Month: June 2011
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Every South Asian “Arab” a descendant of Muhammad!
Y chromosomes of self-identified Syeds from the Indian subcontinent show evidence of elevated Arab ancestry but not of a recent common patrilineal origin: Several cultural or religious groups claim descent from a common ancestor. The extent to which this claimed …Read more »
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Every South Asian “Arab” a descendant of Muhammad!
Y chromosomes of self-identified Syeds from the Indian subcontinent show evidence of elevated Arab ancestry but not of a recent common patrilineal origin: Several cultural or religious groups claim descent from a common ancestor. The extent to which this claimed ancestry is real or socially constructed can be assessed by means of genetic studies. Syed…
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Around the Web – June 24th, 2011
There have been some good posts at Gene Expression Classic you might want to check out. In particular: Synaesthesia and savantism and Where do morals come from?. The second is a review of Braintrust: What Neuroscience Tells Us about Morality by Kevin M…
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Friday Fluff – June 24th, 2011
1) Post from the past: The wisdom of Seinfeld. How far in the past? When I wrote this it was closer to the series finale of Seinfeld than to now! 2) Weird search query of the week: “economics of having children marketplace.” I think I mi…
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Of sensible sematics
One of my met peeves is the confusion which some ethno-linguistic terms can cause. For example, the fact that there were Iranian language speakers on the plains of Ukraine ~2,000 years ago naturally indicates to people that Scythian nomads issued …Read more »
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Good calories, bad potatoes?
Changes in Diet and Lifestyle and Long-Term Weight Gain in Women and Men: Within each 4-year period, participants gained an average of 3.35 lb (5th to 95th percentile, −4.1 to 12.4). On the basis of increased daily servings of individual dietary comp…
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How do you do, and how do you say?
Dutch Court Acquits Geert Wilders of Hate Speech. Where is a Muslim most likely to feel comfortable amongst non-Muslims, in Europe, where there are laws against hate speech, or the United States, where there are no such laws? Obviously underlying condi…
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Give the West a rest
I’m pretty critical of the tendency to fixate on the “West vs. the Rest” which is common today across the ideological and cultural spectrum. Frankly, I think Zach does it a little too much for my taste, but that’s a separate issue. Rather, I want to highlight this bizarre tendency to fixate on the West…
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The privilege of many without privilege
The New York Times Magazine has a long piece up by Jose Antonio Vargas about his life as person without papers in the USA. Vargas is no Bob Woodward, but anyone who follows the news closely would be familiar with his name (for example, he was commissioned to write about Mark Zuberkberg for The New…
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The Afghan sunk cost
As U.S. Pulls Back, Fears Abound Over Toll on Afghan Economy: While President Obama’s announcement of troop reductions is not expected to change much here right away, American and Afghan officials are already worrying about the impact of the eventual withdrawal of international forces on Afghanistan’s struggling economy. Very little will happen immediately. “What’s going…
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The assimilated model minority
Well played Hermon Kaur Raju! Or not. Not to be a bigot or anything, but I didn’t pay close attention to the video when I saw it first, and assumed that the obnoxious passenger was a blue blood WASP product of one of the tony Connecticut towns. As it is, she hails from a very…
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“Fortress India,” things that make you go “hhhmmm”
I always consider Foreign Policy to be a shallower version of Foreign Affairs, but there are so many weird issues with this piece, Fortress India – Why is Delhi building a new Berlin Wall to keep out its Bangladeshi neighbors? First, the subhead. The uniqueness of the Berlin Wall is that it wasn’t meant to…
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Hints of Ötzi’s genome
John Hawks points to a report in Science on some morsels of information about Ötzi-the-Iceman’s genetics, The Iceman’s Last Meal: Also at the meeting, researchers led by geneticist Angela Graefen of the Institute for Mummies and the Icema…
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Cave of Forgotten Dreams, see it, but tune the narration out
Today I took some time out to see Cave of Forgotten Dreams. My main reaction is that I really would have appreciated less verbal exposition from Werner Herzog. The most gripping portions of the film were invariably those which focused on the cave art w…
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Breaking the “Central Dogma”
Epigenetics is making it “big time,” Slate has a review up of the new book Epigenetics: The Ultimate Mystery of Inheritance. In case you don’t know epigenetics in terms of “what it means/why it matters” holds out the promi…
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The trials of the “content slave”
Some of you may have read Oliver Miller’s AOL Hell: An AOL Content Slave Speaks Out. If you haven’t read it, please do! This section is important: “LADY GAGA PANTLESS IN PARIS” is the example given in “The AOL Way” internal document…
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Convergent evolution happens!
In the image to the left you see three human males. You can generate three pairings of these individuals. When comparing these pairs which would you presume are more closely related than the other pairs? Now let me give you some more information. The r…
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Britons, English, and Dutch
As a follow up to the previous post I’ve spent some of this weekend looking for the results which might shed some more light on the genetic impact of Germans on the British landscape between ~500-600 A.D. There are some problems here even assumin…