razib
Posts by this author
March 28, 2006
Below is an image that should strike fear into the hearts of all birds, from below and above, evil knows no bounds! On a serious note I was chatting with a friend of mine about the possible hypotheses for the domestication of the dog, and when we moved onto cats he remarked that I'd had it flipped…
March 27, 2006
Interesting report out, Evolutionary biology research techniques predict cancer. Medicine has been around for thousands of years, from the "healings" of shamans to the "theoretical" paradigm of Galen. It seems possible that until the last 100 years or so medical techniques were just as likely (…
March 27, 2006
This whole conversion story in Afghanistan has been in the news recently. The Christian Science Monitor attempts to put the issue of conversion from Islam to another religion in an international perspective. I am cautious about making large generalizations without qualifications, but I will…
March 26, 2006
Apropos of my earlier post relating to heritability...this is the sort of confusing gibberish that ends up making it into the press, Professor researches genetics of gambling. He tries to clear up problems of communication:
This quote has been misconstrued. In the logical development of any…
March 26, 2006
There is an important paper out on calculating heritability (JAVA applet). Heritability is an important and misunderstood concept. Some people have argued that heritability is fallacious reification, a biostatistical construct which has no real relevance (or reality) outside of its utility in…
March 26, 2006
Does my blog own me? Since girl scientist started it, I Ihad to go along....
18.75 %
My weblog owns 18.75 % of me.Does your weblog own you?
March 25, 2006
The first week of spring, and two birds have already been the victims of domestic selection....
March 25, 2006
John Lynch comments on an impending list of Ph.D. scientists who dissent from Darwin. He doesn't care, and neither do I, ho hum. As I've noted in the past (and plenty of others have) these lists are usually stacked with physical scientists, and within the life sciences they are slim on…
March 24, 2006
Well, I've been having fun reading John Hawks' posts on the term "genomics," and I'm sure Evolgen thinks I'm a bit too preoccupied with the three old thugs of population genetics...but this article, Marriage of Math and Genetics Forges New Scientific Landscape is kind of funny, the past is the…
March 24, 2006
About a month ago I asked around for some bio-geek-rhymes. MC Coffee Mug, AKA The Genius, stepped forward. Props to the thug (and PUBMED too).
Matako-chan, represent!
MC Coffee Mug rap
yo I'm down for chuck d like
Thomas Huxley
where my bulldogs at this shit
is getting ugly
punk please styles are…
March 23, 2006
Did you know that Angelina Jolie is an atheist? I didn't...
Another materialist young female celebrity below the fold....
Quote:
Of her religion, Portman says, "I'm much more like the product of a doctor than I am a Jew." She is uncomfortable about the concept of the afterlife. "I don't believe…
March 23, 2006
I've received several emails about this study, Atheists identified as America's most distrusted minority. This shouldn't surprise too many people, but I think some perspective is in order. I think the results are probably accurate, but, I also think that the belief is wide but shallow.
I went to…
March 22, 2006
Dan Dennett will be on Radio Open Source today to talk about his book Breaking the Spell. I've been getting into it on the comment boards.
Update: Re: Dennett's book, I read it. It is a good review of the literature, though I highly recommend you go straight into the primary sources (though for…
March 22, 2006
Some of the Science Bloggers are coming up with taxonomies of biologists, physicists and anthropologists and chemists. This is great, and I don't have anything to add except that it is always important to remember that science the method is irrelevant without the science the culture. It itself…
March 22, 2006
I saw The New World last night. It was pretty dull, but can anyone else see the resemblence between Q'Orianka Kilcher and Jewel Kilcher?
(coefficient of relatedness 1/8)
March 22, 2006
Data from The American Religious Identification Survey is floating around the blogosphere right now. One of the points noted is that the number of Americans who avow "No Religon" has gone from 8.2% to 14.1% of the American population between 1990 and 2001. Now, one meme floating around is…
March 21, 2006
Dienekes points me to this article, Aurignacian ethno-linguistic geography of Europe revealed by personal ornaments. In case you don't know, the Aurignacians were the first modern humans in Europe and flourished between 35-20,000 years BP. It isn't surprising that cultural diversity was a feature…
March 21, 2006
Chris of Mixing Memory has an important two part series that explores the recent discussion of cognition by those with partisan viewpoints. As usual he clears up some big confusions, hopefully this will get read/linked across the web.
March 21, 2006
A review paper worth checking out in Molecular Ecology, Variation within and among species in gene expression: raw material for evolution. The salient bit:
We find: (i) microarray-based measures of gene expression are precise given appropriate experimental design; (ii) there is large inter-…
March 21, 2006
Well, because sometimes it results in babies born without eyes! Detailed commentary here. Think the title is asinine? Well, the National Society of Genetic Counselors suggests that cultural respect trumps individual and social prudence. In Britain cultural sensitivity has resulted in serious…
March 20, 2006
You can watch the whole South Park episode that was never aired on Comedy Central online.
March 20, 2006
Just so you know, Brad and Angelina did not get married. What sort of animal signal is this?
March 20, 2006
In my post below where I try to synthesize The Superficial and The Causes of Evolution I used the term "fitness." Well...as Matt McIntosh pointed out the term itself is problematic, and so using it as a reference of any sort is really sketchy. Evolgen has slammed the use of "genetic load", and I…
March 19, 2006
Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt are classic "beautiful people." By now you know they are going to have a baby. What sort of child will this be? Handbag.com offers you a projection:
Not half bad. Certainly more traditionally beautiful than the Brit Rock look-alike produced by Jennifer Garner and…
March 18, 2006
I often read the weblog Sepia Mutiny, and today there was a post about a pair of men flying while brown. They were pulled off the plane and their bags were sent ahead. It was a big foul up. Now, here is the kicker: the men were wearing "traditional" South Asian clothes and skull caps and one…
March 18, 2006
I was just sent a link to the torrent for last night's showing of The Family that Walks on All Fours.
March 17, 2006
Steve Olson in Why We're All Jesus' Children has a gimmicky exposition on the reticulated character of our genealogies. But Olson tries to pull a fast one here:
It gets even stranger. Say you go back 120 generations, to about the year 1000 B.C. According to the results presented in our Nature…
March 17, 2006
I wonder, do readers know much about "Post Modern" biology? Radio Open Source contacted me about this topic...the thing is that I don't usually pay much attention to the "overthrow" of the "orthodox" doctrine because I don't think these "doctrines" are really adhered to in the same way that…
March 16, 2006
A recent story of a non-feathered dinosaur in a presumably feathered clade is stirring the pot a bit right now. The importance of shared derived characters in systematics is one reason that something like feathers tends to elicit a response from many scientists, since one character might result in…
March 15, 2006
John Hawks has a piece in Slate critiquing the recent scientific genealogy trend. Congrats for John for going "mainstream," and kudos for Slate to contributing something substantive to the discourse. And I've noted before, most of the people taking the tests won't find out anything they don't…