contains a haunting portrayal of the senseless killing of the SAIGA from helicopters, in the wanning years of the Soviet Union.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coalescence_(genetics)

Um… 3 possibilities: (1) that word does not mean what you think it means (least likely), (2) I do not understand what is going on here (more likely), or (3) you meant to type divergence.

Please elucidate (or correct if that is called for).

not convincing. livestock can be subject to powerful selection and reduce genetic diversity.

Given that people are employing these women to live with them in their own homes, help to supervise their kids, prepare meals, etc. and that they keep on doing it (repeat contracts, etc), it seems safe to assume that HK people have no problem with it. From observation and personal experience, relations are comfortable, even warm and friendly.

You’ll always hear the occasional story of a rogue employer or employee, but that’s clearly not the generality. And most of them do want to go home again – they don’t see this as some route to permanent residence; certainly not now that the court ruling has made that completely clear.

“In domains of virtuosity the intersection of innate talent and conscientiousness are often critical.”

I’d imagine something like task commitment would matter too:
http://changelog.ca/quote/2012/07/06/task_commitment

As a side note, task commitment seems a lot like obsessive-compulsive behavior.

(I tend to conflate the two together. The difference between the two, in my mind, being the connotations people associate with then.)

“Now we can move to the second visualization technique. While the PCA
does not posit any hypothesis of population structure (it just “fell
out” of the genetic variation due to the shared history of some
individuals via their common ancestors), the second method is “model
based,” in that the authors posited seven ancestral populations to match
the seven populations which African Americans may be derived from.”

I know you did not explicitly say this (so I’m not trying to put words into your mouth). This is just a kind of side note (and something you probably already know)….

Using a PCA is not a model-less approach. It assumes a linear (or near linear) model.

Perhaps the data really is linear or near-linear is reality, but you could run non-linear analyses on the data.

From Ashwin Paramsweran-

Technological Unemployment Amidst Stagnation

Deskilling and the Cul De Sac of Near Perfect Automation.

From J. N. Nielson –

Automation and the Human Future

Addendum on Automation and the Human Future

Technological Unemployment and the Future of humanity

There may be some surprises when I get the results from 23andme in a month or so, but I’m not optimistic.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/21/opinion/the-outrageous-cost-of-a-gene-test.html?ref=opinion&_r=0

David Agus was one of the founders of Navigenics. He says:

“Without competition, Myriad can effectively charge whatever it wants. Later this year, the company said it would begin incorporating the BRCA test into a 25-gene cancer-risk evaluation and phase out the à la carte BRCA test by 2015. For that broader test, it projects a gross profit margin of 87 percent.”

“I’m all for innovation and the right to protect intellectual property, but when there is a clear monopoly and human lives are at stake, we need legislative action for rational and appropriate pricing. We don’t make vaccines prohibitively expensive so only the rich can protect themselves. Nor should we let other preventive measures that can save thousands of lives be priced at levels far above what normal “market conditions” would suggest.”

Odds are good that the Supreme Court will side with Myriad … see recent case where there sided with Monsanto.

It’s then up to Congress to set things right.

Razib regarding large scale population studies I see Flanders study have published new report they finally tested for R1b-L21 which they had left out the last time around. They also tested for R1b-Z195.

“Increasing phylogenetic resolution still informative for Y chromosomal studies on West-European populations”

http://www.fsigenetics.com/article/S1872-4973(13)00101-4/abstract

-Paul

The subject has been on my mind lately. I read an interesting article in the airport (can’t remember if it was in Discover or Scientific American) about the coming rise of 3D printing in manufacturing. In addition, there’s this article, which details a new much cheaper manufacturing robot which has the capabilities to wipe out much of the remaining low-wage assembly work. And of course, the robot hamburger maker, which got more buzz around the web this week.

Mass unemployment due to automation had not happened yet, even though it’s been predicted for generations. But it seems like automation is hitting its stride now, and there just aren’t obvious job growth areas to make up the difference.

For those of us who lean left economically, there is at least a simple solution, although in practice it may not be easy to implement. But I’m curious what posters on the right side of the spectrum think should be done once the bottom third (or more) of the aptitude spectrum cannot do any job that a machine can’t perform better?

Rather that African slaves’ resistance to malaria made the institution of African slavery “work”.

He points out that the cost of buying and maintaining an African slave may have actually been higher than the cost of having a European indentured servant come over. Further, wouldn’t you prefer having a European servant come over because they’re closer to your culture and could even be directly from England and speak English?

This system was tried, and did exist, but the fact that Europeans were so susceptible to malaria meant that these individuals never lasted long, whereas African slaves did.

Further, if you look throughout the Americas, you see a much larger proportion of Afro-descendants in hot humid areas. Look at the Carribean. Look at the coastal areas of Colombia, Ecuador and Peru. Up in the Andes, Afro-descendants are much fewer. In many coastal areas that are prone to malaria, they predominate.