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May 14, 2008
Banana: The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the World permlink
Category: Culture
When I was a child in Bangladesh one of my "charming" activities would be to give the local banana seller some unsolicited advice. As he walked down the street carrying his banana-bunch I would shout down from the balcony and...
Posted by Razib at 3:48 AM • 1 Comments
Soul gene? permlink
Category: Genetics
Ron Bailey in Reason, The Genetics of Ensoulment: Advances in stem cell research may be provoking a kind of "God of the Gaps" retreat on the moral status of embryos. People who subscribe to God of the Gaps thinking believe...
Posted by Razib at 2:56 AM • 0 Comments
May 12, 2008
Richard Dawkins interviewed by 3 Quarks Daily permlink
Category: Evolution
Here. The embed is the best bet if you can view it; the download often fails (server has been slammed?). Only a moderate amount of discussion about religion; Dawkins talks a fair bit about an obscure field, evolutionary biology. Well...
Posted by Razib at 10:25 PM • 3 Comments
Ways to skin the cousin marriage issue permlink
Category: Genetics
Another article about cousin marriage in the UK. The issue here is simple; you have a National Health Service which covers everyone, and doctors are noticing that Pakistanis are overrepresented in many cases of recessive diseases. The culprit is probably...
Posted by Razib at 7:33 PM • 19 Comments
Browsing biology on the web: NextBio permlink
Category: Genetics
Last year p-ter put up a post pointing to useful online tools such as Haplotter. One of the great things about biology today is that so much of the data from genomics is being thrown out there within reach of...
Posted by Razib at 10:14 AM • 1 Comments
Powerset permlink
Category: Blog
...is live. Don't know what I'm talking about? Natural language search; people have been talking about this as the Next Big Thing for a while.... (though I will say, if people have been talking about something, it isn't likely to...
Posted by Razib at 5:04 AM • 1 Comments
Religion in China permlink
Category: Culture
Pew has an excellent survey up about the state of religion and religiosity in China. There isn't a lot of good data out of China on this topic for obvious reasons. One of the phenomenon of recent years in the...
Posted by Razib at 12:45 AM • 12 Comments
Western Muslims permlink
Category: Religion
I have a new sublog over at Talk Islam. My first post, A wrong track for Western Islam?:...
Posted by Razib at 3:45 PM •
"Harun Yahya" goes to jail? permlink
Category: Creationism
Via The Corner, Turkish Islamic author given 3-year jail sentence: Controversial Turkish Islamic author Adnan Oktar was sentenced to three years in prison on Friday for creating an illegal organization for personal gain, state-run Anatolian news agency said. ... Oktar,...
Posted by Razib at 5:27 AM •
May 10, 2008
One explanation to rule them all permlink
Category: Culture
I've commented on height genetics now & then. It seems that the quantitative genetic supposition that variation on this trait was due to the cummulative effect of numerous loci of small effect is correct. Recent research has pinpointed about ~5%...
Posted by Razib at 1:05 PM • 7 Comments
The theory of evolution permlink
Category: Genetics
Over at The Scientist Neil S. Greenspan has an article up, Darwin and deduction: One of the most remarkable but insufficiently noted features of Charles Darwin's conception of evolution is that its logical implications are still being worked out. I...
Posted by Razib at 1:58 PM • 0 Comments
Microcosm: E. coli and the New Science of Life permlink
Category: Biology
I notice that the Moon-man is flogging Carl Zimmer's new book. So I feel it's time to pile-on, buy Microcosm! Carl is of course giving a series of talks at fine bookstores near you.......
Posted by Razib at 12:23 AM • 1 Comments
Sewall Wright & genetic drift permlink
Category: Genetics
Notes on Sewall Wright: Genetic Drift: Continuing my series of notes on the work of Sewall Wright, this one deals with the subject of genetic drift. I had originally planned to call this note 'Inbreeding and the decline of genetic...
Posted by Razib at 12:18 AM • 0 Comments
May 7, 2008
Our Enemy, The State permlink
Category: Politics
Last fall I argued that the relatively light death toll of hurricane Sidr was due to improvements in the institutional framework of the Bangladeshi polity. More recently, I suggested that Burma's social & economic deficits vis-a-vis Bangladesh were due to...
Posted by Razib at 2:07 AM • 5 Comments
