The cheating of the chosen
Update: Harvard Students in Cheating Scandal Say Collaboration Was Accepted.
Harvard Says 125 Students May Have Cheated on a Final Exam:
Officials said that nearly half of the more than 250 students in the class were under investigation by the Harvard …
Deep dive into the Denisovans
By now you have probably seen the new Denisovan paper in the media. John Hawks has an excellent overview, as you’d expect. The only thing I will add is to reiterate that I think population movements in near and far prehistory significantly obscur…
Being fat is like being gay (?)
Anti-obesity: The new homophobia?:
Consider the many parallels between the treatments advocated by those who claim being gay is a disease, and those being pushed by our public health establishment to “cure” fat children and adults of their supposed…
Enough with the double standard
Most of the conventionally liberal readers of this weblog would probably term me anti-feminist. I believe that there are sex differences, and that these are important in the way we arrange policy and our personal lives. But I’m really pissed … Continue reading →
Quantifying the great flip
The two maps above show the Democratic and Republican counties in blue and red respectively. Carter in the 1976 presidential election, and Obama in 2008. A few days ago it was brought to my attention that Matt Yglesias was curious about how Maine beco…
Evolution: its ideological own refutation
Recently I stumbled upon the fact that Honey Boo Boo‘s sister had a child at age 18. The grandmother, Honey Boo Boo’s mother, is 33 years old. Younger than I am! Then I see headlines in trashy British tabloids of the form: The three …
Evolution: its ideological own refutation
Recently I stumbled upon the fact that Honey Boo Boo‘s sister had a child at age 18. The grandmother, Honey Boo Boo’s mother, is 33 years old. Younger than I am! Then I see headlines in trashy British tabloids of the form: The three …
The future of the three “Pakistans”
Over at Econlog Bryan Caplan bets that India’s fertility will be sup-replacement within 20 years. My first inclination was to think that this was a totally easy call for Caplan to make. After all, much of southern India, and the northwest, is al…
The future of the three “Pakistans”
Over at Econlog Bryan Caplan bets that India’s fertility will be sup-replacement within 20 years. My first inclination was to think that this was a totally easy call for Caplan to make. After all, much of southern India, and the northwest, is al…
The eternal question of calorie restriction
There’s a lot of buzz about a new paper in Nature (yes, I know there’s always buzz about some Nature paper or other), Impact of caloric restriction on health and survival in rhesus monkeys from the NIA study. You’ve probably heard abo…
What I do is what I do
This morning on Twitter the estimable Carl Zimmer stated that I had “reported” on the recent paper on European skin pigmentation evolution. I wondered, wait, am I a reporter? I don’t really know, and this really is rooted in the ̶…
Not all genes are created the same
The map to the right shows the frequencies of HGDP populations on SLC45A2, which is a locus that has been implicated in skin color variation in humans. It’s for the SNP rs16891982, and I yanked the figure from IrisPlex: A sensitive DNA tool for a…
A political animal in the genes
Trends in Genetics has a review article, The genetics of politics: discovery, challenges, and progress. The main reason I point to these sorts of papers isn’t that I think they’re revolutionary. Usually they aren’t. Rather, the public…
Evolutionary & population genetics preprints – Haldane’s Sieve
OK, perhaps I can help with that. Dr. Coop speaks of the collaboration between himself & Dr. Joseph Pickrell, Haldane’s Sieve, which I added to my RSS days ago (and you can see me pushing it to my Pinboard). From the “About”:
As …
Back to the 70s?
Peter Turchin has basically implied that it’s 1970 again, and we’re in for a new age of disturbance. I’m rather skeptical…but, today a co-worker pointed out that I have “70s hair.” My sideburns, yes, but that’…
A note on open genomics
A few months ago I purchased a decent desktop just to crunch ADMIXTURE and other packages to analyze genomic data. More recently I set up a ~100 GB Dropbox account, and have started to “push” all of my output files from ADMIXTURE, PLINK, et…
Europeans got less shaded in stages
The Pith: the evolution of lighter skin is complex, and seems to have occurred in stages. The current European phenotype may date to the end of the last Ice Age.
A new paper in Molecular Biology and Evolution, The timing of pigmentation lightening in E…
Non-whites consistent on “life” issues
Over at Darwin Catholic a commenter asked whether a pro-choice commenter on this weblog also supported the death penalty. I presume that they were here pointing to the consistent life ethic issue. Many liberals who oppose capital punishment support ab…
A circumcision compromise?
The New York Times has a piece on an update to the American Academy of Pediatrics position statement on circumcision (shifting toward a more pro-circumcision position of neutrality). In the United States the rates of circumcision for infant boys has go…
A circumcision compromise?
The New York Times has a piece on an update to the American Academy of Pediatrics position statement on circumcision (shifting toward a more pro-circumcision position of neutrality). In the United States the rates of circumcision for infant boys has go…