Admixture in Madagascar
In my spare time today I went through much of Madagascar: A Short History. After reading it I’m even more convinced that people need to stop talking authoritatively about this island and its people. There’s a lot of interesting material in it, but ultimately the years before European contact remain very shadowy. I don’t know […]
John McCarthy, 1927-2011
John McCarthy has died. Sadly I was expecting this, I was told that McCarthy was still teaching courses in 2008 by someone in Stanford’s computer science department, but he was in obvious bad health. One of the major downsides of the incredible information flow in the internet age is that you often hear through the […]
Ötzi, the dead sea scrolls of genomics?
Dienekes points me to the fact that Ewen Callaway has the dirt on what’s going on with Ötzi: To get a better grip on his ancestry and predisposition to disease, Albert Zink, head of the Institute for Mummies and the Iceman in Bolzano, and his team sequenced Ötzi’s 3 billion base pair nuclear genome from […]
Think right, not deep
Over the past few weeks I’ve been observing the response to Rick Scott’s suggestion that Florida public universities focus on STEM, rather than disciplines such as anthropology. You can start with John Hawks, and follow his links. More recently I notice a piece in Slate, America Needs Broadly Educated Citizens, Even Anthropologists. There several separate […]
The Ötzi embargo
Dienekes has some harsh words for the way some science is produced, focusing on the genome of Ötzi the Iceman as a case in point: Yesterday, I twitted in exasperation that Otzi’s genome, which must have been available in at least some sort of draft form since at least the beginning of this year, has been under […]
Sunday Stuff – October 23rd, 2011
1) Weird search query of the week: “145 iq can’t hold job”
2) Fluff below the fold….
In the year 2015….
Recently I was having a discussion with some friends about getting the full genomes of everyone in my immediate family when the price point comes down to $1,000, just as I have had my immediately family genotyped. You can find some interesting stuff just from the genotype alone, which for current affordable platforms aims for […]
Of course Huma Abedin’s parents are probably “backward thinking”
Anthony Weiner Sexting Partner Says Politician Criticized Muslim In-Laws: In excerpts of Nobles’ book obtained by MailOnline, she writes that she and Weiner shared more than just dirty talk. Weiner confided in her about his relationship with his in-laws, allegedly saying they were “backwards thinking.” Weiner is married to Huma Abedin, Secretary of State Hillary […]
At the American Antipode
Argentina has famously gone from being the 10th wealthiest to the 60th wealthiest nation in the world over the past 100 years. But I was curious about the trends for its neighbors as well in a world context.
The Betsileo of Madagascar are Malay and Bantu
A month ago I posted the genetic results of a Malagasy individual of Merina identity. Today I post those for someone of Betsileo heritage. All the technical details are the same. You can find all the ADMIXTURE and PCA files here. This genotyping was paid for by readers. I’ll update the post with the names […]
Which Hispanics identify as white?
I wanted to clarify a few issues with the Census’ American Community Survey. These data come from the interval of 2006-2008, and they allowed me to query the proportional of various Latino/Hispanic groups who identified as white. I knew in the aggregate that the majority of America’s Latinos identified as white, but I was […]
Gene Expression DonorsChoose
I haven’t raised that much money this year on DonorsChoose. No idea why that is. Perhaps I didn’t pick projects appealing to my readers? Also, I’ve frankly been too busy to bring notice to it very often. It’s great that Phil is doing the heavy lifting for Discover, but I’d like to help a little […]
Why do we still vary?
I notice that last summer Karl Smith asked “Why Are There Short People?” His logic is pretty good, except for the fact that the fitness variation seems to be much starker in males than females (there is some evidence I’ve seen that shorter women can be more fertile, though that’s balanced by the fact that […]
Ötzi tidbits
The genome of Ötzi the Iceman is floating around somewhere, but for now we only have to go on what leaks out via the media. From National Geographic, Iceman Autopsy: The genetic results add both information and intrigue. From his genes, we now know that the Iceman had brown hair and brown eyes and that […]
The modern human coordination miracle
Thanks to Ed Yong several people on twitter have encountered my post, The point mutation which made humanity. My broader concern which I was attempting to highlight is that too often when we attempt to ascertain the origins of modern human success in relation to our archaic cousins/ancestors we presume that there must be a […]
Individual differences don’t lie
Over at Think Progress there’s a piece titled Why We Can’t Dismiss The NBA Labor Dispute As ‘Millionaires Versus Billionaires’, where the author argues that the players are fundamentally different than the owners in relation to the acquisition of their wealth. There’s a whole lot of prose there, but the first commenter really hit the […]
Don’t overgeneralize about 2.5 billion people
With the current economic malaise in the developed economies and the rise of the “B.R.I.C.s” you hear a lot about “China” and “India.” There is often a tacit acknowledge that China and India are large diverse nations, but nevertheless in a few paragraphs they often get reduced to some very coarse generalizations. What’s worse is […]
E. O. Wilson in The Atlantic
The Atlantic has a huge profile of E. O. Wilson up. The main course is his new book, The Social Conquest of Earth. It seems to be an elaboration of some of the ideas in the infamous Martin Nowak paper which resulted in a huge counter-response from biologists. But this part was kind of fun: […]
Sunday Stuff – October 16th, 2011
1) Weird search query of the week: “hat is the difference between loose and tight magazine circulation”
2) Picture of a kitten that we fostered recently….
Is it ethical to publish your baby’s genome?
That’s what a reader below asks. To some extent I wondered this when Dan MacArthur and Ilana Fisher put their genotypes out there. They have a son, and so now you can generate a likely matrix of risks for Tobias MacArthur since you have his parents’ genotypes. Since he’s only a bit over a year […]