razib
Posts by this author
December 14, 2009
Cool new report in Current Biology, Defensive tool use in a coconut-carrying octopus:
The use of tools has become a benchmark for cognitive sophistication. Originally regarded as a defining feature of our species, tool-use behaviours have subsequently been revealed in other primates and a growing…
December 13, 2009
I was looking for the term "Depression," in the economic sense. But look at the clear seasonal trend in search for the term:
December 10, 2009
A friend pointed me to a new Pew survey, Many Americans Not Dogmatic About Religion. It shows the general finding that though Americans are a religious people, they're moderately ecumenical in their practices and beliefs. I was concerned in particular though with the resurgence of supernatural…
December 9, 2009
According to search engine traffic one of the most popular posts on this weblog has to do with the genetic background of Ashkenazi Jews. That is, those Jews whose ancestors derive from Central & Eastern Europe, and the overwhelming number of Jews in the United States. The genetic origins of…
December 9, 2009
At Reuters Felix Salmon has been making the case that a home should not be thought of as an investment. Here's the the Google Trends for "investment property":
I think the biggest argument that one should be careful about viewing a home purchase as an investment is that many people will now roll…
December 8, 2009
I post some data analysis over at my other weblog. For example, today I looked at the relationship between food stamp usage and unemployment. The Census makes a lot of county-level data available, though it's often slapdash and disorganized. But using R I've constructed many data sets including…
December 7, 2009
Well, I don't quite know about that, but that's the sort of take-away from a new paper in PLoS Biology which looks at the downsides of female attractiveness. A Cost of Sexual Attractiveness to High-Fitness Females:
Adaptive mate choice by females is an important component of sexual selection in…
December 7, 2009
Researcher Can't Find Men Who Have Not Seen Porn:
A new study on the effects of pornography has just started, but there is already one revealing find: the researcher could not find any men who have not viewed pornography. The study will proceed without a control group consisting of men who have…
December 6, 2009
Two loci control tuberculin skin test reactivity in an area hyperendemic for tuberculosis:
Approximately 20% of persons living in areas hyperendemic for tuberculosis (TB) display persistent lack of tuberculin skin test (TST) reactivity and appear to be naturally resistant to infection by…
December 6, 2009
Cardiovascular fitness is associated with cognition in young adulthood:
During early adulthood, a phase in which the central nervous system displays considerable plasticity and in which important cognitive traits are shaped, the effects of exercise on cognition remain poorly understood. We…
December 6, 2009
At my other weblog I looked at some of the data on the international data on religion. There are two positions in regards to religious trends which always crop up.
* That in the medium-to-long term religion, in particular supernatural religion, will disappear.
* That in the short-to-medium term we…
December 6, 2009
Apple's Game Changer, Downloading Now:
The way the industry once operated, "Each handset company would come up with its latest iterations and maybe have the hottest device of the season or not," says Ms. Huberty, the Morgan Stanley analyst. "Enter apps into the equation, and that changes. It goes…
December 5, 2009
About six months ago I had a post up on the Cape Coloureds of South Africa. As a reminder, the Cape Coloureds are a mixed-race population who are the plural majority in the southwestern Cape region of South Africa. Like the white Boers they are a mostly Afrikaans speaking population who are…
December 5, 2009
Darwin's idea has cost lives:
Truths that America's founding fathers had held to be self-evident - that all men were created equal and endowed with certain inalienable rights - were now scorned as gross sentimentalities that had been overtaken by Darwinian science. Within a decade the self-styled "…
December 4, 2009
One thesis in regards to the vitality of religions is that state sponsorship tends to result in disaffection because public monopolies offer sub-standard product. In contrast, separation between the public sector and religion results in a free market of ideas which promotes vigorous diversity and…
December 4, 2009
Here. All I have to say is that 60 minutes really isn't that much time.
December 4, 2009
Press release on the partnership with ScienceBlogsTM. Nothing should change around these parts, though I might avail myself of the image library instead of going to Wikipedia all the time. When I was a kid I will admit though that reading issues of National Geographic from 1910 or 1920 was one of…
December 2, 2009
For the past few months I've been following The Givewell Blog. Here's a recent post, Why are we always criticizing charities?:
Recently, we've criticized (in one way or another) many well-known, presumably well-intentioned charities (Smile Train, Acumen Fund, UNICEF, Kiva), which might lead to some…
December 1, 2009
In the comments below, vanya states:
But razib, upstate New York is not New England. I've never heard of "Greater New England." As a kid in New Hampshire I always understood that New England was superior to New York state, which was mostly a nest of Dutchmen and Tories in 1776 anyway.
I never heard…
December 1, 2009
Why Tiger's endorsement empire is safe:
And as indiscretions go, this is not Michael Vick, say sports marketers. This is not Michael Phelps. This is not Kobe Bryant. Not yet, anyway.
"I'm convinced that this will not cause the end of Tiger Woods Inc. as we know it," said Paul Swangard, managing…
December 1, 2009
We May Be Born With an Urge to Help:
What is the essence of human nature? Flawed, say many theologians. Vicious and addicted to warfare, wrote Hobbes. Selfish and in need of considerable improvement, think many parents.
But biologists are beginning to form a generally sunnier view of humankind.…
November 30, 2009
A friend of mine pointed me to an interesting weblog, Here in Glitner. From the "About" page:
Reflections from my life as a Muslim, perspectives on Islam in my true life as a non-Muslim. I was a Muslim woman, a Muslim wife, a Muslim mother, a Muslim sister. I wore hijab, abstained from pork,…
November 30, 2009
This article pointed me to this interesting paper, Rapid adaptive evolution of northeastern coyotes via hybridization with wolves:
The dramatic expansion of the geographical range of coyotes over the last 90 years is partly explained by changes to the landscape and local extinctions of wolves, but…
November 30, 2009
Wet phases in the Sahara/Sahel region and human migration patterns in North Africa:
The carbon isotopic composition of individual plant leaf waxes (a proxy for C3 vs. C4 vegetation) in a marine sediment core collected from beneath the plume of Sahara-derived dust in northwest Africa reveals three…
November 29, 2009
I've been crunching some county-by-county data at one of my other weblogs:
Where the fat folks liveDiabetes and obesityThe white vote for Obama, by county & correlatesAre over-leveraged counties seeing an increase in food stamp usage?
November 26, 2009
Open Secrets has data on members of the House and Senate in relation to their net worth. Here are some descriptive statistics:
Democrats & Republicans:
25th percentile = $228,006
Median = $791,004
75thth percentile = $2,962,519
Mean = $6,438,210
Republicans:
25th percentile = $269,007
Median…