Why Beautiful people have more daughters – Alan Miller & Satoshi kanazawa
This is the first time ever I read a whole book non-stop. Went to Borders and purchased it around 2 pm and by midnight I was done, breaking only to go out and fetch dinner.
The book attempts to explain various aspects of human behavior using Evolutionary principles. This field of science is called ‘Evolutionary Psychology’. Although I did not learn anything fundamentally new from this book it helped me correct my terminology and strengthen arguments about the concepts I understood before. The issues dealt with in the book and the arguments presented would make fascinating dinner table discussions. If you are looking for interesting topics to discourse on then read through it. The topics are such that they force the reader into pscho-analysis and introspection.
The authors primarily engage sex and reproduction as the underlying motive and reasoning for almost all of human behaviour. And they are not wrong since evolution is in effect all about sex and reproduction. Only in the very last chapter of the book do the authors deal with more interesting issues (for me) such as religion and somehow manage to connect them (although cautiously) to sex & reproduction as well. I guess any investigation if given evolution as the tool for reasoning will end up doing so. I have found some interesting reference links though for further reading and will get around to them soon. Although to their credit most of the theories listed seem plausible.
It would be even better if ‘Evolutionary Psychology’ could be put under the test of prediction like many other Scientific theories do. What I mean is that we make predictions using ‘Evolutionary Psychology’ and see if they turn out to be true (how to do this? I do not yet know). At the moment it seems that it only accounts for things in hindsight i.e. having come across an observation seek an explanation for it.
The most enjoyable part that I found is at the very end of the book where the authors dicuss questions that ‘Evolutionary Psychology’ yet cannot explain. One of them is ‘Why do parents in advanced industrialized nations have so few children?’ – this is my view is not just a mere mystery for Evolutionary Psychology, but a sizable blow and must be averted.
Genome – Matt Ridley
I am trying out a more creative way of expressing my joy of reading this book. It has an almost perfect balance between technical discussions, political & social issues & history on the subject. Highly recommend this for anyone interested in light reading on genetics.
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hilarious!
This website is absolutely hilarious
Continuing Studies…
After a break in the summer (mainly due to lack of any interesting courses being offered) I have enrolled again for a couple with Stanford Continuing education. The first one is ‘Statistics – A Gentle Introduction‘ taught by Prof. Michael Walker. The course apparently will focus primarily on examples from biomedical applications which is exactly what I am looking for.
The other one should be really fun – the course title is ‘Mountaineering‘ and the instructor is Prof. Frank Sarnquist. This is just a two day course with 6 hrs instruction on each. The course advertisement even says that there may be an opportunity for interested students to join the instructor in the ascent of a technically easy but high peak in the Sierra Nevada mountains. The reason of pursuing this one is my crave for one day taking this up as a serious activity. I have been hiking for the past year and have planned a couple of more trips in the next month. One day i wish to leave my footprint high up in the Himalayas. So far time is the only thing keeping me away from this but I am working to resolve this. One option i am already considering is ‘Project Himalaya‘
Bad Science – Ben Goldacre
This is the second book I read on this month’s India trip. Can’t believe just how productive transit time can turn out to be.
I would call this book ‘Bad Medicine’ rather than ‘Bad Science’, nonetheless its principles apply to any stream of science.
From Homeopathy & mainstream medicine to the MMR hoax, the author has expressed educated criticism of how bad scientific practices are widely prevalent, endorsed and accepted. The author has not shyed away from criticizing personalities made famous inspite of their pseudo scientific practices. In fact he has written dedicated chapters aiming the blow the cover of famous personalities in the business of nutrition science. I don’t follow this field, so I was intrigued to learn about it.
I am thoroughly impressed by all the information that has been compiled and presented in this book. Lots of references to studies and facts and figures.
The main lesson to be learnt here is how to conduct unbiased and largely accurate research (mainly clinical trials). This is a good read for any skeptics or scientists alike.
Some of the more interesting chapters of the book deal with the role of journalists and their ineptness leading to the spread of bogus scientific stories, treatments and claims. The point to note is that the reasons for their support of substandard scientific stories is not necessarily malintentions but sheer lack of knowledge & skills – knowledge about how research (more specifically clinical trials) should be conducted so as to get the right results and skills to identify inadequacies in methods used for medical research.
The problem i feel is much more grave. A layman has to rely on information conveyed by the mainstream media. One cannot expect him to be able to verify every possible claim that he comes across in the news. It simply is not possible. So he has to rely on journalists & the so called specialist and their opinions to make his own decisions. That, I think simply cannot change.
So what can be done? One thing that popped in my head as i was reading was a simple law, stated as follows – “For any claims made in media the entire evidence to support that claim must be made publicly available” (Clearly my linguistic skills in legal settings leave a lot to be desired). But i know – as for any law the real burden is in effective enforcement and not in the legislation.
I am reading another book similar in nature called ‘Panicology’ – first impressions seem moderate.
Stumbling on Happiness – Daniel Gilbert
This is one of the two books that I read on my trip to india this month. First of all the name of the book is misleading. It is not a tutorial on How to be Happy as the name suggest. It is likely that a prospective reader might think so since such books are available in plenty on shelves of bookstores. Instead this book really is about the Psychology of the Human mind. Happiness is the term used to define the goal that human actions hope to achieve.
The author makes a startling claim – “Human beings are the only species who can think about the future”. Sure ants store food and birds migrate but for them it is a response to the changing environment and not a conscious thought.
So the claim made in the book is that human beings are very poor at predicting the future, not at foretelling the future but at judging their own feelings in the future aka how happy they would be at a later time given their assumptions of events that would take place. The book uses evidence from numerous psychological experiments conducted as part of variuos research projects to support this claim.
I enjoyed most parts of this book. Most chapters are very informative on the workings of the brain while a few seem to delve in philosophical discussions. Overall it is a pleasurable read and certainly forces the reader into introspection.
Cool facts (quoted from the book)
- When people seem to be staring directly at something, their eyes are actually flickering slightly away from the thing they are staring at 3-4 times per second, which is why eyeballs look jiggly if you study them up close
- There is a blind spot at the center of the eye where the optic nerve attaches
Cool judgements (quoted from the book)
- We treat our future selves as though they were our children
- Memories, especially memories of past experience are notoriously unreliable
- The details that the brain puts in are not nearly as troubling as the details that it leaves out
- We fail to recognize that our future selves won;t see the world the way we see it now
- Because we tend to remember the best of times and the worst of times instead of the most likely of times, the wealth of experience that young people admire does not always pay clear dividends
1lec.com
1lec.com is a cool website that contains animations explaining various topics in the following areas
Genetics
Biochemistry
Immunology
Physiology
Microbiology
many thanks to the people who are doing this!
Laws can be funny
In the past few weeks I have seen two legislations moving society in completely opposite directions. One towards more tolerance and revoking un-justified punishment while the other taking a step back to the middle ages.
On one hand the de-criminalization of private homosexual activity within the Indian constitution is commendable, and on the other the Irish governments attempt’s to criminalize blasphemy seems ridiculous.
The news has been covered well here and here
The problem I think lies not with the law itself but with the definition of the word blasphemy – “that is grossly abusive or insulting in relation to matters held sacred by any religion, thereby causing outrage among a substantial number of the adherents of that religion”. Are you kidding me! How can this be a basis for judging whether something should be made illegal.
In my view any concept based on unsubstantiated evidence and still not open to debate holds no credibility. Giving it protection by law is taking it too far.
23andme
The genotyping results from my dna have now been made available at 23andme.com. Took me a little bit to browse through the data.
For introductions: 23andme.com is one of several companies that sequence and analyze an individual’s genome. In case of 23andme.com the process is really convenient, I just sent in a bit of my saliva using a pre-ordered kit from 23andme.com, they extracted the dna from it, sequenced the dna, analyzed it and made the information available on their web site, where I can log in and browse through it. They have given it a social networking feel wherein one can share genomic data with friends and family. The site is also very educational with 101 type videos and pretty detailed info about diseases and traits. 23andme.com analyzes about 550,000 SNPs which is about 5% of the total estimated SNPs in the human genome. May be in the future they can do more.
At a first glance nothing striking appears that draws immediate attention, which is probably a good thing. I was kind of expecting a lot more stuff to show up. Moreover, each time I look at a trait or a report it says “This result applies to people of European ancestry. We cannot yet compute more precise odds for those originating from South Asia” – which is kind of disappointing.
In all I can see 10 clinical reports and 8 Carrier Status. The clinical reports are ones that are accepted in the scientific community to be reasonaly accurate. A Carrier Status simply says whether I am a carrier of certain genes or not. In addition to these there are a bunch of research reports available based on my genetic data. These are more interesting than clinical reports but are not yet as convincingly accepted by the scientific community.
So what did I find out?
For some of the good news – I do not posses the genes for Hemochromatosis or Bloom’s Syndrome or Cystic Fibrosis (Delta F508 mutation). Until now I did’nt even know what Hemochromatosis or Bloom’s Syndrome meant. And as per one of the research reports I only have typical odds of baldness :)
For some of the bad news – I am at a risk of Age-related Macular Degeneration, which totally sucks but don’t need to worry about it for another forty years. And yes type 1 diabetes – should blame this on my mother.
My maternal ancestry seems to be Europe while Paternal ancestry is Southern Europe/North Africa
What I am really interested in and is one of the reasons I signed up is that the raw genetic data is available for download. Someday I plan to play around with it.
For now this information is not much more that amusement to me, but science in genetics is progressing impressively each year. I am certain that in the future most things about an individual would be determined way before birth and more fantastically even altered. Companies like 23andme have taken the right step towards making a business in this area.
At least my knowledge of medicine is slowly improving as I am reading through the results. Now I know names of symptoms and conditions I never would have thought existed. And I love the user interface of this web site, really good job done by the designers.
Super colony of ants
I maintain that there are many other species more successful in the occupation of the planet than our own. Leaving out microorganisms I suspected ants to certainly be one of them. There are over 12000 known species of ants found almost on every corner of the world. The number of individuals one can imagine has to be staggering
Now there seems to be some evidence for this. Reported here and here. The original research appeared in the journal Insect Sociaux.
Apparently the Argentine ants have formed a global supercolony. The first question I guess comes to mind is how to define a supercolony. The simple definition used in this research is colonies that are not aggressive towards each other and comprise of individuals of the same species can be considered to be one. More or less I agree to this notion. Ants are territorial and colonies have been known to fight with each other.
So what has been observed here is that individuals belonging to colonies which may be continents apart appear to be tolerant of each other and show no signs of aggression.
The interesting thing is that the creation of the ant supercolony may be attributed to humans. By connecting the continents together humans may be responsible for spreading the Argentinian ants to different parts of the globe.
Interesting tidbits
* As few as ten workers and a single queen can establish a new colony
* ants may be the only group apart from mammals where interactive teaching has been observed
* ants may contribute 15–20% (on average and nearly 25% in the tropics) of the total terrestrial animal biomass, which exceeds that of the vertebrates
