In Unleash the Crowds Newt Gingrich is right: We need more debates. And more yelling! By David Weigel, Weigel makes the compelling case that the debates are an inexpensive and effective way for the candidates to show their excellence and communicate with voters.  So effective, that it is hard to imagine anything more valuable they could have done with that time. I’m convinced but I’m glad I don’t have to watch them.

Human capture of the planet’s productive capacity, according to the most recent relevant study, now adds up to about 24 per cent of the total productivity of the Earth’s terrestrial biosphere. In other words, a quarter of everything produced by all plantson land is eaten or otherwise consumed by us.

Different landscapes are exploited with different intensity: whilst forests will yield up to a fifth of their annual production in fuel, fibre or timber, cropland allows us to grab an impressive 83 per cent of the yearly productive share per hectare. The human species, therefore, whilst comprising only half of 1 per cent of the global animal biomass, consumes a significant fraction of everything the Earth produces. This triumph for us is of course a disaster for the species we have displaced from their food webs: the disappearance of habitat and food supply is currently the greatest cause of the planet’s continuing loss of biological diversity. It is also clear that ecological tipping points can be crossed if we push this process too far, with potentially irreversible consequences as overgrazed grassland tips into desert, or as degraded tropical forest dries out and burns over vast areas of Indonesia and Brazil.

The Smart Way to Play God with Earth’s Limited LandCan humans grow enough food, produce enough energy and still preserve some of the last refuges of other species–both plant and animal–on the planet? By Mark Lynas 

This strikes me as a confused sort of biological accounting akin to those articles that mindlessly compares GDP to some giant company’s sales when the right analog is profits + wages (which is much smaller). By far the biggest use of land by man is agricultural purposes. But when man farms or herds on land, that land supports other plant and animals as an intermediate step. So for example, the weight of the 1.3 billion cattle on earth   has roughly the same biomass again as all the humans, and that’s just one domesticated species. The weight of the wheat is similarly approximately the weight of the humans. Since resources can be consumed by many plants and animals n the weigh to feeding or clothing humans, it doesn’t seem helpful to me to ask how much much we consume. It isn’t a pie that all the plants and animals consume. It is not a zero sum game.  Instead it is a  feedback loop or life cycle  where resources continuously flow in and out of species. Sure, technology induced additional energy radiating  and space travel means we’ve let some stuff leak out of the loop, but in percentage terms that cannot be much.

What I would rather focus on is how does the use of agriculture influence the robustness and depth of ecosystems. Extensive use of monocultures exposes humanity to tremendous idiosyncratic pathogen risk. Some yield sacrifice is worth paying to ensure greater robustness and pigovian taxes on mono-cultures are a simple way around it. Second, the quantity of biomass seems an object of interest. Just as a spot of forest can support a full time jungle or light grasses for part of the year, we might be interest in sacrificing some total output  to allow more room for plants and animals. For example, a field could contain vegetables which we eat directly or we could use it to grow grass we feed to cattle. The former uses the land once  to the latter’s twice. I view this analagous to increasing the level of inter-mediation in an economy.

The article is definitely worth a read, spending most of its time covering not the point above but the environmental and personal liberty benefits of urbanization.

Scientists since have assumed that underneath the morphological diversity of dogs lay an equivalent amount of genetic diversity. A recent explosion in canine genomic research, however, has led to a surprising, and opposite, conclusion: The vast mosaic of dog shapes, colors, and sizes is decided largely by changes in a mere handful of gene regions. The difference between the dachshund’s diminutive body and the Rottweiler’s massive one hangs on the sequence of a single gene. The disparity between the dachshund’s stumpy legs—known officially as disproportionate dwarfism, or chondrodysplasia—and a greyhound’s sleek ones is determined by another one.

The same holds true across every breed and almost every physical trait. In a project called CanMap, a collaboration among Cornell University, UCLA, and the National Institutes of Health, researchers gathered DNA from more than 900 dogs representing 80 breeds, as well as from wild canids such as gray wolves and coyotes. They found that body size, hair length, fur type, nose shape, ear positioning, coat color, and the other traits that together define a breed’s appearance are controlled by somewhere in the neighborhood of 50 genetic switches. The difference between floppy and erect ears is determined by a single gene region in canine chromosome 10, or CFA10. The wrinkled skin of a Chinese shar-pei traces to another region, called HAS2. The patch of ridged fur on Rhodesian ridgebacks? That’s from a change in CFA18. Flip a few switches, and your dachshund becomes a Doberman, at least in appearance. Flip again, and your Doberman is a Dalmatian.

“The story that is emerging,” says Robert Wayne, a biologist at UCLA, “is that the diversity in domestic dogs derives from a small genetic tool kit.”

Media reports about the gene for red hair, alcoholism, or breast cancer give the false impression that most traits are governed by just one or a few genes. In fact, the Tinkertoy genetics of dog morphology is a complete aberration. In nature, a physical trait or disease state is usually the product of a complex interaction of many genes, each one making a fractional contribution. Height in humans, for instance, is determined by the interaction of some 200 gene regions.

Mix, Match, Morph How to Build a Dog Scientists have found the secret recipe behind the spectacular variety of dog shapes and sizes, and it could help unravel the complexity of human genetic disease. By Evan Ratliff

The article claims we’ve been selecting for genes with big impact on appearance rather than having found an animal that is particularly easy to manipulate. We haven’t proven this point yet because dogs have received most of attention in cosmetic and specialization breeding.  We’ll need more show chickens and cats before we can make a finding like that.

Should the government search your brain? The state may soon be able to force you to reveal your password. That’s a huge threat to the Fifth Amendment BY DAVID SIROTA paints a very dark future of state mandated mind reading in legal proceedings. I don’t know if the constitution would really prevent that. After all, the DNA you accidentally leave on a chair in a police station can be used against you (Collection and Analysis of DNA Left on a Chair at the Police Station Not a Fourth Amendment Search, Court Holds). But if your mind isn’t private, it is hard to understand privacy having any meaning. I hope that the Supreme Court makes an accurate finding of law and  our legislatures and executives protect us of the constitution does not.

“The legislation has indeed included draconian remedies in various drafts, so I join my colleagues in criticizing the bills. But our opposition has become so extreme that we are doing more harm than good to our own cause. Those rare tech companies that have come out in support of SOPA are not merely criticized but barred from industry events and subject to boycotts. We, the keepers of the flame of free speech, are banishing people for their speech. The result is a chilling atmosphere, with people afraid to speak their minds.”

The False Ideals of the Web By JARON LANIER
If those in opposition were advocating genocide, mass-rape, or some other near-universally reviled and horrible thing would Lanier mind that the advocates were being shunned for their perfectly legal speech? I doubt it. Freedom of speech is the right to speak your mind without legal consequences. It is not the right to say what you want without any consequences.  If you say unpopular things you have to live with the possibility of becoming unpopular. For a community where rule of law and information sharing are core values, advocating SOPA / PIPA are shun worthy or nearly so.

“Since 1980, the United States Census Bureau has asked: “Does this person speak a language other than English at home? What is this language? How well does this person speak English?” The bureau reports that as of 2009, about 20 percent of Americans speak a language other than English at home. This figure is often taken to indicate the number of bilingual speakers in the United States.

But a moment’s reflection reveals that the bureau’s question about what you speak at home is not equivalent to asking whether you speak more than one language.
…
the census should ask the same question that the European Commission asked in its survey in 2006: Can you have a conversation in a language besides your mother tongue? (The answer, incidentally, dented Europe’s reputation as highly multilingual: only 56 percent of the respondents, who tended to be younger and more educated, said they could.) Until the census question is refined, claims about American monolingualism will almost certainly be overstated.”

Are We Really Monolingual? By MICHAEL ERARD

Unfortunately for Mr. Erard, the survey data shows that most people who speak a second language are the ones who speak it at home:

“Do you personally speak a language other than English well enough to hold a conversation?” Yes, 26%.. No 74%

About One in Four Americans Can Hold a Conversation in a Second Language. Spanish is by far the most frequently spoken second language by Chris McComb

It is possible that Illegal immigrants are under-surveyed with respect to the census, possibly because of fear of detection, difficulty of getting them on a survey, or inability to answer survey questions because of poor English. That would suggest the 6% or so of people who can have a conversation in another language but don’t speak it at home is an low estimate, maybe even a floor.

Just as Europe is not currently an optimal currency area it isn’t an optimal language area either. But just as changing government transfers, economic integration, and cheaper leisure travel is making Europe closer to an optimal currency area, so too is are cultural and economic forces making Europe closer to an optimal language area.

Ajay addresses a common myth about hunter gather life, that the men don’t contribute much:

First the claim from an article on Crooked Timber (Dear Guys Who Would Like to Make Stuff up About Sexual Relations a priori on the Basis of, Like, Spiders or Something by BELLE WARING)

Generally, the gathering (mostly done by women) provides 80% of the average adults’ calories and the hunting (mostly done by men) 20%.

Ajay’s  response

“This varies depending on what latitude you’re at. Go a bit further north and pretty much all the calories come from hunting, which is done by the men. (Not much to gather in Greenland.)

…Of course, it’s more complicated than that, because if you look at “time spent in hunting-related program activities” rather than just “time actually spent hunting”, the split’s more even. You need a lot of kit to survive spending eight hours at a time in the buckle, and the kit’s mainly made and maintained by the women while the men are out working on their frostbite.

But I don’t think you can assume that the 80%/20% production split which is observed in modern hunter gatherers living on some of the least fertile and hottest bits of the planet was also followed by hunter gatherers living in every other environment in the world.”

This is an important point, we have to be very careful making inferences about the pre-agricultural life and culture and man from the life and culture of people who live in pastoral cultures today. The pastoral cultures have survived in some of the most hostile places on earth. If farming could have survived their the superior numbers that farming supports would likely have driven them out, and that also means that their was likely less biomass to support the sort of large prey-animals that would make for a big caloric contribution of the hunters.

It is also important to remember that meat is delicious and highly prized, so we should not confuse the caloric contribution with the value to their contribution. Calories alone are not enough, and it is routine among the poor to tolerate some hunger for  entertainment, cultural, and religious objectives.

Unsurprisingly, human capital and productivity determine wages:

“The American Jewish newspaper Forward conducted a survey in 2010 comparing salaries for rabbis, protestant ministers, and Roman Catholic priests. The rabbis came out on top by a wide margin, with an average annual haul of approximately $140,000, including a tax-free housing allowance. Christian holy men earn more than $100,000 less than rabbis, on average, with Catholic priests making even less. There are a couple of reasons why: Christian congregations tend to be smaller than their Jewish counterparts and often have multiple pastors. Also, rabbis typically spend more years in training than Christian ministers.

What Type of Clergy Get the Highest Salaries? A priest, a rabbi, and an imam walk into a bar. Who buys the drinks? By Brian Palmer

It is worth pointing out that senior Christian clergy like Bishops, Cardinals, Pontiffs, and Patriarchs often receive lavish perquisites as part of their position that include retainers, luxurious housing and travel, and free handmade bespoke clothing.

I love John Quiggin’s new idea:

“Newspapers, including the NYT, should include a set of factual conclusions, regularly updated, in their style manuals. The most relevant current example is that of global warming. As with the current account deficit (routinely glossed as ‘the broadest measure of the balance of payments’) the NYT should formulate a standard set of words, such as “a conclusion endorsed by every major scientific organization in the world’) to be used whenever the views of Repubs on the issue are mentioned.”

Truth, truthiness and balance

A style manual would allow us to see clearly see the positions of the publishers, which would be a major contribution in itself. It would also free the journalists from having to rehash these issues over and over. Online copies could simply hyperlink to pages laying out the justification for these positions, perhaps commissioning these positions themselves as journalistic pieces from scholars and other subject matter experts. However, such a process would inevitably politicize which subjects are treated as factual conclusions. Would the NY Times be prepared to state the economic consensus on unemployment insurance or rent control? How about the scientific case for the inheritability  of intelligence? That would still be better than the status quo where the truth has little weight  in any politicized matter. We should probably be honest that in the long run this would further politicize access, where right wing groups would give special access to groups that would let them lie, at least from time to time. If the Democrats are called liars every time they say they say that there are no important negatives to rent control or minimum wage laws then  it won’t take them long to stop picking up the phone when the WSJ calls. Would a deeply polarized media (by access) be a price worth paying so that politicians would stop lying some of the time about some issue? That’s a tougher call, but I believe an increase in the willingness to call liars liars would be valuable.

Slate has a great three part series on the misuse of lab mice as a model organism for human disease by Daniel Engber. Highly recomended. It was the best set of articles I read while I was in Chicago for the ASSA meetings.
The Mouse Trap The dangers of using one lab animal to study every disease.

Just how ubiquitous is the experimental rodent? In the hierarchy of lab animal species, the rat and mouse rule as queen and king. A recent report from the European Union counted up the vertebrates used for experiments in 2008—that’s every fish, bird, reptile, amphibian, and mammal that perished in a research setting, pretty much any animal more elaborate than a worm or fly—and found that fish and birds made up 15 percent; guinea pigs, rabbits, and hamsters contributed 5 percent; and horses, monkeys, pigs, and dogs added less than 1 percent. Taken together, lab rats and lab mice accounted for nearly all the rest—four-fifths of the 12 million animals used in total. If you extend those proportions around the world, the use of rodents is astonishing: Scientists are going through some 88 million rats and mice for their experiments and testing every year.

The Trouble With Black-6: A tiny alcoholic takes over the lab.

Almost every pain researcher now uses one of two rodent breeds, Mogil tells me: Black-6 mice or Sprague Dawley rats. With each passing decade, the field has grown more devoted to this pair of animals, on the theory that at the molecular level, at least, mammalian species are more or less interchangeable—mouse to rat and rodent to ape. In 2008, Mogil conducted a survey of the PubMed database and found that rodent pain studies were about as popular as those of dogs, cats, rabbits, and horses through the 1970s. Thirty years later, they accounted for 92 percent of the research. “We’re making this implicit assumption that things are the same in rat and mouse,” he says, “and the reason we’re making that assumption is because we’re making another assumption—that if something is true in rats and mice, it’s true in people.”

The Anti-Mouse Could a hairless African rodent be our secret weapon in the war on cancer?