razib
Posts by this author
November 8, 2006
John Hawks says:
UPDATE (11/8/2006): My colleague, Greg Cochran, has a post at GNXP discussing introgression and microcephalin further:
If this pans out the way we think it will, introgression from Neanderthals (and maybe with other archaics) may have been one of the two fundamental patterns…
November 8, 2006
I've been talking about introgression for a year right now. I've been waiting for the papers on this topic to come out, and the first has. If you haven't, please read the posts from Greg and John Hawks. Another paper is on the way, and Hawks promises something within this week. I strongly…
November 7, 2006
It's past midnight here on the West coast, and I'm about go to sleep, so, I'm going to say something really quickly about the election. Wow. Really wow. Myself, I'm not super excited about the Democrats winning the House, and quite likely the Senate (it'll come down to the Virginia recount and…
November 7, 2006
Update II: Follow up post. You really should read Greg and John Hawks, seeing as how they have a paper in the pipeline on this topic which is stepping off from where Lahn et. al. left off.
Update: Greg and John Hawks have much more must read stuff!
Read about it here. Here is the paper, Evidence…
November 7, 2006
Bangladesh is no longer the most corrupt country in the world!!!. Chad, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sudan, Guinea, Iraq, Myanmar and Haiti are tops. Boy, and I am proud to be an American, after all, we helped Iraq attain the status of being the 3rd most corrupt nation in the world!…
November 7, 2006
Previously I discussed the probability of extinction across one generation for a new mutant allele. To review, there is ~1/3 chance that a new mutant will go extinct within one generation of its origination (i.e., a de novo mutation is not replicated and transmitted to the next generation of…
November 7, 2006
Here is a radio documentary about the "prayer warriors" of Pastor Ted from 1997. I recall listening to this and finding it a bit peculiar at the time (and being disgusted by the documentarian's attraction to what seems like a cult, but hey, sheep are sheep, without them Ubermensch would have no raw…
November 6, 2006
Via Sepia Mutiny a hilarious brown rendition of "12 days of Christmas"....
Also, check out The Office, Diwali (abridged). Slay the pagans when they congregate under their lights!
November 6, 2006
I recently re-read the Epic of Gilgamesh. This translation was particularly helpful in that there were notations next to passages with clear parallels in the Hebrew Bible (in Genesis). I thought about this when I watched a YouTube clip of Richard Dawkins confront Ted Haggard last year about his…
November 6, 2006
Neandertals and moderns mixed, and it matters:
Twenty-five years ago, the Middle-to-Upper Paleolithic transition in Europe could be represented as a straightforward process subsuming both the emergence of symbolic behavior and the replacement of Neandertals by modern humans...Over the last decade,…
November 5, 2006
Hawks on Neandertal introgression:
The bottom line is that the bones are modern (i.e., not Neandertal), but they include features that are common in Neandertals. Almost all the other European bones of early Upper Paleolithic date also have Neandertal features. The number and frequency of such…
November 4, 2006
Saudi court sentences rape victim to 90 lashes
A Saudi court has sentenced a gang rape victim to 90 lashes of the whip because she was alone in a car with a man to whom she was not married.
The sentence was passed at the end of a trial in which the al- Qateef high criminal court convicted four…
November 4, 2006
Interesting piece in The Guardian about the problems that a Catholic revivalist group is making in the pagan-rich town of Glastonbury via heckling and intimidation. In Korea scholar Frank Tedesco has long chronicled the assault which Buddhism has faced from evangelical Christians. In Brazil the…
November 3, 2006
This week's Ask a ScienceBlogger:
What's the most important local political race to you this year (as a citizen, as a scientist)?...
I want to Harlold Ford Jr. to win in Tennessee to show that there's no harm in a man of color having a taste for white women. This is personal, I want my life choices…
November 3, 2006
Q: Is it permissible for white men to rap?
A: There are no hadiths which state the prophet's opinion of white men rapping (P.B.U.H). But, we can apply our reason in light of the evidence to this question. In the year 1413 A.H. a white man produced a reggae themed "rap" single which force us to…
November 3, 2006
Islam Online is one of the top 1,000 sites on the net according to Alexa. Every Friday I will offer a "taste" of learned commentary from that website for your edification. Today, apostates, or irtidad.
Dr. Yusuf Al-Qaradawi "is a world-renowned scholar and head of the European Council for Fatwa…
November 2, 2006
"And say to the believing katz that they should lower their gaze and guard their modesty; that they should not display their beauty and ornaments except what (must ordinarily) appear thereof; that they should draw their veils over their fur ... " [24:31]
November 2, 2006
Aisha points me to this new report about sexuality worldwide:
However, those reporting multiple partners were much higher in developed countries - up to a third of under 25s in some areas - whereas only a small percentage in Africa reported the same.
And among singletons, westerners were more…
November 2, 2006
Yes. Ted Haggard might be gay. So what? Robert Wright his gay too, he's obviously falling in love with Henry Farrell. And there are other gay people out there....
November 2, 2006
This Moral Politics quiz said I was a progressive liberal. I wasn't happy with that result, so I retook the Politopia test which tagged me as a a "centrist." I wanted to look for a test which would label me as a libertarian, but I'm tired, so another time....
November 2, 2006
I predict that the Democrats will be pick up 22 seats in the House and 5 seats in the Senate. These are uneducated guesses, but, if I'm close I'll pretend that I had reasons to make these guesses after the election and generate a bunch of after the fact justifications for my random guess based on…
November 2, 2006
Over at my other blog another post on the veil. Also, check out the interview with Ingrid Mattson, head of the Islamic Society of North America. She has some pragmatic things to say about the veil, and the reality of living in a non-Muslim social context where the old rules no longer apply.…
November 1, 2006
John Hawks says:
So keep on coming by -- I guarantee there will be some very interesting stuff in the next two months.
Things that make you go hhhmmm....
Well, go this symposium:
Salk Institute for Biological Studies DeHoffmann Auditorium
Friday, November 3, 2006
2:30 - 2:50: John Hawks, "Combining…
November 1, 2006
Modern Humans, Neanderthals May Have Interbred:
"To me, what happened is that the Neanderthals were [genetically] absorbed into and overwhelmed by modern humans coming into Europe from Africa, and they disappeared through this absorption," Trinkaus said.
...
Examining the bones, Trinkaus discovered…