razib
Posts by this author
Genome-wide distribution of ancestry in Mexican Americans:
Migrations to the new world brought together individuals from Europe, Africa and the Americans. Inter-mating between these migrant and indigenous populations led to the subsequent formation of new admixed populations, such as African and…
Years before Genetic Future, there was Future Pundit. If you haven't checked out, I think you should. Yes, the title is cheesy, but so what?
Well, today something popped into my RSS which is likely to make many neoatheists somewhat excited; Participating In Religion May Make Adolescents From Certain Races More Depressed:
But new research has found that this does not hold true for all adolescents, particularly for minorities and some…
Since I pointed to a blog geared toward reviewing technologies which serve to benefit the perpetuation of the white European hegemony yesterday, I thought I should make it known that you should check out Not Exactly Rocket Science. Dawg has been bringing his game.
Just a small point. I do not believe scientists are particularly rational people as compared to the normal human. Because the average scientist has a higher IQ than the average artist I am willing to grant marginally higher rationality to an average scientist. Their ability to decompose and…
The post below on AVPR1A and fidelity alluded to the fact that this locus has been implicated in many other behavioral traits. I spent some of today digging through the literature. So check it....
AVPR1a and SLC6A4 Gene Polymorphisms Are Associated with Creative Dance Performance
AVPR1A and OXTR…
After about 3 hours of use I have switched to Chrome as my default browser. Read all about it. Some are skeptical. But, I'm tired of the "Application Not Responding" :-) Also, I just ran a quick test of SunSpider JavaScript Benchmark Results, and Chrome was 2 X the speed of Firefox 3.01 beta.
Commentary has a long piece, Jews and Their DNA, which covers the recent findings coming out of genetics in regards to the "Who is a Jew" question. It's a fair summary of the field, though I would note that the author relied heavily on uniparental lineages passed purely through males and females,…
Enter the new hegemon, ScienceBlogs welcomes another white male, Genetic Future.
Over the years I've blogged a fair amount on the AVPR1A gene. Variation on this locus has been associated with differences altruism in humans and mating preferences in voles. Now a new paper is out in PNAS, at some point in the near future (not online, but will be here), which shows differences in…
Notes on Sewall Wright: the Adaptive Landscape:
My series of posts on the work of Sewall Wright is now approaching its (anti?)climax. The next post, on the shifting balance theory, should be the last. The present note deals with a closely related subject. Wright introduced the concept of the '…
My post The Genetic Map of Europe drew a lot of interest, but there's even a cooler paper on the same topic out, Genes mirror geography within Europe:
...Despite low average levels of genetic differentiation among Europeans, we find a close correspondence between genetic and geographic distances;…
Sciencedebate 2008 got some answers from Barack Obama. Props to Chris and Sheril who put some labor hours into this....
Seems like there's a 14% chance that if the Republicans keep the White House this year that Sarah Palin will be President of the United States in the interval 2009-2013. Of course, you could modulate the probability up or down based on plugging in more priors into the model, but I think it gives a…
War and the evolution of belligerence and bravery:
Tribal war occurs when a coalition of individuals use force to seize reproduction-enhancing resources, and it may have affected human evolution. Here, we develop a population-genetic model for the coevolution of costly male belligerence and bravery…
In my post below I pointed out that there was no sex difference in terms of attitudes toward the legality of abortion on demand. But the question remains: is there a difference of intensity? Yes. Women care more. Specifically, pro-choice women care a great deal more than pro-choice men. There…
Those with more education, wealth and intelligence. Those with less pigment in the skin and more liberal politics. There is no sex difference. Charts below.
The question: "Please tell me whether or not you think it should be possible for a pregnant woman to obtain a legal abortion if: The…
A comment:
In Canada, places in the far west like Alberta and British Columbia contain a higher percentage of atheists and other non-religious, but also a higher percentage of evangelical Christians.
This is true in the USA to some extent...but I didn't want to compare to "evangelical Christians"…
At least when it comes to choosing his VP candidate. Joe Biden as a "safe" choice; Sarah Palin is not.
Over at Island of Doubt James Hrynyshyn says:
As far as I can tell, North Carolina's no different from the rest of America when it comes to religion. About a tenth of the population is free of religious conviction....
Well, I was pretty sure that there is a statistically significant difference…
'Pristine' Amazonian Region Hosted Large, Urban Civilization:
The paper also argues that the size and scale of the settlements in the southern Amazon in North Central Brazil means that what many scientists have considered virgin tropical forests are in fact heavily influenced by historic human…
Fortune favours the brave; but the brave are motivated by favours of another kind:
If courage makes it significantly more likely that small bands of tribes-men will win military confrontations with their neighbours, its overall advantages can easily outweigh its risks, a mathematical model has…
As I have said before biology is quite often the science of exceptions, of variation. Evolutionary biologists spend a great deal of time wondering about the origin of sex, but across vast swaths of the tree of life sex is simply not a consideration. W. D. Hamilton made his name with models of…
Tectonic environments of ancient civilizations in the eastern hemisphere:
The map distribution of ancient civilizations shows a remarkable correspondence with tectonic boundaries related to the southern margin of the Eurasian plate. Quantification of this observation shows that the association is…
Update: Please read Sandman's response after you look over this post....
New Evidence Debunks 'Stupid' Neanderthal Myth:
Blades were first produced by Homo sapiens during their colonization of Europe from Africa approximately 40,000 years ago. This has traditionally been thought to be a dramatic…
A lot of comments have revolved around whether I am a Post-Modernist when it comes to the definition of religion. This post is to make explicit and clarify my own position so I don't have to waste so much time in the comments. Most readers can therefore ignore this and wait until I go back to…
Pew has a nice survey up right now, A Closer Look at the Parties in 2008. Here are three questions, and the Republican - Democrat difference on the responses:
Do you think the US made the right or wrong decision in using military force against Iraq?, a 50 point difference on both "yes" and "no." I…
John Hawks points me to a "He said, she said," piece which wonders whether there is an inverse relationship between belief in the paranormal and religion. The basic thesis is that the mind abhors a vacuum so without institutionally guided supernatural beliefs people simply revert to "default"…
A rather pontifical commenter promoted me to do a little digging on the demographics of American atheists, as I was pretty sure that it would reinforce my point about the subjectivity of definitions. The product is a post at my other weblog, Large minority of atheists are religious:
...20% of…