Culture
cortex | July 7, 2006Sharon Begley has another wonderful column today in the WSJ. She focuses on the so called "violence gene" as an example of the hopelessly complicated relationship between genetics and real life.
In the late 1980s, a number of men in several generations of a large Dutch family were found to carry a mutation in the MAOA gene that made it inactive. They all had a long rap sheet of rape, attempted murder and arson. MAOA became known as the "violence gene," headlines warned of "a violence in the blood," and there was talk of screening everyone to identify carriers.
The link between MAOA and…
cortex | July 7, 2006Money also can't buy you happiness. It's been reported before, but it's always worth repeating: the rich aren't happier than the rest of us. In the last issue of Science, a team of researchers (including Nobel Laureate Daniel Kahneman), reported that
"The belief that high income is associated with good mood is widespread but mostly illusory...People with above-average income are relatively satisfied with their lives but are barely happier than others in moment-to-moment experience, tend to be more tense, and do not spend more time in particularly enjoyable activities."
Of course, this isn't…
razib | July 6, 2006I am a registered Republican. There, I said it. I'm not a particularly ardent one, but I am not ashamed of being a Republican. I have no idea if there are any other Republican bloggers here at Science Blogs, even nominal ones like myself. Additionally, my impression is that aside from David Ng everyone here at Science Blogs is pretty pale faced. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but someone should chi square this and see if they scry prima facie grounds for discrimination. I kid of course.
In any case, Bora has a long post about liberalism and the academy. He talks about a long…
cortex | July 6, 2006Over at The Corner, Jonah Goldberg alleges that if global warming were an entirely natural phenomenon - as opposed to a man-made problem caused by greenhouse gases - then "the reluctance on the part of some on the right to fix the problem would evaporate." This is a grand claim, and it's worth noting that Goldberg doesn't explain his position. I can only guess that conservatives would be more willing to confront the inconvenient truth of global warming if it didn't involve curtailing economic growth or becoming less reliant on fossil fuels.
That said, I do find the second part of Goldberg's…
cortex | July 6, 2006Much ink has been spilled about the recent paper in Science documenting empathy in mice. The experiment was rather simple. The scientists noticed that mice given a painful injection displayed increased writhing behavior (a reflexive response to pain) in the presence of cagemates who had also been injected. Furthermore, the writhing increased the longer the paired rats had previously been caged together. If the mouse saw their friend get poked with a needle then their own injection seemed to hurt even more.
I tend to agree with Jake over at Pure Pedantry, who argued that "The question of…
cortex | June 30, 2006From The Daily Telegraph:
Scientists who carry out embryonic stem cell research and politicians who pass laws permitting the practice will be excommunicated, the Vatican said yesterday.
"Destroying human embryos is equivalent to an abortion. It is the same thing," said Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo, head of the Pontifical Council for the Family.
"Excommunication will be applied to the women, doctors and researchers who eliminate embryos [and to the] politicians that approve the law," he said in an interview with Famiglia Christiana, an official Vatican magazine.
Excommunication forbids…
cortex | June 29, 2006I've lived in New Hampshire for almost a year now, and I'm still not used to the constant presence of presidential hopefuls. Yesterday, Bill was here. Pataki was supposed to come, but the floods kept him in NY. In the last month, we've had Warner, Feingold, Clark, McCain and just about everyone else daydreaming about a White House run in 2008. Last time I checked, Kerry still had a billboard up.
Now I don't mind all the attention. It's pretty amusing. But I've also lived in Los Angeles and New York City, and I can honestly say that I've seen more politicians in the last few months (and the…
razib | June 26, 2006Manish points me to this bizarre article about a successful young American who happens to be gay, and, is seeking a "marriage of convenience" with a suitably inclined lesbian. Oh, and guess what, he is a practicing Muslim to boot! A few months ago rik asked me if I thought science and religion were fundamentally compatible. My somewhat lame answer was that they must be, as there are individuals who are great scientists who seem sincerely religious. Now, is a homosexual orientation which is active and unabashed compatible with Islam? Most of the scholars and clerics interviewed in the…
cortex | June 26, 2006According to the Wall Street Journal, DaimlerChrysler is going to announce this week that it is introducing the Smart car into the U.S. market. For those who don't know, the Smart car is an incredibly tiny line of cars that get excellent gas mileage and are targeted at urban dwellers. In Paris, for example, Smart cars have been known to park with their front facing the curb. Of course, in Paris Smart cars don't have to compete with Suburbans and Navigators.
cortex | June 26, 2006My post comparing Gladwell and Freud seemed to provoke a few defenses. Dave Munger over at Cognitive Daily offered a guarded defense of Gladwell, while Mixing Memory offered a defense of Freud. I'll respond to Cognitive Daily first. Here is Dave on me on Gladwell:
Jonah's problem with Gladwell's method is that Gladwell doesn't parse the data the way Jonah wants him to. Jonah would like to see Gladwell explain all the data he discusses in the context of showing how the mind works. But that's not what Gladwell's doing in Blink: Gladwell's goal is to show how we respond to a particular type of…
cortex | June 26, 2006Today's rumination on faith and fundamentalism by Edward Rothstein in the NY Times left me cold. In the process of reviewing Bill Moyer's new program on "religion and reason," Rothstein rejects the idea that fundamentalism, violence and religious faith are especially intertwined. He goes on to suggest that Colin McGinn's "proselytizing for wind-surfing" is somehow equivalent to the fatwah against Salman Rushdie, or the zealous faith that propels suicide bombings:
After all, the fundamentalism of belief was typical of pre-Enlightenment faith, and if, like post-Enlightenment reason, it has much…
cortex | June 24, 2006My next article for Seed will talk briefly about Toyota and some of the reasons for its astonishing success in one of the most competitive industries in the world. But I thought it was worth highlighting a quote from the former chairman of Toyota, Hiroshi Okuda, who stepped down yesterday. "I do not view efforts to address issues in the energy and environmental fields as a burden to industry or society," Mr. Okuda said in a 2004 speech. "To the contrary, I believe they should be recognized as opportunities for growth." As the CEO's of the Big Three lobby Congress to not raise fuel economy…
cortex | June 23, 2006The murmurs are growing louder...Will Al Gore be the first presidential candidate to launch a campaign based on a scientific issue? Here is Marty Peretz:
The issues Gore has tended to are issues on which he is truly expert...He is not afraid of science and technology because he knows science and technology.
It seems to me that scientific issues (global warming, R&D, energy policy, etc.) are the best issues for Democrats to draw a clear distinction between themselves and Republicans. Iraq is a miasma, and there are no good alternatives. Closing budget defits requires tax hikes. Apparently…
razib | June 23, 2006This is a question I'm throwing out to the philosophers out there, what is the current thinking in regards to Popper in philosophy of science? My own impression is that Popper is considered passe. I find this interesting, because in my personal experience when workings scientists mouth philospophical platitudes, it is almost purely in a Popperian language. A friend of mine who is a systematist was at a conference, and she recounted to me how a cladist badgered her after her presentation because she had violated "the Popperian method." Another time I read a paper which explored the…
cortex | June 22, 2006The National Bureau of Economic Resarch just released a new study on peer effects in the classroom:
The marginal effect of a one percent increase in the quality of peers on student achievement is equivalent to between 8â15% of a one percent increase in one's own earlier achievement...We find that peer effects operate in a heterogeneous manner. High ability students benefit more from having higher achieving schoolmates and from having less variation in peer quality than students of lower ability.
If I understand the paper correctly, there were three separate findings. 1) Kids achieve more…
cortex | June 21, 2006The Wall Street Journal just posted a very interesting list which analyzes all the known bird flu deaths so far. It makes for strangely engrossing reading.
cortex | June 21, 2006In the new The New Republic, Steven Pinker does a fair and thorough assesment of the recent study asserting that Ashkenazi Jews have a genetic advantage in intelligence. According to the researchers (Gregory Cochran, Jason Hardy, and Henry Harpending), this selection took place from about 800 A.D. to 1600 A.D, when Jews in Northern Europe were relegated to being moneylenders and estate managers. Of course, rapid selection produces unintended side-effects, and Cochran, et.al. argue that the price of a higher IQ was Tay Sachs and Gaucher's disease, which are highly prevalent among Ashkenazi…
cortex | June 19, 2006PZ Myers dissects Ann Coulter's ridiculous claim that "There is no physical evidence for evolution" with his usual panache and wit. Of course, he is entirely right: Darwinian evolution is a sacrosant biological fact. Without the theory of evolution, life makes no sense.
But I do think that Myers misinterprets Coulter's claim. While Coulter says many foolish things, I'm sure she is well aware that thousands upon thousands of science papers have documented the abundance of evidence for evolution. (As Myers notes, PubMed currrently lists 150,000 peer-reviewed articles on evolution.) But Coulter…
cortex | June 15, 2006As a writer, there are few nicer things than reading a lucid and thought provoking response to an article you've written. PZ Myers, in responding to my article on the controversial theories of Joan Roughgarden, has written a gem of a blog post. Much of his post is devoted to scrutinizing and criticizing Roughgarden's theories. I'm not an evolutionary biologist, but I think Myers makes some excellent points. (He is a skeptical voice in my article as well.) Although he discusses several possible explanations for the evolutionary origins of homosexuality, he settles on a favorite:
Homosexuality…