razib | September 15, 2008Allen MacNeill of the Evolution List has a new weblog, Evolutionary Psychology. Check it out.
razib | September 15, 2008In response to the debate between David Frum and Andrew Gelman about whether inequality is bad for Republicans, Jim Manzi crunches some data. Below is Manzi's chart which shows that as you increase inequality (shifting to the right) you decrease the percentage of those voting for George W. Bush (decreasing along the Y axis). Read Manzi's whole post for methods and interpretation! The only thing I would add, which Manzi alludes to, is that interaction effect between regions and inequality probably matters, tying back to Gelman's point that Frum should be cautious about extrapolating from the…
razib | September 15, 2008John McCain Answers Science Debate 2008. Compare with Obama's side by side.
razib | September 14, 2008Population substructure in Finland and Sweden revealed by the use of spatial coordinates and a small number of unlinked autosomal SNPs:
We genotyped 34 unlinked autosomal single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), originally designed for zygosity testing, from 2044 samples from Sweden and 657 samples from Finland, and 30 short tandem repeats (STRs) from 465 Finnish samples. We saw significant population structure within Finland but not between the countries or within Sweden, and isolation by distance within Finland and between the countries. In Sweden, we found a deficit of heterozygotes that we…
razib | September 14, 2008A Theory of the Emergence, Persistence, and Expression of Geographic Variation in Psychological Characteristics:
Volumes of research show that people in different geographic regions differ psychologically. Most of that work converges on the conclusion that there are geographic differences in personality and values, but little attention has been paid to developing an integrative account of how those differences emerge, persist, and become expressed at the geographic level. Drawing from research in psychology and other social sciences, we present a theoretical account of the mechanisms through…
razib | September 14, 2008A few years ago it was shown that white America fertility correlated 0.86 to voting for George W. Bush in 2004 on a state by state level. What that means is pretty simple, if you have the 50 states + DC, and plot their white fertility on the X axis and % voting for George W. Bush on the Y axis the variation of X could predict about 3/4 of the variation of Y. That's pretty good. But what about on an individual level? The differences here aren't so stark. In short, those whites who voted for John F. Kerry wanted nearly as many children as those whites who voted for George W. Bush. They…
razib | September 13, 2008My earlier post which showed that large numbers of people around the world are skeptical about the "official" story regarding the perpetrators of 9/11 really needs an American baseline as a comparison. I have posted data from a Zogby poll as well as a Pew survey of American Muslims. Note that I selected only some of the fields; if the N's were too low or I found the category uninteresting I left it out (what's uninteresting? Don't care if you participate in Little League).
Question: "There are three main schools of thought regarding the 9/11 attacks. The first theory is the official…
razib | September 13, 2008I've mentioned MHC before; they're interesting from an evolutionary perspective because they're one of the most polymorphic loci in humans, likely due to their role in disease resistance and the "diversified portfolio" strategy which seems optimal over the long term (kind of like sex). The logic is pretty simple, pathogens are good at adapting because there are so many who replicate so fast so they figure out ways to get around common defensive strategies before a few host generations have come to pass. This increases the fitness of the rare alleles in the hosts, until they become not-so-…
razib | September 12, 2008As I mentioned earlier, I bought the domain stuffscientistslike.com, and have set up a minimal weblog, Stuff Scientists Like. I'll post there now and then, and plan on constructing a quiz similar to the one for Stuff White People Like after I get a large enough list.
razib | September 11, 2008Andrew Sullivan responded to my post, Science is rational; scientists are not:
...One of the greatest errors of modernity is simply conflating the truths of one world of experience with the truths of another. I guess Michael Oakeshott instilled in me the sense that this confusion is the central intellectual problem of modernity. It is indeed at the root of a great deal of our difficulties. It is a mistake to apply the truths of science to that of history or aesthetics or politics. They are simply different categories of understanding the world. And the most profound mistake in human thought…
razib | September 11, 2008Thoughts on educational attainment and voting patterns at the state level:
The percentage of a state's population with a bachelor's-plus does not correlate nearly as strongly with estimated IQ scores based on NAEP data (.46) as the percentage of a state's population with less than a high school education (.72) does. The prolish behavior HS detests might be better indicated by the less than high school percentage than by the bachelor-plus number, depending on where the cutoff is*. Both measures include similar proportions of the population (19.6% of the population over 25 years of age has less…
razib | September 11, 2008Guadalupe Storm-Petrel has a post, Stuff Scientists Like. Here' a few things I'll add to this list....
1 - Proofs. Because you're certain.
2 - LaTeX. Because non-nerds get confused and might think you're talking dirty.
3 - Precision. Because you can't always be certain, but would like to reduce your uncertainty.
4 - Computers. Because they're more rational than you.
5 - Food chemistry. Food + science ⇔ heaven!
I actually bought the domain stuffscientistslike.com, so I'll be collecting submissions there.
razib | September 9, 2008My two previous posts, Science is rational; scientists are not and its follow up Scientists are rational?, generated a lot of response. I would like to clarify and refine my thoughts and some of the arguments brought up in the comments. Some propositions:
- A few scientists are responsible for most scientific advancement
- The practice of science has varied as a function of time; e.g., the gentlemen scholar of the Victorian Age vs. the modern scientific-industrial complex which necessitates the grant-monkey
- Even the brilliant scientists who are responsible for most productivity are…
razib | September 8, 2008I'll be in San Francisco on the 26th at a Million Comment Party for ScienceBlogs. Specifically, I'll be hanging with the Bleiman Brothers, Craig, Janet and Josh.
So again, 9 PM on Friday the 26th @ Tonic
razib | September 8, 2008The most recent issue of Seed Magazine has a cover story that readers of this weblog might find of interest, How We Evolve. It's not online, but its basic core is the acceleration of recent human evolution. John Hawks seems to be the primary source. The author, Benjamin Phelan, made a good faith effort to explain concepts like linkage disequilibrium, the Shifting Balance (by implication) and haplotype structure. I have some qualms about the piece, which I will moot at some point in the near future, but I think if you find some of the population genetics references on this blog opaque…
razib | September 8, 2008The 90% rate of abortion upon prenatal discovery that a fetus likely has Down Syndrome is being quoted a lot today. Is it true? Seems like it. Termination rates after prenatal diagnosis of Down syndrome, spina bifida, anencephaly, and Turner and Klinefelter syndromes: a systematic literature review:
...Termination rates varied across conditions. They were highest following a prenatal diagnosis of Down syndrome (92 per cent; CI: 91 per cent to 93 per cent) and lowest following diagnosis of Klinefelter syndrome (58 per cent; CI: 50 per cent to 66 per cent). Where comparisons could be made,…
razib | September 8, 2008See Red State, Blue State, Rich State, Poor State: Why Americans Vote the Way They Do, or, the author's weblog. Here are some myths and facts. It is interesting that when I tell both liberals and conservatives that Thomas Frank is full of crap there's a lot of disbelief and incredulity. One of the standard responses is that everyone knows that poor whites vote Republican on cultural issues, or that rich whites are elitists who lean Democratic due to the power of social liberalism. I suspect the strength of the meme is that the Thomas Frank argument is persuasive to both sides. On the…
razib | September 8, 2008Is a personal genome sequence worth $350,000?:
Basically, we're currently at a stage where costs are dropping much faster than the rate at which the value of genetic information is increasing - in other words, you and I will be able to afford a genome sequence long before science will be able to tell us much about what it really means. However, the beauty of a genome sequence is that (unlike 23andMe-style chips, which are constantly being replaced by higher-resolution models) it never becomes obsolete. Once you have your entire sequence sitting on your hard drive you can simply sit back and…
razib | September 7, 2008A friend of mine emailed me that he scored a 21 out of 107 on the full list of Stuff White People Like. I thought it was a little tedious to count, so I wrote up a small script which counts it up for you via the checks you make. Below the fold....
*/
#107 Self Aware Hip Hop References
#106 Facebook
#105 Unpaid Internships
#104 Girls with Bangs
#103 Sweaters
#102 Children's Games as Adults
#101 Being Offended
#100 Bumper Stickers
#99 Grammar
#98 The Ivy League
#97 Scarves
#96 New Balance Shoes
#95 Rugby
#94 Free Healthcare
#93 Music Piracy
#92 Book Deals
#91 San…