razib
Posts by this author
May 25, 2006
I don't know what to think about this year's idol winner, but hey, perhaps he won't be a closeted gay man always in image control mode because of his "secret" (not that there's anything wrong with that!). As for the runner up, best of luck to her, I know how it feels....
May 25, 2006
My friend Manish Vij just started a new brown themed weblog, aptly titled UltraBrown. Anyway, this entry is hilarious. Talk about seeing the world only through your own lens! When I was in San Francisco once someone came up to me in a shop at Ghirardelli Square and asked "where I was from." You…
May 25, 2006
This week's "Ask a Science Blogger" is:
Since they're funded by taxpayer dollars (through the NIH, NSF, and so on), should scientists have to justify their research agendas to the public, rather than just grant-making bodies?
This question is loaded because how you interpret it really colors how…
May 25, 2006
I had a strange experience the other day. I was walking down a hallway, and all of a sudden the name of a local software company came to mind. I didn't understand why I was thinking about this, and I was mulling over this strange issue when 20 seconds after I'd started thinking about the company…
May 23, 2006
PLOS has a new paper out which fleshes out how SRY might play a critical role in sex determination in mammals. Here is the press release. Below the fold I've taken figure 7 from their paper and cropped and reedited it a bit for ease of viewing, as well as adding minor parenthetical remarks (e.g…
May 23, 2006
I'm an atheist. Just like some people who are Christians but weren't always tell me that they "always believed in Christ," myself, I've never believed in God. Before the age of 7 I did avow a belief in God, but in hindsight I see only the most minimal of deisms in my conception of the world aside…
May 23, 2006
My post yesterday offered up a quick sketch of the phenomenon of genomic imprinting. In short, genomic imprinting is the selective expression of an allele conditional upon whether it is inherited from the father or mother. This selective expression is limited to a small subset of loci, perhaps…
May 22, 2006
Since I'm on a Dumb Vinci Code kick today, check out this amusing article about the genetics of Jesus! Check it:
In humans, females package some of their DNA in two matched X chromosomes, males in a single X and Y. So if you're a male, there's only one way you could have gotten your Y chromosome…
May 22, 2006
Below GrrlScientist asks why The Da Vinci Code is "bad history." I believe it is bad history because someone whose work I respect and have enjoyed has pointed out manifold errors, incluing in a book which covered this ground. His name is Bart Ehrman, and he is the head of Relgious Studies at UNC…
May 22, 2006
Some of the most fascinating theoretical evolutionary biology that I've run into emerges out of David's Haig's work on genetic conflict. You've probably stumbled into it somewhere, whether via popularizers like Matt Ridley, or other researchers like Robert Trivers and Sarah Blaffer Hrdy. Haig is…
May 22, 2006
Conservative Christian Pollster George Barna has an interesting report out on those who have read the book, The Da Vinci Code. Some results:
* Catholics more likely to have read it than Protestants
* "Upscale" individuals are four times as likely to have read it than "downscale" ones (household…
May 21, 2006
Interesting article in The Boston Globe which profiles researchers who suggest that variation in gut flora (the mix of bacteria) might be the cause of differences in body weight. Interesting fact: there are an order of magnitude more bacteria in your gut than cells in your body. Also, to my…
May 21, 2006
I talk about religion a lot on this weblog....but to some extent, I think I talk past many of the readers here. Many of my ideas over the past few years in regards to religion have been shaped by the naturalistic program in evolutionary cultural anthropology. The key workers in this area are Dan…
May 21, 2006
Reader Mengu Gulmen emailed me about our exchange in regards to how we view the development of the mind:
Mengu: Every decision we make, everything we do and say, is based on the
previous experiences we've had [all we did, all we have learned from
our schools and our families and friends and…
May 21, 2006
3 years ago I invited David B to post on Gene Expression (classic), and over the years he's produced some meaty entries which deal with important scientific and cultural issues. Below are 10 posts which I'd like to introduce to Science Blogs readers....
Biological versus cultural evolutionIs…
May 20, 2006
There are reports coming out that Angelina Jolie is going into labor. This is improtant, because last year Armand Leroi spoke about the possible relationship between beauty and low mutational load.
Leroi has posited that one way to decrease the effect of load is hybridization. The logic is…
May 20, 2006
A new paper in The American Naturalist should interest some in these parts, Placental Invasiveness Mediates the Evolution of Hybrid Inviability in Mammals:
...Here, we show that the maximum genetic distance at which interspecific mammalian pregnancies yield viable neonates is significantly greater…
May 20, 2006
Rik asks:
Off topic... what's the best argument you've read, contra Dawkins and Dennett, that Christianity is compatible with the scientific worldview?
I had to mull this over because I didn't have a "pat" response. The short of it is that I like have my cake and eat it when it comes to science…
May 19, 2006
In the comments below Jason Malloy took issue with John Hawks' contention that Creationists "will now cite Eric Lander in support of the idea that hominid fossils are not transitional between apes and humans, but instead are hybrids of apes and humans."
I don't know. Here is a short passage from…
May 19, 2006
Well...the title is a little creepy, but sums up the melange in this report, Study finds that a woman's chances of having twins can be modified by diet. But there is more than diet, researchers have long known that genetics plays a role in twinning rates, it is heritable in that some proportion of…
May 18, 2006
My attempt to solicit a narrow and eminent list of evolutionary biologists for my planned attempt at rolling my own quizilla at some point in the future really got out of control. On the one hand, the discipline was too broadly construed. Biases creep in. On the other hand, the category was too…
May 18, 2006
Check out this post from Ed Brayton on a definition for "cultural racism" from the Seattle Public Schools:
Examples of these norms include defining white skin tones as nude or flesh colored, having a future time orientation, emphasizing individualism as opposed to a more collective ideology,…
May 18, 2006
This weeks "Ask a Science Blogger" question is:
"If you could shake the public and make them understand one scientific idea, what would it be?"
I assume others will answer this also, so I want to get this out first: my reply is that the public needs to know that the most important idea about "…
May 18, 2006
In the comments below in regards to the great evolutionary biologists, and the "Top 10 list," I received some good submissions. But, there is definitely (in my mind) a top tier which I am inflexible about.
Darwin - he basically invented the field as a science, made some darn good predictions (H.…
May 17, 2006
Your nominations? Mine below....
Charles Darwin
R.A. Fisher
Sewall Wright
J.B.S. Haldane
Motoo Kimura
Ernst Mayr
Richard Lewontin
J. M. Smith
W.D. Hamilton
Theodosius Dobzhansky
I chose based on subjective criteria, and the individuals above differ a great deal. Lewontin has done good work, but…
May 17, 2006
Ah...busy with other things, and Evolgen pounced on this story of hybrdization in the midst of the split between the pre-human and pre-chimpanzee lineages 5-7 million years ago. Carl Zimmer offers some social perspective, while John Hawks tears into the science (tears, cuts and bludgeons, actually…
May 17, 2006
This dovetails nicely with my previous post on encephalization. Brain size not linked to Microcephalin and ASMP?. Normal Variants of Microcephalin and ASPM Do Not Account for Brain Size Variability:
Normal human brain volume is heritable. The genes responsible for variation in brain volume are…
May 16, 2006
At least 6 known murders this spring. How many more unsolved mysteries? How many nests rendered empty?