razib
Posts by this author
September 15, 2008
Allen MacNeill of the Evolution List has a new weblog, Evolutionary Psychology. Check it out.
September 15, 2008
In response to the debate between David Frum and Andrew Gelman about whether inequality is bad for Republicans, Jim Manzi crunches some data. Below is Manzi's chart which shows that as you increase inequality (shifting to the right) you decrease the percentage of those voting for George W. Bush (…
September 15, 2008
John McCain Answers Science Debate 2008. Compare with Obama's side by side.
September 14, 2008
Population substructure in Finland and Sweden revealed by the use of spatial coordinates and a small number of unlinked autosomal SNPs:
We genotyped 34 unlinked autosomal single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), originally designed for zygosity testing, from 2044 samples from Sweden and 657 samples…
September 14, 2008
A Theory of the Emergence, Persistence, and Expression of Geographic Variation in Psychological Characteristics:
Volumes of research show that people in different geographic regions differ psychologically. Most of that work converges on the conclusion that there are geographic differences in…
September 14, 2008
A few years ago it was shown that white America fertility correlated 0.86 to voting for George W. Bush in 2004 on a state by state level. What that means is pretty simple, if you have the 50 states + DC, and plot their white fertility on the X axis and % voting for George W. Bush on the Y axis the…
September 13, 2008
My earlier post which showed that large numbers of people around the world are skeptical about the "official" story regarding the perpetrators of 9/11 really needs an American baseline as a comparison. I have posted data from a Zogby poll as well as a Pew survey of American Muslims. Note that I…
September 13, 2008
I've mentioned MHC before; they're interesting from an evolutionary perspective because they're one of the most polymorphic loci in humans, likely due to their role in disease resistance and the "diversified portfolio" strategy which seems optimal over the long term (kind of like sex). The logic…
September 12, 2008
As I mentioned earlier, I bought the domain stuffscientistslike.com, and have set up a minimal weblog, Stuff Scientists Like. I'll post there now and then, and plan on constructing a quiz similar to the one for Stuff White People Like after I get a large enough list.
September 11, 2008
Andrew Sullivan responded to my post, Science is rational; scientists are not:
...One of the greatest errors of modernity is simply conflating the truths of one world of experience with the truths of another. I guess Michael Oakeshott instilled in me the sense that this confusion is the central…
September 11, 2008
Thoughts on educational attainment and voting patterns at the state level:
The percentage of a state's population with a bachelor's-plus does not correlate nearly as strongly with estimated IQ scores based on NAEP data (.46) as the percentage of a state's population with less than a high school…
September 11, 2008
7 years on "views differ," as they say.... Graph source
H/T Talk Islam
September 11, 2008
Guadalupe Storm-Petrel has a post, Stuff Scientists Like. Here' a few things I'll add to this list....
1 - Proofs. Because you're certain.
2 - LaTeX. Because non-nerds get confused and might think you're talking dirty.
3 - Precision. Because you can't always be certain, but would like to…
September 9, 2008
My two previous posts, Science is rational; scientists are not and its follow up Scientists are rational?, generated a lot of response. I would like to clarify and refine my thoughts and some of the arguments brought up in the comments. Some propositions:
- A few scientists are responsible for…
September 8, 2008
I'll be in San Francisco on the 26th at a Million Comment Party for ScienceBlogs. Specifically, I'll be hanging with the Bleiman Brothers, Craig, Janet and Josh.
So again, 9 PM on Friday the 26th @ Tonic
September 8, 2008
The most recent issue of Seed Magazine has a cover story that readers of this weblog might find of interest, How We Evolve. It's not online, but its basic core is the acceleration of recent human evolution. John Hawks seems to be the primary source. The author, Benjamin Phelan, made a good faith…
September 8, 2008
The 90% rate of abortion upon prenatal discovery that a fetus likely has Down Syndrome is being quoted a lot today. Is it true? Seems like it. Termination rates after prenatal diagnosis of Down syndrome, spina bifida, anencephaly, and Turner and Klinefelter syndromes: a systematic literature review…
September 8, 2008
See Red State, Blue State, Rich State, Poor State: Why Americans Vote the Way They Do, or, the author's weblog. Here are some myths and facts. It is interesting that when I tell both liberals and conservatives that Thomas Frank is full of crap there's a lot of disbelief and incredulity. One of…
September 8, 2008
Is a personal genome sequence worth $350,000?:
Basically, we're currently at a stage where costs are dropping much faster than the rate at which the value of genetic information is increasing - in other words, you and I will be able to afford a genome sequence long before science will be able to…
September 7, 2008
A friend of mine emailed me that he scored a 21 out of 107 on the full list of Stuff White People Like. I thought it was a little tedious to count, so I wrote up a small script which counts it up for you via the checks you make. Below the fold....
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#107 Self Aware Hip Hop References…
September 7, 2008
A quick rebuttal (of sorts) to my post Science is rational; scientists are not:
Peer review and the scientific community is not what distinguishes science from other areas of knowledge. After all history community decides what is good history knowledge, theology community decides what is good…
September 6, 2008
Earlier this week I posted a link to new research on the genomics of Mexican populations and the impact of selective evolutionary pressures within the last 500 years. I also pointed to the fact that despite Argentina's self-conception as a European settler nation, a non-trivial Amerindian…
September 6, 2008
It sucks. I downloaded it and tried it out. I made the sacrifice so you don't have to.
September 6, 2008
Wayne Allyn Root's Million-Dollar Challenge:
But the thing Root really wanted to talk about was Obama's grades. Specifically, he was willing to bet a million dollars that he earned a better grade point average at Columbia than his old classmate, and that the only reason Obama went on to Harvard Law…
September 5, 2008
Language Log has an excellent critique of the media stories around AVPR1a and its effect on male behavior. This sort of media criticism is warranted, but I don't know exactly how headline writing will clearly communicate that a given dependent variable might have myriad independent variables.…
September 5, 2008
One "urban legend" which is in common circulation among my friends is that liberals are smarter than conservatives. From my own personal experience this seems plausible, and I doubt I'm the only one as evidenced by the furious speed at which the "Bush voting states have lower IQs" meme spread…
September 4, 2008
A Woman's History of Vaginal Orgasm is Discernible from Her Walk:
In the sample of healthy young Belgian women (half of whom were vaginally orgasmic), history of vaginal orgasm (triggered solely by penile-vaginal intercourse) was diagnosable at far better than chance level (81.25% correct, Fisher's…
September 4, 2008
PalMD has a post, Science is politics. I would respond that science is normative. Or, more precisely, the practice of science intersects naturally with our normative presuppositions. There's a big universe out there, and the stuff we study is skewed toward topics which interest humans. For…
September 4, 2008
Chrome is Google's browser, and Blogger is Google's weblogging service, but Firefox is much better in the Blogger editing box.