the a)...

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Posted by Razib at 3:02 PM • 12 Comments

One RNA to bind them all?  permlink

Category: Genetics

The Boston Globe has a long piece titled DNA unraveled. With the subtitle like "A 'scientific revolution' is taking place, as researchers explore the genomic jungle" you know what to except, lots of adjectives and a healthy dollop of hyperbole....

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Posted by Razib at 8:27 AM • 1 Comments

September 22, 2007

Liberals and low IQ believe in astrology more  permlink

Category: Culture

The Inducivist is always digging into the GSS and coming back with interesting stuff. For example, he reports: Percent who believe astrology is very or sort of scientific 43.3% Extremely liberal 32.2% Liberal 31.4% Slightly liberal 25.9% Moderate 25.9% Slightly...

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Posted by Razib at 5:17 PM • 17 Comments

Why do you have blue eyes?  permlink

Category: Genetics

Well, you may not have blue eyes, but many people do. The post below suggests that there is still a lot of confusion on how eye color is inherited, but now in 2007 we are coming close to clearing up...

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Posted by Razib at 4:30 PM • 24 Comments

September 21, 2007

Correlation structure of traits  permlink

Category: Genetics

Do any readers know of work which tracks the correlation between characteristics such as blonde hair and blue eyes (within population where these are extant at high frequencies, but not fixed)? I am also interested in geographic distributions. In part...

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Posted by Razib at 11:40 AM • 20 Comments