Events

A fundamentalist Mormon sect living along the Nevada-Arizona border has a serious problem with a rare genetic disorder, because everyone is closely related to everyone else: “With polygyny you’re decreasing the overall genetic diversity because a few men are having a disproportionate impact on the next generation,” says Mark Stoneking, a geneticist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Germany. “Random genetic mutations become more important.” In isolated communities, the problem is...

Three groups from whom one would expect general support of the President of the United States yesterday told the current occupant of that office to stop behaving like an ass: It’s far too early to know whether they mark a turning point in how people who have been at least nominally supportive of the president will approach him in the future, but Trump ought not to be dismissive of their significance. The critiques may not change the president’s behavior, but as a marker of the rising concern about the...

We have lovely weather in Chicago today—24°C and sunny—but summer has been pretty warm so far. It's been worse in other places. The Times demonstrates today that this is a worldwide trend: During the base period, 1951 to 1980, about a third of summers across the Northern Hemisphere were in what they called a “near average” or normal range. A third were considered cold; a third were hot. Since then, summer temperatures have shifted drastically, the researchers found. Between 2005 and 2015, two-thirds of...

The President can't actually change military policy with a tweet: This morning there is news that there will – for now – be no change in the US military’s policy toward transgender service members. The news comes in the form of a letter shared with members of the press from Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Joseph Dunford. On its face this is no more than a statement of military command protocol and the chain of command. The President is Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, with vast powers...

Usually when I work from home, I get a lot done. Today...not as much. I've run errands, had two meetings outside the house, and (to Parker's horror) vacuumed. Now I'm off to another meeting, with half the house un-vacuumed and many emails unread. Articles also unread: Don't be a single-malt snob. (I will be, though.) Why is NYC traffic slowing down? Your Roomba is spying on you. Statistical omissions are just as bad as misleading statistics. Now, time for a board meeting.

New York Times White House correspondent Peter Baker says President Trump's outrages aren't outraging us anymore: After six months in office, Mr. Trump has crossed so many lines, discarded so many conventions, said and done so many things that other presidents would not have, that he has radically shifted the understanding of what is standard in the White House. He has moved the bar for outrage. He has a taste for provocation and relishes challenging Washington taboos. If the propriety police tut tut...

Via Deeply Trivial, a new study published last week provides new evidence that only a few genetic changes made wary wolves into friendly dogs: Not much is known about the underlying genetics of how dogs became domesticated. In 2010, evolutionary geneticist Bridgett vonHoldt of Princeton University and colleagues published a study comparing dogs’ and wolves’ DNA. The biggest genetic differences gave clues to why dogs and wolves don’t look the same. But major differences were also found in WBSCR17, a gene...

Through a number of circumstances mostly beyond my control, I didn't fly anywhere between last December 26th and this past Saturday, a total of 208 days. I have to go all the way back to 2006, when I didn't fly for 154 days, to get even close to that interval. On average, since 1 January 2001 I've taken a flight every 10.6 days. Even last year, in which I flew the fewest miles since 2003, I flew every 25 days on average. Well, the next five weeks will bring the 2017 average up a bit. But still, I miss...