Month: December 2008

Scientific American on How Human Beings Are Evolving

Occasionally I’ll read articles in newspapers or magazines speculating that humans are no longer subject to natural selection and just have to shake my head. Fortunately, Scientific American has a nice overview of the current state of thinking about human evolution that dispels that “we’re no longer evolving nonsense.” In fact, it appears to be just the opposite,

But DNA techniques, which probe genomes both present and past, have unleashed a revolution in studying evolution; they tell a different story. Not only has Homo sapiens been doing some major genetic reshuffling since our species formed, but the rate of human evolution may, if anything, have increased. In common with other organisms, we underwent the most dramatic changes to our body shape when our species first appeared, but we continue to show genetically induced changes to our physiology and perhaps to our behavior as well. Until fairly recently in our history, human races in various parts of the world were becoming more rather than less distinct. Even today the conditions of modern life could be driving changes to genes for certain behavioral traits.

. . .

But that turns out not to be the case. In a study published a year ago Henry C. Harpending of the University of Utah, John Hawks of the University of Wisconsin–Madison and their colleagues analyzed data from the international haplotype map of the human genome [see “Traces of a Distant Past,” by Gary Stix; Scientific American, July 2008]. They focused on genetic markers in 270 people from four groups: Han Chinese, Japanese, Yoruba and northern Europeans. They found that at least 7 percent of human genes underwent evolution as recently as 5,000 years ago. Much of the change involved adaptations to particular environments, both natural and human-shaped. For example, few people in China and Africa can digest fresh milk into adulthood, whereas almost everyone in Sweden and Denmark can. This ability presumably arose as an adaptation to dairy farming.

Another study by Pardis C. Sabeti of Harvard University and her colleagues used huge data sets of genetic variation to look for signs of natural selection across the human genome. More than 300 regions on the genome showed evidence of recent changes that improved people’s chance of surviving and reproducing. Examples included resistance to one of Africa’s great scourges, the virus causing Lassa fever; partial resistance to other diseases, such as malaria, among some African populations; changes in skin pigmentation and development of hair follicles among Asians; and the evolution of lighter skin and blue eyes in northern Europe.

Harpending and Hawks’s team estimated that over the past 10,000 years humans have evolved as much as 100 times faster than at any other time since the split of the earliest hominid from the ancestors of modern chimpanzees. The team attributed the quickening pace to the variety of environments humans moved into and the changes in living conditions brought about by agriculture and cities. It was not farming per se or the changes in the landscape that conversion of wild habitat to tamed fields brought about but the often lethal combination of poor sanitation, novel diet and emerging diseases (from other humans as well as domesticated animals). Although some researchers have expressed reservations about these estimates, the basic point seems clear: humans are first-class evolvers.

The article goes on to provide a simple gloss over different possibilities for human evolution including extinction, stasis, and even self-directed evolution (transhumanism FTW).

It seems odd to see stasis as an option. In the short term, certainly we can arrange things so humanity remains relatively as it is now if we really wanted too, but only if we maintain the same environment and clearly that is simply not an option. Human culture changes the environment which then fuels further changes in human culture. There’s very little about the last 50,000 years of humanity’s existence which could in any way, shape or form be described as static.

Running in place is simply not an option for homo sapiens.

Robert Reich on Legality of Auto Bailout

I think the planned bailout of the automobile industry is an awful idea. Robert Reich thinks it is a good idea. But Reich is at least principled enough to worry that the way the Bush administration plans to handle the bailout — after Congress already rejected attempts to craft such a bailout — borders on being illegal,

But I’ve got to tell you, I’m deeply troubled by what I hear is the administration’s likely decision to give them a bridge loan, when just last week Congress said they can’t have it.

Call me old-fashioned, but I believe in democracy. And under our Constitution, Congress is in charge of appropriating taxpayer money. If Congress explicitly decides not to appropriate it for a certain purpose, where does the White House get the right to do so anyway? By pulling the money out of another bag? That other bag, by the way, called the Troubled Assets Relief Program, or TARP for short, was enacted to rescue Wall Street, not the automobile industry.

. . .

If it’s a slush fund, everything’s arbitrary. I mean, why autos and not, say, state and local governments? They’re running short about $100 billion this year and as a result are slashing public services, including the nation’s schools. Even as it is, TARP is shrouded in secrecy. The Treasury has burned through about $335 billion so far, and no one knows exactly how or by what criteria. Why, for example, did it set tough conditions on some banks while giving Citigroup the sweetest deal imaginable?

Unfortunately the incoming administration seems to be just as clueless as the outgoing one when it comes to economic and financial policy.

Reason on Arkansas’ Ridiculous Interior Designer Licensing

Katherine Mangu-Ward wrote an excellent article for Reason back in November on Arkansas’ idiotic licensing scheme for, of all things, interior designers.

In 22 states, including Arkansas, it is illegal to call yourself an interior designer without going through an arduous and expensive certification process. In Nevada, it’s illegal to do interior design without a license. That’s right, advising someone about drapes could land you in the hoosegow.

Like many states, Arkansas has an Interior Design Board. The sole purpose of this board is to register interior designers. The IJ paper notes that “consumer complaints about interior designers to state regulatory boards are extremely rare. Since 1998 an average of one designer out of every 289 has received a complaint for any reason. Nearly all of those complaints, 94.7 percent, concern whether designers are properly licensed—not the quality of their service.”

The Institute for Justice paper Mangu-Ward is referring to is Dick Carpenter’s Designing Cartels which has a thorough look at such regulations across the nation.

Mangu-Ward’s article is mostly about Arkansas state legislator Dick Greenberg (R) who is attempting to kill regulation of interior decorators there by eliminating funding for the Interior Design Board which is responsible to be registering interior designers. Of course he faces an uphill battle — we can’t just have people running around making interior design recommendations without registering for government permission first!