razib | September 20, 2006John Derbyshire reviews a book about Christian Europe slaves in North Africa. I've read that book, and it's pretty good, though one should also check out Islam's Black Slaves as a companion.
razib | September 19, 2006A spicy solution for colon cancer?:
Looking for a cancer cure? Try the spice rack.
In the last few years, that tactic has proved productive for researchers investigating turmeric, a curry spice used for centuries in Indian traditional medicine.
They've found that turmeric's active ingredient, curcumin, works in the lab to fight skin, breast and other tumor cells. In fact, human clinical trials employing curcumin have already been launched.
You gotz to know, my shit is medicinal! Sweetness in, and sweetness out.
Update: Abel says my shit isn't applicable.
razib | September 19, 2006A few weeks ago I posted my fixations which put the spotlight on some elementary population genetics formalisms. I thought I'd put my elementary Illustrator skills to use and throw up the canonical diagram use to elucidate basic population genetics in many classrooms. Here you see two demes, two breeding populations, and the arrows show the factors which increase and decrease genetic diversity. While mutation increases genetic variation, genetic drift tends to remove variants. Similarly, while balancing selection, whether it be frequency dependent or heterozygote advantage, tends to…
razib | September 18, 2006Not much on evolution and genetics of late...well, sometimes life goes in other directions. But, I though I'd point you to JP over at my other blog commenting on a paper where the author dismisses the rate of human genomic evolution next to his vaunted Drosophila (the full paper can be found in the links over there). RPM responds over at his blog. The comment boards on my other blog have been hoppin', with RPM being the Drosophile, and JP making the case that H. sapiens is the next big model organism. Scroll down and you'll see the Allen Iverson.'
I just got Evolutionary Genetics:…
razib | September 18, 2006Interesting article about the teaching of evolution in a United Methodist affiliated college, and Creationism in a Baptist one. From the Creationist:
"At the time of the Big Bang, evolutionists believe there was all this matter out there, where did that matter come from? At the time of the Big Bang, how did the Earth end up getting all of the water and the air and the life-forms? Everything from as simple as bacteria to as complicated as people -- no life-forms have ever been found anywhere else," Wilbanks said. "We hear that all life-forms are progressing from one life-form to another, but…
razib | September 17, 2006...to show that he regrets his gaffe.
[From the Muslim Onion]
This whole fiasco is making Sam Harris' point for sure. Too bad I have no expectation that this sort of irrationality can be banished as opposed to managed in the future....
Though seriously.
1) The Pope quoted Manuel II Palaiologos who basically implied that Islam was a derivative and uncouth religion. I think that context matters here, Manuel was a erudite man, and he surely drew upon the tradition started by John of Damascus, in Heresy of the Ishmaelites, to view Islam as simply the most prominent in a long line of un-Orthodox…
razib | September 16, 2006I recently read the remarks of the Pope. Everyone is focusing on the aggressive tone taken toward Islam. Muslims are reacting in a typically bestial manner. But it seems to me that Benedict is being disingenuous in pretending as if Christianity was spread purely through moral suasion. I have already noted the vandalism and violence sanctioned by Christian Emperors, starting with Theodosius, against pagans their sacred temples late in the 4th century. The conversion of figures like Clovis or Vladimir meant that their peoples entered the faith by fiat, certainly this was not the case…
razib | September 15, 2006The other day I was IMing a friend of mine. She's a college graduate with two liberal arts degrees. Anyhow, I accused her best friend of racism. See, what happened was that I asked how many men this woman had dated. My friend stated 6 men. I asked if they were all white. My friend said, "Yes, all white." Well, I was like, "She's racist, she only dates white men!" Well, this wasn't convincing, so I was like, "Well, there's only a 12% expectation that she would date 6 straight white men!" Now, here, my friend was intrigued, "What, where'd you get that number?" I was like, "Well, 70% of…
razib | September 15, 2006A new find pushes the date for the last Neandertals in southern Iberia to 28 K B.P., but John Hawks advises some skepticism. I'd listen to Hawks, he's a pro, but, I would also assume it is important to remember that normally the first and last appearance of a species in the fossil record often does not capture the full time span of its existence. If you read my posts about introgression you will likely intuit that I still find the new work interesting because of the possibility of long term spatial mosaicism between Neandertals and H. sapiens sapiens. Interestingly, Erik Trinkaus has come…
razib | September 14, 2006PLOS has an interesting article which reports on the differentiation of European populations into northern and southern clusters, along with separability between various nationalities. Since until recently mate selection has been a function of distance and topography, and national borders also tended to be bounded by physical features (e.g., the Alps or the Pyrenees), it is no surprise that, on average, the French tend to cluster with other French. But, I do think quantification such as this is useful:
...most individual participants with southern European ancestry (Italian, Spanish,…
razib | September 14, 2006I think this comment in the message boards needs to be highlighted:
I think it's important to know that functionally, stated atheism in Japan is quite different than stated atheism in the west. In Japan, "religion" (the word itself in Japanese: "shuukyo" was a Meiji era invention), is generally seen as a family affair, namely funerals. Actual religious practice such as shrine visiting or New Year's is seen as cultural despite the fact that people are going through religious motions such as prayer and charm buying. The act of buying charms in and of itself is interesting. A professor of mine…
razib | September 14, 2006Since this blog has basically turned into a forum for my opinions about religion, I thought I'd offer my comments on Pope Benedict's challenge to Islam and secularism. First, I'll point you to John Wilkins' deconstruction of Benedict's misimpressions of evolutionary theory. Ah, the bad.
But what about the good? The good is that Benedict is challenging Islam and demanding that it join the civilized and castrated stable of modern organized religions. The universe is characterized by cycles, and organized religions arose first in their prototypical form with the rising priesthoods of city…
razib | September 13, 2006I just noticed that David C. Queller's review of the history of the evolutionary biology of sex ratios is open access. Here's the conclusion:
Most important, this seemingly arcane topic has played very prominent roles in the development of game theory, in the debate over group selection, in supporting kin selection and parent-offspring conflict, and in the field of within-organism conflict. Many biological advances will require high tech instrumentation and deeper probing into molecular mechanisms of model organisms. But there remains room for a good theory, for adroit choice of non-…
razib | September 13, 2006Ed Brayton and Jason Rosenhouse have long posts up about the recent dispute between PZ Myers and Ken Miller, the Roman Catholc cell biologist who has been one of the most prominent popular expositors of evolutionary biology in these United States. You can read my 10 questions for Ken Miller to get some sense of him through my own idiosyncratic lens.
Since Jason and Ed are bringing up issues relevant to the broad church of the anti-Creationist movement, I take interest. Though I am a civilian, that is, I leave the fighting to others so I may do other things, there a few general points…
razib | September 12, 2006Scent of father checks daughter's maturity. Basically the authors found in a survey that if biological fathers are around, girls mature more slowly. This sounds like the Harpending-Draper model of father absence, though with a somewhat more biological edge. The researchers suggest that the late maturity reduces the risk of inbreeding. Frankly, I'm skeptical that that is it, many animals do have pheromonally sensitivities which seem to adopt a "near enough" & "not too far" strategy for genetic diversity & compatibility, but humans seem a bit better at kin recognition than say...…
razib | September 12, 2006Baylor university has a new survey (PDF) of American religion out, and it is an excellent supplement to The American Religious Identification Survey.
Here are some findings I found interesting:
Instead of 14% of Americans with "No religion" (nearly doubling in a generation) the new survey suggests that a more accurate number is 10.8% (still an increase). The issue here is that the set of individuals who a) attend religious services b) disavows any affiliation has increased greatly over the past generation. The number of young people (18-30) with "No religion" is greater than the median…
razib | September 11, 2006Do you remember the famous saying by which began Martin Niemöller "First they came for the Jews...." The moral is that evil targets the weak and the vulnerable and works its way up the food chain. By safeguarding the rights of the weakest of us we safeguard all our rights. By humanizing the least of us we reaffirm what makes humanity precious.
This week there has been talk of banning women from praying near the Kaaba. I am not a believer, but I can see how religious women would become upset by this exclusion. The rationale was simple: there was overcrowding which was causing a public…