razib | October 22, 2006Hsien-Hsien Lei points me to another story about black and white twins. First, the "black" twin is clearly mixed race, her skin color is between the modal complexion of Europeans and sub-Saharan Africans on the von Luschan scale. The "white" twin on the other hand does seem to exhibit the color of someone of European descent. What's going on here? This is somewhat different than the other case of black and white twins, in that case both parents were mixed-race, in this case the father is white (German) and the mother is mixed-race (Jamaican & English). The two cases are different even…
razib | October 22, 2006Just for the record, that's a pajama, not a dress. I don't appreciate people I know making fun of me (you know who you are). If you are curious about the fact that I am beardless and singing, well, that was before I became a good Muslim.
razib | October 21, 2006The comments below about Muslims in Europe have continued to come in, so I figured I would put a new post up and allow further comments here on the front page. On my other blog I have another post on the veil. Two points:
1) It seems like "New Labor" has decided to drop the PC-veil, so to speak, and take a hard line on Islamic separatism. This is somewhat rich since the government itself in the 90s helped give succor to "community groups" like the Muslim Council of Britain which were retarding the process of assimilation (in fact, they had an interest to perpetuate separation since it…
razib | October 20, 2006Ask a Science Blogger:
What's the best science TV show of all time?...
No contest, NOVA.
razib | October 20, 2006Via The American Scene, Skin Color and Wages Among New Immigrants (Update: Steve Sailer an interesting critique of this study). The basic finding is that controlling for all variables that they could nail down darker skinned immigrants tend to make less bank. As someone of luscious brownitude (see picture to your far left) this does concern me, but mom always told me that true Ãbermenschen always have their burdens. In other, somewhat related news, Dienekes reports on an interesting finding that in regards to skin tone a lighter shade of brown is oh so sexy baby, more so than black berry…
razib | October 19, 2006David B continues his series on R.A. Fisher's opinions regarding population size and evolutionary genetics (part I).
Update: Links fixed. Thanks John.
razib | October 19, 2006In the comments Fly states:
Within the next two decades it will become easy to modify skin color and hair characteristics. A person's skin color may be a fashion statement much as a woman's hair color is today. Rather than most people being brown, I expect some will opt for attention garnering colors more commonly seen in fruits.
I'm hopeful that racial group identifiers that energize identity politics will disappear.
Hopeful is a good word to describe how I feel, I do think that within a few decades racial identity will be far more malleable than it is today. In particular, I believe the…
razib | October 18, 2006I really enjoyed The Long Summer by Brian Fagan. It's a pretty interesting and multi-dimensional story, hitting all the evolutionary, archeological and climatological angles that you'd expect. Fagan's central hypothesis is that our species has been responding to local climatic shocks with short-term strategies1 to buffer our societies against these ups and downs, but the tradeoff has been of possible massive catastrophic effects when hit by a major oscillation. Fagan points to several civilizational collapses which might have been triggered by climatic changes (the Mayan is the most famous…
razib | October 17, 2006Sunn vs. Shia on the other blog. My conclusion:
Of course, this isn't the sort of thing that is interesting to most people. It would obviously be best if government officials who played a role in making decisions where this knowledge would be critical would be aware of the details. But I'm not holding my breath, my own experience on this and other blogs is that when it comes to opinions about Islam and the Middle East research is deemed unnecessary and the empires of opinion conquer all (in fact, I have been told that knowing too much is an impediment to proper understanding, and though I…
razib | October 17, 2006What is a Good Society? What values should we has a society hold to be Good and True? These aren't light questions, but we often neglect them. I believe that many "political" differences can ultimately be traced back to the weights placed on these initial axioms of value. Ruchira Paul comments on a new book who explores happiness and amity from an economic and philosophical perspective:
I frequently irritate champions of the unbridled free market who trumpet the triumphs of nations such as India and China and the recent impressive rise in their GDP, economic growth indices etc. I keep…
razib | October 17, 2006This is the shape of things to come for mankind is an article which claims that "Variations in skin colouring are expected to be smoothed out, with most humans moving towards a brown tone." The source of this is an evolutionary psychologist, Dr. Oliver Curry, but, it seems to me that Dr. Curry is passing off what he read in science fiction as science. Genetics is not blending. I have posted on skin color enough to make clear why humans won't turn uniformly as beautifully brown as some privileged people! A small number of loci (4-5) control skin color variation, and though random mating…
razib | October 16, 2006JP has an interesting post, Why the regulatory changes vs. coding sequence changes debate is inane:
Here's the question we're supposed to answer: which are more important-- protein-coding changes or regulatory changes? And here's the problem with that question: how do you define important? Let's make a list of the ways humans differ from chimpanzees-- we walk on two feet, we have bigger brains, we have less hair, etc. etc. You can add your own if you like. If a protein-coding change gives us the bigger brain, but a regulatory change the lack of hair, who wins? Sure, you could argue about…
razib | October 16, 2006Josh Rosenau has a review of The God Delusion which is, I think, a little bit harder on Richard Dawkins than I. The comments are hopping, so you should check it out!
Let me reiterate my general position re: Dawkins & The God Delusion:
My own personal assessment of the universe as it is resembles that of Dawkins
My own assessment of the nature of religious belief is similar to that of Dawkins, insofar as I believe it is a byproduct of proximate cognitive features which have their ultimate origins in our evolutionary history
My own attitude is one of general hostility toward religious…
razib | October 16, 2006Polish MEP calls for 'scholarly debate' on evolution:
'I am a scientist, I am a geneticist, my specialty is population genetics and I reject the theory of evolution on the basis of the field of science I represent. I find that in many fields of science there are scientists who reject the theory of evolution because in their fields they also find evidence against the theory.' says MEP Maciej Giertych.
I won't go through the blow-by-blow. Only two points:
1) It exhausts my creativity how one could reject evolution because of population genetics, seeing as how population genetics as a field…
razib | October 16, 2006The cover of this month's SEED has a small blurb on the bottom front left (your left as you face the cover) which refers to "Intelligent Design on the Arab Street." My first thought was, "Interesting, the only Muslim Creationists I know are those weird Turkish groups." So I open up the article and it's about Turkish Creationists! Now, I know that the term "Arab Street" is common lingo, but there is the problem that Turks are not Arabs. Not a big deal, except that knowledge about the details of the Middle East seem to be a serious problem seeing as how our nation is pretty heavily…
razib | October 16, 2006It's been a few weeks since I posted on the Tripoli Six, but while I've been busy with other things there are still six lives in the balance. Revere has more details, and Janet has a long post on the importance of writing letters. The trial starts October 31st, so let's raise some consciousness as a lead up!