I agree that it’s not obvious that they are any less so than Homo Sapiens sapiens. It is an interesting question as to whether cloning one would be ethical, though.
Category Archives: Science And Society
Obesity
Are we entering an epigenetic spiral of it?
The relatively new fields of epigenetics and nutrigenomics are showing that changes in gene expression can be produced by environmental mechanisms. Could rising levels of obesity alter our genes, and, in turn, could these obesity-favoring alterations be passed on to future generations?
OK, I’m a little confused. Isn’t there a difference between the gene expression and the gene itself? Are they really saying that the environment can change the genes in a way that makes the trait acquired as a result of the environment heritable? That is, are they saying that Lamarck may have been onto something?
[Update a few minutes later]
Just a coincidence, I’m sure, but amusing that this story came out two days before Darwin Day.
And of course, Darwin was born on exactly the same day as Abraham Lincoln, in 1809. In fact, in protest of “President’s” Day, which trivializes the memory of both Washington and Lincoln, I think I’ll go put out the flag.
One Funeral At A Time
The intellectual arrogance of this post is breathtaking.
For the record, I’m not a “denier,” I’m a skeptic, as are all true scientists. And I think that long before we die, society will come to its senses. It’s already started happening, when you see how low this issue is on most peoples’ agenda in the polls (close to the bottom).
My Cat Drives Me Crazy
She does, actually, with her willful refusal to pee in a litter box, but it may be literally true as well:
It’s almost impossible to hear about Flegr’s research without wondering whether you’re infected—especially if, like me, you’re a cat owner, favor very rare meat, and identify even a little bit with your Toxo sex stereotype. So before coming to Prague, I’d gotten tested for the parasite, but I didn’t yet know the results. It seemed a good time to see what his intuition would tell me. “Can you guess from observing someone whether they have the parasite—myself, for example?,” I ask.
“No,” he says, “the parasite’s effects on personality are very subtle.” If, as a woman, you were introverted before being infected, he says, the parasite won’t turn you into a raving extrovert. It might just make you a little less introverted. “I’m very typical of Toxoplasma males,” he continues. “But I don’t know whether my personality traits have anything to do with the infection. It’s impossible to say for any one individual. You usually need about 50 people who are infected and 50 who are not, in order to see a statistically significant difference. The vast majority of people will have no idea they’re infected.”
A long, but fascinating article.
Obama’s Amazing Energy Spin Machine
Thoughts on the administration policy mess. And the media will continue to help spin it, all the way to November.
Damn Gaia
Why will she not obey our theories?
The world’s greatest snow-capped peaks, which run in a chain from the Himalayas to Tian Shan on the border of China and Kyrgyzstan, have lost no ice over the last decade, new research shows.
The discovery has stunned scientists, who had believed that around 50bn tonnes of meltwater were being shed each year and not being replaced by new snowfall.
Unexpectedly!
Of course, they have to maintain the politically correct line:
“The new data does not mean that concerns about climate change are overblown in any way. It means there is a much larger uncertainty in high mountain Asia than we thought.
Yes. Now consider what else you don’t know that you thought you did. And yes, let’s spend trillions now to prevent the ocean from rising by one meter a century from now. Because that makes perfect economic sense.
Diet Soft Drinks
Are worse for you than regular ones? I’m not really surprised. But sugar’s bad for you, too. That’s why I make sure it’s properly fermented before I drink it.
Eat Like A Caveman
The latest advice on going paleo.
I’ve been doing this for about a year, though I haven’t gone whole hog (so to speak) on it. I still occasionally have a slice of bread, or potato, or legumes (though I’ve quit eating peanuts). And it’s tough to give up cheese.
The biggest problem with it is that most people in the world can’t afford it. Civilization happened because when agriculture happened, food became cheap, but not good for our health. If everyone started eating this way, prices of produce and meat would skyrocket — it’s just too inefficient, in terms of the acreage it takes to produce it, for everyone to be able to eat wild or range-fed meat and leaves. The ultimate solution may be genetic engineering that can produce healthy and good tasting foods in vats on a similar industrial scale to that of present-day refined grains. Of course, for many, the instant gratification of stuff that tastes good (sugar, bread, pasta), particularly when it’s cheap, will always overwhelm the long-term benefits of a better diet. But I think that the science is speaking very clearly on this issue now, and it’s time to end the war on fat and the nonsense of the FDA pyramid.
Bad Science
…by the numbers. And yet we’re supposed to just go along with the “authorities,” and “settled science” when there is great political power and trillions of dollars at stake.
A Stunning Space Station Video Of Earth
…and a new paper on urban heat islands/a>:
The debate over whether urbanization and related socioeconomic developments affect large-scale surface climate trends is stalemated with incommensurable arguments. Each side can appeal to supporting statistical evidence based on data sets that do not overlap, yielding inferences that merely conflict with but do not refute one another. I argue that such debates can only be resolved in an encompassing framework, in which both types of results can be demonstrated on the same data set, in such a way that apparent support for one conclusion occurs as a restricted case of a more general specification that supports the other, and where the restrictions can be tested. The issues under debate make such data sets challenging to construct, but I give two illustrative examples. First, insignificant differences in warming trends in urban temperature data between windy and calm conditions are shown in a restricted model whose general form shows temperature data to be strongly affected by local population growth. Second, an apparent equivalence between trends in a data set stratified by a static measure of urbanization is shown to be a restricted finding in a model whose general form indicates significant influence of local socioeconomic development on temperatures.
You don’t say.
I should add that every time I see a video of earth from space like this, I just shake my head in amazement at the people who think that there’s no market for people to go into space.