razib
Posts by this author
May 11, 2008
I have a new sublog over at Talk Islam. My first post, A wrong track for Western Islam?:
Thabet mentioned the spread of Salafism among British Muslims. Of course most of you know that North Indian Islam has an indigenous form 'reformist' Islam, Deobandism, which is not in intents all that…
May 10, 2008
Via The Corner, Turkish Islamic author given 3-year jail sentence:
Controversial Turkish Islamic author Adnan Oktar was sentenced to three years in prison on Friday for creating an illegal organization for personal gain, state-run Anatolian news agency said.
...
Oktar, born in 1956, is the driving…
May 10, 2008
I've commented on height genetics now & then. It seems that the quantitative genetic supposition that variation on this trait was due to the cummulative effect of numerous loci of small effect is correct. Recent research has pinpointed about ~5% of the variance. In contrast, skin color…
May 9, 2008
Over at The Scientist Neil S. Greenspan has an article up, Darwin and deduction:
One of the most remarkable but insufficiently noted features of Charles Darwin's conception of evolution is that its logical implications are still being worked out. I am not merely claiming that experimental and…
May 8, 2008
I notice that the Moon-man is flogging Carl Zimmer's new book. So I feel it's time to pile-on, buy Microcosm! Carl is of course giving a series of talks at fine bookstores near you....
May 8, 2008
Notes on Sewall Wright: Genetic Drift:
Continuing my series of notes on the work of Sewall Wright, this one deals with the subject of genetic drift. I had originally planned to call this note 'Inbreeding and the decline of genetic variance', but anyone interested in the matters covered here, and…
May 6, 2008
Last fall I argued that the relatively light death toll of hurricane Sidr was due to improvements in the institutional framework of the Bangladeshi polity. More recently, I suggested that Burma's social & economic deficits vis-a-vis Bangladesh were due to negative government action. Now Chris…
May 2, 2008
Saw Iron Man with that genderist SOB Jake Young. All I can say is that it is nice that G. K. Paltrow finally has a hit on her hands after all these years....
April 30, 2008
From The evolution of human skin coloration, page 12:
The main reason I post is that I don't think that intuitively people have a good idea of how far north the north of Europe is, and the fact that "temperate" East Asia is at the latitude of the Mediterranean (as is most of the United States).
April 29, 2008
John Derbyshire has a long column excoriating Ben Stein and the Discovery Institute titled A Blood Libel on Our Civilization:
And there is science, perhaps the greatest of all our achievements, because nowhere else on earth did it appear. China, India, the Muslim world, all had fine cities and…
April 28, 2008
Over @ Stranger Fruit John Lynch points a section from a paper which recounts the Christian assocation with eugenics:
On the whole the evangelical mainstream in the decades following the turn of the century appeared apathetic, acquiescent, or at times downright supportive of the eugenics movement.…
April 26, 2008
Welcome to the 30th Gene Genie!
Indulge in the fascinating world of Radiology and Nuclear Medicine has a "genetics lifestyle" post, Home Improvement For Geneticists. Not quite Tim Allen. Fellow ScienceBlogger Sandra illustrates Mapping polymorphisms in 16S ribosomal RNA. Definitely worth…
April 25, 2008
Just a heads up, I've been posting now and then to the quasi-Twitteresque site Talk Islam run by my friend Aziz Poonawalla. I also have a sub-weblog where I'll be posting some of my longer form ruminations...but it might be best to just sign up for the RSS so you're notified when I start posting…
April 25, 2008
If you read this weblog you are aware that I have a fascination with the intersection of human history and human evolutionary genetics. There are many questions I have about the finding from evolutionary genomic studies that light skin evolved at least twice independently in Eurasia within the last…
April 24, 2008
Genetic variation in human NPY expression affects stress response and emotion:
Understanding inter-individual differences in stress response requires the explanation of genetic influences at multiple phenotypic levels, including complex behaviours and the metabolic responses of brain regions to…
April 23, 2008
Is it necessary to assume an apartheid-like social structure in Early Anglo-Saxon England? :
It has recently been argued that there was an apartheid-like social structure operating in Early Anglo-Saxon England. This was proposed in order to explain the relatively high degree of similarity between…
April 22, 2008
Mother's Diet Influences Infant Sex: High Energy Intake Linked To Conception Of Sons:
...The study shows a clear link between higher energy intake around the time of conception and the birth of sons. The findings may help explain the falling birth-rate of boys in industrialised countries, including…
April 22, 2008
Seems like both the Republican nominee and the likely Democratic nominee entertain the autism and vaccination "hypothesis". I don't follow politics very closely, this sort of comment really disturbs me....
Via TNR.
Update: And Clinton too.
Update II: Insolence & Aetiology have more.
April 21, 2008
A follow up to the scientists & drugs topic, Wired's current issue is devoted to cranking up your intelligence. Most of the advice is kind of kooky, but there is a neat chart of mind-amping drugs if you are so inclined.
April 21, 2008
History and Geography of Human Genes is one of my favorite books; it might rank up there in my "top 10" if I ever wished to enumerate one. But in both Human Evolutionary Genetics, a textbook, and A Genetic and Cultural Odyssey, a biography of L. L. Cavalli-Sforza, it was noted that the PCA maps…
April 21, 2008
Vitamin D Important In Brain Development And Function:
McCann & Ames point out that evidence for vitamin D's involvement in brain function includes the wide distribution of vitamin D receptors throughout the brain. They also discuss vitamin D's ability to affect proteins in the brain known to…
April 20, 2008
If you don't like the word "racial," just substitute "population." In any case, Many African-Americans Have A Gene That Prolongs Life After Heart Failure:
About 40 percent of African-Americans have a genetic variant that can protect them after heart failure and prolong their lives, according to…
April 20, 2008
Chris Mooney is claiming Expelled is a box office success. Documentaries don't make a very big splash typically, but whatever you think about the impact of Expelled, the fact that Fahrenheit 9/11 will go down as a much bigger success illustrates the contrast between depth and breadth of feeling…
April 19, 2008
Massimo Pigliucci's wedding profiled in The New York Times... (did a double-take when I saw that on the front page...but it's for real)
April 19, 2008
...as a piece of propaganda. I noticed that the local "art house" theater was screening Expelled, so I decided to check it out. There weren't many people there. It started off very heavy-handed, a montage of archetypical scenes from the Communist and Nazi regimes, but the production values…