Razib Khan’s Content Aggregation Site
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Knowledge of heritability, ignorance of genes
Does the Slut Gene Exist?: The DRD4 study isn’t an isolated case of shaky genetic science. In fact, it joins a cadre of questionable scientific assertions that link single genes to much broader patterns of behavior. The last decade has witnessed an explosion in genetics studies, and with it, a proliferation of sensational study results…
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The history of us all
I should mention I finished Why the West Rules a few days ago, and Tyler Cowen was spot on. The author is by training a classical archaeologist, and so the first portion of the book which focuses on archaeology, and up to the classical historical period, is thick, dense, and insightful. But as he pushes…
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Admissions of illiberalism
Recently I was having a twitter conversation with Kevin Zelnio and Eric Michael Johnson about the fact that I define myself as “right-wing.” Kevin kind of implied that I was poseur in a tongue-in-cheek fashion. I don’t wear my political beliefs on my sleeve too much in this space because 1) I find talking about…
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The cultural construction of truth
If you know of John Ioannidis‘ work, Jonah Lehrer’s new piece in The New Yorker won’t be a surprise to you. It’s alarmingly titled The Truth Wears Off – is there something wrong with the scientific method? Here are some sections which you can’t get without a subscription, and I think they get to the…
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Diabetes stops at the state line!
Visualization of data is great. And sometimes it tells us something…though we don’t always know what. Slate has an interactive feature showing the rise of diabetes in America by county. Nothing too surprising. But follow the gradient from El Paso to the Illinois-Missouri border. The differences are small across state lines, but the consistent differences…
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The magical power of “genes”
Liberal Überblogger Matthew Yglesias, Pulling Back The Curtain on Human Behavior: People sometimes seem to think that you could forestall a Gattaca-esque scenario of genetic transparency through privacy laws. But it seems to me that you’d actually need to go stronger, and not only guarantee the right to not have your genetic information disclosed. To…
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Around the Web – December 6th, 2010
For Those About to Rock…You’ll Need These. Chris Mooney has a round-up of ‘Rock Stars of Science’. I’ve been meaning to talk about this, as Chris gave me a heads up, but I’ve been kind of busy with other things. But better late than never. I have some of the same concerns as the nay-sayers.…
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Was the medieval European peasant wealthier than an African?
Medieval England Twice as Well Off as Today’s Poorest Nations: The figure of $400 annually (as expressed in 1990 international dollars) is commonly is used as a measure of “bare bones subsistence” and was previously believed to be the average income in England in the middle ages. However the University of Warwick led researchers found…
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Collapse, stagnation, and explosion – Myspace, Yahoo!, and, Facebook
A tale of three firms via Google Trends. I’ve been checking in on Facebook’s numbers in Google Trends for years to see if I can see evidence of plateauing. Not quite yet. Interestingly all three companies were drawing similar search traffic on Google at the end of 2008, after which Myspace began its long descent,…
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BRICs in charts
The term “BRICs” gets thrown around a lot these days. At least it gets thrown around by people who perceive themselves to be savvy and worldly. In case you aren’t savvy and worldly, BRICs just means Brazil, Russia, India and China. The huge rising economies of the past generation, and next generation. Here’s a […]
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On that Native American ancestor
Traces of Sub-Saharan African and Amerindian admixture in old stock European Americans: Some people like to overestimate extra-European admixture in old stock Americans, while others take the position that it never happened. It did happen, and I can prove it, but certainly not to a great extent, otherwise I wouldn’t be bending over backwards to…
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Extraordinary claims about arsenic
Rosie Redfield has a “must read” post, Arsenic-associated bacteria (NASA’s claims). I won’t excerpt it, read the whole thing. To me it is very interesting that many pieces of her critique are ones I’ve encountered in emails or Facebook postings. She stitches them together into a coherent whole. She’ll be writing a letter to Science.…
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Extraordinary claims about arsenic
Rosie Redfield has a “must read” post, Arsenic-associated bacteria (NASA’s claims). I won’t excerpt it, read the whole thing. To me it is very interesting that many pieces of her critique are ones I’ve encountered in emails or Facebook postings. She stitches them together into a coherent whole. She’ll be writing a letter to Science.…
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Open Thread – December 4th, 2010
A few people have asked about me the assertion I made about the decline in violence over time. This doesn’t seem to pass the smell test for many moderns. In particular, I think the objection about the magnitude of modern wars is a valid one…but the main issue to remember is to focus on the…
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The great northern culture war
A new paper in The New Journal of Physics shows that a relatively simple mathematical model can explain the rate of expansion of agriculture across Europe, Anisotropic dispersion, space competition and the slowdown of the Neolithic transition: The front speed of the Neolithic (farmer) spread in Europe decreased as it reached Northern latitudes, where the…
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Friday Fluff – December 3rd, 2010
1. First, a post from the past: A prayer for the Emperor. 2. Weird search query of the week: “what it means to be a turk”. 3. Comment of the week, in response to Latitudes and continents: Why are you reviewing Physical Geography for Fourteen Year Olds? Back to the genetics, please. Sorry, I’ve just…
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Humanity+ conference in Pasadena
I was going to try and make it to the Humanity+ conference this year, but life intruded and the scheduling didn’t work out. Here’s the program. If you live in the LA area and this is your cup of tea, registration still looks open. Also check out H+ magazine. I noticed that my friend […]
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Men at work: hoes, ploughs, and steel
Ancient Egyptian farmer ploughing a field Recently several weblogs have pointed to a new working paper on the role of plough-based agriculture vs. hoe-based agriculture in shaping cultural expectations about male and female labor force participation specifically, and the differentiation of gender roles more generally. My first reaction was: “doesn’t everyone know this already?” I…