razib
Posts by this author
February 8, 2006
NPR has a piece, Evangelical Leaders Urge Action on Climate Change. Paging Chris Mooney for commentary (and Ed Brayton).
You can see the full list of signatories here, I was surprised that some heavy hitters are on the list. For example, the presidents of Calvin College, Wheaton College and…
February 8, 2006
As I have said before, sometimes you actually have to play the game. An interesting thing that surprised me years ago was that the time until fixation of a highly deleterious allele was lower than a neutral allele. In other words, if you had an allele with negative fitness implications the time…
February 7, 2006
Radio Open Source is going to do a show on The Genetics of Genealogy. I've recently expressed some skepticism about many of the tests peddled by corporations and their scientist promoters, so I'm primed to jump into this discussion. I have already offered a few comments, and will probably post…
February 6, 2006
What is a hill? I mean, how do you define a hill as opposed to a mountain, or, flat, level ground. The reality is that all surfaces on the planet which aren't artificial seem to have discontinuities and wrinkles on the macroscale.1 Here is a dictionary definition:
A well-defined natural…
February 5, 2006
Update: Trivial prediction: more Muslims will die because of "protests" and riots because of the Danish cartoons than non-Muslims.
Matt McIntosh has posted a piece titled We Have Met the Enemy, and He Is Us at my other blog. It has spawned a lot of comments. Many people were offended by the way…
February 3, 2006
One of the things that really pisses me off about the Evolution-Creation "debate" is that it uses up oxygen that could be profitably allotted to documenting the tsunami of data emerging out of the "post-genomic" era. The actual examination of evolution is not just an academic exercise, as much of…
February 2, 2006
Wired has an article up about urban coyotes:
...coyotes are thriving in city suburbs like Itasca and Palatine Village, and have even been spotted in the heart of Chicago's metropolitan area.
They've also been sighted in other major urban areas, including St. Louis, Minneapolis, Detroit, Cleveland…
February 2, 2006
Instead of an update, I want to specifically point readers to Evolgen's extended post on the nearly neutral theory. He takes my 10 yard pass on genetic drift and jukes and jives all the way to the end zone (with a good block from John Hawks). The take home message is that science is about…
February 2, 2006
John Derbyshire compliments me a bit in his January Diary over at NRO, under "Jeunesse." Who wouldn't link to someone patting them on the back? He takes a jab at Intelligent Design under "The Blogger's Life." Derb's almost finished reading Mark Ridley's Evolution, I'm praying he'll mention his…
February 1, 2006
From the BBC: Muhammad cartoon row intensifies: Newspapers across Europe have reprinted caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad to show support for a Danish paper whose cartoons have sparked Muslim outrage. I have posted comments over at Ed Brayton's weblog on this topic, they are verbose, but they…
February 1, 2006
Chad Orzel is asking about misconceptions in science that irritate. Evolgen and Afarensis have chimed in. My problem is not an misconception, it is a pet peeve. As I've noted before, random genetic drift is a catchall explanation for everything.
I am not saying drift is not powerful, it is the…
January 31, 2006
I've been getting queries about the ear wax paper...below the fold I've copied table 1, which shows the frequencies of the haplotypes in various populations.
First, note the sample sizes.
Keep these sample sizes in mind as you try to get an understanding of the clines the authors were talking…
January 31, 2006
The Guardian has a piece titled Steve Fuller: Designer trouble, in reference to testimony that the aforementioned professor gave to the Dover court. After reading the article I have to say that I'm not surprised that he testified, he seems to not be of any camp aside from that of Steve Fuller,…
January 31, 2006
When I use terms not in regular circulation like linkage disequilibrium, or those which I suspect aren't as well understood as I think they should be, like random genetic drift, I usually make reference to the companion website to Mark Ridley's text Evolution (if you followed the links to the terms…
January 31, 2006
In response to a skeptical response to my post below from RPM I have posted an entry on my other weblog asking whether I am deluding myself in thinking that our generation is at an axial pivot in the progression of ages. If previous posts on this topic are any clue, the discussion should be…
January 30, 2006
Radio Open Source is calling for Blogs of the Union (BOTU)posts. So here I go....
Ten years ago the internet was a new and innovative technology that was going to change our lives as it entered into mass culture. Today I doubt most citizens of this union could imagine a world without the…
January 30, 2006
Life can be really funny. When I was in college I was incorrigibly curious and I asked a Korean American friend if his ear wax was dry (I'd read that East Asians had dry ear wax once) and his response was, "Isn't everybody's?" When it comes to interpersonal differences there are many things we…
January 29, 2006
Newsweek has an entertaining story which highlights the recent penetration of science into the venerable enterprise of genealogy. The good:
...Adopted at birth, Royer knew nothing about her biological parents. But certain physical traits-wide nose, dark skin-led people to guess that she was…
January 27, 2006
Science isn't perfect, it often misses obvious truths. Consider the 2005 Nobel in medicine, awarded for the work of Barry Marshall and J. Robin Warren in establishing the connection between Helicobacter pylori and ulcers. After the fact you hear many stories of doctors who had stumbled onto the…
January 26, 2006
All of the other science bloggers are talking about the finding that the British might be more Creation-friendly than we'd have thought. My first thought is that we need to be careful about the survey. But my second thought is to remind myself that a 1988 survey (page 8 of the PDF) found that…
January 26, 2006
Over the past 5 years Matthew Harris has been doing some interesting research into feather morphogenesis, and he has produced some must watch videos. His work on quantitative modeling of development via the activator-inhibitor system is, I believe, a necessary precursor in fruitfully talking about…
January 25, 2006
Since Chad Orzel hasn't posted on it, I figured I'd link to this story about a Nature letter which announces the discovery of a planet 5.5 times as massive as our own! This is pretty cool, I was a big fan of astronomy when I was a kid, and it certainly is the science with tickles my "shock &…
January 25, 2006
Judith Rich Harris is author of The Nurture Assumption and the forthcoming No Two Alike: Human Nature and Human Individuality. Her controversial thesis is that parents don't matter, genes and peers do, in making you who you are as a person. You can read my Q & A with her over at my other…
January 25, 2006
This article about the halting of land development in Scotland because of "fairies" under a rock is illustrative. When comparing nations in regards to belief in the paranormal we often assume that "modernity" and education have banished magical thinking. I don't believe it is so, rather, magic is…
January 24, 2006
A few weeks ago Edge.com asked prominent thinkers what their Dangerous Idea was. The poser of the question was Steven Pinker, and he's on Radio Open Source today (you can listen on the web, wait 'till 7 PM EDT). I offered my 2 cents in the comments, the basic gist of which was that the explosion…
January 23, 2006
Yesterday I was talking to a friend of mine who is a graduate student at a university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in the department of "Organismic and Evolutionary Biology." My friend asserted that most people within her department are dumb, overbearing, arrogant and uninformed. Her concern was…
January 21, 2006
I have a post on the importance of understanding human psychology in relation to evolution and Intelligent Design/Creationism on my other weblog.
Related: Ed Brayton has the nitty gritty on what's going on in Utah.
January 21, 2006
The Harvard Crimson reports on George Church's attempt to develop super-cheap genomic sequencing, though this time he's giving a $10-20,000 price point quote instead of $1,000. Scientific American has a subscription only piece.
January 20, 2006
In the interview below with anthropologist Dan Sperber I allude to the "naturalistic paradigm" in anthropology. What does this mean? Sperber, along with Scott Atran, Pascal Boyer and Laurence Hirschfield are anthropologists who treat culture as an outgrowth of a natural and reducible process…
January 19, 2006
Over at my other weblog I have been doing a "10 questions" series. Here are the ones I've done so far:
John Derbyshire of National Review and author of Prime Obsession
Armand Leroi of Imperial College and author of Mutants
Warren Treadgold of Saint Louis University and author of A History of…