Substack cometh, and lo it is good. (Pricing)

Around the Web – February 28th, 2011

February always goes by so fast….

Should you go to an Ivy League School, Part II. I think the value of an Ivy League degree will be more, not less, important in the future. It seems possible that we’re nearing the end of the age when the wage gap between unskilled and skilled workers is relatively modest (roughly, the wage gap decreased between 1800 up to 1970, and has been increasing over the past 40 years). Credentialing and finding juicy rents and sinecures is probably the way to go in the future. As the past was, the future shall be?

Anthropologists Trace Human Origins Back To One Large Goat. “Read the whole thing.”

Advanced Degrees Add Up to Lower Blood Pressure. I’m sure that the paper itself is less irritating in terms of conflating correlation and causation. The problem is that it is the least intelligent people who will think that extra years of education = extra years of life in a magical manner. That being said, peer group effects probably matter, so I suspect that that’s part of what’s going on here after you correct for background variables.

Election Defeat Predicted for Ireland’s Ruling Party. It is rather strange that the more right-wing party generally enters into coalitions with the left-wing party, against the centrist party.

At last – an explanation for ‘bunga bunga’.


Genome-Wide Association Study Identifies Loci for Body Composition and Structural Soundness Traits in Pigs.

The Decline And Fall of Effects In Science. Measured take from Neuroskeptic. Incentives matter. Positive results mean getting published. So keep trying until you get a statistically significant result, and get published. Sometimes the sociology of science matters.

Most Doctors Do Not Know Guidelines Well, German Study Finds. This is for German doctors. Since we have the Best Healthcare In The WorldTM and American doctors are absolute geniuses, it doesn’t apply to this side of the Atlantic.

Bamiyan Buddhas Once Glowed in Red, White and Blue. Ancient Classical monuments and statues were also supposedly once gaudily painted.

A Population Genetic Approach to Mapping Neurological Disorder Genes Using Deep Resequencing. On the rare variants side of the ledger.

A Genome-Wide Study of DNA Methylation Patterns and Gene Expression Levels in Multiple Human and Chimpanzee Tissues. Another stab at trying to characterize human-chimpanzee differences in terms of gene regulation.

Discovery of Oldest Northern North American Human Remains Provides New Insights Into Ice-Age Culture.

Man has 39 wives, nearly 100 children. ‘He heads a local Christian religious sect, called the “Chana,” which allows polygamy. Formed in June 1942, the sect believes it will soon be ruling the world with Christ and has a membership of around 400 families.’ Instead of proselytizing, he is propagating.

Catastrophic Drought in the Afro-Asian Monsoon Region During Heinrich Event 1. “Here, we demonstrate that the height of this stadial, about 17,000 to 16,000 years ago (Heinrich Event 1), coincided with one of the most extreme and widespread megadroughts of the last 50,000 years or more in the Afro-Asian monsoon region, with potentially serious consequences for Paleolithic cultures.”

Ancestor Worship. Brian Switek reviews the “first human” arguments. Must read.

Late Neandertals and the intentional removal of feathers as evidenced from bird bone taphonomy at Fumane Cave 44 ky B.P., Italy. This is naturally resulting in some funny “artistic renderings.”

Fossils May Look Like Human Bones: Biological Anthropologists Question Claims for Human Ancestry.

Single-Tissue and Cross-Tissue Heritability of Gene Expression Via Identity-by-Descent in Related or Unrelated Individuals. ” Finally, we obtained similar estimates of the cis components of heritability using IBD between unrelated individuals, indicating that transgenerational epigenetic inheritance does not contribute substantially to the “missing heritability” of gene expression in these tissue types.”

India East and Inward. Comment on the involuted outlook of many Hindus.

Dwarfism Gene Linked to Protection from Cancer and Diabetes.

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