razib
Posts by this author
February 24, 2009
Wings, Horns, and Butterfly Eyespots: How Do Complex Traits Evolve?:
Complex traits require co-ordinated expression of many transcription factors and signaling pathways to guide their development. Creating a developmental program de novo would involve linking many genes one-by-one, requiring each…
February 23, 2009
The Kindle: Good Before, Better Now. A woman was using a Kindle at Starbucks the other day. She really didn't get much reading done, people kept wanting to talk to her about her Kindle, and look at it themselves. The Kindle will have made it when people can actually use it in a public place…
February 23, 2009
Recipe for Disaster: The Formula That Killed Wall Street:
In hindsight, ignoring those warnings looks foolhardy. But at the time, it was easy. Banks dismissed them, partly because the managers empowered to apply the brakes didn't understand the arguments between various arms of the quant universe.…
February 23, 2009
Mystery of the 'Land of Twins': Something in the Water? Mengele?:
There was no evidence of the use of contraceptives or fertility drugs among the women, nor of any genetic mixing with people of African origin, who have higher twinning rates than caucasians, Dr. Matte said. But the rate of…
February 23, 2009
Seed Magazine has a nice review of the brewing controversy over shoddy statistical methods in the field of fMRI. To some extent science is politics, this is a sexy and appealing field. A friend of mine who is a psychologist mentioned that though he doesn't think much of fMRI the head of his lab…
February 23, 2009
Since I asked regular readers to fill out a survey, I've received over 300 responses. My own experience with these surveys is that about 50% of the total responses come within 24 hours. Next weekend I'll put up the .csv file with all the data, and present some of my analyses as well. But below…
February 22, 2009
Obit Magazine has a fascinating rumination on the life & times of Socks Currie-Clinton:
One of the most telling political photographs of the past few decades is a snapshot of a cat. Against an unassuming suburban backdrop, the picture shows a black-and-white feline crouched on a sidewalk while…
February 22, 2009
In light of my previous comments on Judeo-Christianity, here is a interesting survey about Israeli Jewish views of other religions, in particular Christianity. Some results:
* 41% believe that Christianity is closest religion to Judaism
* 32% believe than Islam is closest religion to Judaism
* 50…
February 22, 2009
In Turnabout, Children Care For Sick Elders:
Partly paralyzed, with diabetes and colitis, Linda Lent needs extensive care at home.
But with her husband working long hours at a bowling alley, Ms. Lent, 47, relies on a caregiver who travels by school bus toting a homework-filled backpack: her 13-year…
February 22, 2009
I was curious as to how trust in science related to questions like human evolution or the danger of nuclear power. So I looked at the variables NUKEGEN, SCITEST4 and TRUSTSCI in the GSS, which ask questions about the danger of nuclear power, the truth of human evolution and our trust in science,…
February 22, 2009
I recently got bored and played a joke on Southern Fried Science a few days ago...my usual PC-tard schtick,* see the comments. In any case, the author of the weblog suggests that I was being unkind at his expense. I won't stop playing these sorts of jokes (see this Greg Laden comment thread), but…
February 21, 2009
It's been a while since I did a reader survey, so I posted 15 questions here. I'll put up a csv file with the results in a week.
February 21, 2009
Ed Yong has an excellent post reviewing new research which suggests that collective religious rituals are more predictive than religious belief as to support for suicide bombings. The novelty and insight from these studies is that they decompose the independent dimensions from which religious…
February 21, 2009
Ziel points me to an amusing post, The Credit Snobs:
I rather like the title "voodoo priest of free market economics" so I am happy to take the blame for the sub-prime mortgage defaults and at the same time stick a few pins in Nouriel Roubini.
Roubini and others generating hysteria about defaults…
February 20, 2009
I mentioned a few months ago that Socks was in end stage cancer. It ended today. R.I.P. Socks.
February 20, 2009
One of the great things about the internet is that you can always look back. See the 5 star reviews for The Bush Boom: How a Misunderestimated President Fixed a Broken Economy. Pretty funny. Here's a sample:
Jeff and Larry have written a volume destined to stand alongside "The Hoover Miracle" and…
February 20, 2009
Over at The Atlantic. Shiller is the author of Irrational Exuberance, The Subprime Solution and Animal Spirits: How Human Psychology Drives the Economy, and Why It Matters for Global. As I've noted before, Shiller's specific arguments about the causal sequences behind manias and crashes leave a…
February 19, 2009
Sheril's post, Chimpanzees Are NOT Pets!, is good. She notes:
1 Chimpanzees are wild animals. Animals that make good PETS like dogs and cats, have been domesticated for [thousands] of years. There has been selection on them against aggression, which is why a dog, unlike a wolf, will not…
February 18, 2009
Dienekes points to a paper by Yann, Estimating Genetic Ancestry Proportions from Faces:
Ethnicity can be a means by which people identify themselves and others. This type of identification mediates many kinds of social interactions and may reflect adaptations to a long history of group living in…
February 17, 2009
My post below outlining the possible future of genomics and intelligence made me recall a paper from last fall, Predicting Unobserved Phenotypes for Complex Traits from Whole-Genome SNP Data:
Results from recent genome-wide association studies indicate that for most complex traits, there are many…
February 17, 2009
Dan the man's post on Race & IQ generated a lot of feedback. A lot. Those of you who are familiar with my weblog oeuvre know I used to be more interested in psychometrics. No more. Rather, if you don't want to believe in IQ or general intelligence, fine. My own experience is that very…
February 17, 2009
Picture Emerging on Genetic Risks of IVF:
In November, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published a paper reporting that babies conceived with IVF, or with a technique in which sperm are injected directly into eggs, have a slightly increased risk of several birth defects, including a…
February 17, 2009
Felix Salmon on Mini-Madoff Allen Stanford:
Allen Stanford might be a moustachioed crook, but he's not stupid. There's still a good chance that he could live out the rest of his life in sybaritic luxury, even as his investors lose substantially everything they entrusted to him and his offshore bank…
February 17, 2009
I looked in the GSS on the number of children and age when first child born for evolution related questions. The number of children and age when first child is born should determine the rate of natural increase of a population (balanced with deaths).
# of children
Age when first child born…
February 17, 2009
Greg Clark, chair of the UC Davis Econ department, admits he's an idiot:
I myself was so confident of the consensus of the end of the business cycle that I persuaded my wife after the collapse of Lehman Brothers to invest all her retirement savings in the stock market, confident that the Fed would…
February 16, 2009
Dan MacArthur's post Should scientists study race and IQ? points to a debate in Nature. Well, scientists are studying genetic variation. And others are engaged in the project of psychometrics. This seems to fall into the category of the economist predicting the past perfectly. Lagging indicators…
February 16, 2009
p-ter points me to a new paper, Global distribution of genomic diversity underscores rich complex history of continental human populations:
Characterizing patterns of genetic variation within and among human populations is important for understanding human evolutionary history and for careful…
February 15, 2009
And in the long run we'll be dead. Put it out of its misery. The probability that GM (let's not talk about Chrysler) could enact a turnaround in a few months was nil. Most people knew that, though it seems some wanted to keep the company from filing for bankruptcy to placate the nervous animal…
February 15, 2009
Pew has the numbers:
The main surprise here are Mormons. I knew that they had become much more Creationist over the past 3 generations due to their identification with conservative Protestants, but I didn't know that it went this far. In The Creationists Ronald L Numbers states:
In 1935 only 36…