No Worries, I had not heard of it before... It's now on pre-order!!

Amazon says it isnt released yet- estimated delivery is Mid March.... Bummer.

polymorphism has been shown to be costly in terms of autoimmunity and materno-fetal interactions..

There is a whole literature about sexual antagonism, and the idea that the "average effect" has been discussed, but is generally thought to not be the case- at least in most situations.. Obviously, most of these sexually antagonistic phenotypes are coded my X chromosome genes (as p-ter points out), but that is not always the case.. 
 
Just think about a gene that is wildly advantageous in males- it can be pretty bad for females, but there is still a NET increase in reproductive success-i.e. the high quality male makes up for the low quality female..

I also blogged about this, although I had not see the press coverage yet...Britany Spears Dad Must be Butt-Ugly

A short response to the post: The question is WHY?

Razza?? New nickname?

Nah, If you want to think about "evolved", think Canidae...

Im glad to see Im not the only "fan" of Babu

Well mine took 3 seconds, but only 'cause I'm super efficient...That counts for something, yes??

I dunno Razib, GNXP sinage is pretty cool...Your video- I thought your image was going to pop out at the end or something...

I wonder about the application of this idea to humans in general- give that the sampling was pretty restricted- to the Dalmatian islands in Croatia- especially since they are relating these processes to human demographic processes within the last 200K years. 
 
I bet that the pattern would be completely different if they sampled throughout human diversity- especially African populations..

p-ter: 
 
Thanks for correcting- my bad. 
 
"One of the most noteworthy differences between humans and other closely related primates is the absence of clear advertisements of fertility within the ovulatory cycle"

Agnostic: 
 
Does the magnitude of solicitation depend on the quality of either the existing mate or extra pair mate? 
 
Yes, you're hitting on my point. Probably advertisement increases when existing mate is of low quality or compatability. They dont specifically test this hypothesis, although it would've been nice if they had.

Patrick: 
The point was that advertising fertility outside the pair bond is not adaptive in genetic monogamy?? 
 
Yes, indicating fertility might be selected within a pair bond- but Im not so sure that it is as simple as looking at the costs of showing.

Please see A Post I wrote about the morality of animal torture.

Torturing ANY animal is morally wrong, after all we are animals, too... 
 
The distinction between us and other animals, whether it is based on complexity, intelligence, or whatever is no excuse.. 
 
I mean ANY animal quite literally- I don't kill things intentionally- even the spiders that scare my wife...

OK... I guess you can't embed videos.. see it here

Leucochloridum paradoxum is a parasitic flatworm that cycles between two hosts: a snail and a bird. Adult worms live inside a bird?s rectum, eating the predigested wastes that pass by them and releasing eggs that leave the bird in its feces. The eggs don?t hatch immediately. Instead, they wait for a snail of the genus Succinea. 
 
The eggs hatch inside the snail and release larvae that reproduce asexually. The snail fills up with larval worms. Most of them accumulate inside the snail?s foot and digestive organs, but some of them migrate into its tentacles. As the snail tentacles fill with larvae, they swell up, develop a set of brightly colored stripes, and start to pulsate. The snail now looks like it has one or two caterpillars sticking out of its head. 
 
Leucochloridum changes the snail?s behavior, too. Normally, the snail likes to stay in the shade, where it?s harder for a predator to see it. But an infected snail climbs to the top of a plant and sits in plain view, waving its caterpillar-like tentacles in the air. Birds spot them, dive down for a snack, and get a mouthful of infective larvae.

About the social selection idea and China. Remember, even very positive mutations (Christianity in this case) when introduced as a single copy are very likely to go extinct via drift. 
 
If we're using selection as the model, it's not all that surprising that this has happened.