Visiting village dogs

I am horribly envious. I am speaking of the Village Dog Project, some current research going on that looks very cool.

Understanding the evolution and domestication in dogs requires genetic analysis of a global and diverse panel of non-breed-affiliated village dogs. With a network of worldwide and Cornell-affiliated collaborators, we plan to gather dog samples from remote villages, establish a genetic archive containing DNA and phenotypic information from these dogs, carry out genetic analyses on these samples, and develop computational methods for analyzing this dataset. In particular, we are interested in understanding the location, timing, and demographic conditions underlying domestication; the genetic changes involved in the transition of wolf to dog; the relationship between these village dogs and the breed dogs; and the effect that historical forces have shaped village dog diversity.

That looks informative and useful, and I’ll be looking forward to the publication of the research. That’s not what’s got me envious, though: for that, you have to look at their field work. The researchers are spending the summer traveling to exotic, remote locations (admittedly, to the kinds of places rife with scavenging village dogs, but still…) to collect blood samples. They have a travel blog that will be recounting their adventures, and also explains the science a little more.

After initial domestication, dogs probably lived “breed-less” lives as human commensals (hanging around humans, not really helping or harming them but living off their trash) for many thousands of years. During this time, dog populations quickly expanded and spread across the globe. In the last few hundreds of years, several hundred dog breeds were formed from local dogs in many parts of the world; these breed dogs have entirely replaced the non-breed “indigenous” dogs in some parts of the world, notably in Western Europe and the USA. However, most dogs throughout the world still live their lives as non-breed, indigenous, commensal dogs. We refer to these dogs as “pariah” or “village” dogs. They tend to be smallish (25-40 pounds), often tan, short-haired dogs, though the type varies a bit according to the region you’re in. The important point is that these dogs have not undergone the intense genetic bottleneck associated with breed formation. Thus, while breed dogs have only a small subset of the total genetic diversity of all dogs, it is likely that village dogs have a much greater range of the total diversity. Thus, they are very useful for looking at the original domestication event. They are informative of the original genetic bottleneck that led to the formation of domestic dogs many thousands of years ago.

Hmmm. We don’t seem to have many dogs running loose around exotic, remote Morris, Minnesota, but there are a few feral cats living off the dumpsters near the grocery store.

I probably wouldn’t try to read about visiting small midwestern towns to collect cats, though.

An outing

A short while ago, the blogosphere was irate over the outing of the identity of a pseudonymous blogger, Publius. The outing followed the usual pattern: pseudonymous blogger annoys right-winger who can’t cope, right-winger lashes out by revealing the name behind the pseudonym (as if that somehow addresses the criticisms), then right-winger sits back and starts defending himself: “he deserved it”, “he shouldn’t expect to be anonymous”, “anonymity is bad, anyways”. It’s so damned stupid.

I have no problem with people using pseudonyms, especially since, as in the case of Publius, there was a consistent voice behind the name, and the person was not trying to avoid being called on his ideas (the fly-by-night, daily change of names by some trolls and sock puppets is a different thing altogether — that is an attempt to avoid being pinned down). When an outer decides to reveal a name behind the identity, though, that is simply an act of cowardice — an attempt to run away from engagement with the ideas to switch to personal intimidation. It is contemptible, no matter what your motivation.

Now we have another example: the Canadian Cynic has been outed. A sanctimonious right-wing she-git declared his identity because he called her mean names, and then justified it this way:

Outing bloggers isn’t usually my thing. I don’t see a point to it. But when you repeatedly abuse and demean people because they do not march in lockstep with you, I’m sorry but you deserve it.

Ah, sweetly stupid rationalizations — don’t they do such a good job of exposing the quality of the intellect behind them? It usually isn’t her thing…but she did it. I want to see a murderer try this defense: “I don’t kill people every day, it was just this one time!” Yeah, that makes it OK. Then she says she didn’t see a point to it…so what was her point? She doesn’t have one. She’s just lashing out angrily, as we can see in her next excuse: he deserved it. She sees it as a punishment. Which, of course, is why she also links to his business in her outing post.

If you know that something is wrong, since you admit to avoiding doing it, and if you know that there is no point to it other than to try to hurt someone personally and materially, there is a simple rule to follow: don’t do it. If you do it anyway, that just means you’re a self-confessed douchebag.

Besides, those of us who have known Canadian Cynic for a long time are just laughing. Larry Moran has known his identity for years. So have I.

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Photo by Lost Marbles

It’s an open secret — the people who outed him are no geniuses, that’s for sure, and it wasn’t that hard to track him down. It was pointless, trivial, and accomplished nothing but expose his critics as petty cranks, confirming what CC has been saying about them all along.

And will his exposure change his behavior? Why, no. Like I said, many of us have known him for a long time, and by his work against creationism (under his full name) and his acerbic posts on usenet (under his own name). I expect him to be even more vocal now.

Case in point: he’ll be speaking in Toronto on 3 July, on the subject of Creationism, ID and the Douchebaggery of Really Bad Arguments: An Evening with the Canadian Cynic.

Ooooh. He sounds really intimidated.

Speaking of philosophy…

As you should know, John Wilkins has left the enveloping (and sometimes stifling) womb of Scienceblogs to strike out on his own, and is also laboring as an underpaid postdoc. He has entered that realm familiar to philosophers everywhere: poverty. It’s good for the soul, John! Calorie restriction is also good for longevity!

Unfortunately, spiritual and intellectual rewards do not pay web hosting bills, so Wilkins would appreciate any donations towards the continued solvency of Evolving Thoughts. Help him out if you can. Oh, and when his book becomes available, buy it. I know I will, even if specialized books by philosophers tend to be more extravagantly priced than us poor college professors can spare.

(Hey, the price isn’t as bad as I feared. Let’s turn it into a weird best-seller!)

Evolving Thoughts has moved!

John Wilkins has left Scienceblogs to start anew at Evolving Thoughts Mk. III. I’m pretty sure it’s because of a) pure philosophical bloody-mindedness, b) chronic embarrassment at his inability to spell “Mghrz’z” properly, and c) something to do with being Australian, which is a legitimate excuse for all kinds of contrary behavior.

Unfortunately, he’s still planning to occasionally chew over my heathenish ways, so I guess I’ll have to continue to keep my eyes on him.

These things come in waves

I wonder what’s behind the somewhat cyclic nature of internet phenomena? I’m getting a lot of messages from people telling me about this discovery that cephalopods have venom—I covered that a few weeks ago. I’m also being told that I’m in an amusing rap video…that one I mentioned over a year ago. I’m not about to discourage anyone from sending me links, I’m simply curious about the strange way I’ll suddenly got lots of links to the same thing all at once.

Twitter is evil

James Hrynyshyn is completely missing the point. He has a post up where he tendentiously explains why twitter is evil, as if it should be a surprise. Why is the Pope Catholic? Why is the darkness dark? Why does Microsoft suck? These aren’t interesting questions: the point is that they are.

I have a Twitter account. I do not have a “My Little Pony” account. Think about it. Isn’t it quite probable that I would leap into this technology precisely because it has great potential for evil? Be seduced, and embrace the evil. It’s fun!

One hundred forty characters is exactly enough room for a “Bwahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!”, but not enough for lengthy monologuing, the bane of villain’s plans everywhere. It’s enough to leave vague hints that has everyone wondering and guessing to what, exactly, one is up. One can easily configure it so one is only receiving tweets from a tiny number of people, who can mostly be ignored, while sending tweets that distract thousands. It is a force multiplier that can turn trivia into terrifying rumors that reverberate across Tweetopia.

Come on. You don’t think a benign force would compel people to start using ridiculous terms like “tweet” and “twitter”, do you? It’s like “blog” — a monstrosity that can corrupt a whole language.

Clucking regretfully over the phenomenon did not stop the German Wehrmacht, nor did calling them brutally efficient. Same with Twitter. It’s evil. We’re celebrating that.

We are going to take over the world!

Seed Media has just announced the formation of Scienceblogs Brazil, to meet all of your needs for science in Portuguese. It looks good, and some of the posts have been translated into English, so even those of us with limited language skills can browse part of it.

There is no word yet if the “Most Popular” and “Most German” sidebar lists will soon be accompanied by “Most Brazilian”, which would definitely arouse some interesting associations with hot wax fantasies. I shall use all of my immense clout to urge that it be made so, immediately.