Pakistani genome
Scientists map genome of first Pakistani man:
“Our nation is a mix of a lot of races,” said Prof. Dr M Iqbal Choudhary, who heads the project. “Pakistanis are like a “melting pot” ie a mix of Mughals, Turks, Pashtuns, Afghans, Arabs, etcetera…
When will the first Jehovah’s Witness be sequenced?
An amusing article, Dr Atta-ur-Rehman, first Pakistani to have genome mapped:
Prof Dr M Iqbal Choudhary, Director International Centre for Chemical and Biological Sciences (ICCBS), Karachi University (KU), disclosed on Thursday that former Chairman, Hi…
Why hominin fossils matter
Yesterday Dienekes had a post up, Homo erectus soloensis fades into the past…. In it he states:
Every year or so there seems to be a redating of a key fossil in human evolution. It’s nice to see scientific self-correction in action, and soo…
Google+, not Wave or Buzz
I’ve been playing around with Google+ a little today. Farhad Manjoo no like, More Like Google Minus:
… First, I don’t know whom the company thinks it’s kidding; Google+ is obviously a direct competitor to Facebook. Given the lar…
No bookstores in Nashville?
That’s what Ann Patchett is claiming. More specifically, there are no bricks & mortar institutions which specialize in selling new books. There are places you can get used books in the city of Nashville. To remedy the situation Patchett is o…
The punctuated equilibrium of culture
John Winthrop, ~1600. Mitt Romney, 2008 – image credit, Jessica Rinaldi
Recently Megan Mcardle had a post up where she expressed curiosity as to why “futurists” circa 1900 had a tendency not to imagine revolutions in clothing style …
“What if you’re wrong” – haplogroup J
Back when this sort of thing was cutting edge mtDNA haplogroup J was a pretty big deal. This was the haplogroup often associated with the demic diffusion of Middle Eastern farmers into Europe. This was the “Jasmine” clade in Seven Daughters…
South Asian genetics would be nowhere without Pakistan
It looks like there have been some changes in the South Asian samples in the 1000 Genomes Project. Earlier there had been a notification that they were trying to get obtain samples of Kayasthas from West Bengal, Marathas from Maharashtra, and Ahom from Assom. No more. Now you have Sri Lankan and Bangladesh populations. What […]
Reify my genes!
BEHOLD, REIFICATION!
In the comments below Antonio pointed me to this working paper, What Do DNA Ancestry Tests Reveal About Americans’ Identity? Examining Public Opinion on Race and Genomics. I am perhaps being a bit dull but I can’t figure …
‘Indianization’ in the first 1,000 years after Christ
I am in the ‘Indian’ section of Strange Parallels and the author contends that Southeast Asian and South India were ‘Indianized’ at about the same time. By Indianized he means the suite of cultural characteristics which issued out of the Gangetic plain during the first millennium, after the Sangam period but before Mahmud of Ghanzi. […]
First Farmers Facing the Ocean
The image above is adapted from the 2010 paper A Predominantly Neolithic Origin for European Paternal Lineages, and it shows the frequencies of Y chromosomal haplogroup R1b1b2 across Europe. As you can see as you approach the Atlantic the frequency co…
Changes to 1000 Genomes South Asians
Looks like there have been some changes to the populations in the 1000 Genomes: At least we’ll be able to answer questions about the origin of the Sinhalese soon enough. I’m a little bummed that the Indian populations in Maharashtra …
Muslim Britons & the gays
Sunny Hundal states: The poll marks a sharp contrast to findings by Gallup in 2009 that 0% of British Muslims were tolerant towards homosexuality. But the two results are not contradictory: Muslims can agree that Islam does not tolerate homosexuality, while celebrating gay rights enshrined in the law. This is possible. But honestly it just […]
The impact of genetic ancestry testing
Attitudes on DNA ancestry tests:
The DNA ancestry testing industry is more than a decade old, yet details about it remain a mystery: there remain no reliable, empirical data on the number, motivations, and attitudes of customers to date, the number of …
Heritability and genomics of facial characteristics
On several occasions I’ve gotten into discussions with geneticists about the possibility of reconstructing someone’s facial structure by genes alone. Combined with advances in pigmentation prediction by genetics, this could put the sketch a…
The collapse of Myspace and its legacy
BusinessWeek‘s The Rise and Inglorious Fall of Myspace is a compelling read. But a huge piece of the puzzle which I thought was omitted was that Myspace was incubated in the short term bottom-feeder world to begin with, so the later fixation on r…
The different dynamics of memes vs. genes
In my long post below, Celts to Anglo-Saxons, in light of updated assumptions, I had a “cartoon” demographic model in mind which I attempted to sketch out in words. But sometimes prose isn’t the best in terms of precision, and almost …
On the Raju affair
Anna John has an interesting post up on Hermon K. Raju. One thing I would like to add: the transparent society is probably inevitable.
Geert Wilders and banning lying
A few people have asked me about the Geert Wilders’ affair. If you don’t know Geert Wilders’ is a right-wing Dutch politician prone to making inflammatory remarks about Islam. He’s been brought to court on the grounds of whether his comments violated the speech laws in much of Europe, which sanction inciting or hateful speech. […]
Islam as perversion
There are some actions which are alien, and frankly repugnant, in other societies. But there are other some actions which are simply obscene on the face of it, and the utilitarian or casuistical logic which justifies them are perverse and simply brook no comprehension beyond the fact that they take humans to their logical ends […]