Speaking of Stats... Check out Nate Silver

I'm sure you will have heard about the recent study that said that only 2.8% of Oklahoma High school kids passed a basic civics (citizenship) test.

Well, Nate Silver (or Poblano, as we used to know him) has a superb take-down of the statistics, and his analysis strongly suggests that the entire study was fabricated. You may know Nate from his electoral statistical wizardry - he got almost everything right, and he shows up every so often on MSNBC. "Are Oklahoma students really this dumb?" is WELL worth a read. This is how a stats dork should write.

Of course, this IS the deep red state Oklahoma, so I wouldn't be surprised if there's a bit of, ahem, an IQ issue here, but still...

Update: Apparently StrategicVision, the pollsters behind this study, is a REALLY shady outfit, and is taking some serious heat from all around.

Indian Ancestry on Nature's cover. Awesome!

I just got this week's Nature magazine. (Yes, I have a personal subscription. There are copies of Nature and Science on my TV tray. Yes, I am a dork.)

And this is what is on the cover:

The actual article by Reich, Thangaraj, Patterson, Price and Singh (and a really neat "News and Views" section written by Aravinda Chakravarti at Hopkins) basically looks at the variation in genomes of individuals from India. Without getting into the weeds, what they did was to analyze DNA from 25 different groups in India, from different geographical areas, from different castes and language groups, and then do some statistical heavy lifting to look at how similar/dissimilar simple variations in sequences (SNPs) are across these groups.

What these studies reveal is something that anyone (myself included) may have intuited just by growing up in various parts of India. There is an amazing breadth of established groups/communities. I mean, anyone who has seen Indian currency will know that we have 15 national languages, and it is quite commonplace to cross state lines and have absolutely no idea what the hell is being spoken (upon which broken English and furious gesticulation will work). But what this study says is that there are basically "Ancestral North Indians" (ANI) and "Ancestral South Indians" (ASI) who have two distinct lineages (Indo-European and Dravidian, respectively), and current day Indians are basically a melange of these two lineages, with ANIs strong in the North and fading towards the South, and vice-versa with ASIs (the other language groups - Austro-asiatic, Tibeto-burman, and Andamanese are sub-variants of ANI and ASIs). This spectrum is reflected in skin color (light to dark), languages, and even caste structure. (Upper and middle tend to be more ANIs, lower castes tend to cluster with ASIs.

The group also makes a case for "founder effects" (basically, genetic bottlenecks) well AFTER 3000 BC when the Dravidians showed up, and 1500 BC when the Indo-European speakers showed up, suggesting that many dispersed communities were established and then they stayed put. The paper also reveals little nuggets - the Santhal and Kharia tribes, which are Austro-asiatic, are descendants of people that arrived 60,000 years ago? Yep, sixTY thousand. The groups also makes the case for marriages within communities (endogamy) has been happening for many centuries, resulting in some interesting disease predispositions.

Overall, this is one really cool study, which you should read (even if the stats may be somewhat inaccessible). As Chakravarti points out, this is only the start - many more detailed analyses should be done on the Indian population to get a true picture of the genetic tapestry that is India.

But that being said, the concept of ANIs and ASIs brings me back to something I have always said : North and South India are two different countries, man...

When grown men do the plie

For those of you who might not know, here is a video of a dude executing a basic ballet move, the plie (plee-yay; there's an accent aigu on the e)



The title is not about the grown dude in the video. This is about a professor I had, way back. I mean, WAAY back, when I was still young and impressionable and things could scar me for life (some things still do, like when I saw this on my ex coworkers' desk):



Anyway, the point is that this professor was a lousy dude. I mean, he was a bad teacher, but he was just simply disgusting as a person. The guy used to have a huge potbelly, and he was one of those guys who "went under" - you can either wear your pants above your belly, or below. This guy chose to go low. Which is fine by me, except that he would wear his shirt with the last two buttons undone, so you would see his hairy underbelly and frayed undies each time he lifted his arms in the air (which was often) right at eye level.

And you know how (well if you're a dude you'll know this) how your shorts every once in a while, get all bunched up, and things aren't where they should be and everything is uncomfortable in the groinal region? Well, when this happens to me, I usually walk it off, and if that doesn't work (it almost always does), a little tug here or there fixes it. Major operations are undertaken in the men's room if need be. But here's what this guy would do:

You knew something was coming because he would be fidgeting for a while and bouncing around more than he needed to. And then he would face us, while lecturing, get a faraway look in his eyes (the kind that you get when you let go of a long-held packet of joyous flatulence), give a robust tug at his inseams, and then execute a slow and drawn out plie. And then he would finish it of with a little groinal jiggle.

Just thought I should share that with youfolks on a beautiful Saturday morning.

The new movie about Darwin - nope, you can't see it

Why, oh why, oh WWWHHHHHYYYYY are we like this????

The Darwin movie (which has been getting pretty good reviews, and from what I gather is more about the man than making the case for a lack of a god/gods), is apparently "too controversial" for audiences in our blessed country of the United States of Am-oh-we-don't-want-to-piss-off-Jesus-and-his-devout-non-evolution-believing-followers-erica. So THEY AREN'T EVEN DISTRIBUTING IT.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

THONK, THONK, THONK.... (sound of yogi's head slowly hitting wall)

Here is the clip. It gives me the goosebumps. I'd love to have seen it. Except of course, I can't now because of how the assholes that quail in fright at the thought of Jesus' army picking up their knives and guns and capping their asses for screening a movie that chronicles the life of a dude, who, you know, changed how we think about life. Idiots. And cowards.

WHO SAID NERDS AREN'T AWESOME???

Did you hear about this??? A Hopkins undergrad (one of those nerdy pre-med types apparently) capped an intruder WITH A SAMURAI SWORD. A FOUR FOOT LONG SAMURAI SWORD. Here's the news report:



And here is what it reminded me of. Of course.

Lab retreats are fun - in a really sad masochistic way

Here's the deal, apparently. If you are in a lab that is big and well funded and sufficiently hard-core (which big and well funded labs tend to be), your boss will sometimes decide that the best way to get group morale up is to go for a little lab retreat. Now this isn't the kind if retreat that your corporate types will relate to. No fancy yacht, champagne and strippers.

What we do is ensconce ourselves a secluded place and talk science amongst ourselves for two days straight. Which, if you really think about it, is like any other two days at work. Except with less comfortable chairs, unbearably cold air conditioning and catered food (to be paid for, thankyouverymuch).

Of course, the formality of the entire occasion demands that you actually prepare for a good week or so in advance, so you don't make a damn fool of yourself. And then your presentation gets ripped anyway with glee, either because it's way too ambitious or it isn't ambitious enough or the controls aren't quite right or the time line for experiments are incomplete. In other words, its almost exactly like a thesis committee meeting, except with more thesis committee members and no threat of failure. Of course, in this case, you just get fired for incompetence. Still, the whole thing while being incredibly tiring, was surprisingly fun (yes, yes, that means I'm a gigantic dork. I know)

Anyway, all of this is to explain away the absence for a week. And the incredibly hungover feeling this past weekend.

Like you all care. But still, there you have it.

DC United Soccer at RFK. Crazy.

OK, so I've been to a bunch of football matches, but this was my first pro "soccer" match at a stadium. (Yeah, I'm getting used to calling it soccer, blasphemous as it may be).

There are many things to be said about watching DC United play at RFK, just outside DC. Here are my observations, in chronological order. More or less.

1. The eastbound Orange line sports a VERY different feel compared to the westbound line which goes into Virginia. You'll know what I mean if you make the trip.

2. There are a bunch of surprisingly ardent fans going to watch DC United play
These fans can be divided roughly into the following groups:
a. Italian Gen2 immigrants trying to pretend that MLS is in the same league as Serie A.
b. Latino Questionable immigrants thoroughly disappointed that MLS is worse than Mexican football.
c. Brothers who are tired of being lumped with ballers.
d. Crazy hot soccer chicks just being themselves. Which was swell.

Plus of course you have bewildered Yogi types who are going for the first time with their England National soccer jerseys instead of DC United.

The rest of my observations can be more or less encapsulated by this photo.

3. The bunch of surprisingly ardent fans is pretty small. The top two tiers of RFK are totally empty.
4. I'm glad most of RFK is empty; any more people and the damn thing was ready to collapse.
5. The whole stadium actually QUAKES when people jump up and down, singing football songs and DC Utd anthems.
6. Fortunately, we didn't hit a resonant frequency - there were enough drunk people (even at 7.50 a beer) that there were enough people out of sync. Even so, there were times when I was lifted a solid 3-4 inches off the ground because of the shaky floors.
7. Beer - expensive. Hot dogs - lousy. Pupusas - awesome. Although be warned, the hot sauce will kill you.
8. Speaking of singing football songs and DC Utd anthems, there were a bunch of SERIOUSLY ardent football fans. There were two sections filled with fan club folk, and Barra Brava are the fucked up crazy ones (Screaming eagles moderately so). I mean, there were the crazy flags and banners and NON STOP singing. Also streamers and firecrackers and smoke bombs. AND a CRAZY shamanesque performance in the concourse at half time, featuring a mosh pit formed around a crazy brother wearing a top hat, an old geezer in a wheelchair, and a giant wearing a kilt and playing the bagpipe. Awesome. Bat-shit insane, but awesome.

Overall, I'd say it's a must go. Sure ticketmaster screws you by charging you an extra 15 bucks for various "convenience charges", but it's well worth watching. Its quite boisterous, and pretty fun. We saw some pretty exciting play; 3 goals in the last 15 minutes, a keeper got sent off, and there was a lot of screaming at opposing players and fans. And the ref obviously. Plus of course, the hot chicks almost made me weep. So all in all, a great evening. Unfortunately three things remind you you're in the US:
1. There are 2,000 people in a stadium that seats 40,000.
2. There is a mascot (Talon, I think. A sad looking Eagle). Sigh.
3. The level of play sucks balls.

Oh, DC Utd lost. But hey, who cares?