Around the internets

Razib has a post on a paper in BMC Evolutionary Biology that shows, fairly well, I thought, that Australian aborigines are most closely related to relict populations of indigenous Indian tribes. They are touting this as evidence that the “southern route” from Africa was the one taken by the Australians (which was hardly to be disputed, but it remains the case that a different route might have been taken, say by sea, and that some of that radiation ended up in India.

Meanwhile, at the same journal, a paper on Old World toads being nested inside New World toads argues that a single colonisation of India and later Eurasia accounts for it.

A typically amusing interview between two of my favour deviants, Henry Gee interviewed (one could call it that, I suppose) by Bora Zivkovic.

A cool piece of work on why streams and hills tend to be evenly spaced.

And some real criticisms of the appointment of Francis Collins to the head of NIH, based on his science, not his religion.