Foreign Dispatches

Human Genetic Variation is Gradated

Clear "racial" boundaries are an artifact of sampling techniques employed, says an interesting study in Genome Research:

Genetic variation in humans is sometimes described as being discontinuous among continents or among groups of individuals, and by some this has been interpreted as genetic support for "races." A recent study in which >350 microsatellites were studied in a global sample of humans showed that they could be grouped according to their continental origin, and this was widely interpreted as evidence for a discrete distribution of human genetic diversity. Here, we investigate how study design can influence such conclusions. Our results show that when individuals are sampled homogeneously from around the globe, the pattern seen is one of gradients of allele frequencies that extend over the entire world, rather than discrete clusters. Therefore, there is no reason to assume that major genetic discontinuities exist between different continents or "races."(emphasis added)

This result isn't really all that surprising once you consider that excluding "admixed" populations from studies will naturally give rise to sharper demarcations than exist in reality; the very notion of "admixture" already carries within it the idea that "races" in their "pristine" state are clearly distinct.

Hilarious

Professor Leiter has an uncharacteristically insightful point ...

-- Says Will Baude. Poor unloved Brian Leiter!

How Very Odd

The Harvard Crimson is carrying a very strange interview with Justice Antonin Scalia. Here's the best part:

Earlier in the evening, Scalia ridiculed the European Court of Human Rights’ 2000 decision striking down British legislation that bars group gay sex on the grounds that the law intruded upon private life.
He asked—rhetorically—how many individuals would have to be involved in a sex act for it to no longer qualify as “private.”
“Presumably it is some number between five and the number of people required to fill the Coliseum,” Scalia joked.
An audience member later rose to ask Scalia “whether you have any gay friends, and—if not—whether you’d like to be my friend.”
“I probably do have some gay friends,” Scalia said. “I’ve never pressed the point.”
But Scalia said his personal views on social issues have no bearing on his courtroom decisions.
“I even take the position that sexual orgies eliminate social tensions and ought to be encouraged,” Scalia said.
“But it is blindingly clear that judges have no greater capacity than the rest of us to decide what is moral. (emphasis added)

Who knew Scalia was a devotee of Bacchanalian excess? Scalia's anti-privacy reasoning here is fundamentally silly: why should the number of participants in sexual activity have anything to do with the issue? As long as they aren't impinging on the rest of the world by engaging in exhibitionism or going at it noisily, I see no reason why even 1,000 participants shouldn't have the right to be free from outside scrutiny. Were Scalia's reasoning to be accepted, the government would have the right to go snooping around the marital chamber if it were ever so inclined, and even masturbation could be made a crime were legislators ever to wish it outlawed - as I'm sure more than a few do, especially in the GOP.

Virgin Nigeria

AdamSmithee notes that Richard Branson is branching out his airline business to ... Nigeria. Yes, you read that right, Nigeria.

Education and Growth - III

William Easterly lays out possible reasons why education appears to confer so little benefit in terms of growth. Particularly noteworthy is the following:

Creating people with high skill in countries where the only profitable activity is lobbying the government for favors is not a formula for success. Creating skills where there exists no technology to use them is not going to foster economic growth. Parents in such circumstances are understandably unwilling to invest as much in their children’s education as U.N. bureaucrats think they should. Expanding education is worth little more than yesterday’s newspaper if the incentives to invest in the future are not there.

Incentives, incentives, incentives: once we forget the importance of incentives, we are well on our way to error, and with the right incentives, all else follows naturally enough, which is why it's so important for LDC governments to stop trying (and mostly failing) to do so much, the better in order to do the most important things well.

Sci-Fi Done Right

To my mind, there have been only three science-fiction films that have been done right - three-and-a-half at a stretch. In rank order of perfection:

1. Blade Runner.
2. 2001: A Space Odyssey.
3. Alien.

with The Matrix earning a half-point when I'm feeling generous. I can't think of any higher praise for the first two films than to say that I still enjoy watching both of them despite having seen them literally dozens of times; each works on so many levels that one feels as if one could never fully plumb their depths given a lifetime to do so, and in them one sees that science fiction is a genre which has the potential to investigate the human condition in a manner no other can, if only it could find the authors and film-makers to do it justice. Unfortunately, the reality is overwhelmingly one of techno-obsessives and cgi-fanatics who tend to forget that the gee-whiz stuff is meant to drive the story, rather than vice versa.

The Evil Libertarian Agenda

This article really has to be read to be believed. If one were to take it at face value, one would imagine that libertarian advocates of private space travel had some sort of secret plot up their sleeve to subvert the Western way of life.

There is a respectable tradition of scientific innovations being stimulated by cash prizes. French industry offered the rewards that prompted Jean-Baptiste Guimet to synthesize artificial ultramarine in 1828 and Louis Pasteur to find a way of making racemic acid in 1853. More recently, the $1-million prizes offered in 2000 by the Clay Mathematics Institute in the United States for solving seven key maths problems have been a tempting stimulus to new discoveries.

But the Ansari X prize is driven neither by the needs of industry nor by the enthusiasms of philanthropists. It has a political philosophy, which is supported by a little rewriting of history.

"We believe", the X prize creed states, "that spaceflight should be open to all - not just an elite cadre of government employees or the ultra-rich." Aviation was once just the way rich people travelled it argues; commercial forces have now brought it within reach of everyone.

Let's leave aside the fact that "everyone" here means everyone in a developed nation. It's the "elite cadre" that bothers me. This is the language of the libertarian right, which maintains that governments are always trying to obstruct our fundamental freedoms. Indeed, the X prize mission states: "Space provides freedom". (emphasis added)

Amazing

I won't describe it: read it for yourself.
[Via Metafilter, where relativism is still alive and well, I see].

Good Intentions and the Speedway to Hell

Mrs Tilton joins with Brad DeLong in displaying righteous outrage at a ridiculous Slate article by some fellow called Seth Stevenson.

Stevenson is in Kerala, you see, where third-worlders make coir doormats. The third-worlders export them to the first world. This gives first-worlders something cheap to wipe their shoes on. Stevenson finds this to be exploitation of the worst moustachioes-twirling kind. It would be morally pure, thinks Stevenson, if righteous first-worlders would refuse to buy the things.

[...]

Stevenson might not enjoy the thought, but he is in effect on the side of US and EU makers of agricultural and trade policy. In its own small way, a Stevensonian boycott of Keralan coir doormats would be of a piece with George Bush's barriers to third-world textiles and French barriers to third-world crops. And, in its own small way, Stevenson's boycott would achieve the same result: chaining impoverished third-worlders to their poverty.

I have little to add to what Mrs T. and the estimable Professor DeLong have already said so eloquently (you must read both in full - that is an order!), other than to say that it's often better to feel no compassion at all than to allow compassion untempered by reason to move one to action, and therein lies a great irony.

Don't Shoot the Messenger

Matthew Yglesias admonishes his fellow Democrats for concentrating on Gallup-bashing rather than facing the fact that every single indicator out there is pointing against their candidate.

Focusing intently on Gallup's problems seems like a way of denying-without-denying the existence of Kerry's problems (like focusing intently on credibility problems at CBS news instead of at the White House). The reality is that after a few days of what looked to me like a comeback, the Kerry campaign has once again lost its momentum. I don't think the enterprise has been nearly as inept as a lot of talk in Democratic circles around town would have you believe, but the reality is that they need to do what they do on good days every single day from here until the election.

Wasting energy squabbling about poll bias isn't going to do a thing to alter that, and I think relying on so tightly scripted a set of "debates" as the ones ahead to do the job is also foolhardy. Why is it that Tereza Heinz Kerry is able to do a better job of explaining her husband's votes on the war than he is himself?