"I don't mind that they work over at the factory, but I don't want one of those lactose intolerant people moving in next door..." or "Some of my best friends are lactose intolerant. But I sure don't want my sister marrying one...."
Say what? (this is a Year in Review post)
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It's never made much sense to me why the pathogenic bacteria Salmonella and Shigella (which is really E. coli) have lost the ability to use lactose (milk sugar).
A few weeks ago I presented a tentative model for how lactose tolerance (the ability of adults to digest milk easily and efficiently) spread throughout the world. Here is what I offered:
Gene-culture coevolution is a topic of interest for me. Consider adult milk digestion. It's weird, and seems like a new adaptation.
Let's see if we can figure this out from first principles. Limiting ourselves to biological evolution, evolution needs a few things to work in practice:-
I think this is the reason why western europe has an 80/20 split in favour of wrong handedness. From a species that overall has a 50/50 split, how many kids did they need to burn to get here?
Remember that burning babies who're in league with the devil is still the only vatican approved method of birth control.
(/semi-coherent rant}