razib | December 29, 2009The Audacious Epigone has an interesting post up, Burden of boredom borne by blockheads:
This isn't just me speaking from personal experience--the data confirm it. The GSS asked respondents in 1982 and again in 2004 how often they have time on their hands that they don't know what to do with. Using the familiar categorization method employed here before*, the following table shows the percentage of each group's members who reported to "almost never" be without something worthwhile to do in their free time:
He presented his data in tabular format. I decided to use the variables he kindly…
razib | December 28, 2009Chard Orzel's book, How to Teach Physics to Your Dog, is out. Much props to Chad for being able to write a book while being a professor and father. A man for all seasons indeed!
razib | December 23, 2009I referenced a paper in PNAS yesterday, and I thought it might be good to actually point to it today. There's nothing that new in the paper. It confirms the finding that ~20% of the ancestry of African Americans is European, and, that African ancestry seems to be much more dominant when it comes to components of the genome presumably disproportionately contributed by females (2/3 of X chromosomes). In any case, the paper, Genome-wide patterns of population structure and admixture in West Africans and African Americans:
Quantifying patterns of population structure in Africans and African…
razib | December 22, 2009
Over at Genetic Future Dr. Daniel MacArthur points out some errors in deCODE's interpretation services. Dr. MacArthur presumably knows his maternity, though if the X chromosome results were correct one would guess that Dr. MacArthur is actually adopted and that his mother might be a Lumbee Indian.
But it makes me wonder how confused people are going to be due to problems with false results. In particular, as these technologies become very cheap many families with make recourse to them. Sometimes this will highlight "extrapair paternity events," but sometimes there will be errors and…
razib | December 22, 2009Brian Switek, The extended twilight of the mammoths:
So, if the team's analysis is correct, both mammoths and horses lived in the interior of Alaska between about 11,000 and 7,000 years ago. This is significantly more recent than the youngest fossil remains of horses and mammoths, dated between 15,000 and 13,000 years ago. There are at least two factors that might contribute to this disparity. The first is that fossils from this more recent time were preserved but have not yet been found. More likely, though, is that the populations of both mammoths and horses had dwindled to the point where…
razib | December 22, 2009There has been more blogospheric discussion on the topic of my post Doing the right thing, doing the legal thing. Megan McArdle, who started the discussion, has a long post elaborating on her objections to strategic defaults. Steve Waldman has two good posts up. Finally, at The Big Money Daniel Gross concludes:
Of course, corporate managers and financiers don't suffer from these neuroses. Do you think billionaire investor Sam Zell feels any guilt or shame because his buyout of the Tribune Co., which had $12.9 billion in debt, ended in a Chapter 11 filing last December? Rather than worry about…
razib | December 22, 2009
A few days ago I pointed out that actors with visible Asian ancestry, such as Keanu Reeves, Mark-Paul Gosselaar and Dean Cain, can play white characters, while those with visible African ancestry can not (I will leave it to debate whether you think Rashida Jones or Jennifer Beals are violations of that rule or not). On the other hand, it does seem that people with no visible African ancestry can identify as black American due to the norm of hypodescent. For example, consider Walter White, who identified as a black man despite his visible white European appearance. White used his ability to "…
razib | December 21, 2009Tom Rees:
It seems that when Christianity is popular, Christians are content with the idea of a firewall separating Church and State. It's only when Christianity begins to lose it's influence over the population at large that Christians begin to campaign for the State to adopt a Christian character.
Looking at survey data from 18 Western countries, they found:
-The fewer Christians in a country, the greater the support among Christians for a greater public role for religion (as shown in the graph).
-The polarization of views between Christians and non-religious on a public role for religion…
razib | December 21, 2009Spatial Organization of Hominin Activities at Gesher Benot Ya'aqov, Israel:
The spatial designation of discrete areas for different activities reflects formalized conceptualization of a living space. The results of spatial analyses of a Middle Pleistocene Acheulian archaeological horizon (about 750,000 years ago) at Gesher Benot Ya'aqov, Israel, indicate that hominins differentiated their activities (stone knapping, tool use, floral and faunal processing and consumption) across space. These were organized in two main areas, including multiple activities around a hearth. The diversity of human…
razib | December 20, 2009Objective Confirmation of Subjective Measures of Human Well-Being: Evidence from the U.S.A.:
A huge research literature, across the behavioral and social sciences, uses information on individuals' subjective well-being. These are responses to questions--asked by survey interviewers or medical personnel--such as "how happy do you feel on a scale from 1 to 4?" Yet there is little scientific evidence that such data are meaningful. This study examines a 2005-2008 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System random sample of 1.3 million United States citizens. Life-satisfaction in each U.S. state is…
razib | December 19, 2009I saw Avatar in 3D.
- The special effects were very good. I have seen special effects of similar quality, but never such quality in such quantity. The detail was striking enough that I assume I stopped thinking of it as "special effects" and more as simply a background canvas. I'm talking more about the landscape, the flora and fauna, than the humanoids, who occasionally slipped into uncanny valley territory.
- The plot was melodramatic and not particularly exceptional. The ideological ax didn't bother me because the plot was mostly extraneous to the film's experience anyhow.
- I think that…
razib | December 17, 2009Increased Prevalence of Myopia in the United States Between 1971-1972 and 1999-2004:
Results
Using the 1971-1972 method, the estimated prevalence of myopia in persons aged 12 to 54 years was significantly higher in 1999-2004 than in 1971-1972 (41.6% vs 25.0%, respectively; P -2.0 diopters [D]: 17.5% vs 13.4%, respectively [P -7.9 D: 22.4% vs 11.4%, respectively [P
Conclusions
When using similar methods for each period, the prevalence of myopia in the United States appears to be substantially higher in 1999-2004 than 30 years earlier. Identifying modifiable risk factors for myopia could…
razib | December 17, 2009Since my last post was rather pessimistic, I thought I'd point to something a little more cheerful, Social Scientists Build Case for 'Survival of the Kindest':
Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, are challenging long-held beliefs that human beings are wired to be selfish. In a wide range of studies, social scientists are amassing a growing body of evidence to show we are evolving to become more compassionate and collaborative in our quest to survive and thrive.
In contrast to "every man for himself" interpretations of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution by natural…
razib | December 17, 2009Megan McArdle has a post up where she follows up on her disgust with home owners who "walk away" from their mortgage obligations when they can continue to pay them. In California, and many other states, the bank can't come after you if you walk away, so if your home is "underwater" then it is often a "rational" decision.
Megan makes the point that our economic and social system does not rely purely on rational self-interest, but also on an accumulated capital of norms which lead to virtuous cycles. My family is from Bangladesh, and I have seen this first hand. Corruption & nepotism in…
razib | December 17, 2009Apropos of my skepticism of Census projections of 2050 demographic balances, there's a new paper out on Argentina which is relevant. Here's Wikipedia on Argentina's self-conception:
As with other areas of new settlement such as Canada, Australia and the United States, Argentina is considered a country of immigrants. Most Argentines are descended from colonial-era settlers and of the 19th and 20th century immigrants from Europe, and 86.4% of Argentina's population self-identify as European descent. An estimated 8% of the population is mestizo, and a further 4% of Argentines were of Arab or…
razib | December 16, 2009White Americans' majority to end by mid-century:
The estimated time when whites will no longer make up the majority of Americans has been pushed back eight years -- to 2050 -- because the recession and stricter immigration policies have slowed the flow of foreigners into the U.S.
Census Bureau projections released Wednesday update last year's prediction that white children would become a minority in 2023 and the overall white population would follow in 2042. The earlier estimate did not take into account a drop in the number of people moving into the U.S. because of the economic crisis and…
razib | December 15, 2009That's probably the big takeaway of a new paper on the genetics of Asians, a set which includes South Asians, but in the new research mostly focuses on the people of East Asia. In a global context this work is important. The backstory is that there are disagreements about the exact process of the "Out of Africa" migration. Most researchers would agree that the vast majority, perhaps all, of the distinctive genetic content of the human species derives from a migration from the African continent between 50 and 100 thousand years ago (closer to the former date than the latter likely). Note that…