That image is a computer-generated simulation; I think the circumsolar glow is an artifact of the artist's imagination, because it closely corresponds to nothing I'm aware of.

It's possible that it was intended to be dust in the inner system (visible on dark nights as the Zodiacal Light (good photo is here) -- that dust is mostly in the ecliptic plane, probably most dense near the Sun and extending well past Mar's orbit. But the dust is also thin enough that it isn't easily visible off-plane: we only see the Zodiacal Light because we're looking through the plane and thus seeing much more dust thickness than would be visible from the perpendicular.

The only other think I can think of is that the artist was intending to show the inverse-square intensity of solar illumination (as hinted at by razib), and got too literal in his interpretation -- the eye's response is far from linear.

Whatever it is, I think it's wrong...

I'm not sure I'd call 56.1% - 41.8% "a narrow margin". Looks pretty definitive to me, and David Carr thinks it may be enough to prevent a second referendum.

He also thinks the Euro is toast, and expects France to bail on it next... heh.

She wanted to do a report on Crichton's "Jurassic Park"... The teacher refused to accept it and made her re-write a report on a book in the school library... Her actions were actually DISCOURAGING my child from her educational pursuits.

Your anger is perfectly comprehensible to me, but don't make the mistake of assuming that this sort of teacher behavior is new.

In early grade school I was bored witless -- I already knew how to read and write before entering kindergarten. So when I decided one day that I'd write my lessons in the script which was mounted so visibly above the blackboards, the teacher's response was to make me erase it all and print it. The exercise, after all, wasn't to learn so much as it was to do exactly what the teacher said to do. It was the beginning of a very long and frustrating process for me...

This was nearly fifty years ago, by the way. Sounds to me like it hasn't changed much.

Bright American students tend to be lazier because American teachers don't make them. If you are given easy schoolwork all through elementary school you won't develop the work habits you'll need to do challenging work in high school and college.

...and that isn't new, either -- it wasn't until high school that teachers told me that I should be making straight A's (which I promptly did); before that, they were simply content to have me shut up and not be a problem.

Again, I think it's not a new problem.

Also, the EU will continue to consolidate itself as a continental superstate.

Really? With the dramatic financial problems of Germany and France (the core of the EU)? With their upcoming demographic catastrophes?

I don't think so...

Considering the well-accepted fact that Stonehenge was built in at least four phases over some two thousand years, with various parts being removed, modified, reused or replaced (and sometimes all of the above) and new portions being added, I think it's a bit brash to argue that there was ever a single overarching theme or purpose behind the construction... especially one so simple as a genital representation. The components listed in Perks' description were placed at three different times, many tens of generations apart, and the original configuration looked nothing like the present one (e.g., there were no stones at all!).

I'm with razib; this one seriously needs to be hooted down!

David B. said, "I doubt that [the meme] has much to offer in explaining practical technology...".

I work as an engineer, and I'd have to say that the methodology of engineering changes over time and certainly differs over space, as techniques are introduced and either "stick" or fail to stick as acceptable methods of engineering. As an example, look at the differences between spacecraft engineering between NASA and those in the old Soviet Union, like Korolev; both approaches clearly work, but the Soviet methodologies scare the crap out of NASA, and the ex-Soviets are baffled by some of the NASA practices.

The concept of memes in practical technology extends even to the manufacturing floor. I once witnessed a production engineer who successfully trained novice workers to do what was regarded as an extremely difficult task suitable for only the most experienced operators; he just avoided the meme that it was hard, and instead told them it was easy. He trained dozens of operators that way, with almost no failures... to the complete bafflement of the other workers (and of competing firms, for that matter). But did they accept the new meme? No, they were infected with the old one -- and lost in the ensuing competition.

These are just two examples, but I'm sure I could come up with literally hundreds with a bit of thought.

Also it seems reasonable to me that there is a limit to how much an ecomony can grow. Consumer demand can be satisfied and technological advances will occur with less frequency, since each new advance is inevitably more complex than its predecessors.

Let me point to computers as an excellent refutation of that argument. It only takes a bit of examination to see it's true in most other areas, also: while the tech is more complex, it leads to cheaper, more plentiful products... and increased demand.

I agree with your self-assessment regarding economic knowledge.

The demand is evident from the fact that computer sales have grown immensely since the 486 was obsoleted; certainly more people own computers now than when the 486 was current, and I suspect they individually tend to use them more (the Web boom postdates the 486, y'know?). Note also that computer prices have gone down dramatically as their capability has increased.

But if you don't like that example for some reason, try the automobile. Or the telephone. Or just about anything in consumer technology. Despite the cute non sequitur about toilet paper, you don't have a valid point.

My anectodal evidence contradicts yours -- I only know one person who has hung onto their old system, but dozens who have upgraded in the past half-dozen years.

And your quote illustrates the same errors Norman Augustine took such delight in presenting in his book -- things like "with the present trend, the Air Force will spend its entire budget on a single aircraft by 200X", or how the increasing complexity of the Army's equipment would cause it to fail more often. That neither happened means something gave... and when you assume "all other things being equal, X will occur", what gives is typically the assumption that all other things will remain equal.

Come back after having watched matters for half a century, and we'll talk again.

David, where would Stephen Jay Gould fall in your hero/villain spectrum?

Considering the fact that culturally-transmitted information is orders of magnitude greater than genetically-transmitted information in humans, I would be very surprised to see selection not operating on the cultural as well as the biological level -- after all, culture appears to affect our behavior more than biology does. And note that "culture" in the anthropological sense is not limited to humans -- whales and nonhominid primates have definitely displayed cultural transmission of behavior, and it's not obvious where the lower bound of "culture" might be set (look at the transmission of hunting behavior in cats, for instance).

Feedback of culture into biological change is slow, of course, which makes it harder to see. But evolution very plainly operates simultaneously on culture and genome, as demonstrated by the Ashkenazi Jews (among many others). I see this as one endpoint of a spectrum; it's not clear where the other endpoint is, however -- what organisms have no interaction at all with others of their species?

I see the denial of group selection as possible only when evolution is defined not to include "cultural" behavior.

"...petulantly self-absorbed, narcisstic, unimaginatively materialistic, arrested adolescent."

Uh, yeah... so what does that make me, duende? From earliest childhood through early adulthood I was not only a devout and evangelical Christian, but (as I grew older) an occasional lay preacher; I spent much of my undergraduate work in theological and religious studies. Around thirty years ago, however, I was no longer able to reconcile the world of my beliefs with the world of my experience and learning, so I abandoned those religious beliefs.

I freely admit to atheism, and I've been much happier with that than with trying to persuade myself there's some reason to believe otherwise. There is only so much contortion the human mind is able to withstand, and now it's difficult for me to understand how an intelligent, educated person can support any but the most abstract and nebulous of religious beliefs.

This is most poignant, of course, when I watch someone defend one particular variety of religious belief while denigrating all other such beliefs, including (oddly enough) the complete absence of any such belief. One might wonder which of those is truly the most logical belief... mightn't one?

That's very interesting... especially when I think back to the decades I spent skydiving, and remember that it was much easier to manage willpower during the week after I'd made a few jumps the previous weekend, than when I was feeling groundbound.

Serotonin levels? Something else? I know from wide experience that skydivers are very often told by their friends and significant others to go get their knees in the breeze, because they're getting testy...

'Nother thought on the "genes interact WITH environment" meme: CopyCat, the cloned kitten, resembles her genetic mother, but is not even close to identical in appearance. Speculation is that inactivation of X-chromosome genes and the different prenatal environment are the reasons... in particular, X-inactivation turned off the orange in CC's coat, and environment seems to have made CC's build quite a bit different than her mom's.

If only all discoveries could be so controversy-inhibiting!

Grady, good points about the many and varied influences on gene expression. The particular controversy I had in mind was the "grow an identical clone" meme which leads to armies of clones, brain transplants (or downloads of brain "recordings") into one's clone as a life-extension/resurrection technology, and the rest of the sfnal/horrorfilm fantasies.

But you're right -- it will be a long time before the recursive procedure converges to true knowledge...

Michael, the existence of SIV and its relationship to HIV, plus the induction of AIDS in chimpanzees via HIV, all put the lie to those claims you quote. Duesberg has reduced himself to a crank over it, and Mullis was always pretty much there all along.

Let it die.

Back in the hilly "old country" of central Missouri, the folks I grew up with called it "sodypop". It was easy to tell the strangers, 'cause they said "pop" or "soda", or (if they were from the deeper South) "Coc'Cola". Them as didn't call it "dope", that is... and I'm completely serious.

Oddly enough, some of the latter two groups have been known to refer to beer as "barleypop", although I strongly suspect a more recent genesis for that term -- not to mention a certain lack of gravitas.

"...obsession with race and IQ, healthy or not, and I do think it unhealthy. It is unlikely to shed any light on present or future social policy, regardless of the answers, and will more likely than not simply make things worse."

Is it just me, or is this a fairly explicit statement of the notion that "there are forbidden topics of which we dare not speak?"

Perhaps it's just my own prejudice, but as one degreed in physics, working in engineering, and indulging in sports like rock climbing and skydiving, I feel pretty strongly that refusing to face the facts of reality is an excellent way of making ourselves less successful at living... and perhaps even making ourselves dead, in the worst of cases. In any event, Charles, I'm afraid I won't grant you the right to decide what I am allowed to consider. Sorry.

Richard Bennett said "The point, dear ones, is that genetic variation within so-called "races" is more than that between races, so the whole exercise in stereotyping is BS.

"BTW, has science identified even a single allele that's race-specific?"

I read some relevant papers on this in Science within the past several weeks, so I'm happy to answer. King and Motulsky[1] say, referring to Rosenberg et al.[2] among others:

"Previous genetic analyses of human history have consistently suggested that most human genetic variation is due to differences among individuals within populations rather than to differences among populations [citation omitted]. The Rosenberg et al. analysis of many more markers and many more people confirms this result: 93 to 95% of genetic variation is due to genetic differences among individuals who are members of the same population and only 3 to 5% of genetic variation is due to differences among the major population groups.

"The power of the method lies in the construction of clusters on the basis of accumulated small differences in allele frequencies across many markers and many people. Statistical clustering of genotypes--composed of 4682 alleles from 377 markers in 1056 individuals from 52 populations--yields groups corresponding to major geographic regions of the world [citation omitted]. Creation of two clusters reflects ancient human origins in Africa and rapid expansion throughout Eurasia, and migrations to the Americas from East Asia. Creation of five clusters yields groups corresponding to five major geographic regions of the world: Africa, Eurasia (Europe, the Middle East, Central and South Asia), East Asia, Oceania, and America. There is excellent agreement between membership of individuals in these clusters and their self-identified regions of origin. Similar results were obtained by the same statistical approach based on fewer populations and fewer markers [citation omitted].

"Population substructure could be consistently identified within some geographic regions but not others. Within Africa, for example, analysis consistently yielded the same four subclusters: Mbuti Pygmies, Biaka Pygmies, San peoples, and speakers of Niger-Kordofanian languages (Bantu, Yoruba, and Mandenka populations)."

Rosenberg et al.[2] were just as blunt; from their abstract:

"We studied human population structure using genotypes at 377 autosomal microsatellite loci in 1056 individuals from 52 populations. Within-population differences among individuals account for 93 to 95% of genetic variation; differences among major groups constitute only 3 to 5%. Nevertheless, without using prior information about the origins of individuals, we identified six main genetic clusters, five of which correspond to major geographic regions, and subclusters that often correspond to individual populations."

Just to clarify what these clusters mean: in the body of the paper, they say<
More....

Hmmm, none of the HTML tags worked. The relevant links are:

King and Motulsky, http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/298/5602/2342

Rosenberg et al., http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/298/5602/2381

Hopefully the remainder of the post was readable even without the many tags...