razib | July 25, 2006Jason says in a post which addresses the religion & science issue:
...Either the Bible is the holy and inerrant word of God, or it is an ancient document written by people with no more claim to authority than any other document that has survived from that time. It's hard to find a logically consistent middle ground.
I regularly made this argument until a few years ago. It generally remains my own personal view, though my estimation of the likelihood of the first possibility is so low that I don't know if it is judgement that is worth making when social considerations are removed. I…
razib | July 24, 2006I am a little unsure whether this article in The Washington Post titled And the Evolutionary Beat Goes On . . ., beginning with the sentence "Stephen Jay Gould would have been pleased," is a subtle joke or not. The journalist has a science background, and has even covered the evolution "controversy," but that doesn't really prepare you to dive into the brand new world of evolutionary genomics.
Here is the short of it. First, biases on the table, to say that I am not a Gouldian is charitable. I would argue that evidence of recent human evolution and diversification seems to be positively un…
razib | July 24, 2006Over at GNXP Classic our resident virgin Matt McIntosh poses 10 questions for Charles Murray, author of The Bell Curve.
razib | July 23, 2006Robert Skipper has an enormous post on R.A. Fisher & Sewall Wright's theories of dominance. I think Wright was more in the right on this issue, remember, it is easier to break (lose function) than make (gain function).
razib | July 22, 2006I have mentioned a few times that I am re-reading The Genetical Theory of Natural Selection by R.A. Fisher. I read it a few years back when I didn't know anything about evolutionary theory, so I believe this run through will be more frutiful. For those of you who don't know, R.A. Fisher was possibly the most important evolutionary biologist, and probably most important statistician, of the 20th century. Along with Sewall Wright and J.B.S. Haldane he created the field of theoretical population genetics which the Neo-Darwinian Synthesis takes as an a priori starting point. I know that in…
razib | July 21, 2006Update: Update at the bottom....
In reference to the sequencing of the Neandertal genome, Kambiz at Anthropology.net states:
I have one little gripe with the New York Times article. Wade quotes a geneticist, Dr. Bruce Lahn saying there is, "evidence from the human genome suggests some interbreeding with an archaic species." Has he not read Paabo's paper 2004 PLoS paper, "No Evidence of Neandertal mtDNA Contribution to Early Modern Humans?" There is significant mtDNA evidence to stongly conclude that humans and Neandertals did not interbread directly.
I left a comment on that website, but I…
razib | July 20, 2006Most of you probably know this, but the race is on to sequence the Neandertal genome. Nick Wade has a decent story on it. Important point:
The chimp and human genomes differ at just 1 percent of the sites on their DNA. At this 1 percent, Neanderthals resemble humans at 96 percent of the sites [the first 3 million base pairs], to judge from the preliminary work, and chimps at 4 percent.
No surprise, the putative last common ancestor between chimps and humans is 6 million years BP, Neandertals and modern humans is 500,000 years BP, and order of magnitude difference.
But these "last common…
razib | July 20, 2006The post below on the genetics (and relaxation of constraint) of dogs has given rise to many good comments. I want to highlight one:
...Yet most feral dog populations quickly revert to a medium-sized, short-coated, yellowish dog - the so-called "Pariah Dog" that's found in so many places around the world - why don't the feral populations look more like their wolf ancestors?
There are many issues mooted below. But this comment is a good one. Why do dogs "revert" into pariah dogs instead of the Eurasian wolf? Remember what is happening here: being as "cute" as a poodle doesn't matter once…
razib | July 19, 2006Over at Darwin Catholic there has been some discussion of the human influenced evolution of dogs. Seed actually has it right, it is human influenced evolution. Some of the interpretation of the paper which showed an increase in the frequency of 'deleterious' alleles spin the results as suggesting that dogs are beyond the constraints of evolution. But, as I pointed out over at DC's weblog dogs are evolved toward their own special adaptations, and the lack of these adaptations in their wild cousins is not evidence that wolves carry "deleterious" traits. For me, the most fascinating case of…
razib | July 18, 2006While I'm engaged in a bit of "radio silence," check out RPM's blog, he's posting some good stuff.
Also, I have a short entry up on historical population genetics in the context of the British Isles at my ,other weblog.
razib | July 17, 2006Does anyone know the backstory to the child mummy in this Shakira video?
Update: A reader emails:
It's just a child with a mask, as sort of reference to the carnival inbarranquilla (http://www.carnavaldebarranquilla.com/), where she isfrom in Colombia. The video is full of references to colombia.Julianhttp://adaptare.blogspot.com
razib | July 17, 2006A recent paper in Genome Research titled Relaxation of selective constraint on dog mitochondrial DNA following domestication concludes that domestication of wolves and their transformation into dogs were facilitated by relaxed selection and increased latent variation, from which subsequent selection could operate upon. Here is a good popular press summary. The basic finding is that domestic dogs in their sample (13 dogs, 6 wolves and 3 coyotes had their full mtDNA sequenced) exhibited greater accumulation of mildly deleterious mutations, in a nearly neutral fashion. Relaxation of selection…
razib | July 16, 2006After reading the comment below in response to my post on the Azeris in Iran I responded with some exasperation. Sometimes you have a "Eureka!" moment, and this is one of them. Even if I agree with John that a positivistic project is near impossible in history because of the nature of the topic, I do think that some of the distortions that I see individuals engaging in are egregious. Meta-facts, conclusions which are extracted from the broad trends of history, maybe disputable, but specific facts can be quite solid. I have a passion for various historical topics, most of them rather…
razib | July 16, 2006I know many of you are dying to hear my opinion on current events, well, your wish is granted. I post over at Nation Building about the current conflict in the Middle East (sort of). I am only tangentially interested in this topic because I'm not ignorant and I am of the opinion that most Americans are, otherwise sentences like this wouldn't be published in a major opinion magazine:
Iran's diverse population should be fertile ground for a covert operation. Iran is only 51 percent Persian. Azerbaijanis and Kurds comprise nearly 35 percent of the population. Seventy percent are under 30, and…
razib | July 16, 2006Over at GNXP Classic Agnostic has an extensive post up on the "women in science" controversy. I will admit to prodding him on this issue as I've been receiving emails (and comments) where people want me to "address" it. But time is finite...and I'm rereading Genetical Theory as well as hitting some George C. Williams, and I'm about as interested in getting "into it" as I am in arguing about Creationism. James F. Crow speaks for me:
Two populations may have a large overlap and differ only slightly in their means. Still, the most outstanding individuals will tend to come from the population…
razib | July 16, 2006In my post below I engage with some commenters in my perceptions of "what religion is." To understand where I am coming from, I thought I would be explicit in some of my assumptions and models.
1) Modern religions often have some very specific beliefs about the nature of God. For example, the Western religions (Judaism, Christianity and Islam) tend to hod that God
a) is omniscient
b) is omnipotent
c) is omnibenevolent
There are deeper philosophical issues, for example, theologians often speak of the deity in negations because to define what God is is very difficult due to the nature of the…