Countdown to Christmas! Hope everyone has pleasant holidays.
Apple v Google. Very long article highlighting the different strategies of the two companies. I do though think Google is starting to get a touch annoying trumpeting their “open ways.” They’re not a struggling start-up, they’re a massive corporation.
More on “culturomics”. Also see the #ngrams hash-tag.
Hmong’s new lives in Caribbean. They’re 1% of French Guinea’s population, but control 70% of the agriculture, since arriving in the 1970s.
Cables Reveal Resentment at Chinese Influence in Africa. Resentment isn’t going to stop the investment. In some ways we’re in the early stages of a latter day Scramble for Africa, though is a matter more of economic than political hegemony.
Evolution of an Agriculture-Associated Disease Causing Campylobacter coli Clade: Evidence from National Surveillance Data in Scotland. ” Taken together these analyses are consistent with an evolutionary scenario describing the emergence of agriculture-associated C. coli lineage that is an important human pathogen.”
Mark Madoff’s Name Became Too Big a Burden to Bear. His more calculating brother is still alive, as is his sociopathic father.
I Want Chromedroid. “Google’s new Android phone and cloud-based Chrome computer would work better together.”
In India, Chinese Leader Pushes Trade. It seems inevitable that there’ll be a political chasm widening while economic integration continues apace.
Upwardly Mobile. I don’t get Angry Birds.
In France, Civil Unions Gain Favor Over Marriage. I favor marriage personally, but there is something to the argument in my opinion that some people are dispositionally unsuited to a multi-decade commitment.
Sweden Bombing Doesn’t Soil Image of Tolerance. ‘…image, as captured by a security camera: a man in a red jacket kneeling by the dying bomber, asking if there was anything he could do for the man while other bystanders, spying unexploded pipe bombs still strapped to the man’s waist, backed away, shouting, “Bomb! Bomb! Bomb!”’ You wonder why Finns think something is off with the Swedes?
Stockholm bomber denounced by father-in-law. ‘In the letter, written in Arabic, Thwany said Abdulwahab had betrayed Sweden, “which gave us home and treated us well and offered us things that others, Arabs, non-Arabs, Muslims and non-Muslims, refrained from doing.”‘ If troops in Muslim lands was an issue it seems that Taimour Abdulwahab would have attempted terrorism in Britain. Sweden’s commitment in Afghanistan seems token by comparison to what Britain has been involved in in both Afghanistan and Iraq. So other issues probably were important, such as the ‘blasphemous’ Swedish cartoonist. Of course my liberal friends will perhaps suggest that Swedish racism played a role in this (mind you, I believe that Europeans are more racist than Americans, even if they are not malicious about it). But if racism was a primary predictive variable then Russia should be ground-zero of terrorism. As it is, Russian “Islamic” terrorism is pretty straightforward Caucasian nationalism which requires minimal unpacking. More Black September than Al-Qaeda.
Epstein-Barr: Scientists Decode Secrets of a Very Common Virus That Can Cause Cancer.
Feast, Famine and the Genetics of Obesity: You Can’t Have It Both Ways.
Report Names Kosovo Leader as Crime Boss. Though of us who are skeptical of humanitarian intervention generally have the attitude that foreign conflicts are never as black-white as they are portrayed. It was pretty obvious back in 1999 that the KLA had a thuggish side. There were no angels in the conflict, just demons and more demonic. Similarly, Paul Kagame’s forces defeated an explicitly genocidal Hutu regime, but has been implicated in its own massacres. International relations is more alchemy than physics.
Anti-Austerity Protest in Greece Turns Violent. Wow. Every news story makes me wonder if it’s the end of Europe as we know it.
General Epistatic Models of the Risk of Complex Diseases. ” These results imply that, in general, gene interactions will result in greater heritability of a complex inherited disease than is expected on the basis of a multiplicative model of interactions and hence may provide a partial explanation for the problem of missing heritability of complex diseases.”
The Rate of Fitness-Valley Crossing in Sexual Populations. “We find that low recombination rates can speed up valley crossing relative to the asexual case, while higher recombination rates slow down valley crossing, with the transition between the two regimes occurring when the recombination rate between the loci is approximately equal to the selective advantage provided by the adaptation.”
The evolution of dissent. “Even more intriguing is the implications for understanding cultural-genetic co-evolution. After all, we know that viruses and their hosts co-evolve in a kind of arms race – sometimes ending up in a relationship that benefits both.”
Where Unconscious Memories Form.
Meet the woman without fear. Much of the phenomena was expected, but not this (at least for me): “She’ll happily stand a foot away from complete strangers, far closer than most people would be comfortable with (even though, again, she understands the concept of personal space).”
Mystery pigs of tropical Asia, and capturing them on film.
Why Humans Are More Sensitive to Certain Viruses: Primate Immune System Differences Identified.
Staying active lessens age-related weight gain, especially in women. I guess the sex difference makes this not necessarily a “duh” study.
SNL Digital short captures something essential about being a 20 year old male. NSFW.