razib
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Two emigrants from ScienceBlogs to Discover Blogs, Chris Mooney and Carl Zimmer, are on Bloggingheads.tv. The focus is the new book Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens our Future, coauthored by Chris & Sheril Kirshenbaum. A comment from below seems appropriate:
I remember…
Yesterday in my review of the recent Pew survey comparing attitudes of scientists and the general public I emphasized the fact that scientists are disproportionately godless liberals. But there are some issues where it seems that the Left is on the forefront of science-skepticism. There has been…
Pew has a new survey out, Public Praises Science; Scientists Fault Public, Media. Lots of interesting facts, though most are not too surprising. Scientists accept evolution at a far greater rate, are less religious and more liberal, than the general public. This is all known. But the report is…
Two positive assessments of Bing. Google is my main search engine, but I use Bing's image search preferentially now since the UI seems less kludgey.
Over at Accidental Blogger a remembrance of travels in Xinjiang/East Turkestan. I think the best model for what's going on in China right now is a race riot catalyzed by economic resentment. Uighurs seem to be attacking Hui as well as Han, the Hui being Chinese speakers who are of Muslim…
Tom Rees of Epiphenom has a new paper out, Is Personal Insecurity a Cause of Cross-National Differences in the Intensity of Religious Belief?. The abstract:
Previous research has shown an apparent relationship between "societal health" and religiosity, with nations that exhibit higher mean personal…
Over at Secular Right I break down attitudes toward a host of issues as a function of class and party identification. It is interesting to see the issues where class matters more than party, and those where party matters more than class, and where one segment is an outlier. Below the fold are a few…
Sunday Function
The subsidiary patient
Pavlov's Dogs: Proving the Null With Bayesianism
UK House of Lords report on genomic medicine: implications for DTC genetic testing
More fuss over Enceladus
Gmail and a raft of other apps were finally thrown out of beta recently. The assumed reason is that Google is trying to horn in on the enormous business market for applications, and people can get fired for greenlighting betas which break. But if you miss that not-ready-for-primetime new app feel,…
Blogger Thomas Mailund is an author on a new paper, Ancestral Population Genomics: The Coalescent Hidden Markov Model Approach:
With incomplete lineage sorting (ILS), the genealogy of closely related species differs along their genomes. The amount of ILS depends on population parameters such as the…
In the early 20th century the geographer Halford Mackinder posited that the key to world domination lay in the control of the Eurasian Heartland. This was in sharp contrast to Alfred Mahan's emphasis on the role of naval power. Whatever the applicability of these geopolitical frameworks in the…
Living the Scientific Life is still in the running for the trip to Antarctica. If you haven't, consider voting for her essay.
Peter Suderman & Megan McArdle are getting married. One of my thoughts was, "How tall will their offspring be?" (assuming they are intent on producing any) I couldn't tell Peter Suderman's height from photographs with certainty, but he has confirmed they are the same height, 6 feet 2 inches.…
I have posted Creationism as a function of geography before. John Lynch pointed me to a new poll of Argentina, China, Egypt, Great Britain, India, Mexico, Russia, South Africa, Spain and the USA. Though the set of countries is smaller than in some surveys, the number of questions asked were much…
An Index Of Blogging Clients:
Blogging clients allow you to prepare posts and then upload them directly. Useful for
-composing drafts of posts offline
-easier editing of HTML
-easier inserting and handling of photos
-easier editing of existing posts
Here's a list of the ones I know of. Any…
I notice that Fortune has a story on personal genomics up, Genetic sequencing gets personal Biotech firm Illumina will sequence your entire genetic code -- and throw in a Mac -- for $48,000:
So far, personalized genomics make up just a small fraction of Illumina's revenue. High costs keep…
Many of you might have seen this video of Japanese bees defending their nest against giant hornets:
The Japanese bees swarm and bake the giant hornets. But Ed Young reports that there is more to this story.
Palin's Move Shocks G.O.P. and Leaves Future Unclear:
Many Republican strategists have argued that it would be difficult for someone to run for governor in 2010 and turn around immediately, while running a state, and run for president in 2012. Gov. Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota announced last month…
Palin announces resignation:
Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin announced Friday that she was resigning her office later this month, a stunning decision that could free her to run for president more easily but also raises questions about her political standing at home.
Palin disclosed the surprise news Friday…
Excellent chart via Calculated Risk. It looks like we're in a whole different territory of anti-superlatives in terms of length & depth in regards to the employment drought....
Lots of chatter about The Blogosphere 2.0, a post which has 7 bullet points:
- The A-List Doesn't Matter Anymore
- It's all about niche blogs
- Blogger Burn Out
- Reader burn out
- MSM yawns
- Huffington Post.
- Twitter and Facebook
Not much I'd disagree with in the generality. Multiple times that…
First Genetic Insight into Libyan Tuaregs: A Maternal Perspective:
The Tuaregs are a semi-nomadic pastoralist people of northwest Africa. Their origins are still a matter of debate due to the scarcity of genetic and historical data. Here we report the first data on the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA)…
Really funny scene of a reporter being harassed by a drunk guy (H/T Daily Dish).
Nicholas Wade is moderately skeptical of Robert Wright's new book, The Evolution of God:
Robert Wright's new book, "The Evolution of God," has a provocative title. But it's a disappointment from the Darwinian perspective. He doesn't mean real evolution, just the development of ideas about God.
He…
World Conference of Science Journalists - New media new journalism
The miracle of the falling cat
More on accomodationism
The Magic of Attraction (aka Attractors in Dynamical Systems)
Peak Psychology
A little under 10% of South Africa's population are Cape Coloureds. They speak Afrikaans and generally worship in Reformed Christian churches, but exhibit discernible non-European ancestry, in particular African ancestry. In the United States anyone who manifests African ancestry is coded as "…