razib | November 21, 2006Chris of Mixing Memory is now a Christian. Just so you know. It was reading Kierkegaard that pushed him over the edge. He just told me via IM. You think Chris is an idiot now, right J-Dog?
razib | November 21, 2006Discover is doing a "25 Greatest Science Books of All-Time" list. The great thing about stuff like this is it gets you thinking, talking, and exposes what your priorities are. There isn't a canonical list with a clear rank order. I mean, yeah, Principia is the bomb, but people can make a case for The Origin of Species. Below is the list from Discover, and below the fold my quick & dirty re-order. Hope it tells you something about me.
1. and 2. The Voyage of the Beagle (1845) and The Origin of Species (1859) by Charles Darwin [tie]
3. Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica (…
razib | November 20, 2006This NPR story about the anti-immigrant backlash in Denmark is pretty interesting. How you feel about it, well, that would depend on your perspective. I see no alternative to Danish "tough love" myself. A brown-skinned immigrant I am you say? Well yes, true that. But, aside from the non-trivial point that my loyalty lay with the traditions of the West (and that includes some irrational ones I suppose), I am of the opinion that assimilationism needs to be kick-started and I reject strongly Western cultural flaccidity that has been spawned by multiculturalism. Yes, racism is bad, I've…
razib | November 20, 2006When I was a kid, back in the day, I read up to book 6 of The Wheel of Time. It seemed that after book 3 the series went into an exponential decay of quality...and I couldn't handle the flat female characters and I ditched in book 6. Well, turns out that he's churned out 11 books total. A friend of mine once joked about "Egwene's Paradox," which was a variant of Zeno's Paradox. Basically, one of the main characters (Egwene) had a destination, and as she proceeded her velocity dropped in every single book so that she would never reach the terminus. Well, I hear she did reach her goal,…
razib | November 20, 2006Muhammad Yunus, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, will be on Talk of the Nation today (Nov. 21st).
razib | November 20, 2006Wow, wow. Lots of chatter around the ScienceBlogs about religion and evolution, etc. etc. Ed Brayton starts it off, drawing a line in the sand against those with an "anti-theist agenda." John Lynch tends to side with Ed. Our resident Ozzie, John Wilkins has been getting into it with Jason Rosenhouse. Josh at Thoughts from Kansas has criticized Dawkins. And of course P.Z. Myers has his own views on these topics.
A few points.
1) This isn't a two-faced coin. I think in Ed's post he overreaches a bit. Some people who are militant atheists are pretty nuts. Other people aren't. Some people…
razib | November 20, 2006I don't have time to comment in detail, but I thought I'd give readers a heads up, there is a preprint in The American Journal of Human Genetics which confirms that a few SNPs on one locus is responsible for 3/4 of the variation between blue and brown eyes in white populations. This locus, OCA2, is the third longest haplotype in the European genome from the HapMap sequence (the European HapMap data comes from Utah Mormons). The length of this haplotype is suggestive of recent strong positive selection within the European population (the further back in time and the weaker the selective…
razib | November 19, 2006Newsweek has a summation of the recent Neandertal papers. Nothing special, but a good reading of the public Zeitgeist.
razib | November 19, 2006A new paper, A Maternal-Offspring Coadaptation Theory for the Evolution of Genomic Imprinting (open access), presents a theory of genomic imprinting which purports to explain some facets of the phenomenon via maternal-child interaction:
Imprinted genes are expressed either from the maternally or paternally inherited copy only, and they play a key role in regulating complex biological processes, including offspring development and mother-offspring interactions. There are several competing theories attempting to explain the evolutionary origin of this monoallelic pattern of gene expression, but…
razib | November 19, 2006Both Jason (TFK) and John (SF) also give E.O. Wilson as the response to Ask a ScienceBlogger. This is kind of disheartening. Can anyone think of another scientist who is plausible and alive? (obviously Carl Sagan would have been a good candidate) I mean, James Watson is an acerbic kook part of the time, Freeman Dyson is a bit idiosyncratic, and Murray Gell-Mann doesn't cut a wide public profile. Like John Wilson "popped" into my head but I spent 15 minutes thinking of possible second options. For living Americans I came up empty.
razib | November 18, 2006I was surprised to see Matt Yglesis on Bloggingheads.tv today, arguing with Ross Douthat...he seems shockingly elfin in his countenance compared to his normal appearance. And interestingly, his voice is far more masculine! I wonder if this is some form of correlated response on the scale of ontogeny?
razib | November 17, 2006Why is it permissible for Muslims to propagate the One True Faith amongst the kuffar, while the kuffar are not allowed to preach their shirk amongst the believers? Watch the video below, and you'll see that it's as simple as 2 + 2 = 4! Bow down to Allah, the one most high!
razib | November 17, 2006This week's Ask a ScienceBlogger:
Who would you nominate for Scientist Laureate, if such a position existed?...
E.O. Wilson. Wilson combines the skills of a serious researcher with literary grace and social/political prominence. With the passing from the scene of Carl Sagan I can't think of any other great scientist who can compare. Yes, there are greater stars in the heavens such as Edward Witten, but none who burn so brightly for the delicate eyes of the common man.
razib | November 17, 2006You want more links to Neandertal related stuff? OK...Afarensis hits the morphology, while Kambiz hits the genetics. On Science Friday they interviewed one of the authors of one of the archeo-genomics papers (Rubin) as well as paleoanthropologist Richard Klein.
razib | November 16, 2006Finally Nick Wade is wading in on the Neandertal genomics story. Wade is a top level reporter, so when he covers a story I am pretty sure he is getting "inside" information that allows him to frame his piece appropriately. So when he says, "Researchers also hope to resolve such questions as whether the Neanderthals spoke, their hair and skin color...." Well, that is definite confirmation of the obvious fact that FOXP2 and MC1R are in the sights. One thing, Wade refers to "founding population." Remember to be careful of terms like this...long term effective population can be tricky, and it…
razib | November 16, 2006A post on my other blog from p-ter on the second Neandertal genomics paper. Here is the important conclusion:
...expect some big papers on "sexy" genes like ASPM, microcephalin, and FOXP2 in the coming years.
Remember "Netscape time." Feels like genetics is approaching that in the Post-genomic era....
razib | November 16, 2006"Ali Eteraz" has started a new site, States of Islam. My friend Aziz Poonawalla has a post up offering his thoughts on the Israel-Palestine conflict. I am aware of two of the headline contributors, Haroon Moghul and Thabet. Though I disagree with them, they're both smart, so I indulge them in their error. Being a SCOOP based site I've set up an account and might post a diary or two flagrantly exhibiting my ridda. I hope Ali indulges me.