David Geary has a new book out on Intelligence and EP (here is a précis). I won’t have time to read it thoroughly until Thanksgiving break, but I have read oodles of Geary’s work (as he and I work at the same university, although in different departments) and, traditionally, he has had a nice appreciation […]

Italian is probably my favorite language, judged purely by aesthetic pleasure from both listening and speaking, and my second favorite cuisine (after Malaysian/Singaporean, which I suppose is sort of cheating because it encompasses southeast Chinese and south Indian along with Malay). Americans’ early impressions of Italian cooking, like their impressions of Chinese cooking, were by […]

Over at Winds of Change they are praising neo-GNXPer Jinnderella. Anyway, the conversation took a turn where Jinn & I started recommending some cognitive science to a few commenters. One individual responded that they would get to those works after hitting Bernard Lewis first. Now, I just started reading From Babel to Dragomans, and though […]

The pending divorce of a Prince of Denmark from a woman of British-Chinese-Austrian descent brought to mind a curious fact: Europeans today seem intent on moving toward post-nationalism, but they have for centuries been ruled by cosmopolitan monarchies. As we all know, the French revolution was the beginning of the end for monarchs across much […]

I’ve posted occasionally on social mobility before. I noticed another recent study on the subject: K. Thienpoint and G. Verleye: ‘Cognitive ability and occupational status in a British cohort’, Journal of Biosocial Science, 36, Part 3, May 2004, 333-349. I can’t find a free online version, but here’s the abstract: The relation between individual trait […]

Two immigrants are running for the seat of the 1st Congressional District in Imbler, incumbent Democrat David Wu and Republican challenger Goli Ameri. (The rest of this post can be found in the extended entry) Both of these candidates appear qualified and intelligent, both attended Stanford, both have advanced degrees, and both are very active […]

I will be in Portland, OR, Thursday-Sunday. Mostly hanging around SE, but will be in SW to meet up with zizka at least one day. Email me, razibk-at-gnxp.com, if you want to meet up. Posted by razib at 11:36 AM

The Nurture Assumption is a good read. Most of you know the general thesis: most of the “environmental” input that shapes your personality is not from your parents but from your peers (to make it short and sweet). I wasn’t convinced by all the arguments, but it definitely makes you reconsider your background assumptions. As […]

In response to the data about male mediated demic diffusion in China along a north-south gradient Steve wonders why this seems a recurring pattern-that is, northern males with southern women. 1) I don’t know how robust this pattern is (think Europe’s possible J haplogroup Neolithic diffusion from Anatolia). 2) I think this is easily explained […]

There is an important new paper on China out, Genetic evidence supports demic diffusion of Han culture: Here we show, by systematically analysing Y-chromosome and mitochondrial DNA variation in Han populations, that the pattern of the southward expansion of Han culture is consistent with the demic diffusion model, and that males played a larger role […]

Razib mentioned that Spencer Wells had a National Geographic documentary about the Phoenicians coming out. Mirabilis.ca gives us a little preview.[National Geographic emerging explorer Spencer Wells and Pierre Zalloua of the American University of Beirut] collected blood samples from men living in the Middle East, North Africa, southern Spain, and Malta, places the Phoenicians are […]

Hate do another linker post but this was paragraph from a review of Richard Dawkins’ new book was just too good to pass up. (hat tip: Butterflies and Wheels)Matt Ridley, “Meet the concestors”, The Guardian, 2004 September 18.“For particular genes, you are more closely related to some chimpanzees than to some humans.” A good example […]

Umm, this is my first post at Gene Expression, and I think I should explain the rather fanciful style of my writing. I adore faerytales, myths and legends, art and music, great literature and poetry, anime, film, and scifi. So these things always are incorporated into the way I think and write. The basic question […]

Below, in the Celts & Iberians entry, there was some talk about Basques and their genetics. There is one thing to keep in mind about Basques genetically, which can be illustrated with this table: Incidence of the Rh Negative Blood Group in Various Populations Population Incidence Chinese and Japanese 1% North American Indian and Inuit […]

Total Serum Cholesterol levels positively corelated to incidence of Schizophrenia one study finds, this provides evidence for the dopamine theory of Schizophrenia. AddendumI guess I should have been clearer, but this is what happens when you are used to talking about these subject with trained biologists. Here is what I meant;The dopamine hypothesis of Schizophrenia […]

Below, Joe Hertzingler asked how Jews could be inbred since their source population engaged in interpopulation mixing, that is, Levantine males + indigenous females (let’s assume this is so). This seems to come up, and part of the problem is that we forget that populations, “races,” are just the sum of their parts and the […]

A twentysomething Iranian’s response to Fahrenheit 9/11 (hat tip: Johan Norberg)It sure is a great country, where someone like Moore trashes the president and gets away with it — and makes so much money!In addition to being funny, the young man’s response raises a good point. For most of human history, heck, in most countries […]

Michael Hammer has two new articles out, summarized in this press release. The skinny is that Hammer is throwing some evidence into the pot that contradicts the finding that females are more likely to be exchanged between groups, as implied in more uniform mtDNA lineages. About 70% of modern human cultures surveyed seem to be […]

“The war for Islam’s heart”, The Economist, 2004 September 16. Three years ago, it was only Americans who asked Why Do They Hate Us? The same question is now being asked by Indonesians, Spaniards, Turks, Australians, Nepalese, French, Italians, Russians and others whose citizens have fallen victim to jihadist “vengeance”.The back of the line is […]

The Sept./Oct. 2004 issue of Foreign Policy features a symposium titled “The World’s Most Dangerous Ideas.” In it are eight fairly interesting articles, although some are quite silly (I’ll post an entry on Paul Davies’ hysteria over sociobiology later). In this symposium, Francis Fukuyama, author of Our Posthuman Future (among other things), has identified transhumanism […]