razib
Posts by this author
A new paper in PLOS One, Ethnic Related Selection for an ADH Class I Variant within East Asia:
The alcohol dehydrogenases (ADH) are widely studied enzymes and the evolution of the mammalian gene cluster encoding these enzymes is also well studied. Previous studies have shown that the ADH1B*47His…
Well, it turns out that there isn't a handy-dandy reference for the numbers for various religions in the past. Mark Kirkorian over at The Corner linked to my earlier post where I expressed skepticism about the contention by the Vatican demographer that a larger number of Muslims than Roman…
The Islamic Republic of Harvard?:
But the decision put Harvard in the awkward position of having to arbitrate what constitutes legitimate religious practice. Marine claims there was a "moral and ethical responsibility" for the administration to act on this request, telling the Associated Press last…
Dan MacArthur at Genetic Future has the details. Some of the stuff coming out of genomics reminds me a lot of what you see with social science; lots of sexy studies which turn out not to be as significant upon later analysis. Perhaps hypotheses are overrated?
Update: Follow up post with some numbers and logic laid out.
Muslims more numerous than Catholics: Vatican:
Monsignor Vittorio Formenti, who compiled the Vatican's newly-released 2008 yearbook of statistics, said Muslims made up 19.2 percent of the world's population and Catholics 17.4 percent.
"…
At my other weblog a long post on religion:
On the most recent bloggingheads.tv you can watch Paul Bloom explaining why he thinks the propensity for theism is an innate bias of our species. Several years back Bloom wrote a piece for The Atlantic, Is God an Accident?, where he makes a similar case…
I have a review copy of Big Brain: The Origins and Future of Human Intelligence; but I'm not planning on reading it at this point. See John Hawks for why. Sometimes interdisciplinary work sheds new light on old questions because of the ability to think-outside-of-the-box. Sometimes not so much.
Just an FYI, but Kat photos will be delayed by a day or so this week. But if you are interested in katage, check out this week's South Park.
Michael C. Moynihan has a article up at Reason, In Defense of Geert Wilders:
In response to the controversy surrounding Fitna, Wilders' website was knocked offline by his American host, Network Solutions; he has been repeatedly denounced by the government of Jan Peter Balkenende as a liability to…
Another paper is out which falls under the category of using genetics to understand human history; Analysis of Genomic Admixture in Uyghur and Its Implication in Mapping Strategy:
The Uyghur (UIG) population, settled in Xinjiang, China, is a population presenting a typical admixture of Eastern and…
Do minorities feel they have more in common with each other rather than whites? See Inductivist.
It was in the 7th century of the Christian Era many of the events which shaped the course of Islamic sectarianism occurred. The major one you are aware of is the Shia-Sunni split; the reality of the origins of this schism and the way in which in manifests today is more complex than the cartoon cut…
New PLOS paper, Geographic Patterns of Genome Admixture in Latin American Mestizos. Nothing new, but pushing the ball forward....
A = autosomal
X = X chromosomal
Related: Genetics, the myth-buster? The case of Argentina.
How a Film Triggered a Global Panic:
But Balkenende is only doing what he believes is the best thing to do under the circumstances. Meanwhile, both the secretary general of NATO and Iran's deputy foreign minister have offered the Dutch advice on how to neutralize Wilders: by invoking Article 29 of…
Normally I don't blog politics since I don't know shit really. I generally subscribe to 2-3 political feeds which I regularly rotate to keep me "hooked in." Today I saw something so so shockingly stupid, or, brazenly mendacious, that I had to take note. Red Massachusetts?:
...And a Scots-Irish war…
I just purchased a copy of A Biologist's Guide to Mathematical Modeling in Ecology and Evolution by Sarah P. Otto and Troy Day. My main rationale for getting this book was that I wanted a reference with the kitchen sink included, and, I was curious about mathematical ecology. This text leans a…
Everyone on ScienceBlogsTM is talking about Arthur C. Clarke. I put up a short post where I noted his passing. I wasn't a super fan of Clarke's fiction, though I found it interesting and thought provoking. My personal favorite was the The City and the Stars, which tells the story of a future…
Read all about it. He was no prose stylist or a crafter of character, but oh the ideas!
John Hawks responds to the new paper in PNAS, Close correspondence between quantitative and molecular-genetic divergence times for Neandertals and modern humans.
I read Christmas: A Candid History walking home last night. It's a small compact book so walking and reading works well. In any case, there was some surprising information here. The basic outline that Christmas, as we understand it, is in large part a co-opted pagan complex of festivals is there…
Why White People Like 'Stuff White People Like':
...Basically, this joke breaks down as "Congratulate a white person and they will feel smugly good about themselves." It's the perfect go-to punchline for Stuff White People Like, because it's really what the site is all about. Because if there's one…
Hasidic actor walks off Portman movie:
First he couldn't hold Natalie Portman's hand - and now a Williamsburg Hasidic Jew-turned-actor has to give up his chance to hit it big in a Hollywood movie.
....
"I am backing out of the movie," said Karpen, a kitchen cabinet salesman. "It's not acceptable in…
David has finally initiated his series on the major ideas of the great evolutionary biologist Sewall Wright. Check out his post on path analysis.
OK, the title is somewhat of an exaggeration, but not much. Out of Africa, Not Once But Twice:
Modern humans are known to have left Africa in a wave of migration around 50,000 years ago, but another, smaller group -- possibly a different subspecies -- left the continent 50,000 years earlier,…
Daniel Larison says:
Reliable information is a bit hard to come by, but it seems as if the policy of increased Han Chinese colonisation in Tibet has finally run up against a violent popular backlash. I haven't anything very insightful to say about this, but it is one of the major foreign affairs…