Wow! Open thread?! Even better than lgf!

I haven't been looking too hard, but I haven't seen anything at all negative about the hapmap. Not what I had expected.

Is this where we mention how often we have already read A Feast for Crows?

One more data point:

President Ahmadinejad, a former revolutionary guard whom several U.S. embassy hostages from 1979-80 have recognized as one of their captors, is an engineer who was involved in covert operations during the Iraq-Iran war.

Is this where we mention how often we have already read A Feast for Crows?

so was it a let down? amazon uk seems to be giving it high, but not stellar marks.

Does Cochran's Quiz on selection have an answer? Or was it intended to elicit discussion? Or a teaser for another bombshell paper?

Raz: so was [A Feast for Crows] a let down?

Not for me. The writing is as good as ever.

How others will like it, I don't know. If you liked the first three books for (1) quotable witticisms, (2) glorious battles, or (3) following clever scheming at court, you will be disappointed.

Because (1) there is no-one funny in Feast. Tyrion is absent, and Jaime has become much more serious. No comic relief in this book. Also (2) the war is over. It's all very depressing, and Winter Is Coming. GRRM goes so far as to show us one potentially gripping battle off-screen. Finally (3) Cersei is deliciously stupid. We get a bit of clever plotting when we see Littlefinger, and see one of the best moments of political intrigue in the series so far in the Dornish chapters, but it's all dominated by the blundering, paranoid idiocy of the Queen Regent.

All of 1,2,3 are certainly deliberate, so I don't think they are valid criticisms. But they make this 4th volume much less... hmmmm, "enjoyable" for lack of a better word. Or "exciting".

I loved it. The readers of this blog will appreciated the fact that the Faith steps into its natural (and much stronger) role in the times of political and ideological unrest. And we even get to peek inside the Citadel, where our fellow scientists are sitting. And plotting. Go Measters!

Open thread, insert foot...

http://www.theonion.com/content/...tent/node/ 41879

OK, I have a question I've been wanting to ask here for a while.

I just read a Richard Dawkins book ("River Out of Eden") which explains how different species evolved along different paths throughout time. At a certain point, members of a species who had been geographically isolated from other members speciated into different groups that could no longer mate with each other to produce fertile offspring.

This is really politically incorrect, but how close, if close at all, was homo sapiens sapiens to speciating into different species in the 50-75,000 years since we left Africa? Were we anywhere close? Is it possible that there are widely divergent groups of human beings -- say, a tribe in New Guinea and a tribe in central Africa -- who might have been unable to mate in, say 5,000 more years?

Thank you for any reply.

And who's to say humans and chimps couldn't produce fertile offspring? On some gnxp thread recently there was a disucssion of this possiblity.

I meant to add that it would be interesting to find any studies that look into possible differences in sterility rates among offspring of mixed race couples.

I meant to add that it would be interesting to find any studies that look into possible differences in sterility rates among offspring of mixed race couples.
My absurdly unscientific response to this is that I haven't known of too many inter-racial couples who've had to spend a lot of time at fertility clinics - although it could be that the reason they are couples is due to higher-than-expected fertility:}

Regarding human/chimp mixes, wasn't there a researcher (French, if my memory serves me right) who performed a cross-species fertilization and then let the egg make a few divisions bfore he killed it? I seem to remember hearing about it some 20-30 years ago.

My understanding was that it was always possible, which then generated flights of fancy regarding revenge, terrorism, and a host of other made-for-TV movie plots.

Were we anywhere close?

no.

I meant to add that it would be interesting to find any studies that look into possible differences in sterility rates among offspring of mixed race couples.

steve said greg and henry looked into it, and didn't find anything interesting. i predict there might be a tradeoff of slightly higher miscarriage rates due to immune incompabilities vs. slightly more robust or resistent immune profile (both due to increased heterozygosity, but also frequency dependent effects). i doubt the effect would be strong enough to note as a strong signal outside of non-genetic factors.

A research team at the University of St Andrews recently found that fertile women are deemed more attractive.

[pictures included in article]

Razib says:


"Someone: I meant to add that it would be interesting to find any studies that look into possible differences in sterility rates among offspring of mixed race couples."

steve said greg and henry looked into it, and didn't find anything interesting. i predict there might be a tradeoff of slightly higher miscarriage rates due to immune incompabilities vs. slightly more robust or resistent immune profile (both due to increased heterozygosity, but also frequency dependent effects). i doubt the effect would be strong enough to note as a strong signal outside of non-genetic factors.


Hmmm: One data point. Two children, no miscarriages, female off the pill, pregnant very quickly after that.

I can survey a bunch of other mixed-race couples I know at the swim club one of my offspring swims at (and there are lots).

However, I thought the questioner was asking about the fertility/sterility of the offspring of mixed-race couples.

That would be an interesting question to get the answer to. Personally, I know of no mixed-race couples whose children have had offspring yet.

Given the importance to females of having support in their reproductive efforts (ie, childrearing support), can one view the efforts of some people to have the state provide that support, either directly in the form of welfare, or indirectly in the form of garnished child support, as the evolution of behavior designed to reduce the cost, for generations to come, of mistakes (like poor choice of sperm donors)?

Following on from that, can others of us view that as an unwelcome burden, or does it provide a net benefit by reducing the disruption caused by un-attached males and their offspring?