Monthly Archives: September 2014

The First Men in the Moon

Posted on September 29, 2014 by gcochran9

I noticed an article in Slate (Practice Does Not Make Perfect), which made the perfectly sound point that people vary in their abilities, genes have a lot to do with it, and Malcolm Gladwell can’t help being a pinhead.  He … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged | 135 Comments

Forty Days

Posted on September 28, 2014 by gcochran9

One of the many interesting aspects of how the US dealt with the AIDS epidemic is what we didn’t do – in particular, quarantine.  Probably you need a decent test before quarantine is practical, but we had ELISA by 1985 … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged | 92 Comments

Suspicious Minds

Posted on September 22, 2014 by gcochran9

  If you want a logical reason for the complete disinterest in longevity research shown by the powers that be, the most obvious, if you’re even a little paranoid, is that they already have the secret, and aren’t interested in … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged | 78 Comments

The Day Before Forever

Posted on September 21, 2014 by gcochran9

Yesterday, I was discussing the possibilities concerning slowing, or reversing aging – why it’s obviously possible, although likely a hard engineering problem.  Why partial successes would be valuable,  why making use of the evolutionary theory of senescence should help, why … Continue reading →

Posted in Aging | 114 Comments

Before Slavery

Posted on September 19, 2014 by gcochran9

We keep hearing more about European genetic prehistory, and the picture is coming together.  In one new paper,  we hear aDNA results from the Carpathian Basin. It’s clear that the LBK farmers are the same people as the earlier Starcevo … Continue reading →

Posted in European Prehistory, Indo-European | Tagged , , , | 87 Comments

Empire of the Ants

Posted on September 18, 2014 by gcochran9

In the process of hanging out in the back yard, and walking around the neighborhood, I have seen a number of examples of ant wars. In one case, they came over the wall, and after a long period of stylized … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 39 Comments

Let’s Get Small

Posted on September 15, 2014 by gcochran9

I said earlier than it seemed likely that archaic hominid living in special environments, for a long time (sometimes more than a million years) inevitably developed high-quality adaptations to those environments, and since such alleles are easily transmitted, modern humans … Continue reading →

Posted in Altitude adaptations, Bushmen, Denisovans, Mangani, Pygmies | 31 Comments

Cal Tech

Posted on September 14, 2014 by gcochran9

The only time I wandered around Cal Tech, I noticed a corpse lying on the floor of an office.

Posted in Uncategorized | 35 Comments

Ashkenazi Ancestry revisited

Posted on September 9, 2014 by gcochran9

Shai Carmi has his article out on Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry.  A few comments: First, looks like a good job, on the whole. Perhaps Carmi had special training… Second, about dates: they assume a mutation rate of 1.44 x 10-8 per … Continue reading →

Posted in Ashkenazi Jews | 113 Comments

The Genghis-Khan effect

Posted on September 7, 2014 by gcochran9

We know of several examples of a huge expansion of a paternal lineage, and several other cases seem likely to be the same thing.  It’s worth taking a close look at the first one found, the paternal lineage of Genghis … Continue reading →

Posted in Genghis -Khan effect, Neanderthals | 121 Comments