This article about the “controversy” over reclassifying humans or chimps because of their close relationship (chimps are closer to humans than gorillas in genetic distance) is pretty stupid-this is old news [1]. Sounds to me a bit like the bruhaha over reclassifying Pluto from a planet to a planetesimal or whatever-who really cares? On the […]

I’ve been a bit remiss in blogging recently. A variety of reasons account for this-but in sum, I’ve just been busy…. Thanks to David B & Jason S for filling in with some meaty pieces. I am reading three books that might be of interest to GNXP readers. First, Journey of Man by Spencer Wells. […]

I said I would come back to this question. It is tedious to spend long on definitions, but I should say what I mean by ‘useful’. I don’t want to tie it too closely to biological (reproductive) fitness. Arguably the effect of a cultural trait on biological fitness should always be the ultimate criterion, but […]

This Businessweek article documents the rise of women in educational attainment. Why is this happening? I think it is the fact that there are more men at the bottom end of the IQ bell curve while the minimum intellectual capacity demanded for collegiate studies has been downshifting toward the fat middle of the distribution (around […]

OK, I guess I must comment on the Jayson Blair fiasco, since enough time has passed that the big boys have all issued their major denials & explanations. Every talk show where they have a black journalist on starts out with said person denying that race played any role. Who are they kidding? Even if […]

Mac Diva says that conservative politics causes AIDS. The logic seems to be that since the south has a disproportionate number of AIDS cases, and the south is conservative, ergo, a causal relationship. I have a simple rejoinder-do a district by district analysis of HIV infection rates in the south and see if they are […]

Steve Sailer interviews Jon Entine who is writing a book that seems to deal with Jewish history through the prism of genetics. A good summary of the current state of knowledge. Update: Story on Hellenized Jews in southern Italy (the Italiot Greek communities are the remnants of Magna Gracia and the Byzantine Era).

Jane Galt takes up the IQ controversy. GNXPers are a bit late to the game…. Also-check out this fluffy review of the book Intelligence, Race, and Genetics: Conversations with Arthur R. Jensen. Here are some quotes that capture the flavor of the review: In a sense, intelligence tests are like artificial intelligence: the “highest” brain […]

Suman Palit bemoans the Indianization of America via multiculturalism and its handmaid affirmative action. As Suman points out the Indian government has been attempting to erase the social and historical reality of caste by government fiat for three generations. It has done this with blatant affirmative action that has slowly been devalued as more castes […]

There’s an important article in this week’s ‘Nature’ (8 May) on ‘The Evolutionary Origin of Complex Features’, by R. Lenski et al. (Nature, vol. 423, pp.139-45). The authors use a computer simulation of the evolution of complex logic functions from simple elements, using proxies for ‘mutation’, ‘fitness’, etc. The technical details are beyond me, but […]

In earlier notes I examined the idea of cultural evolution by selection operating on groups of people. This note looks at a different process: cultural evolution operating directly by selection of cultural traits. The general idea is simple: cultural traits (customs, institutions, art forms, etc) ‘reproduce’ (they get themselves copied); the ‘copies’ are similar but […]

From the recent Economist an article on immigrants in Europe. Though the tag lines don’t mention it-it is basically about Muslims, little mention of West African Christians or British Sikhs aside from a token sentence here & there. This is partially because of Muslim numbers-but also because they are surely more difficult to assimilate. Europe’s […]

Noy Thrupkaew and Steve Sailer review the Asian American film Better Luck Tomorrow. I saw it on vacation. Implausible, the reviews are more interesting than the film, but that’s just my opinion. Posted by razib at 09:12 PM

Gene enhances prefrontal function at a price Studies of a gene that affects how efficiently the brain’s frontal lobes process information are revealing some untidy consequences of a tiny variation in its molecular structure and how it may increase susceptibility to schizophrenia. People with a common version of the gene associated with more efficient working […]

Dienekes has been looking for just the right way to define ‘race’ in an on-going series of posts over at his blog. I know people have a lot of uncertainty with this topic, so I would recommend leaving comments, concerns and questions for him if you have them. The new PBS series “Race – The […]

On re-reading my note on ‘Cultural evolution by group selection’, and the comments people have made on it, I realise that some of my terminology was not clear enough – so I hope the following is useful. ‘Heritability’: in referring to the ‘heritability’ of cultural traits I simply meant the tendency of the ‘offspring’ of […]

I didn’t intend to comment at length on this subject just yet, but there is evidently some disagreement on the meaning of ‘group selection’, and it may help if I say what I mean by it myself. Sorry, it’s another long one! A quick disclaimer: nothing in this note is concerned with group selection of […]

Nick Wade has an article titled World’s Farmers Sowed Languages as Well as Seeds. The following summations near the end capture my view: Dr. Christopher Ehret of U.C.L.A., an expert in the history of African languages, said the authors had overstated the role of agriculture in explaining the pattern of language distribution. “In reality, the […]

A recent study by the Department of Immigration in Australia confirms the Borjas effect and proposes a solution to it. Note also the reference to the US’s ability to absorb immigration which is relevant to the discussion I had with zizka in comments on a previous posting: Poorly educated city dwellers should be given a […]

This continues the discussion in my note of 24 April. It’s a long one, so take a deep breath (as the rock star said to the groupie). First, a couple of preliminaries. (a) I have had several useful comments on my previous note, both on the message board and by email. I will try to […]