Just found out about this book, The Puzzle, that attempts to sketch out why homosexuality exists within human populations. Here is an interview with the author, who seems to be suggesting that homosexuality emerges out of the human ESS. He also seems to be saying that homosexual behavior can be changed, something that isn’t going […]

A week ago, Randy asked: 1. How do they think current immigration waves in North America and Europe differ from previous waves (gastarbeiter in Europe, the turn-of-the-century wave in North America)? 2. What do they think are the particular dangers or problems of the current waves? Many responses ensued. One thing that I think it […]

Will be in Cambridge, Mass, hanging out with a friend this week, Wed. night to Friday night. Email me if you want to hang (see contact on sidebar). Posted by razib at 04:56 AM

Seems like someone found this old post about ID & evolution by godless and decided to rebut it. Here is a representative quote: Wow, I’ve never read a less informed defense of evolution by someone who appears so confident.…Apparently, Gene Expression author “godless” isn’t particularly familiar with typical descriptions of evolution. To quote some of […]

So gay marriage is almost a reality in Massachusetts. This is highlighting a “cultural chasm,” blah, blah, blah. On a related note, here is Jay Manifold commenting on a the recent article on Sugar Land, Texas: Finkel nonetheless strives to make all this sound as alien, unpleasant, and un-Blue-State-like as possible. The resulting transparent failure […]

From a reader: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/05/13/60minutes/main617270.shtml. Razib, this is an extremely important article that is an almost verbatim script of a show I just saw on CBS’s 60 minutes. It deals with allegations of gang violence (esp. gang rape) that is going on against women in the immigrant ghettos of France. The interesting thing to me was […]

Pascal Boyer has many of his articles on evolutionary psychology & cognitive science online. Ditto for Gary Marcus. A man could lose himself…. Posted by razib at 03:28 AM

This article in The New York Times is about the relationship of health and social status. A few economists offer words of caution, and here, I tend to agree with them, there seem to be too many confounding issues. Many of the points and counter-points seem to hint at so many other potentional follow up […]

I, Robot is being made into a movie. Bridget Moynahan plays Dr. Susan Calvin…and I thought Isaac had imagined her as a spinster. Posted by razib at 10:18 PM

Interviews with many scientists over at this archive (free registration, and they are in “beta” mode, they’ll probably throw up barriers in the future, so get it while it’s gratis). Update: Also check out Luxuriant Flowing Hair Club for Scientists™. Long time member Steve Pinker says: “Luxuriant hair is always pleasing, possibly because it shows […]

Matthew Yglesias points me to this Den Beste post where he speculates on linguistics. It seems Amritas triggered this whole episode. Last year, Jason Malloy had an excellent post deconstructing Amritas’ tack against ‘universal grammar.’ As Jason notes, it seems that Amritas was trying to use the Right’s aminus toward Chomsky’s political views to to […]

All Things Considered has a piece titled Probing the Minority Achievement Gap. Standard model issues: majority black middle class district where “tracking” results in segregation, as whites are packed into “honors” courses, etc. etc. Various explanations are addressed, etc. etc. Anyway, at one point, they are interviewing a young black teacher who is very close […]

In the comments for an earlier post I pointed to this page which elaborates on the concept of narrow sense heritability, that is, the (additive genetic variance)/(phenotypic variance) (remember, exclude dominance effects since they are obviously not “additive”). That brings me to a point that might need some repeating: a trait can be genetic, but […]

For personal reasons I won’t be posting much over the next month or so, but I will try to note briefly any interesting points from the UK press. Last year in a post on The future of the birth rate I gave reasons from evolutionary theory to expect birth rates in western countries to rise […]

Extra time on the math portion of the SAT helps the most able students the most. Posted by razib at 03:50 PM

After my exchange with Frank in the The great “IQ hoax” post, I would like to reiterate one point. When I say something is 50% heritable, I do not mean that ‘the trait is 50% genetic’. Rather, I mean that 50% of the variation within a population is due to variation in the genotype (I […]

I will probably watch Troy this weekend. Here is a Slate piece on whether Helen is hot or not. I used to be a Mycenaean history buff, so I’m curious about what they got right, and where they decided to go with the faux-Classical standard that dominates sword-and-sandal epics. For example, look at this scene, […]

I read two books recently, The Rise of Christianity and The Barbarian Conversion. I will offer a full length treatment of the ideas in both books, and try to integrate them, in a later post. But, I want submit an idea that has been nagging me for some time: in the United States, secularists and […]

Randall Parker has an excellent post up about the growing tension between Kurds and Arabs. Randall has been arguing for a partition of Iraq, and I am sympathetic to that idea. One point to note is that of the dozens of Arab nations, only a few like Jordan or Morocco are making moves toward genuine […]

A few days ago I posted on some problems with Stephen Oppenheimer’s The Real Eve. Over the next week I’ll be offering a few summations of major points in the “meat” of the book. One of the most important points in in Oppenheimer’s narrative is that there was only path Out-of-Africa. This is in sharp […]