The paper describing the sequence and analysis of the dog genome ends thusly:
For millennia, dogs have accompanied humans on their travels. It is only fitting that the dog should also be a valued companion on our journeys of scientific discovery.
The lamest line in a scientific paper ever?
My friend John Derbyshire chronicles his spiritual devolution over the past few years….
Derb has a long article up where he answers all the “religion questions” he’s had to deal with and chronicles his drift away from Anglican theism. Not quite Rod Dreher level of personal anguish, but Ponurru isn’t pleased….
Heterogeneous Genomic Molecular Clocks in Primates:
The rate at which mutations accumulate in a genome, referred as a “molecular clock,” is an instrumental tool in molecular evolution and phylogenetics. Different types of mutations occur via distinctive molecular pathways. In particular, while most mutations occur from errors in DNA replication, spontaneous deamination of methylated CpG dinucleotides is another important source of mutation in mammalian genomes. Molecular clock studies typically combined all types of mutations together. In this paper, the authors analyze molecular clocks of replication-origin and methylation-origin mutations separately. By utilizing high-quality sequence data from several primate species and fossil calibration, the authors demonstrate that the two types of mutations follow statistically different molecular clocks. Methylation-origin mutations accumulate relatively constantly over time, while replication-origin mutations scale with generation-times. Therefore, the genomic molecular clock, as a whole, is shaped by the molecular origins of mutations that have accumulated over time. The authors’ results have direct implications on phylogenetic analyses, estimation of species divergence dates, and studies of the mechanisms and processes of evolution, where molecular clocks are imperative.
I really don’t have much to add, their own summary covers all the bases. Molecular clocks are critical in reconstructing phylogenies, and in human evolution their utility is so great that they have arguably revolutionized paleoanthropology. Obviously the great “rate debate” within phylogenetics matters here, as a million years here and there is essential in framing and generating hypotheses about the environment in which our hominid ancestors evolved and speciated.
See What You Want to See: Motivational Influences on Visual Perception:
People’s motivational states-their wishes and preferences-influence their processing of visual stimuli. In 5 studies, participants shown an ambiguous figure (e.g., one that could be seen either as the letter B or the number 13) tended to report seeing the interpretation that assigned them to outcomes they favored. This finding was affirmed by unobtrusive and implicit measures of perception (e.g., eye tracking, lexical decision tasks) and by experimental procedures demonstrating that participants were aware only of the single (usually favored) interpretation they saw at the time they viewed the stimulus. These studies suggest that the impact of motivation on information processing extends down into preconscious processing of stimuli in the visual environment and thus guides what the visual system presents to conscious awareness.
(via Chris)
Why does this matter? People see what they want to see, and their logic leads them to what they want them to see. Thank god natural science has reality!
Steve’s newest column tackles the next election (and the likely shift toward the Democrats) and its relevance to immigration. Meanwhile, Derb has been talking up Lou Dobbs Democrats. I don’t know what to think about this. I haven’t talked about immigration much because I’ve been rather pessimistic of late…but now I’m not sure sure. Perhaps I won’t have to make sure that I’m part of the 21st century oligarchy.
Assume that you have a new mutation, totally novel. What’s its probability of going extinct in one generation? That is, it doesn’t get passed on….
Consider, you have a population of N individuals. Fix the population size across nonoverlapping generations. So, in generation t you have N individuals and in t + 1 you have N individuals. In the first generation of the mutation the proportion in the population is 1/N, that is, there is one mutant amongst N individuals (ergo, N – 1 other copies). The probability that the mutant is never “drawn” (copied) to the next generation in this fixed population is (1 – 1/N)N. 1 – 1/N represents the non-mutants, and there are N draws since the population across generations is fixed. For example, if there are 100 individuals (haploid) and 99 are non-mutants, and the next generation will also have 100 individuals, there are 100 opportunities for the 99 out of 100 instead of the 1 out of 100 to be drawn, i.e., (1 – 0.01)100.
This equation converges upon ~ 0.37 as N approaches ∞. Here are some values generated for a given N:
10 → 0.34867844
100 → 0.366032341
1000 → 0.367695425
10000 → 0.367861046
The Washington Post has a fun profile of Sam Harris. This part cracked me up:
“If the Koran were exactly the same,” he said, toward the end of the night, “and there were just one line added to it, and the line said, ‘If you see a red-haired woman on your lawn at sunset, kill her,’ I can tell you what kind of world we’d live in. We’d live in a world where red-haired women would be killed often. We’d live in a world where people like yourself” — and here Harris gestures to his opponent, Oliver McTernan — “would say, ‘That’s not the true Islam.’ Twenty women in Baghdad would have their heads cut off and someone would come forward and say, ‘This has nothing to do with Islam. Some of them were strawberry blond. Some of them were strangled.”
Later on religious scholars chide Harris for his simplistic reading of religion. The bloggers are Get Religion dismiss Harris’ arguments as shallow. If by “shallow” they mean that Harris takes religion at its word and interprets its own axioms in a straightforward and guileless manner, then shallow he is. Once I was talking to an evangelical Christian who was attempting to convince me of the power of prophecy in the New Testament. I pointed out that Jesus himself said, “Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass, till all these things [the wonders of the Second Coming] be fulfilled.” To this my friend responded, “Ah, but you see, generation means the Jewish people in this context! And the Jewish people remain, so of course Christ has not returned.” And there you have it, my understanding was “shallow” and superficial, a closer look at scripture and religious practice fleshes out the nuance and richness.
The New York Times Magazine has a piece on the Iranian bomb and Islamic attitudes toward use of extreme measures in battle. In Infidels: A History of the Conflict Between Christendom and Islam Andrew Wheatcroft suggests that the Islamic attitude toward battle and war lagged the West in regards to a transition to rational and utilitarian paradigm in theory and practice. In other words, medieval values of valor and courage as opposed to victory at all costs persisted longer in the world of Islam than in Christendom, to the disadvantage of Muslim powers after 1500. So it is interesting to see how some Muslim scholars are now rationalizing barbarities, and how most Muslims now accept suicide bombers as martyrs. I bring this up, because as an unbeliever
1) I am always struck by the enthusiasm that followers of “higher religion” have toward assailing or battling those with whom their disagreemants are on the smallest matters of creed or ritual interpretation (to the point where one wonders if the foot soldiers who die for the sake of the creed can even genuinely discern the differences for which they lay their lives down!).
2) …and yet, there is such slippery ease with which the clerics and intellectuals of said “higher religion” can re-interpret the propositions entailed by their beliefs when the situation warrants. When I was a child in the 1980s many of the more traditionalist Muslims would not accept the taking of pictures because it was idolatry, and yet now the most radical of the ghazis videotape themselves, and it seems clear that this media serves as a focal point of devotion and adoration!
I suppose from the perspective of the unbeliever the question is this: what is the structure and nature of religious beliefs which allows such plasticity which masks itself as rigidity? Consider that Islamic radicals kill ostensibly in the name of a traditional society, but in the process they sanction the usage of non-traditional tactics such as female suicide bombers! To me, the heart of the piece above is that Islamic scholars will expend a great deal of time rationalizing whatever suits their own ultimate needs, so the background implication that there is some true axiomatic logic which demands that a group of believers espouse a particular set of beliefs down a chain of propositions seems ultimately implausible. Though killing will continue in the name of small differences, those differences are themselves subject to the contingencies of the age.
Addendum: Of course, remember that there is a difference between what people believe and what they believe they believe, and what they say motivates and what truly motivates them. Such considerations need to move past the simple analyses of the past such as Freudianism or Marxist materialism, but there various vectors can I think eventually help in constructing a model of the mind as it moves through the social and physical universe.
I haven’t had regular access to cable television since July of 2004. I haven’t had regular access to a television since March of 2005. Overall this has been a good thing, I’ve read more, I’ve thought more, and oh yes, I’ve blogged more, than I would have. Nevertheless over the past few months I have started to notice that my “pop culture lexicon” is getting out of date…I am simply cut off from the cultural touchstones of my peers. This isn’t all a bad thing, the animal mutterings which pass for speech from most humans are inputs I only marginally process (just enough to respond as if I am actually listening to the vapid stream). Nevertheless, the rise of YOUTUBE and internet video enabled by broadband allows me to “sample” the Zeitgeist of popular culture now and then. So that was how I stumbled upon this Nelly Furtado video, Maneater. I have three immediate responses
1) Jesus fucking Christ!!! (and I don’t even believe in that stuff)
2) Watching a video like that makes it clear just how un-sexy most internet porn is. Internet porn, with its anatomical focus is like a super-value meal, a lot of calories for the buck, but fundamentally unsatisfying once the aftertaste kicks in.
3) Southern European women sure do clean up after a good shaving, huh? The contrast of dark hair and light skin is their bane when it comes to the mustache tendency, but it can be quite striking when the lack of hair means they no longer look like a small men….
Addendum: I believe that for best data gathering you should simply start viewing about 60% of the way through.
TangoMan Adds:To add another data point to the analysis see Georgian beauty Katie Melua. Her style tends to emphasis the range of her voice rather than relying on studio gimmickry. This video has a nifty Hannibal Lechter theme and some great video compositing.
I particularly liked the intellectual controversy that surrounded Katie’s song Nine Million Bicycles where her lyrics “We are 12 billion light-years from the edge. That’s a guess – no-one can ever say it’s true” came under public fire from cosmologist Simon Singh for their inaccuracy. In a one time performance Katie reworked her lyrics – “We are 13.7 billion light-years from the edge of the observable universe; that’s a good estimate with well-defined error bars/and with the available information, I predict that I will always be with you”. Most agreed that they had lost a little zip in translation.
See also this video for a closer examination of what Georgia has to offer the world.