Month: April 2012
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The culture that is Microsoft
Frustration, Disappointment And Apathy: My Years At Microsoft: Large companies have overheads, a necessary evil, you say. Overheads need to be managed. And managed they are: Group Managers, Program managers, General managers, together with ‘Senior’…
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A deeper dive analysis of two Cubans
About a week ago I put up a post put on an analysis of a paper which reported on the ancestral make up of 50 Cubans (as well as assorted other Hispanic/Latino groups). One aspect of the paper which was somewhat notable is that 1 out of 3 Cubans were 90…
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The end of IE; the rise of Chrome
A comment below prompted me to recheck the browser stats on the web. People are now starting to give Google crap for not having really hit the jackpot on anything since Gmail, especially after the flubs with Google Wave and Buzz, and the mixed reviews …
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No sin in homogamy
Recently the New York Times had an article, For Asian-American Couples, a Tie That Binds. I didn’t mind the piece myself, but it deals in lots of stereotypes of white people. For example: ““I didn’t like that he thought that was weird,” she said. “That’s my role in the family. As I grew older, I…
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The billion SNPs of Alba?
A man of astonishing multitudes? Daniel MacArthur points me to one of the funniest historical genetic popular write-ups I’ve seen in years. Study reveals ‘extraordinary’ DNA of people in Scotland: Researchers believe that Scotland…
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The genome is a structure, not just an abstraction
Here’s a quick follow-up on the study which purported to illustrate the shortcomings in genomic risks prediction, and received major media coverage: Neil Risch, PhD, a leading expert in statistical genetics and the director of the UCSF Institute …
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Ancestry painting: true but trivial, or interesting but inaccurate
23andMe has done some great things, and I highly recommend its service to friends. But I’m really glad that CeCe Moore is being consulted by them in regards to improving their ancestry feature set. Below are the “ancestry paintings” f…
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Grandparents as reality, not theory
I am not particularly mystical or sentimental about genetics. I favor openness. But I just started getting my daughter’s results back from 23andMe, and some of her coefficients of relatedness to her grandparents deviated sharply from 0.25. As I h…
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If you are not too stupid you can be in Mensa
Is 4-Year-Old as Smart as Einstein? Not Quite, Scientists Say: One of the latest members of the high-IQ club Mensa is a mere 4 years old, with an IQ of 159 — but psychologists warn against pulling out the Albert Einstein comparisons just yet. ……
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Standardized test scores: math and verbal
Prompted by miko’s skepticism about the utility of WORDSUM (a vocab test) across subcultures, I went and looked for SAT data. My assumption was that math sections are more “culture-fair” (though from what I gather ETS tries hard in va…
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Reprising genes & geography
Comparing Spatial Maps of Human Population-Genetic Variation Using Procrustes Analysis: Recent applications of principal components analysis (PCA) and multidimensional scaling (MDS) in human population genetics have found that “statistical maps&#…
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None dare call it eugenics!
Well, almost no one: “The unspoken central reason for the societal taboo and the penal ban on incest is the possibility of hereditary defects — a factor that Strasbourg only hinted at. But the intention behind the eugenic argument is one th…
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Common variant for “IQ gene”?
A few people have forwarded me this paper, Identification of common variants associated with human hippocampal and intracranial volumes: …Whereas many brain imaging phenotypes are highly heritable…identifying and replicating genetic influen…
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Group selection survey
I don’t have time to do a detailed analysis of my group selection survey right now. So I’ve uploaded the raw results for anyone to play with (there is no personally identifying information obviously). You should be able to convert it into a…
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The case of the white Cubans
In a follow up to a post below, a new paper in PLoS Genetics has some data on American Hispanics. Specifically, Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, Mexicans, and Cubans, as well as assorted Central and South Americans. I am not too interested in the cases excep…
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Microryza: A Kickstarter for science?
A few days ago I was contacted by Microzyra, a Seattle based start-up. Their aim is do for science what Kickstarter has done for creative projects. Obviously I can’t vouch for them, but I am intrigued enough to eventually consider seeing if I can…
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Verbal intelligence by demographic
A few years ago I put up a post, WORDSUM & IQ & the correlation, as a “reference” post. Basically if anyone objected to using WORDSUM, a variable in the General Social Survey, then I would point to that post and observe that the cor…
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Against Microsoft Word
Until a few years ago if I had to use MS Office, I used Office 97. I’ve been using Open Office and its precursors going back to 2000, but sometimes people really want MS format, and the export and “save as” features of Open Office don…
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Genes: still a pretty big deal
Many people say that having children gives you a much better sense of the power of genes in shaping behavior. At least in the abstract sense that is not true in my case. I accept the “conventional wisdom” from behavior genetics that “…
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The Anglosphere American exception (?)
PLoS ONE has another article up about admixture in Argentina. The interesting aspect is that in its self-conception Argentina, like the United States of America or Australia, is a European settler nation, and therefore unlike Mexico, Boliva, or Brazil,…