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June 30, 2008
Synteny - who is right? permlink
Category: Genetics
PZ Myers outlines synteny. RPM says he's kind of wrong. Check out the definition in Wikipedia. Since RPM came down on me for confusion on this term I knew he would bring this up. I don't really care much about...
Posted by Razib at 11:09 PM • 0 Comments
George Lakoff's The Political Mind permlink
Category: Politics
Chris of Mixing Memory is doing us the service of a chapter by chapter review of George Lakoff's The Political Mind. This should be fun! I told Chris that reading Lakoff talking about the minds of conservatives is kind of...
Posted by Razib at 3:50 PM • 0 Comments
The paucity of libertarianism permlink
Category: Politics
A few weeks ago I read Brink Lindsey's The Age of Abundance: How Prosperity Transformed America's Politics and Culture. One strange thing is that because I've watched Brink on BloggingHeads.TV on occasion could hear the prose with his particular cadence...
Posted by Razib at 3:42 AM • 24 Comments
June 29, 2008
We have to the technology; we can rebuild the race! permlink
Category: Genetics
Baby to be born free of breast cancer after embryo screening: The couple produced 11 embryos, of which five were found to be free from the gene. Two of these were implanted in the woman's womb and she is now...
Posted by Razib at 7:50 PM • 3 Comments
June 27, 2008
Heritability of voting permlink
Category: Genetics
I just read an interesting new paper, Genetic Variation in Political Participation: The decision to vote has puzzled scholars for decades...The results show that a significant proportion of the variation in voting turnout can be accounted for by genes. We...
Posted by Razib at 4:39 PM • 4 Comments
Bird phylogeny permlink
Category: Evolution
The best summary so far here of the bird phylogeny paper. Also, Greg Laden. Most definitely I was surprised and interested to learn that falcons are not closely related to eagles & hawks....
Posted by Razib at 6:10 AM • 4 Comments
June 26, 2008
Pigmentation loci, TPCN2 and ASIP permlink
Category: Genetics
Sandy pointed me to letter to Nature by a group which has done some earlier pigmentation work, Two newly identified genetic determinants of pigmentation in Europeans: We present results from a genome-wide association study for variants associated with human pigmentation...
Posted by Razib at 2:48 PM • 1 Comments
June 25, 2008
Why "Asian" mice have straight hair permlink
Category: Genetics
Humans, being who we are, are really interested in how our external phenotype is shaped. Since the year 2000 many of the genetic underpinnings of the gross physical features which we use to categorize people, the sort of thing that...
Posted by Razib at 1:17 AM • 4 Comments
June 24, 2008
Selection, drift, disease and complexity, all rolled into one.... permlink
Category: Genetics
One of the great things about evolutionary genetics is that it is such a diverse field in terms of the cognitive toolkit which one must access as a matter of course. Since R. A. Fisher's The Genetical Theory of Natural...
Posted by Razib at 2:59 PM • 3 Comments
June 23, 2008
Postgrad education vs. literalism: update permlink
Category: Religion
Last month my posts Biblical literalism or low IQ: which came first? and Educational levels & denomination got a lot of play around the blogosphere. I used the US Religious Landscape Survey to get demographic data for denominations, but I...
Posted by Razib at 6:35 PM • 11 Comments
Evolutionary genetics in Iceland; it's about the parameters permlink
Category: Genetics
Another story about recent human evolution, this time, really recent. The paper in PLOS is A Drastic Reduction in the Life Span of Cystatin C L68Q Carriers Due to Life-Style Changes during the Last Two Centuries. A mouthful, but the...
Posted by Razib at 4:18 PM • 2 Comments
Perfidious Neandertals permlink
Category: Evolution
Britain's Last Neanderthals Were More Sophisticated Than We Thought. I don't need to comment/summarize because Anthropology.net already has.......
Posted by Razib at 3:35 PM • 1 Comments
Buddhists do believe in god permlink
Category: Religion
One of the points that I run into all the time is that Buddhism is a religion without god, that is it is an atheistic religion. I admit this assertion as an ideal or elite belief, but contend that the...
Posted by Razib at 1:46 PM • 27 Comments
June 22, 2008
Engaging theism & engaging Creationism permlink
Category: Religion
I happen to personally accept both of these assertions: 1) A scientific world-view entails atheism 2) A scientific world-view contradictions Creationism That being said, as matters of debate & discussion I think the former is an open question, while the...
Posted by Razib at 2:59 PM • 25 Comments
Black, but how black? permlink
Category: Genetics
Comparing Genetic Ancestry and Self-Described Race in African Americans Born in the United States and in Africa (H/T Yann): Genetic association studies can be used to identify factors that may contribute to disparities in disease evident across different racial and...
Posted by Razib at 2:29 AM • 7 Comments
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