Reasons why not to marry your cousin

Friday, January 18th, 2008

Scene from “Arrested Development,” episode, “Fakin’ It”, George Michael (Michael Cera, L) and Maeby (Alia Shawkat, R) participate in a mock wedding to entertain Alzheimer’s patients
Human fertility increases the further away your mate’s hometown. Labouriau, Rodrigo, Amorim, Antonio, “Human Fertility Increases With Marital Radius,” Genetics 2008 178: 601-603
Marry a foreigner. A stranger. [...]

From NYT City Room: Would-Be Jumper Sues Empire State Building

Tuesday, January 15th, 2008

 
From the NY Times:
 

N.Y./Region
City Room: Would-Be Jumper Sues Empire State Building
By Anemona Hartocollis
Published: January 15, 2008
The professional parachute jumper who tried to leap off the city’s tallest building in 2006 released a video that shows him struggling with security guards and police officers on the observation deck.

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Hapmap update: Evolution speeding up; schizophrenia DNA very homozygous and looks like recessive selection

Sunday, December 30th, 2007

Which is better, for genes to change or for them to stay the same?
Is it better to evolve or devolve?
According to new hapmap data, evolution is accelerating with increasing human density and migration. We are evolving more quickly since the Pleistocene, according to a recent report in PNAS by Hawkes et al. Most of [...]

Pigment, last time, I promise

Sunday, October 28th, 2007

I watch C-Span to get to sleep, but as usual, it was pretty interesting, so I stayed up to watch it.
Senator Dodd’s father was one of the prosecutors of the Nuremberg trials — and he published a book of letters written while the trial was ongoing. (I had read some of the trial transcripts [...]

More Seven Deadly Sins: Gluttony

Sunday, September 23rd, 2007

Sardinia!

Sardinia, Satellite Photo (Wikipedia, Sardinia entry)

Sardinia, a beautiful gem of an island off the coast of Italy, known for gorgeous beaches, glamorous holidays, $2M birthday parties, and lately known for studying the genetics of its inhabitants. The population is considered an isolated one, like Icelandic populations, and therefore presumably more genetically homogeneous than [...]