linkfest – 01/15/12

The Case of the Missing Polygamists

A German by Any Other Name… – @those who can see. the globe stats for traits like “future orientation” and “collectivism” are really interesting. (thnx, m.g.!)

Changes in positions on social behaviors over time, by country – @the audacious epigone.

Class, Caste, and Genes – from henry harpending – h/t jayman!

Digit ratios and celebrity worship – “[G]irls with more feminine digit ratios are much more likely to worship celebrities.” – @the inductivist.

Why Republicans Deny Science: The Quest for a Scientific Explanation – lots of good points in this article, but it’s really just the pot calling the kettle black.

Evolution: A Game of Chance – not much new here for a lot of you, but still a good read. maybe it’d be good to email it to confused family and/or friends. (~_^)

Inside Darwin’s Tumor – cancer evolves. @the loom.

Why Women Report Being in Worse Health Than Men – “Women have a higher rate of underlying chronic health problems.”

bonus: Scientists discover soldier bees

bonus bonus: Smaller Than a Dime, The World’s Tiniest Frog Has Been Discovered

_{(note: comments do not require an email. smallest frog in the world. he’s so cuuuuuuuuute!)}

linkfest – 06/19/11

New study supports Darwin’s hypothesis on competition between species – “The researchers found that the frequency and speed of this extinction process — called competitive exclusion — was significantly greater between species that were more closely related.”

Breeding with Neanderthals helped humans go global

Facts Of The Matter – malcolm pollack on free [sic] will.

Ancestry plays vital role in nutrition and disease, study shows – “Dietary recommendations made by major health organizations are typically generalized to multiple populations, but are often based on available data from studies that represent one or two human populations. With regard to PUFAs, the American Heart Association currently recommends that Americans increase dietary PUFA levels to 5 to 10 percent of dietary energy. Studies like these suggest that such recommendations may not apply or be healthy for all populations.”

Stature and robusticity during the Neolithic transition: population replacement, not necessarily declining health – @dienekes.

Scientists Measure the Accuracy of a Racism Claim – “‘I just didn’t trust Gould,’ he [Ralph L. Holloway] said. ‘I had the feeling that his ideological stance was supreme. When the 1996 version of “The Mismeasure of Man” came and he never even bothered to mention Michael’s study, I just felt he was a charlatan.’” – from nicholas wade.

Real divorce statistics – @half sigma.

Early French had a taste for beer – “New study unveils archaeobotanical evidence of beer brewing in Iron Age France”

Britain Is More Germanic than It Thinks

White adolescent girls may be losing sleep from the pressure to be thin – “When results were divided and analyzed by ethnicity, these pressures to be skinny were significantly predictive of sleep duration for white girls, but not for black or Hispanic girls.”

Rule Breaker – “The biology of ethics.”

Jews and Big 5 traits – @inductivist.

UK pupils ‘among least likely to overcome tough start’ – “Among countries, South Korea, Finland, Japan, Turkey and Canada are the most successful in terms of poorer pupils achieving high results. Among regional education systems, Shanghai and Hong Kong top this resilience league table – and are top of the overall rankings. The top five places overall are taken by regional or national school systems in Asia.” – via diversityischaos.

The Social Psychological Narrative — or — What Is Social Psychology, Anyway?

Honeybees Might Have Emotions – “Honeybees have become the first invertebrates to exhibit pessimism, a benchmark cognitive trait supposedly limited to ‘higher’ animals.”

linkfest – 06/05/11

Religious Experiences Shrink Part of the Brain – “The study, published March 30 in PLoS One, showed greater atrophy in the hippocampus in individuals who identify with specific religious groups as well as those with no religious affiliation…. The results showed significantly greater hippocampal atrophy in individuals reporting a life-changing religious experience. In addition, they found significantly greater hippocampal atrophy among born-again Protestants, Catholics, and those with no religious affiliation, compared with Protestants not identifying as born-again.”

An Epidemic of False Claims – “Competition and conflicts of interest distort too many medical findings”

Autism May Have Had Advantages in Humans’ Hunter-Gatherer Past, Researcher Believes

Atheists and the Big 5 personality traits – “[A]theists are disagreeable and open to new things.” from the inductivist.

Scientists find BEES suffer from negative emotion

Non-independent mutations present new path to evolutionary success – “Mutations of DNA that lead to one base being replaced by another don’t have to happen as single, independent events in humans and other eukaryotes, a group of Indiana University Bloomington biologists has learned after surveying several creatures’ genomes…. [They] found that across the board, about three percent of new mutations are ‘multi-nucleotide mutations,’ or MNMs, perhaps the result of a single, error-prone DNA polymerase making two or more mistakes as it made its way down the chromosome.”

Will Neuroscience Challenge the Legal Concept of Criminal Responsibility?

Female Australopiths Left Home Once Mature, Males Didn’t – “Teeth from ancient human ancestors suggest that females joined new social groups once they reached maturity.”

Asphalt may have poisoned ancient Americans

Women have a little less sex and a couple more partners than they did 20 years ago – from the audacious.

Color Red Increases the Speed and Strength of Reactions

Researchers characterize epigenetic fingerprint of 1,628 people

Human Brain Limits Twitter Friends to 150 – “The number of people we can truly be friends with is constant, regardless of social networking services like Twitter, according to a new study of the network.” – the dunbar number again!

Californian dolphin gang caught killing porpoises

bonus: Quantum mechanics rule ‘bent’ in classic experiment

auster and the germans

larry auster doesn’t like the germans. i mean, he really doesn’t like the germans. he thinks they are out to destroy western civilization as we know it (or what’s left of it):

“German chancellor criminally charged for expressing delight over bin Laden’s demise“

“[T]he German-championed transnational opposite of the Nazi nationalism which sought to destroy the nations of Europe, is also destroying the nations of Europe. One way or another, whether in their Nazi form or in their hyper-liberal form, the Germans pose a determined threat to the nations and peoples of the West. To paraphrase Churchill’s famous remark about the Germans, they need to be kept at our feet, or else they will go for our throat.

“I am not being extreme or ‘anti-German’ when I say that. The Germans agree with me. They see themselves as a threat to others. That’s why they say that the EU is necessary, to keep them, the ever-threatening Germans, in check. The problem is that the German-led EU which in the German mind is aimed at suppressing the German nation, must suppress all other European nations as well. This is why, just as German nationalism could not be allowed to rule Europe, German anti-nationalism also cannot be allowed to rule Europe. Germany must not rule, period….”

a little extreme, but — fair enough. the man’s entitled to his opinion.

but, as a german blogger points out, you wouldn’t be able to utter those words — “the Germans pose a determined threat to the nations and peoples of the West” — about any other group of people without practically being strung up for it!

larry does have a point, tho (edit: with regard to the “nazi nationalism” [isn't that redundant?] part). the germans (or germanic peoples) do often seem to be in search of a little lebensraum, to the detriment of their neighbors: first the romans, then the gauls, the britons got shoved aside, not to mention the poles, and the french again — and again!, and — oh, i dunno — a bunch of slavic peoples, iirc (which i don’t). h*ll — a bunch of them even came to this country! oh, wait. even the founders, being anglo-saxony brits, were germanic. eek! they’re everywhere!

but you can’t blame the germans for wanting to expand their territory. EVERYbody wants to expand their territories! and many have. for instance: the bantus in africa, the han chinese, the russians, the french, the spanish, the arabs, modern humans…. seems a little unfair to pick on the germans when almost every human group (prolly every human group) has tried to expand its territory — including many other european populations!

and, if he were paying attention, larry would know that this is just basic biology. ALL species expand into new territories whenever they can. THAT’s the whole point! a few examples: uh … bears, chimps, ants, KILLER BEES! you get the idea.

sure. the people(s) who are at the receiving end of some other group’s expansion are bound to be p*ssed off. i can understand that. however, i think auster might have a different, more personal reason for hating germans. and that’s understandable, too.

me? i like germans! what’s not to like about germans?!:

_{(note: comments do not require an email.)}