razib
Posts by this author
January 12, 2007
I just found this article by Heather Mac Donald in Slate, Send a Message to God: He has gone too far this time. She published it two years ago, and somehow I missed it!
January 12, 2007
Jason Rosenhouse has a nice post on the rate of mutation within the genome. David plumbs the depths of J.B.S. Haldane's 2s. Peromyscus posts on the ladies looking for possible "extra-pair matings." A**man posts on short guys.
January 11, 2007
Yesterday I watched Will Wilkinson and Ezra Klein on Blogging Heads. Will, as many of you will know, is a pragmatic libertarian (oh, they exist), while Ezra is a liberal. I was struck by (somewhat appalled in fact) by Ezra's irritation and contempt for the philosophical nerdiness of many…
January 11, 2007
Jonah over at The Frontal Cortex has some commentary up on the gay sheep story. A reader pointed out that this controversy started off with some wild claims made by PETA. Nevertheless (more at Andrew Sullivan's), no matter the details of the claim, there are a few points I'd like to pick up on....…
January 10, 2007
Jason Rosenhouse and John Hawks have both commented on the introgression of cattle alleles into wild bison. J & J have hit many of the salient points, but let me suggest one issue: not all genetic loci are created equal. That is, "neutral" markers should be weighted less than "functional"…
January 5, 2007
With all the controversy around Keith Ellison, the first Muslim in Congress, no one seems to be publicizing the first two Buddhists in the House, Mazie Hirono (Hawaii) and Hank Johnson (Georgia).
January 5, 2007
Over the past month or so I've been blogging chapter 5 of Evolutionary Genetics: Concepts & Case Studies. This chapter covers "stochastics processes," basically the random elements in the flux of gene frequencies in biological populations. Now, I'm a selection man for real, but to understand…
January 4, 2007
Over in The Corner they are talking about eugenics. Of course my friend John Devilshire, I mean, Derbyshire, started it all off.
1) I think Jonah Goldberg is correct that eugenics we do will be not called eugenics, while eugenics which is ethically objectional will be thrown under that term.
2) I…
January 4, 2007
Over at Accidental Blogger Ruchira Paul has a profile up of Barbara Forrest, philosopher and science activist. I've long admired her coauthor Paul Gross, who I've had the pleasure of being mildly acquainted with on internet mailing lists, and I props to Dr. Forrest as well. I don't talk much…
January 3, 2007
Differential fitness costs of reproduction between the sexes:
We found that increasing number of offspring (parity) and rates of reproduction were associated with reduced parental survivorship, and significantly more for mothers than fathers. Parental mortality resulted in reduced survival and…
January 2, 2007
Over at my other blog 10 questions fo Heather Mac Donald. You might remember Heather from her recent dust up with other conservatives in regards to her secularity.
January 1, 2007
The headline says it all: Down screening urged for all pregnant women.
Related: To breed a better human - we have the technology.
January 1, 2007
Science told: hands off gay sheep:
Scientists are conducting experiments to change the sexuality of "gay" sheep in a programme that critics fear could pave the way for breeding out homosexuality in humans.
You can read the whole article yourself. Randall Parker has been saying for years that…
December 31, 2006
Genetic Evidence for the Convergent Evolution of Light Skin in Europeans and East Asians:
...these results point to the importance of several genes in shaping the pigmentation phenotype and a complex evolutionary history involving strong selection. Polymorphisms in two genes, ASIP and OCA2, may…
December 29, 2006
Earlier this week I sketched out the general theoretical basis for not denying unexpected deviations from expectation, so to speak, when it comes to quantitatve traits. The main issue is that varying genetic backgrounds leave unaccounted for gene-gene interactions, and so our predictions when two…
December 28, 2006
Life has been occupying me, why, between good wine (I prefer mild Chardonnay), work, books and beautiful women who detest science fiction I haven't been able to resume my survey of Evolutionary Genetics: Concepts & Case Studies. Nevertheless, I'd like to point you to Jason Rosenhouse's…
December 27, 2006
I work on two machines in the mid-to-high 2 Ghz range with 1 gig of RAM on a regular basis. And yet the new YAHOO MAIL "Beta" has consistently crashed and throttled Firefox multiple times within the last few days. If your AJAX app does this you're worse than Microsoft.
Client: Is my app Web 2.0TM…
December 27, 2006
John Lynch has a post up about Richard Dawkins' lack of theological sophistication in The God Delusion. John is basically reiterating the point that Dawkins did not truly engage theological arguments for theism on a very high or sophisticated level. In fact, John levels the implicit charge that…
December 26, 2006
A few months ago I posted Discrete continuity in genetics to show how the granular nature of genetic inheritance may still manifest to our perception as continuous variation (i.e., quantitative traits). I used skin color as a model trait because it is easy to relate to, and we are beginning to…
December 24, 2006
Below I spoke of historical perspective, while earlier I referred to Christmas as "universal pagan wine poured into a particular Christian chalice." I thought I might elaborate upon this.
First, the cultural and historical origins of Christmas are multi-textured. Though Christians assert "Jesus is…
December 24, 2006
I'm reading The Fall of the Roman Empire by Peter Heather. Most people know I'm a classical history buff (e.g., I've read a fair number of the late Michael Grant's works). Now, one thing that always strikes is this: 2,000 years ago a political organization existed which stretched from Scotland to…
December 22, 2006
Steinn Sigurðsson has an has an amusing post up about his multicultural Christmas. Here is the "American Infidel," Robert Ingersoll, on Christmas (1892):
This is the festival of the sun-god, and as such let its observance be universal.
This is the great day of the first religion, the mother of…
December 22, 2006
New paper in PLOS Genetics, Low Levels of Genetic Divergence across Geographically and Linguistically Diverse Populations from India. Here's the conclusion:
Populations from India, and groups from South Asia more generally, form a genetic cluster, so that individuals placed within this cluster are…