Different forms of prejudice are held to different levels of disrepute. The hierarchy seems as such: Race is the most heinous one. Sexism is the most acceptable. And others like religious bigotry fall somewhere in the middle. Racial prejudice seems so unjustified to many people because one can not control race. But certainly religious zeal […]

Ikram Saeed links to a Queer Muslim conference. Yeah. The article Ikram linked to had this image as an advert on the left bar: I just wanted to pass along the blasphemy to any orthodox Muslims reading this site…. Also, Ikram highlights this woman: So, in the fall of 1999, witnessed by two of my […]

Article on changes to the practice of arranged marriage among young BOSCOs [1]. Read Zack Ajmal’s blog on this topic a few weeks back for background. [1] BOSCO = Briton of Subcontinental Origin. Posted by razib at 11:00 PM

Andy @ World Wide Rant blogs about a machine that might give one savant like abilities. Weird. Wacky. And cool! Jason S. comments I find Snyder’s theory of autism as discussed in the article quite interesting because it proposes a different ‘root cause’ and defining characteristic of the condition than that promoted by the better […]

Day 3 in Columbus and the locals news is exploding with stuff about the trucker that was an Al Qaeda mole. This sort of thing is a scary development for American Muslims and brown skinned people in general…. On a different note, did you know that Columbus was Ohio’s biggest city!

The MIT OCW “Course 7.03: Genetics” from MIT Professors Chris Kaiser and David Page features 36 Lecture notes addressing the structure and function of genes, chromosomes, and genomes. Also offered: “The 7.03 Bible,” a set of detailed study guides, problem sets, and exams from 1993 through 2001.

The Y chromosome has some interesting tricks up its sleeve to not get turned into a totally mutated wack.

Clothing Chain Accused of Discrimination. So it seems Abercrombie & Fitch, the clothing brand that appeals to annoying frat boys, hires people that can relate to such individuals. What a surprise! Yeah, I’m sure it’s discrimination under the law, but check this out: “If you look at a store like Banana Republic,” Mr. Gonzalez said, […]

Larry Auster over at View From the Right challenges secular white racialists, can the race survive without Christianity? Being neither white, nor a racialist, and never having a direct connection with the Christian faith, I’m really not invested in this argument, but I will admit that I view the Christian racialists with the same amusement […]

Imbler State University has onlined the Linus Pauling Papers, including scanning and indexing forty-six research notebooks spanning the years 1922 to 1994 : “The notebooks contain many of Pauling’s laboratory calculations and experimental data, as well as scientific conclusions, ideas for further research and numerous autobiographical musings.” Interesting stuff; see esp. books 1-13 containg his […]

This article on affirmative action in Brazil is interesting. Here is the conclusion: “I don’t think there’s any doubt that some middle-class white kids are taking advantage of the system by declaring themselves black,” said Salgueiro, the admissions director. “It’s disappointing because that means the program is not always benefiting poor or underprivileged kids. But […]

I’ll be there for a week starting tomorrow. Anything going on there??? Posted by razib at 02:53 PM

This article on “urban nomads,” wandering youth that have dropped out of society, is pretty interesting. My small town in Imbler seems to have a lot of these kids (and older types too) hanging around the main drag doing the Portland-San Francisco circuit (we’re about equidistant along the I-5 route). They’re kind of irritating because […]

There is an interview with John Maynard Smith in the current issue of New Scientist (14 June). Among other things, he says: “Eugenics is a dirty word, but I don’t think it should be. I think we are going to have to think quite seriously about it. The words ‘eugenics’ and ‘fascism’ are regarded as […]

Sex Differences in the Distribution of Mental Ability. Good bookmark for those interested in psychometry. Posted by razib at 03:43 PM

Nice to see this kind of thinking percolating into the mainstream: The second effect of the literacy obligation was to drive a lot of Jews away from their religion. [stupid Jews become Christians or Muslims -Razib] Botticini and Eckstein admit that they have little direct evidence for this conclusion, but there’s a lot of indirect […]

Zack Ajmal has a great post on arranged marriage and all that jazz. On an aside, I think arranged marriages tend to be a trait of dense agricultural societies, which means most of written history. Studies, from what I know, of hunter-gatherer peoples indicate a more chaotic and free-form attitude toward love & marriage, perhaps […]

I have at last got my hands on C. Capelli et al.: A Y Chromosome Census of the British Isles, Current Biology, vol. 13, 979-984, 27 May 2003. Capelli et al. took DNA samples from men in 25 small towns around the British Isles, excluding men whose paternal grandfathers were born more than 20 miles […]

A few years back a study indicating that people are attracted to faces like their own came out. One thing that I neglected to mention when I blogged this last was the following: What Perrett found was students who were born when their parents were older than 30 overwhelmingly preferred older faces. Students whose parents […]

Our Islamic Fine-Tuning Project is an introduction to a book titled Progressive Muslims. I wish them good-luck, but I suspect that they’re the Spinozas of their age, ahead of their time….