Month: November 2009

"Neoconservatism has become a set of attitudes that might be summed up as, 'somewhere, shaggy kids might be having sex or smoking dope—so let’s cut interest rates and invade Iraq!'” – Daniel McCarthy, TAC.

You might want to start early this year. More on holiday shopping economics here.

The inner life of a cell:

(Hat tip: 3QD)

Jerry Coyne summarizes a study on contemporary and future evolutionary change in humans:

Several traits did indeed appear to be undergoing selection.  From the amount of this selection, we can predict the percentage change in the trait that we expect to see after ten more generation of reproduction (roughly 300 years from now).

Total cholesterol: going down.  Projected to drop 3.6% in ten generations

Weight:  going up a tad, projected to increase 1.4% in ten generations

Height:  we’re getting shorter projecting a drop of 1.3% (2.1 cm) in ten generations.

Systolic blood pressure:  Going down, as predicted. Projected to drop 1.9% in ten generations.

Age at menopause:  Going up; projected to rise 1.6% (0.8 years) in ten generations.

Age at first reproduction: Going down. Projected to drop 1.7% (from 26.18 to 25.74 years).

So women, at least, are getting shorter,  stouter, and reproducing earlier and over a longer period of time.  This is evolutionary change.  Based on this study, we can tentatively say, with more assurance than I used to, that yes, our species is still evolving.

He adds a few caveats to the data later on in the post.

A quiz.

Scozzafava has now endorsed Democrat Bill Owens in NY-23. Her Republican supporters would normally go to the Conservative Party candidate, Hoffman. But Hoffman's unfavorables among Scozzafava voters are higher than Owen's. Polls suggest that Hoffman is soaring; but the local paper's endorsement of Owens (after backing Scozzafava) and now Scozzafava's following suit may create a new dynamic.

I don't know. I'm not from there. But neither is Hoffman.

It could be your genes.

UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon uses the US decision to end the HIV travel ban as a pivot to push for those few left with stigmatizing policies to step up:

Ban has made the lifting of stigma and discrimination connected with AIDS a personal mission, first calling on countries to lift their travel restrictions in 2008 at a UN meeting on the disease. The travel restrictions "should fill us all with shame," Ban told a global AIDS conference in August 2008.

According to UNAIDS, Ban's home country of South Korea is "in the last stages of removing travel restrictions," while China and Ukraine are among countries considering following suit. "Placing travel restrictions on people living with HIV has no public health justification. It is also a violation of human rights," said UNAIDS executive director Michel Sidibe.

One other great thing for the US: international HIV and AIDS conferences will now be able to take place stateside for the first time in almost two decades.

It seems to me that any pretense that he remains a journalist must now be retired. He's a Republican party operative, trading on a once-respected name in news.

The senator moves drastically to the right to prevent Obama's agenda from getting through.