razib
Posts by this author
May 21, 2009
California, a Broke State, Reels as Voters Rebuff Leaders:
Direct democracy has once again upended California -- enough so that the state may finally consider another way by overhauling its Constitution for the first time in 130 years.
The problem is simple. Voters approve services through ballot…
May 20, 2009
Turns out there is a new weblog which showcases some Brazilian ScienceBlogs posts, translated into English.
May 20, 2009
Check out this Felix Salmon's interview (video) with Gillian Tett, author of Fool's Gold: How the Bold Dream of a Small Tribe at J.P. Morgan Was Corrupted by Wall Street Greed and Unleashed a Catastrophe (the reference to "Tribe" is a wink to Tett's background as an anthropologist). Also, she was…
May 20, 2009
Poor, poor Ida, Or: "Overselling an Adapid"
Physics in Star Trek
Online social networking isn't for everyone
Decoding the brain's response to vocal emotions
Philosophy and evolution
May 19, 2009
Seed's Mr. Space Lee Billings has an interesting piece, The Long Shot:
"If planets are found around Alpha Centauri, it's very clear to me what will happen," Marcy said. "NASA will immediately convene a committee of its most thoughtful space propulsion experts, and they'll attempt to ascertain…
May 19, 2009
You'll be seeing a lot of media hype about a new paper, Complete Primate Skeleton from the Middle Eocene of Messel in Germany: Morphology and Paleobiology. Here's some perspective, A Discovery That Will Change Everything (!!!) ... Or Not and There is no missing link. Bora has just about every…
May 19, 2009
400-500 years ago in the midst of the Great Dying somewhere the indigenous inhabitants of the New World suffered mortality rates on the order of 90-95%. This was almost certainly due to the facts of evolutionary history; the indigenous peoples had little defense against Eurasian pathogens. A result…
May 18, 2009
Amusing web view parodying the data-bleed overload of today's youth, from 5-minute-twitter-updates to a sea of cellphone pictures at parties of people posing like tools. Perhaps a transparent society is a society of trivialities?
Police Slog Through 40,000 Insipid Party Pics To Find Cause Of Dorm…
May 18, 2009
Ed Yong has an excellent review of new research which casts substantial doubt on the trivia chestnut that Komodo dragons kill their prey with their extremely pathogen rich saliva. The more prosaic answer seems to be that they utilize poison, not particularly surprising or trivia worthy for a…
May 18, 2009
There are several papers and letters in Nature Genetics on the relationship between menarche, menopause, etc. and genetics.
Meta-analysis of genome-wide association data identifies two loci influencing age at menarche:
We conducted a meta-analysis of genome-wide association data to detect genes…
May 16, 2009
I was looking up some data on obesity rates, mostly for American states, and I stumbled onto the maps below on obesity rates by nation for males & females (in that order):
You can find the source and legend here. In any case I was totally surprised at how fat Arabs are, particularly Gulf…
May 16, 2009
Does secularization of the USA spell social meltdown?:
That's certainly what two European sociologists, Loek Halman and Thorleif Pettersson, have concluded. Using data from the European Values Survey, they found that there was no relationship between how religious a country was (on average) and a…
May 16, 2009
There was a somewhat funny, if stupid, comment below in regards to minority opposition to gay marriage:
This has to be one of most ignorant and race obsessed articles I have ever read. Since you are so blinded by race you decided to leave out the most determinative factors in ones opinion…
May 15, 2009
Genome-wide Insights into the Patterns and Determinants of Fine-Scale Population Structure in Humans:
Studying genomic patterns of human population structure provides important insights into human evolutionary history and the relationship among populations, and it has significant practical…
May 15, 2009
Rebecca Skloot has a piece up in Double X, Slate's new webzine, on the controversy around Myriad Genetics.
May 15, 2009
When I was reviewing the paper on skin color and ethnic ancestry a few days ago I saw a peculiar figure in a related paper which I thought I would highlight. The paper is Skin pigmentation, biogeographical ancestry and admixture mapping. The samples were 232 African and African-American…
May 14, 2009
I heard on the radio several times in the past few weeks commentators refer to minority opposition to gay marriage, specifically the fact that New York and California have large numbers of blacks and Latinos who are voters. I was curious if Latinos really are notably more opposed to gay marriage…
May 14, 2009
One of the peculiarities of American discussion about race is that skin color is assumed to be synonymous with racial distinctions. That is, skin color is not just a trait, but it is the trait which defines between population differences. There's a reason for this, the skin is the largest organ…
May 13, 2009
Physics, Tolkien, and the Bomb
Obesity - A new study and what it means to be a "healthy weight"
Could Food Shortages Bring Down Civilization?
The Social Ramifications of Volcanism
Why don't we finish the human genome first?
May 13, 2009
When I found out a while back that Jonah Lehrer's next book was titled How We Decide, I knew I was going to check it out. It's no coincidence that I recently reviewed Predictably Irrational, I blog because I'm interested in reducing the human animal down its basic units of organization. Due to my…
May 13, 2009
Via Marginal Revolution, Has Overweight Become the New Normal? Evidence of a Generational Shift in Body Weight Norms:
We test for differences across the two most recent NHANES survey periods (1988-1994 and 1999-2004) in self-perception of weight status. We find that the probability of self-…
May 12, 2009
You can watch the new Frontline documentary on Bernie's fraud online. If you're a Madoff-junkie, like I am, absolutely nothing new in terms of substance. But, it is really striking how much Fairfield Greenwich was run by total bullshit artists.
May 12, 2009
Analysis of genomic diversity in Mexican Mestizo populations to develop genomic medicine in Mexico:
Mexico is developing the basis for genomic medicine to improve healthcare of its population. The extensive study of genetic diversity and linkage disequilibrium structure of different populations has…
May 11, 2009
I went and watched the new Star Trek movie this weekend. It was alright. Worth the money. But there's one thing that's been getting in my craw about criticisms about the film, so I thought I would air my dissent. Since it's a spoiler, below the fold....
I liked the fact that the time travelers…
May 11, 2009
You might have already see this chart relating obesity to time spent eating in The New York Times:
The commentary accompanying the chart goes like so:
On Monday, in posting some of the data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development's Society at a Glance report, I noted that…
May 11, 2009
That seems the finding of this paper, Familial Aggregation of Survival and Late Female Reproduction:
Women giving birth at advanced reproductive ages in natural fertility conditions have been shown to have superior postmenopausal longevity. It is unknown whether improved survival is more likely…
May 11, 2009
Dienekes reports on an abstracts for paper presentations at the ESHG 2009. This was is particularly interesting:
European Lactase Persistence Allele is Associated With Increase in Body Mass Index
J. A. Kettunen et al.
The global prevalence of obesity, usually indexed by body mass index (BMI) cut-…