razib
Posts by this author
June 9, 2006
This week they ask:
Assuming that time and money were not obstacles, what area of scientific research, outside of your own discipline, would you most like to explore? Why?
Cosmology. Transcendence.
June 9, 2006
In response to a few reflective posts of mine in regards to the "big picture" of evolutionary dynamics Brown Gaucho has his own summation of the issues at hand. Worth a read. He tends to take a slightly different tack than myself, but ultimately I think the issues we can agree upon relate to the…
June 9, 2006
The famous pictures of Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt's baby, Shiloh, below the fold....
Sike!!!!! Sucker!!!!!
June 8, 2006
I have a guest post over at the CAID website.
June 8, 2006
My comment about the basics of evolutionary biology and how they enter into non-scientific discourse elicited this response from RPM:
You may not like the concept of speciation, but the parts that make it up (reinforcement, geographic isolation, pre- and post-zygotic barriers, etc) are real. They…
June 8, 2006
Evolutionary genetics nerds might find this picture of interest. Look to the top right.
June 8, 2006
Over at my other weblog, Gene Expression "Classic", I addressed the polemics of one David Stove, author of Darwinian Fairytales. I won't go into the details of Stove and that book, but if you follow the comment thread you will see that sometimes shit can be a very good fertilizer and give rise to…
June 7, 2006
Over at Genetics & Health Lei is commenting on the genetic character of Shiloh Jolie-Pitt, and referencing an old post of mine on this topic re: genetics. It is all pretty amusing, but, here is a prediction:
The level of spontaneous abortion should be increasing in modern populations
"…
June 6, 2006
Evolgen has a has a nice little post poking fun at the late Ernst Mayr. A few comments.
1) R.A. Fisher, J.B.S. Haldane and J.M. Smith were trained as mathematical/physical scientists before their biological days. Fisher did work in statistical mechanics before he went off to Rothamsted.…
June 6, 2006
Chad's response to this week's Ask a Science Blogger pointed to two issues which I think need some clarification.
First, that brain drain might be good for the species in that it distributes the "wealth" of human capital around. This is not a trivial or baseless argument, but, The World Bank has…
June 5, 2006
Nick Wade reviews and summarizes the new festschrift to Richard Dawkins, Richard Dawkins : How a Scientist Changed the Way We Think. Here is the list of contributors (from Edge):
Dr Robert Aunger, Senior Lecturer, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine
David P.Barash, Professor of…
June 5, 2006
Is it me, or did Janet explode by the old 300 world barrier? :) In any case, she brings up some good issues in her expansive post, and there is one thing I want to follow up in regards to the "brain drain." Who is it good for? Who is being drained?
This is a definitely "US centric" question.…
June 5, 2006
Brown gaucho has set up a website, Conservatives Against Intelligent Design. He elaborates on a few points in one of his introductory posts. So far nearly 200 people have signed the mission statement, with some known figures such as John Derbyshire, Derek Lowe and Pejman Yousefzadeh. It would be…
June 5, 2006
Here is a press release of a paper which reviews Neandertal mtDNA diversity. Here is the first paragraph:
The cohabitation of Neandertals and modern humans in Europe about 35,000 years ago has stimulated considerable debate regarding hypothetical admixture. Recently, sequences of the…
June 3, 2006
There has been a long standing debate in evolution of the possibility of sympatric speciation, that is, speciation between two coterminous populations. Well, here is evidence from some fish of it happening, at least in the first stages, so that genetic differentiation is minimal to non-existent.…
June 3, 2006
I received an interesting email from the lead researcher on the work reported in the earlier post on prosopagnosia:
Dear Razib, I appreciate your comments (and scepticsm) about our reported work and the thoughts about continuums (aspergers/autism). One possibly clarifying point -- Face…
June 2, 2006
Possible ancestral structure in human populations:
Using sequence data from the Environmental Genome Project, we find strong evidence for ancient admixture in both a European and a West African population (p ~ 10^{-7}), with contributions to the modern gene pool of at least 5%. While Neanderthals…
June 2, 2006
This weeks "Ask a Science Blogger" is:
"Do you think there is a brain drain going on (i.e. foreign scientists not coming to work and study in the U.S. like they used to, because of new immigration rules and the general unpopularity of the U.S.) If so, what are its implications? Is there anything…
June 2, 2006
It is no secret that John Derbyshire is a friend of mine. I am sure most SB readers would find such a connection abhorrent, nevertheless, any man who picks up Mark Ridley's Evolution at my recommendation is a friend :) The goddess of evolution should not just be admired and given due respect, one…
June 2, 2006
Some people have wondered if there is any point in signing petitions. Well, sometimes it is important to declare you exist, to stand and be counted. With all due respect to Ed, evolution's connection with "Culture Wars" is not a good thing, and, more importantly (to me) it saps genuine discourse…
June 1, 2006
Dave Munger reports that "face blindness," prosopagnosia, might be found in ~2% of the population. Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence, so I'm not convinced, but, if it does pan out this seems to have two primary implications off the top of my head
1) It is a signal for mutational…
May 31, 2006
Brown Gaucho seems to have set up a petition under the heading "Conservatives against Intelligent Design." I am the first signer. Come now John, why not make it official?
Update: John not only signed, but he linked from The Corner.
There have been some questions regarding whether I am a "…
May 31, 2006
Percentage of Students Earning Degrees in Science and Math Has Fallen, GAO Tells Lawmakers ($$$), but this is all you need to know:
The GAO reported that 27 percent of students obtained degrees in those fields, which are known as the STEM disciplines, in the 2003-4 academic year, compared with 32…
May 31, 2006
Apropos of this week's Ask a Science Blogger, AMERICANS SUPPORT FREE ACCESS TO RESEARCH. Not that their opinion matters!
May 31, 2006
The title is tongue in cheek, some researchers now are suggesting that speciation may be proportional to a particular energetic value. R.A. Fisher wanted an "ideal gas law" for evolutionary genetics, but this is ridiculous! In any case, one issue that many of us who are interested in…
May 31, 2006
This lion research is just cool. Hey, I'm human, I'm a sucker for cats, and the bigger the better:
Understanding the phylogeographic processes affecting endangered species is crucial both to interpreting their evolutionary history and to the establishment of conservation strategies. Lions provide…
May 31, 2006
The American Journal of Human Genetics has a paper in its pre-print section titled "A geographically explicit genetic model of worldwide human settlement history." I quickly skimmed it (and uploaded it into the GNXP forum). I have serious issues some of the inferences made in regards to the "…
May 30, 2006
PLOS Genetics has a nice review titled The Jewels of Our Genome: The Search for the Genomic Changes Underlying the Evolutionarily Unique Capacities of the Human Brain. It is short and pithy and hits the major points (e.g., SNPs vs. duplications vs. gene expression), so I see no reason to offer any…
May 29, 2006
I was pointed to this research (via David) that is just out about the correlation between variation on DRD4 and "sexual arousal." From the press release:
Interestingly, some forms of variants in this gene were shown to have a depressing effect on sexual desire, arousal and function, while other…