Pivot!

So here's Palin's excuse for her fucking lame performance in the Katie Couric interview. She was pivoting apparently:

Palin told Carl that she was "annoyed" at some of the interviews she has done, "Ok I'll tell you honestly the Sarah Palin in those interviews is a little bit annoyed because it's man no matter what you say you are going to get clobbered. If you choose to answer a question you are going to get clobbered on the answer," Palin said. "If you choose to try and pivot and go on to another subject that you believe that Americans want to hear about you get clobbered for that too."

Here's another example of a crazy person incoherently pivoting:

If you can't get the staff.....

.....employ a monkey waiter! According to the BBC:

A restaurant in Japan has some unusual waiting staff on its books - two macaque monkeys.

Yatchan and Fukuchan serve customers hot towels and drinks, and are given soya beans as tips.

The monkeys are family pets who have been allowed to help in the bar. Animal rights regulations mean the premises have been visited to ensure the creatures are not being mistreated.

Here's a video of the little chaps:

Has human evolution stopped

Famous UCL geneticist Steve Jones is being quoted in various places as saying that human evolution has stopped:

Health, birth control and the healing power of lust all conspire to tell us that, at least in the developed world, and at least for the time being, evolution is over. So, if you are worried about what Utopia is going to be like, cheer up - you are living in it now.

Jones isn't the first to argue that human evolution has stopped; Francis Collins has also done so, albeit primarily for religious reasons. It's an interesting claim. There is a large amount of evidence suggesting that humans have been evolving a fair bit recently (recent being the last few thousand years). There have been a few studies taking a general look at evidence for recent positive selection. For example:

Wang, E.T. et al. (2006) Global landscape of recent inferred Darwinian selection for Homo sapiens. PNAS, 103, 135-140.

and

Voight, B.F. et al. (2006) A Map of Recent Positive Selection in the Human Genome. PLoS Biology, 4, e72.

As I say, these take a wider perspective, looking at the whole of the genome. There is also research that focuses in much more specifically, on a gene or two, related to a particular trait. The Lahn lab has been at the forefront of this, for example with evidence that resistance to malaria may have developed as recently as 1600 years ago:

Tishkoff, S.A. et al. (2001) Haplotype Diversity and Linkage Disequilibrium at Human G6PD: Recent Origin of Alleles That Confer Malarial Resistance. Science, 293, 455 - 462.

in addition to work which demonstrates that a gene important in regulating brain size arose only 5800 years ago and was subject to very strong positive selection:

Mekel-Bobrov, N. et al (2005) Ongoing Adaptive Evolution of ASPM, a Brain Size Determinant in Homo sapiens. Science, 309, 1720 - 1722.

The apogee of the whole recent positive selection stuff was reached last year when John Hawks published a paper arguing for accelerated human evolution during the late Pleistocene. He has an excellent summary of his research here and the paper is:

Hawks, J. et al. (2007) Recent acceleration of human adaptive evolution. PNAS, 104, 20753-20758.

The conclusion of the paper is important in the context of what Steve Jones is saying:

It is sometimes claimed that the pace of human evolution should have slowed as cultural adaptation supplanted genetic adaptation. The high empirical number of recent adaptive variants would seem sufficient to refute this claim [3, 6]. It is important to note that the peak ages of new selected variants in our data do not reflect the highest intensity of selection, but merely our ability to detect selection. Due to the recent acceleration, many more new adaptive mutations should exist than have yet been ascertained, occurring at a faster and faster rate during historic times. Adaptive alleles with frequencies under 22% should then greatly outnumber those at higher frequencies. To the extent that newadaptive alleles continued to reflect demographic growth, the Neolithic and later periods would have experienced a rate of adaptive evolution more than 100 times higher than characterized most of human evolution. Cultural changes have reduced mortality rates, but variance in reproduction has continued to fuel genetic change [47]. In our view, the rapid cultural evolution during the Late Pleistocene created vastly more opportunities for further genetic change, not fewer, as new avenues emerged for communication, social interactions, and creativity.

Now, it's important to note that the research above is generally looking at things that have occurred in the last few thousand years, so it's possible that Jones is right and that human evolution has stopped in the last 100 years or so. However it's a conclusion reached without any actual evidence. When we consider the large amount of evolution taking place up until very recently (and possibly continuing) and the final bolded sentence above, we should be very wary of what Jones says.

For a more specific look at why Jones is wrong, read Razib over at Gene Expression. Key quote:

When I initially read the quotes from Jones in The Times I was alarmed, but wondered if his position was being taken out of context or misinterpreted. I emailed a prominent evolutionary biologist who I suspected would know Jones well enough to clarify this issue. My correspondent responded that Jones really does believe this, and he finds Jones' ideas as ludicrous as I do (adding for good measure he doesn't get the sense that Jones has a really good grasp of population genetics).

Lehman CEO gets punched

Arf arf

No vid of the actual event unfortunately, but see this:

Hypocrisy

Here is the dictionary definition of hypocrisy:

hy·poc·ri·sy
n. pl. hy·poc·ri·sies

1. The practice of professing beliefs, feelings, or virtues that one does not hold or possess; falseness.
2. An act or instance of such falseness.

Or, if you'd prefer, here is a picture based definition:


"Pope criticises pursuit of wealth"

Empire in Black and Gold - book review

Another book review. This time I've provided a much smaller picture of the cover than I did for my review of Brasyl. The reason is simple - the cover is terrible. Cheap and lazy looking. This is a real shame because it actually masks one of the better fantasy debuts in recent memory. Empire in Black and Gold is written by new boy to the scene, Adrian Tchaikovsky.

The book begins with one of the principal characters, Stenwold Maker, witnessing the fall of a Lowland city to the soldiers of the Wasp Empire. Fast forward a couple of decades and Stenwold is trying to warn the complacent movers and shakers in the Lowlands. The book follows Stenwold and his allies attempts to thwart the Empire. That's pretty much it. So far so predictable.

Why should I bother with this book you might be thinking. Well this description only tells a part of the picture - I mentioned the Wasp Empire. This isn't purely descriptive, the Empire consists of humans with wasp like characteristics. The world of Empire in Black and Gold is split into racial groups along insect based lines. These groups are Kinden and we have beetles, dragonfly, spiders, moths, ants and so on. Each of these has distinct physical characteristics related to their insect designation and also distinct cultural traits. This idea is ripe with opportunities for exploring serious issues like racism but it is also simply enjoyably imaginative and open to a wide range of possibilities. It's a genuinely interesting addition to the world of fantasy literature.

In addition to this we aren't dealing with the bog-standard quasi mediaeval secondary world. 500 years ago, the Lowlands were ruled by the Moths, a mystical kinden with control of magic and a tyranical domination of the other races. They were eventually overthrown by the rationalist species, in particular the Beetles. This led to the demise of magic from general usage to the point where few believe in it beyond the Moths and their client Kinden. The Beetles are skilled craftspeople and they eventually propelled the world towards a sort of proto-industrial revolution. The book is therefore filled with early flying machines, the development of trains and steam power. Certain elements of traditional fantasy world; we are still talking about swords and taverns and whatnot. However, the transitional nature of the world is interesting and fun to explore.

The book isn't perfect. The prose is a bit clumsy in places, particularly early on, and not all the characters are massively interesting. Although I have praised the worldbuilding, for me it is actually a bit light in places - hopefully the background of the Kinden and the history of the world will be explored in greater depth in future books (it's a trilogy). There is certainly scope for this. Despite these minor issues, this is a very creditable debut and comes highly recommended.

The Guardian and racism

For all it's faults (e.g. employing prize twat Seamus Milne) I'm proud to call myself a Guardian reader; it's the paper that best embodies my social and political views. That said, it does occasionally suffer from the malaise affecting part of the left where supposed anti-imperialism leads to unbalanced criticsm of the US and Israel and tacit support for illiberalism. Nowhere is this better embodied than on Comment Is Free; wade into the comments to many of the blogs and you will find yourself in a conspiracy theory obsessed, anti-semitic, flat-out racist swamp. DavidT at Harry's Place has been following up one particularly interesting case of this. One commenter, Tehrankid77, was notorious for her racist views towards Israel. One such example:

Star of David has been flying inside number 10 since Thatcher days; you are just too blinded by your hatred for the Muslims to notice it.

Now The Graun supposedly have "a zero-tolerance policy on antisemitic postings or any other form of hate speech." This is somewhat contradicted by their tolerance of comments like that above. It is further contradicted by the fact that they ended up commisioning Tehrankid77 to write a column. Then another.

The Guardian is now aware of this situation and they won't be accepting any more articles from Tehrankid77. Which is fine. But you have to wonder why she was on board in the first place. To me it looks like a generally lax attitude towards anti-semitism, that simply wouldn't be allowed were it racism directed towards other groups.

The Guardian needs to shape up and take a firm and consistent stand for anti-racism.

Stop fucking winking at the fucking camera

Well gosh darn it, if she'd have sounded any more Little House on the Prairie I'd have been forced to shovel apple pie down her throat till she exploded with a cheery smile. Here she is, connecting with "Joe Sixpack" and "Hockey Mom" through the medium of extraordinarily transparent folksiness.