To run an airline, you need not only pilots, airplanes, and fuel, you also need landing rights at airports matching your planned routes and times. Today airlines must buy these rights one at a time via trades, and so risk ending up with mismatched slots that they cannot use. Thirty years ago economists designed and tested [...]

The Freedom From Religion Foundation, with the help of local secularists, has placed a red-white-and-blue billboard with the message that God and government are a “dangerous mix” at Wenatchee Avenue west of McKittrick in Wenatchee, Wash.

The billboard, “God & Government — A Dangerous Mix: Keep State & Church Separate,” was posted in time to counter the National Day of Prayer today. Congress sets aside the first Thursday in May and requires an annual presidential proclamation exhorting citizens to “turn to God in prayer.”

The Freedom From Religion Foundation, with 16,500 members around the nation and more than 900 in Washington, is the nation’s largest atheist/agnostic association, and also works as a state/church watchdog. FFRF has three court challenges underway against the National Day of Prayer, most prominently Obama v. FFRF in the appeals courts. Last year a federal judge agreed with FFRF that a government day of prayer is unconstitutional, but an appeals court threw out FFRF’s case on standing. FFRF is asking the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago for an en banc review.

Wenatchee was just singled out by the Sunday New York Times (May 1) as the fourth “safest” area in terms of where to live to avoid a natural disaster.

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The pith: there are differences between populations on genes which result in “novelty seeking.” These differences can be traced to migration out of Africa, and can’t be explained as an artifact of random genetic drift.

I’m not going to lie, when I first saw the headline “Out of Africa migration selected novelty-seeking genes”, I was a little worried. My immediate assumption was that a new paper on correlations between dopamine receptor genes, behavior genetics, and geographical variation had some out. I was right! But my worry was motivated by the fact that this would just be another in a long line of research which pushed the same result without adding anything new to the body of evidence. Let me be clear: there are decades of very robust evidence that much of the variation in human behavior we see around us is heritable. That the variation in our psychological dispositions, from intelligence to schizophrenia, is substantially explained by who our biological parents are. This is clear when you look at adoption studies which show a strong concordance between biological parents and biological children on many metrics as adults, as opposed ...

1) First, a post from the past: 10 questions for Judith Rich Harris.

2) Weird search query of the week (#5 keyword!): “dutch best language”

3) Comment of the week, in response to “One root for rice”:

Timely paper! Rice agriculture must have been brought to India by the Austro-Asiatics. But the the EDAR genes that the Austro-Asiatics also brought with them do not seem to have been selected in India unlike in East Asia. The Munda only have 5% East Asian EDAR while having 15 to 30% East Asian ancestry.

Why did the East Asian variant lose its selective advantage in India? The reason must be that EDAR selection in East Asia was by sexual selection. Darwin proposed this to be the reason for non-adaptive differences between the races. Sexual selection, especially for cosmetic factors, is mostly a matter of female choice – while men may prefer blondes they will readily settle for brunettes but women hold out for Mr. Right. The Austro-Asiatics spread in India by their men marrying local women. These women did not care one way or the other for the thick straight hair of the Austro-Asiatic men ...

“Intermittent sun exposure and sunburn are strong predictors of cutaneous malignant melanoma (CMM). On the other hand, melanomas may arise also in non-sun-exposed areas such as the vulva. However, little is known about a possible relationship between sun exposure and vulvar melanoma. Temporal and latitudinal dependencies of the incidence rates of vulvar melanoma were studied in comparison with those of CMM among Caucasians in Sweden, East Germany, USA and Victoria (Australia). The ratios of vulvar melanoma incidence rates to those of CMM tend to decrease with increasing CMM rates. The incidence rates of CMM have increased with time until recently, while those of vulvar melanoma have either decreased or remain constant. In USA vulvar melanoma incidence rates seem to increase from south to north, while for CMM incidence rates on sun exposed skin areas decrease from south to north. Comparison of latitudinal trends of the incidence rates of vulvar melanomas and CMM show opposite trends. Whenever CMM rates increase, either with time or with decreasing latitude (indicating increased sun exposure) the ratio of vulvar melanoma rates to CMM rates on exposed skin, seem to decrease. Thus, latitudinal trends seem to ...

Recently Kent Hovind’s International House of Lunacy offered to send out free DVDs to anyone who asked. So naturally, I had to take them up. Yesterday, it was delivered to my… let’s say “imaginary roommate”, with the oh-so-subtle name “Sevil … Continue reading →

This week: great coverage of Randi at Neuromagic, the magic and neuroscience conference in San Simon, Spain.

• La Informacion, May 6, 2011
  James Randi: "Mantened los ojos abiertos y pensad por vosotros mismos" (English: "Keep your eyes open and think for yourselves", by Antonio Martinez Ron and David G. Tesouro)
  
  
• PopRX | Salon, May 2, 2011
  Why does your doctor hate alternative medicine? (by Rahul Parikh, M.D. - link to Pigasus Awards)
  
  
• Infectious Thoughts | SciBlogs, May 3, 2011
  National Immunisation Week (by Siouxsie Wiles)
  
  
• New York Observer, May 3, 2011
  Dinner With the Unknowners: The NYC Skeptics Break Bread (by Jonathan Liu)
  
  
• El Correo Gallego, May 4, 2011
  James Randi une la neurociencia con la magia en el Gaiás (English: “James Randi linking neuroscience with the magic in the Gaiás” by André Uriza Santiago)

Remember the billboard that was put up by the Central Valley Coalition of Reason (in Fresno, California)?

It said: “Don’t believe in God? Join the club.”

That billboard went up on Tuesday afternoon.

It didn’t even last a week before the vandals got to it.

Here’s what the billboard looks like now:

The word “Don’t” has been crossed out… leaving “believe in God? Join the club.” And I guess MADC wants to take credit for the destruction…

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No, this isn’t about Neil Shubin’s wonderful book about fossils, fishes, and evolutionary remnants, but a an article by Dr. Michael Mosley on, oddly, the BBC News “health” page.  You must see it, if only to watch the 30-second time-lapse video (made from high-quality scans) of the development of the embryonic human face up to ten weeks.  As Mosley explains (and the video shows), our fishy ancestry explains that curious groove between our nose and upper lip, the philtrum.  Have you ever wondered why it’s there? It doesn’t have any obvious adaptive function.  It’s an evolutionary remnant.

The video (which I’m unable to embed) shows this clearly, but Mosley explains:

The early human embryo looks very similar to the embryo of any other mammal, bird or amphibian – all of which have evolved from fish. Your eyes start out on the sides of your head, but then move to the middle. The top lip along with the jaw and palate started life as gill-like structures on your neck. Your nostrils and the middle part of your lip come down from the top of your head. There is no trace of a scar; the plates of tissue and muscle fuse seamlessly. But there is, however, a little remnant of all this activity in the middle of your top lip – your philtrum.
...

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What’s the News: The foundation of modern electronics, silicon transistors are miniature on/off switches that regulate electric current. This week, Intel demonstrated a new transistor design that’s being hailed by Intel as one of the most radical developments in transistors since the advent of integrated circuits of the 1950s. By adding tiny, vertical fins to normally flat transistors, Intel’s new Tri-Gate transistor allows for faster, smaller, and lower-voltage computer chips. “We’ve been talking about these 3-D circuits for more than 10 years, but no one has had the confidence to move them into manufacturing,” chip-manufacturing specialist Dan Hutcheson told The Wall Street Journal.

How the Heck:

Engineers added a fin-shaped structure to the part of the transistor that acts as a conducting channel for electrons; with the extra depth, more current flows through the transistor. They also designed the gate, or the component that turns the current flow on and off, so that it surrounds the fin on all three sides, more effectively stanching current ...

To mark the publication of A Planet of Viruses, the University of Chicago Press asked me to participate in a weekly series of conversations with experts on some of the themes I explore in the book. They’ll be coming out each Friday in May. First up is an exchange between me and Ian Lipkin, a virus hunter at Columbia University and the subject of this 2010 profile I wrote for the New York Times. As if waving a piece of red meat before me, Lipkin wonders if viruses can alter our behavior. I then take the bait. Check it out.

The podcast 365 Days of Astronomy is a great show about space and astronomy. It was created as part of the International Year of Astronomy 2009, and was renewed for 2010 and again 2011.

The cool thing is, the podcast is created by you, the listener! Every daily episode is written and recorded by volunteers who want to talk about some aspect of the Universe that excited them. I think this is a great idea, since it really motivates people and gets them involved.

The problem is, though, they need more episodes! Right now, for example, the schedule for May 2011 is only half full.

Do you have some idea about astronomy you’re dying to talk about? Galaxies get you going, supernovae blow you away, you bought a new ‘scope and have advice for another newbie? If you have a topic you’d like to discuss, then check the podcast calendar, look for an open slot, and get to work!

The weave of the new translucent fabric traps sound, while letting light—and in this photo from the Swiss lab, a view of neighboring houses—through.

What’s the News: Noisy rooms are no fun, but neither are those smothered in heavy sound-canceling drapes. The solution? A translucent curtain that quenches sound by behaving like foam, developed by Swiss materials scientists and a textile designer.

How the Heck:

To get a grip on what kind of curtain would block sound but not light, the research team at the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Research built a computer model of the acoustic qualities of fabric. This model helped pinpoint the exact properties—for example, the fabric’s density and the shape of the microscopic holes that pepper it—that the new textile would require. They then passed their findings off to the designer, Annette Douglas, to turn into reality.

The curtains were tested in a seminar room
built specifically for measuring acoustics.

Douglas—who has been ...

As you might expect, I am not a big fan of ghost hunting shows. Stopping every ten seconds and dramatically whispering "Did you hear that?" is not exactly the best way to run a scientific investigation.

So I’m pleased to see satires and such of those programs, and I think the web comic Dork Tower does it pretty well here.

Man, there’ve been a lot of good sciencey skeptical web comics lately. Keep ‘em coming, folks. It’s one of the best ways to spread the word.

Related posts:

- Ghostly reflections
- Ghost hunting results in death
- When is a man like a horse?
- TAPped out

So Atlas Shrugged: Part 1 was a bomb. Anyone surprised? Apparently the producer, John Aglialoro, held the rights to produce a movie but wasn’t able to create one for over a decade. When it looked like the time limit was about to run out, he threw together what he could. Rotten Tomatoes gives it a [...]

This is a guest post by Jamie L. Vernon, Ph.D., an HIV research scientist and aspiring policy wonk, who recently moved to D.C. to get a taste of the action Climate change skeptics, 9/11 truthers and “birthers,” those who deny President Obama’s American citizenship, have provided us with an extensive record of denialism within American [...]

I’ve been posting amazing astronomical night sky time lapse videos, but how about one that shows a time lapse about astronomy?

Check out this video from cinematographer Patryk Kizny showing amateur astronomers preparing for the annual Astropolis Star Party in Jodlow, Poland in 2010:

If you’ve ever attended a star party you’ll know that it really does look like this (lots of extremely rapid, frantic movement while there’s still light, and then, suddenly, astronomy). Patryk did some special effects with the actual deep-sky images, adding the 3D star fields, but the shots of the sky movement at the end are pretty much as-is, and quite nice.

If Patryk’s name is familiar, he did the amazing video called The Chapel, showing an eerily beautiful decayed Protestant chapel in Poland. He used HDR (high dynamic range) techniques which gave that video an astonishing, mystical feel to it. It went viral quickly; I remember seeing it when it came out and it really is worth seeing the whole thing.

Having seen so many of these videos now, it’s clear that the music complements these videos tremendously. The visuals are moody and draw you in, but the ...

So after a multi-year lull in its cycle (one of historic length), the Sun is finally getting more active again. Want to know what all the fuss is about?

Continue reading →

Chris Rodda, the Senior Research Director for the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, has a request and an offer. First, some background. You’ve probably heard of David Barton by now. He’s become the go-to historian for the religious right, because he provides a historical justification for their policies. He’s become important enough that the New York [...]

I was recently pointed to this news report from a local Fox affiliate – about an inventor who has developed an engine that can burn water. This is a topic well-covered in skeptical and scientific circles. The inventor, Denny Klein, makes all the typical claims that are made for such systems. Briefly – you cannot [...]

I saw a patient recently for parasites. I get a sinking feeling when I see that diagnosis on the schedule, as it rarely means a real parasite. The great Pacific NW is mostly parasite free, so either it is a traveler or someone with delusions of parasitism. The latter comes in two forms: the classic [...]

Has Osama bin Laden's body washed ashore in India?

I’ve mentioned Elaine Ecklund’s research before on ‘spiritual atheists.’ Though I had a hard time understanding the thrust of her conclusions or inferences on occasion I could grapple with her raw quantitative results. But now she has a long paper out in Sociology of Religion, Scientists and Spirituality, which is based on long qualitative interviews. It is open access so you should be able to read the whole thing. Honestly I have a hard time figuring out if this is all a big semantic confusion. I’m curious if you can extract something interesting. Here’s the abstract:

We ask how scientists understand spirituality and its relation to religion and to science. Analyses are based on in-depth interviews with 275 natural and social scientists at 21 top U.S. research universities who were part of the Religion among Academic Scientists survey. We find that this subset of scientists have several distinct conceptual or categorical strategies for framing the connection spirituality has with science. Such distinct framings are instantiated in spiritual beliefs more congruent with science than religion, as manifested in the possibility of “spiritual atheism,” those who see themselves as spiritual yet do not believe in God or a god. Scientists stress ...

Arstechnica: Researchers have bred a new species of all-female lizard, mimicking a process that has happened naturally in the past but has never been directly observed. “It’s recreating the events that lead to new species,” said cell biologist Peter Baumann of the Stowers Institute for Medical Research, whose new species is described May 3 in the Proceedings [...]

1

David Barton, the Christian conman who’s revising history to have a far more Christian slant to it than it deserves — and influencing several state history curriculums in the process — was on The Daily Show last night. The extended interview is now on their website.

The Daily Show
The whole thing is just infuriating. Barton goes on and on (and on), talking over Stewart, saying that Christianity is under attack. Stewart calls him out on it. Barton changes the subject, cherrypicks court cases to prove some obscure point, and acts like he’s victorious. (Both Barton and Stewart also misstate a lawsuit brought about by the Freedom From Religion Foundation — FFRF has no desire to force people to stop praying, but they don’t believe the government should be promoting a National Day of Prayer. And they’re right.) Stewart never really nails him, though, and I was unsatisfied after watching the entire interview.

Chris Rodda wasn’t happy, either. She had written a book debunking the lies of the Christian Right’s retelling of our nation’s founding called Liars For Jesus: The Religious Right’s Alternate Version of American History Vol. 1.

But after hearing the interview, she can’t take it anymore. She’s going to give away her book for free in the hope that the truth can spread:

Sure, I could write about the particular snippets of disinformation and dishonesty that spewed forth from Barton during this particular interview, but what good would that do? Been there; done that. Then, staring up at the face of Ben Franklin, it was his words, “Do well by doing good,” that suddenly popped into my head…

… [Those words] have now been stuck in my head for hours, and aren’t going to leave until I do what I’m about to do: give my book away for free.

Can I afford to do this? No. Do I need to do this? Yes! Will lots of people download it and read it? I have no freakin’ idea. It’s just what I need to do to be able to look Ben Franklin in the eye on that poster on my wall.

So download it, read it, spread it, and help put a dent into Barton’s influence. Better yet, buy it if you can so future volumes can be published.
Continue to Friendly Atheist website

Expense account reveals affair between executive and his stenographer.

From today’s National Post: The practice is discouraged by major medical groups, considered unethical by many doctors and with uncertain benefit, but one in five Canadian physicians prescribes or hands out some kind of placebo to their often-unknowing patients, a new study suggests. The article references a paper in the Canadian Journal of Psychiatry which [...]

What’s the News: In another glorious reminder of how weird nature really is, it’s time to get ready for the swarm: This May, after spending 13 years underground, huge populations of cicadas will emerge in the southern U.S. to molt, sing their riotous mating tunes, and breed. It’s a brief coda to their long adolescence in burrows 30 cm beneath the soil—by July, they will be dead, and their children will be beginning their years of exile from the surface.

What’s the Context:

While there are plenty of cicada species that send a generation to the surface every year, cyclical cicadas (of the genus Magicicada) come out en masse after 13 or 17 years. Scientists believe that this strategy evolved as a way to overwhelm predators—when there are so many cicadas around at one time, a good many of them will probably survive. Cyclical cicadas live in tribes called broods that occupy certain geographic areas (see map)—the brood that’s swarming this year, called brood XIX or the Great Southern Brood. It was last seen in 1998. (Go ahead, check the math.) Scientists have puzzled for decades over the fact that some ...

Do the neoclassical canons still describe the beauty of faces? An anthropometric study on 50 Caucasian models.

“Since a long time has gone from their definitions, the authors’ aim was to determine whether or not the neoclassical canons are still valid to describe the facial beauty in Italian women. The photographs of 50 italian models selected for an important beauty contest were obtained. All the pictures were taken by a professional photographer with a professional digital reflex camera with a millimeter-graduated scale white background. All the pictures were printed in 1:1 dimensions. Eleven neoclassical canons were measured and the results statistically evaluated. The results of the present study showed that the medium face third is reduced when compared to the upper and the lower thirds and that the two upper quarters of the face are decreased if compared to the two lower quarters (p<0.01). The nose height was smaller than ear height and the nose width smaller than 1/4 of facial width. In 72% of cases the ear axis was steeper than the nose. The intercanthal width in this study resulted smaller than nose width and smaller than eye width (p<0.05). ...

A monkey frog

The Pith: The Amazon Rainforest has a lot of species because it’s been around for a very long time.

I really don’t know much about ecology, alas. So my understanding of evolution framed in its proper ecological context is a touch on the coarse side. When I say I don’t know much about ecology, I mean that I lack a thick network of descriptive detail. So that means that I have some rather simple models in my head, which upon closer inspection turn out to be false in many specific instances. That’s what you get for relying on theory. Today I ran into a paper which presented me with some mildly surprising results.

The question: why is the Amazon Rainforest characterized by such a diversity of species? If you’d asked me that question 1 hour ago I would have said that it was a matter of physics. That is, the physical parameters of a high but consistent rainfall and temperature regime. This means the basic energetic inputs into the biome is high, and its consistency allows the organisms to plan their life schedule efficiently, maximizing the inputs. All ...

Apparently some philosophers have developed philosophies of hypocrisy, to justify their not following the moral rules they advocate for others. They tried to keep quiet about it: [Famous philosopher of ethics Henry] Sidgwick was the son of an Anglican clergeyman. Along with many eminent Victorians he could not accept revealed religion. Unlike most of them [...]

Like John Hawks I get a fair number of questions from students. Some of them seem legit and I try and answer them, but sometimes they’re asking detailed things which would take me too long and it falls out of my task stack. And alas on occasion they’re clearly straight up asking me to write their paper from what I can tell. But today I got an interesting email from a doctoral student in England who found me via twitter and my blog, and was wondering if I could fill in an online survey for her research. It took me all of 5 minutes, so if you want to help her out (I’m thinking this is a painless way to increase someone’s sample size):

To fill in the survey, please:

Click here if you have bought a genetic test. (If you have bought a test but haven’t recieved your results yet, please still follow this link and just ignore any questions you can’t answer).

Click here if you are thinking of buying a genetic test.

I do so love to report these wins for reality, as rare as they are: the very vocal antivax advocate Mark Geier has had his medical license revoked in Maryland. Why?

The Maryland State Board of Physicians reviewed nine cases of autistic children seen by Geier, of which he treated seven. Of those nine, the Board found he misdiagnosed six of them. He (mis)diagnosed them with "precocious puberty", a medical condition where kids have extremely early onset of puberty. Why would he do such a thing? Well, this condition can be treated with Lupron, a drug which lowers testosterone (it’s used to chemically castrate adult men). Geier happens to think Lupron can also help autism — despite there being no evidence at all that’s the case — which makes his diagnosis very suspect. It implies strongly that he used the precocious puberty diagnosis as an excuse to prescribe the drug.

By the way, Lupron costs $5000 – $6000 a month to administer. The side effects can be severe as well, including seizures, and it’s known that autistic children are prone to seizures. That’s why the Board wrote that Geier’s treatment "exposed the children to needless risk ...

Alice robots at work.

What’s the News: The diminutive, unassuming Alice robot has helped a Swiss research team test a core tenet about the evolution of altruism, called Hamilton’s rule. The researchers’ new study shows that even simple robots operating with simple evolutionary rules can recreate evolution’s complex interplay of selfishness and selflessness.

How the Heck:

Each Alice bot is a trundling cube equipped with two wheels and 33 “genes” that reflect the make-up of its artificial nervous system. These genes control how well they can move around and push small disks that represent food into their nests. Because researchers wanted to do the study on a big scale (500 generations of 1,600 robots each), they actually carried out most of the action in a computer simulation of the robots, where it could be done faster and cheaper. (Previous work showed that the software version of Alice evolution was a good model of the hardware version.) At the beginning of the simulation, each robot was randomly assigned a value for each of its genes. Then survival of the fittest took over: The robots that couldn’t gather food effectively didn’t have their genes ...

Photographs purportedly show images of a dead Osama bin Laden. (GRAPHIC IMAGES WARNING)

This is a guest post by Jamie L. Vernon, Ph.D., an HIV research scientist and aspiring policy wonk, who recently moved to D.C. to get a taste of the action Last night, the George Washington University and the University of Ottawa presented the D. Allan Bromley Memorial Lecture with featured speaker Dr. John P. Holdren, [...]

Very excited to learn that my talk from TEDxCaltech is featured on the TED home page today. They have their own comment thread, and in a couple of weeks we’ll have a live call-in “conversation with the speaker” deal. If the Twitters are to be believed, these TED talks are pretty darn popular. The talk [...]

California’s getting a number of atheist billboards this month!

The Orange County Coalition of Reason is putting up the traditional “Don’t believe in God? You’re not alone” billboard:

Just in time, too, since they’re hosting the Orange County Freethought Alliance Conference on Sunday, May 15^th.

“The point of our ongoing nationwide awareness campaign is to reach out to the millions of atheists and agnostics living in the United States,” explained Fred Edwords, national director of the United Coalition of Reason. “Such nontheists sometimes don’t realize there’s a community for them because they’re inundated with religious messages at every turn. We hope our effort will serve as a beacon and let them know they aren’t alone.”

…

Edwords added: “All the billboards going up this week also celebrate the National Day of Reason on May 5, an alternative observance to the National Day of Prayer. And they will remain up even after the supposed Rapture that a few have predicted for May 21.”

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Over at I Think I Believe (Not completely SFW), Arni Zachariassen explains why religious science is better than atheist science: For the atheist science is like porn. For the religious person science is like sweet, hot lovemaking. This was meant in good fun, but I believe it needs a rejoinder. Any ideas? For context, here’s [...]

Chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) is an enigmatic disorder. The primary symptom is debilitating fatigue that does not resolve with rest. Fatigue, however, is a very non-specific symptom, meaning that it can potentially result from many underlying causes. Anything that saps the energy our body uses to function will cause fatigue. In part CFS is a [...]

I recently came across this post at Science & Religion Today, authored by Dan Kahan, who is the Elizabeth K. Dollard Professor at Yale Law School. It clarifies so many important issues about motivated reasoning–what it is, what it isn’t–that I asked Kahan if I could repost it here, as I think it deserves very [...]

Imagine you know everything on Wikipedia, in the Oxford English Dictionary, and the contents of every book in digital form. When someone asks you what you did twenty years ago, on demand you recall with perfect accuracy every sensation and thought from that moment. Sifting and parsing all of this information is effortless and unconscious. Any fact, instant of time, skill, technique, or data point that you’ve experienced or can access on the internet is in your mind.

Cybernetic brains might make that possible. As computing power and storage continue to plod along their 18-month doubling cycle, there is no reason to believe we won’t at least have cybernetic sub-brains within the coming century. We already offload a tremendous amount of information and communication to our computers and smartphones. Why not make the process more integrated? Of course, what I’m engaging in right now is rampant speculation. But a neuro-computer interface is a possibility. More than that: cyber-brains may be necessary.

The idea of a cyber-brain is pretty simple. Our brains are all-in-one systems that store, process, organize, and collect data. A cybernetic brain would augment one, many, or all parts of that ...

Sometimes it pays to look over some older data and re-examine it. An exoplanet called 55 Cancri e was thought to have an orbit that was just 2.8 days long when it was discovered. However, two researchers looked over the data and realized they got a better fit if the orbit were actually only 0.73654 days — just under 18 hours! This meant it orbited its star far closer than previously thought as well.

And while that may be somewhat interesting, it’s the implications for the planet itself that make this orbital revision so cool. Or actually, hot. And dense.

Right. As usual, there’s a story to tell here…

The planet was discovered using the Doppler method: as it orbits its star, the gravity of the planet tugs on the star, causing a very small shift in the spectrum of starlight. The problem is getting enough observations to nail down the planet’s period; you can’t observe when it’s up during the day, and that cuts into the ability to get a good sampling of measurements. The discovery data gave a good fit at 2.8 days, so that’s what ...

We may have not had success getting our own prime-time network show with The Skeptologists, but skeptical outreach professionals are appearing more and more often on existing shows as featured experts. Today I added another such contribution in a small way. Twice now I’ve appeared as a talking head on William Shatner’s Weird or What?, [...]

I apologize for this in advance. But it’s going viral, so you’re likely to see it somewhere eventually. Isn’t is better to get it over with now, from a friend? A pair of juggling evangelical scarecrows lip-sync poorly to a bad rap about how you get ill when you don’t pray. Who on earth thought [...]

A new paper in Proceedings of the Royal Society dovetails with some posts I’ve put up on the peopling of Japan of late. The paper is Bayesian phylogenetic analysis supports an agricultural origin of Japonic languages:

Languages, like genes, evolve by a process of descent with modification. This striking similarity between biological and linguistic evolution allows us to apply phylogenetic methods to explore how languages, as well as the people who speak them, are related to one another through evolutionary history. Language phylogenies constructed with lexical data have so far revealed population expansions of Austronesian, Indo-European and Bantu speakers. However, how robustly a phylogenetic approach can chart the history of language evolution and what language phylogenies reveal about human prehistory must be investigated more thoroughly on a global scale. Here we report a phylogeny of 59 Japonic languages and dialects. We used this phylogeny to estimate time depth of its root and compared it with the time suggested by an agricultural expansion scenario for Japanese origin. In agreement with the scenario, our results indicate that Japonic languages descended from a common ancestor approximately 2182 years ago. Together with archaeological and biological evidence, our results suggest that the first farmers ...

In the comments to my previous article I had said I would tackle the topic of how Pharmaceutical Products are marketed and how the FDA is involved in that process. Then I managed to get a new job with a different company, and have been busy getting up to speed. I still do the same [...]

Welles was born May 6, 1915, in Kenosha, Wisconsin, son of Richard Hodgdon Head Welles (1873, Missouri – December 28, 1930, Chicago, Illinois) and Beatrice Ives (1882 or 1883, Springfield, Illinois – May 10, 1924, Chicago, Illinois). His family was raised Roman Catholic. Despite his parents’ affluence, Welles encountered many hardships in childhood. In 1919, his parents separated and moved to [...]

Audible Audio Edition - Read by Richard Dawkins and Lalla Ward Product Details

* Audible Audio Edition
* Listening Length: 16 hour(s) and 16 min.
* Program Type: Audiobook
* Version: Unabridged
* Publisher: Audible, Inc. (March 29, 2011)
* Language: English

The Selfish Gene - audible.com version - Amazon.com

The Selfish Gene - audible.com version - Amazon.co.uk