razib | April 5, 2007I'm rereading Unto Others, David Wilson and Elliott Sober's argument for Multilevel Selection. One of the core planks in the book is that supra-individual levels of selection are necessary for the evolution of altruism, and much of the book details what Wilson & Sober perceive are the stretched and implausible explanations that scientists who are straight-jacketed into individual selection need to concoct. So how can selection between groups lead to the emergence of altruism?
Consider two groups:
Mixed & Selfish
Assume that both groups begin in generation 1 with 100 individuals.…
razib | April 4, 2007Nick Wade has a long write up about the recent work on Etruscan phylogenetics.
"The overwhelming proportion of archaeologists would regard the evidence for eastern origins of the Etruscans as negligible," said Anthony Tuck, an archaeologist at the University of Massachusetts Center for Etruscan Studies.
In terms of "evidence," that would be archaeological evidence. Historical sciences do not rest upon one leg! Two minor points:
1) There is some concern that non-Indo-European languages were not extant from our textual knowledge in the region of ancient Asia Minor from which the Etruscans…
razib | April 3, 2007I'd assumed that Mad Dog's Revenge Habanero & Chile Extract would be the spiciest "sauce" of the bunch. I put sauce in quotations because it isn't a hot sauce, it's a food additive. The label warns not to use this as a hot sauce because it is way too spicy. How spicy? The label says, "1,000,000 Scoville units Mad Dog's Revenge is 450 times hotter than Tabasco Sauce." If you don't know about the Scoville Scale, here's a sample:
2,500 - 8,000 Jalapeño Pepper (which I chow down like Bell Peppers)
100,000 - 350,000 Habanero Chile
2,000,000 - 5,300,000 Standard US Grade pepper spray
Well…
razib | April 2, 2007I enjoyed the recent Blogging Heads dialogue between John Horgan and George Johnson, in part because I could follow the whole thing without falling asleep. But the comments about string theory were really over the top and kind of disturbing. I enjoyed Lee Smolin's jeremiad against string theory, The Trouble With Physics,1 but at least he acknowledged that his own camp was in a definite minority. In the exchange Horgan deems string theory "pseudoscience" and analogizes it to theology. You'd expect the author of The End of Science and The Undiscovered Mind: How the Human Brain Defies…
razib | March 31, 2007For Mad Dog Liquid Fire the same critique that I applied to Ass in Space applies. The only difference is that there was a nice tangy smoked flavor to it, so I will actually give it a 4 out of 10 (I was too disgusted with Ass in Space's lack of spice to rate it).
razib | March 30, 2007You Can't Handle This Hot Sauce is subject to the same critique as Dave's Insanity. Only not as spicy (though close). 6.5 out of 10. I ate it with rice + Yumm! Sauce + avocado + black beans & onions + cilantro & tomatoes.
razib | March 29, 2007Steve Gimbel has a post up where he expresses skepticism of the utility of lab sections. Janet, Chad & Chad and RPM all offered responses. All that needs to be said from the various angles that I would have touched upon has been said, so I won't add much more, except to recall my discussion over at the literary blog The Valve about the testimony of Steve Fuller during the Dover trial. For those of you who don't know, Fuller is a scholar of science (that is, he studies science as opposed to being a scientist) who has suggested that Intelligent Design is a worthy research program, and is…
razib | March 29, 2007As some of you might have noticed, I was not impressed with Hot Sauce #2. For day 3, I had pepper-crusted beef, bacon, and arugula sandwiches and spicy mustard with the Hottest Fuckin' Sauce. As you can tell by the picture to the left where I'm pouring, yes, pouring, the sauce over my sandwich, this isn't that hot of a concoction. The ingredients listed are: Habanero Peppers, Water, African Oleoresin, Scotch Bonnet Peppers, Salt, Onion, Vegetable Oil, Acetic Acid, Garlic and Xanthan Gum. I don't know what did it, but this might not be as spicy as Dave's Original "Flavorless" Insanity Sauce…
razib | March 29, 2007Diana, 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 girl on the subway isn't exchanging her t-shirt that says, "I must, I must, I must improve my bust," for a burqa anymore than our industrialists and molecular biologists and physicists are going to stop thinking and innovating and creating. They are an army much more powerful than the Quran, yes. We…
razib | March 28, 2007Seeing 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.
razib | March 28, 2007Study 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 study confirmed and elaborated on earlier research by molecular biologists indicating that many of today's mammalian orders originated from 100 million to 85 million years ago. The reasons for this evolutionary burst are not clear.
Drawing on both molecular and fossil data, the researchers said…
razib | March 28, 2007Ass 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....
razib | March 27, 2007The 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 Washington, were not positively disposed toward political parties because they were conscious of the problems of "faction" (which plagued the last years of the Roman Republic). Nevertheless, it seems that the past two centuries of the spread of liberal democracy show that political parties are a…
razib | March 27, 2007So, 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 one drop in about 25 ounces of home-made tomato sauce and it makes the sauce noticibly hot. This is NOT a sauce to dash into your soup or to liven up some salsa." Hm. So I was warned. I tried a drop...and well, it was spicy, but not that spicy. So I tried a dash. Definitely made me sweat, but it…
razib | March 26, 2007Regular 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 habanero sauce that's not very debased with tomato extract and other vegetable additives to make it palatable for mortals. Well, I got tired of this. I've decided I'm going to try and obtain a wholesale quantity of really spicy hot sauce to last me for years, I'm tired of running out, I'm tired of…
razib | March 26, 2007The 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] largely separates northern from southeastern individuals...and is consistent with the clines observed in classic gene-frequency...Y-chromosome...mtDNA...and whole-genome...studies of European diversity. PC2 [the second largest principle component of variance] reflects mainly east-west geographic…
razib | March 25, 2007Paul 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 subset that speak Spanish, and a few other languages represented in scattered groups. That does not mean we should talk about English as an adaptive product of evolution. Language, definitely - there's clearly a heritable biological element to that ability. Similarly, religion may easily be a consequence…
razib | March 25, 2007Over 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 same time, I find it difficult to work up any great enthusiasm for his writings. This is partly due to the obscurities I have already mentioned, but also to a certain dryness and narrowness of scope. Whereas one can still read Fisher and Haldane and hope to find new insights and speculations, there…