Month: September 2011
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Which undersampled groups would you like to see?
To my excitement I got the Tutsi (almost) and Malagasy genotypes. These are cases where N = 1 is a big deal, as opposed to N = 0. What other groups might be informative? Most of the world’s population is obviously not sampled, but they’re n…
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The Merina of Madagascar are Malay and Bantu
A month ago I asked for a Malagasy genotype. Almost immediately I received a response from someone that was 33% Malagasy. More recently I have sent a genotyping kit to someone who is Malagasy. Those results should come in within a month or so. But a fe…
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Friday Fluff – September 9th, 2011
1) Post from the past: Introgression in wolves & dogs. 2) Weird search query of the week: “any gay iranians to shag.” 3) Comment of the week, in response to Twin studies are not useless: It’s interesting that one of the San genomes h…
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The gift of the gopi
Krishna with milk-maids Unlike in some Asian societies dairy products are relatively well known in South Asia. Apparently at some point my paternal grandmother’s family operated a milk production business. This is notable because Bengal is not qu…
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Why I’d “go short” on “genetic privacy”
Patient Data Posted Online in Major Breach of Privacy: A medical privacy breach at Stanford University’s hospital in Palo Alto, Calif., led to the public posting of medical records for 20,000 emergency room patients, including names and diagnosis cod…
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Racism, what about speciesism?
One thing that came to the fore in late 2008 was the worry that a financial regulatory regime which had been exceeding lax was now more conscious of the excesses of the previous era. The problem being that one will not necessarily be prepared for the n…
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Of beasts and men
“There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare [children] to them, the same [became] mighty men which [were] of old, men of renown.” – Genesis 6:4 Th…
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What our ancestors did best
I know I’ve posted this before, but in light of another paper on archaic admixture, this video from 10 years ago keeps going through my mind….
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Africans aren’t pure humans either
Last year when discussing the possible admixture of Neandertals with the ancestors of modern non-Africans I joked that Sub-Saharan Africans were “pure humans.” This was tongue-in-cheek in part because the results from the Neandertal genome …
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Why Islam is superior to Hinduism
Tasty TASTIER! Healthy
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Sepia Mutiny, moving to WordPress
Finally. Bugs being worked out, but it’s only going to get better now that their CMS has an active support community. Best of luck to them.
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Atheists are unfit to serve in public office
That’s the question from the World Values Survey I’m posting below. Observe that I disaggregated the Indian states in the results. Politicians who don´t believe in God are unfit for public office N Agree strongly Agree Neither Disagree Strongly disagree Bangladesh 1420 31.9 39.1 5.5 21.1 2.4 Pakistan 2000 82.4 12.5 4.0 0.9 0.2 Andhra…
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Creationism evolves!
One of the most interesting things to me is the nature of Creationism as an idea which evolves in a rather protean fashion in reaction to the broader cultural selection pressures. For me the weirdest example of this was an interlocutor who kept bringin…
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Horses, not people (sort of)
I have criticized the “pots not people” paradigm on this weblog before. In short, the idea is that material cultural changes reflected in the archaeological record are an indicator of memetic, not genetic, evolution. So a shift from pottery…
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Being an atheist with a “Muslim name”
I was sent off to purchase some cheap white wine yesterday to further the production of a very tasty tuna pasta. So I quickly ran over to the neighborhood mini-mart. Actually, this was my first visitation to the mini-mart. The woman behind the counter was brown. Going by the numbers she was probably an Indian…
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Caturday Fluff, September 3rd, 2011
Been very busy of late. 1) Post from the past: Of pigs, people and porcine polygenism. 2) Weird search query of the week: “kate gosselin before and after.” 3) Comment of the week, in response to Why Melanesians are blonde resolved?: ……
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10 Questions for Charles C. Mann
Over at Discover Blogs. Mostly about 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created.
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10 Questions for Charles C. Mann
Charles C. Mann is the author of several books, including 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus and 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created. Much of his work has been involved in publicizing the ecological factors which shape th…