razib
Posts by this author
January 9, 2008
In my previous post I contended that biology is an important causal factor to keep in mind when we model the behavioral ecology (a.k.a., history) of H. sapiens. A separate, but complementary, tack is to use genetic data to supplement what we know from other historical sciences (history, archeology…
January 8, 2008
When I was a teenager I read William H. McNeill's Plagues and Peoples, an attempt to sketch out a brief history of the world shaped by the parameter of disease (I also recommend The Human Web: A Bird's-Eye View of World History, where the same author takes a broader view of events). Though I…
January 8, 2008
Can I get a "What, what?!?!" You can check out the results real time. Here are the exit polls. I'm not going to do the final tally yet since it won't come in at 100% for a few hours, but it looks like I really messed up with Obama vs. Clinton. But I'm in plenty of company. I doubt Paul is…
January 7, 2008
It's been confirmed, Nicole Kidman is no longer innocent! How the mighty have fallen. Chastity is a value which we no longer aspire to in this age of license & worldly delights....
January 7, 2008
Ross Douthat has a quick comment on a Noah Feldman piece on Mormonism. Feldman is really, really smart; but his argument is a bit more extended than it needs to be. This interest in the religion is basically sparked by the Romney candidacy. A few quick points:
First, the evangelical Protestant (…
January 7, 2008
The primary happens tomorrow, and I'm ready with my predictions (see my Iowa outcome).
Republicans:
McCain - 33%
Romney - 30%
Huckabee - 14%
Paul - 12%
Giuliani - 7%
Thompson - 3%
Hunter - 1%
Keyes - 0%
Democrats:
Obama - 45%
Clinton - 30%
Edwards - 19%
Richardson - 4%
Kucinich - 2%
Gravel - 0%…
January 6, 2008
p-ter has the details. For me one of the most confusing aspects of the Hobbits were the concomitant phenomena of extremely small cranial capacities (inference: low intelligence) with relatively advanced toolkits. If it the Hobbits exhibited the pathology reported in the paper which p-ter discusses…
January 6, 2008
K-Fed's call to cops: 'Britney's got a gun':
Our source said: "Jamie's new-found publicity enraged jealous Britney. And after calling Kevin that night she rang Jamie and told her, 'You're not going to be the only f***ing Spears on the front cover of a magazine next week!' and then hung up."…
January 6, 2008
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We've got 20 people signed up so far. I know more will come on board, so I'm looking forward to getting drowned in pure science in 4 weeks.
January 6, 2008
A few days ago I posted about selection and population structure. The basic idea is to imagine demes, breeding populations, and consider how variation in the standard parameters such as selection coefficient and migration might affect the overall frequencies of the alleles. The paper, Fixation…
January 5, 2008
The Christian Science Monitor has a nice piece highlighting the role of forensic anthropologists in exploring the question of the fate of the Norse of Greenland:
"You don't find bodies in and around the ruins," says William Fitzhugh, director of the Arctic Studies Center at the Smithsonian…
January 4, 2008
I note that Slate is congratulating a reader who guessed the top 3 finishers for both Repubs and Dems. Well, I got everything right except flipping Biden and Richardson (heard some guy on the radio say he was going for Biden, so I did it for the hell of it!). OK, this is a bit easier I think...…
January 3, 2008
How did I do? First, I got the rank order pretty much down! The only mistake was swapping Richardson and Biden. Second, I didn't know how the Iowa Democratic Caucus was set up...otherwise, I would have been retarded to not assume it would have taken a "Winner Take All" outcome due to the 15%…
January 3, 2008
Evolutionary genetics is subject to parameters; forces which pull and push and shape the nature of dynamic processes over time and space. Population size, mtuation rate, migration, selection. etc., these are all parameters we have to keep in mind when attempting to analyze the nature of…
January 2, 2008
Again, based on knowing almost jack-shit about politics compared to the pundits, here are the percentages I'm predicting after reading websites for a few hours....
Republican:
Huckabee - 29%
Romney - 27%
Thompson - 15%
McCain - 13%
Paul - 10%
Giuliani - 5%
Hunter - 2%
Keyes - 1%
Democrat:
Obama-…
January 2, 2008
I don't really know much about politics...but that never stops people from blogging about politics, so here are my Iowa predictions ranked ordered from first to last.
Republican:
Huckabee
Romney
Thompson
Mccain
Paul
Giuliani
Hunter
Keyes
Democrat:
Obama
Edwards
Clinton
Biden
Richardson
Dodd…
January 2, 2008
My views apparently match Dennis Kucinich & Ron Paul:
# 1 Dennis Kucinich 75% similarity
# 2 Ron Paul 75% similarity
# 3 Christopher Dodd 73% similarity
# 4 Bill Richardson 73% similarity
# 5 Mike Gravell 71% similarity
# 6 John Edwards 69% similarity
# 7 Barack Obama 68% similarity
# 8…
January 1, 2008
Richard Dawkins on his acceptance of The Handicap Principle:
Verbal arguments of this kind can take us only so far. Mathematical models are needed, and various people supplied them, notably John Maynard Smith who concluded that Zahavi's idea, though interesting, just wouldn't work. Or, to be more…
January 1, 2008
Heads up, Just Science 2008 is on. You can sign up to contribute now! Here are those who have signed on so far. The dates are February 4th-8th, 2008. More notifications soon!
December 31, 2007
So, I just found out that Sayyed Qaboos bin Sa'id Al 'Bu Sa'id, the Sultan and autocrat of Oman, is a homosexual. Not that there's anything wrong with that! But that got me thinking, are there any other homosexual heads of state* out there? Please post a reference if you submit a candidate.
*…
December 31, 2007
Rich Lawler has an insightful comment:
It's interesting to note that a few of the most insightful observations about the evolutionary process were first promulgated verbally, then later proven mathematically (unlike H-W equilibrium). These include runaway sexual selection (first adumbrated by…
December 31, 2007
Looking for Nm* values for humans I stumbled across an interesting paper, Estimating sex-specific processes in human populations: Are XY-homologous markers an effective tool?:
...To test this idea, we analyzed XY-homologous microsatellite diversity in 33 human populations from Africa, Asia and…
December 30, 2007
Evolgen and Popgen Ramblings have put up posts where they criticize a parameter of the acceleration paper. John Hawks responds in the comments. But I thought this line was priceless:
Nah, you're not a dirty anti-adaptationist! All these labels are nonsense; all that is important is understanding…
December 30, 2007
Laelaps has an excellent post up, Evolution's Arrow, which you should read. Set some time aside, it is long. I don't know enough about paleontology to comment with great insight on the many of the topics which Laelaps alludes to, and some of them get a bit philosophical for my own taste (that is,…
December 27, 2007
Genome Wide Association (GWA) Study for Early Onset Extreme Obesity Supports the Role of Fat Mass and Obesity Associated Gene (FTO) Variants. Even if this is true, these correlations between particular alleles and obesity hold for the modern German lifestyle. I guarantee you that population level…
December 27, 2007
Mark of Denialism left a comment below re: Vitamin D deficiency:
I wouldn't call that evidence thin biff. The role of vitamin D in tuberculosis was actually pretty well nailed by studies of immigrants in the UK which demonstrate that latent TB infections will reactivate in the sunless climate. The…