razib
Posts by this author
March 29, 2007
Diana, formerly of "Letters from Gotham," reviews Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali at GNXP Classic. Here's her conclusion:
And, unlike the chicken littles of the Right blogosphere, I think that is exactly what we are saying, even if in rather mumblingly, hesitantly and stammeringly. That Puerto Rican…
March 28, 2007
Seeing how everyone just loves it when I talk about Buddhism, I point you to a post on my other weblog, the round-eyed Buddha, where I review a book which discusses the relationship of the West and Buddhism over the past 2,000 years.
March 28, 2007
Study Re-evaluates Evolution of Mammals:
Until now, however, most paleontologists had favored a "short-fuse" model in which mammals came into their own almost immediately after the dominant reptiles vacated their habitats. Before the extinctions, most mammals were small nocturnal creatures.
The new…
March 28, 2007
Ass in Space was basically souped up Tabasco Sauce. In other words, it sucked!!!! I have nothing more to say about this lame excuse for a "hot" sauce....
March 27, 2007
The discussion below about the adaptive value of religion was interesting, but it sparked in me an analogy which captures my attitude toward this phenomenon. Consider religions, such as Christianity, as analogs to political parties, such as Republicans. Many of the founders, including George…
March 27, 2007
So, I tried out Dave's Insanity Hot Sauce with some Tuna pasta yesterday. Here's a comment from Amazon: "I am a real fan of hot sauce, hot peppers and anything that makes my eyes water, and I have to honestly say that Dave's Insanity Sauce is absolutely the hottest thing I've ever tasted. I use…
March 26, 2007
Regular readers know that I'm really into smokin' hot sauces. I mean real hot. I'm the guy who the chefs at the local Thai restaurant know well enough to get their habanero paste ready for the medium rare steak flank. I'm the guy who checks out the local organic or Mexican grocery store for…
March 26, 2007
The American Journal of Human Genetics has an article up examining population substructure within Europe (or, more precisely, the varation of genes), Measuring European Population Stratification with Microarray Genotype Data. From the discussion:
PC1 [the largest principle component of variance]…
March 25, 2007
Paul Zed Myers comments on Alan MacNeill's contention:
To an evolutionary biologist, such pan-specificity combined with continuous variation strongly suggests that one is dealing with an evolutionary adaptation.
Myers sayeth:
For another example, people in the US largely speak English, with a…
March 25, 2007
Over at GNXP Classic David B has an introductory preface to a series of posts he plans to write on the great evolutionary geneticist Sewall Wright. David sums up:
As for my own assessment, for what little it is worth, in reading Wright I have realised that his achievement was truly massive. At the…
March 23, 2007
One issue that has cropped up in the comments a few times here is a conflation between quantitative & population genetics. Though people seem to think they're interchangeable terms, they're distinct fields. That's why population genetics text books have chapters devoted specifically to…
March 22, 2007
I really don't know what to think of this. Did you catch Zach Braff debating CATO's Will Wilkinson? Either Scrubs isn't doing so well, or Robert Wright is so big that semi-intellectual actors want to get aboard with bloggingheads.tv.
March 21, 2007
I figured I would just note this, another skin color study:
...We previously reported significant associations of two coding region polymorphisms with hair, skin, and eye color in Caucasians. Here we characterize the promoter region of MATP [SLC45A2] identifying two new transcription start sites…
March 19, 2007
A few days ago I began a survey of Martin Nowak's treatment of modern game theory in his book Evolutionary Dynamics. Today I'm going to hit the Prisoner's Dilemma. Roughly, this scenario is one where two individuals are isolated, and if they both keep their mouths shut (cooperate) they get off,…
March 18, 2007
If there is one thing that casts a pall over the rise of genomic technology and its applications, it is the eugenics movement. This article highlights a new exhibit which surveys the historical development of this movement. Of course we all know about the abominations of the Nazi regime, but…
March 16, 2007
Dienekes has a nice post up on the follies and failures of historical population genetics. As he notes, part of the problem is that people really want to find x instead of !x, and with a statistical science that is really, really, bad.
March 15, 2007
As I've said before I've been reading Martin Nowak's Evolutionary Dynamics. Nowak is a mathematical biologist, and a lot of his research program deals with game theory, so it isn't a surprise that several chapters in this book address exclusively game theoretic concepts. In the first chapter to…
March 14, 2007
Over at GNXP Classic Ikwa points to some papers from the PLOS One project, which facilitates public feedback in the peer review process. Ikwa has a full list of papers, but I'll list the ones that he highlighted as of particular interest:
Melanesian mtDNA Complexity
Meta-Analysis in Genome-Wide…
March 14, 2007
From PLOS Genetics Identification of the Imprinted KLF14 Transcription Factor Undergoing Human-Specific Accelerated Evolution:
Imprinted genes are expressed in a parent-of-origin manner and are located in clusters throughout the genome...By sequence analysis of numerous species, we place the timing…
March 13, 2007
A few weeks ago I purchased what I have since referred to as a "coffee table book for nerds," Martin Novak's Evolutionary Dynamics: Exploring the Equations of Life, a richly illustrated hardcover which is eminently browsable. In keeping with the focus of Nowak's own researches the chapters in this…
March 12, 2007
I have not, I think, made a secret of the fact that I am a "Neville Chamberlain atheist," at least when set against the jeremiads of P.Z. Myers or Larry Moran. Part of this is due my personal laissez faire orientation when it comes to to falsities in the minds of others. So long as the falsehoods…
March 7, 2007
To all the physical anthropologists out there, what kind of elf is this? I thought their kind were all gone!
March 6, 2007
Is the technorati link tracking widget worth it for the slower load times? Yay or nay?
March 6, 2007
Nick Wade has a new article which draws upon the two new books about the genetics of the British Isles, Saxons, Vikings, and Celts, by Bryan Sykes, and The Origin of the British, by Stephen Oppenheimer. The gist is that the British peoples are genetically very similar, and predominantly the…
March 6, 2007
The current Mendel's Garden just went up over at "sperm competition" Matt's place.
March 5, 2007
A new meme about "10 weird things about me" has started on ScienceBlogs, so I'll bite....
1) I love shrimp more than any other food.
2) I love to hate goat cheese more than any other food.
3) I liked Car Voltron more than Lion Voltron.
4) I had difficulties with gendered pronouns until 2nd grade,…