Archive for November, 2004

Disclaimer stickers for science textbooks

In light of recent decisions on the local level calling for IDiot ideology to be taught with an equal amount of vigor as evolutionary biology, Colin Purrington has uploaded a PDF file of 15 disclaimer stickers that can be posted onto schoolbooks. Check it out! Posted by Arcane at 09:53 PM

Race-based (Math) Pedagogy?

New article in EPAA. It has flaws, but (surprise, surprise): (a) it adds to the evidence that the achievement gap is not going to go away without massive government intrusion (take a gander at the article’s last paragraph)…and even then, the magnitude of the gap’s closure is debatable (of course, there are other options); and […]

The muslim vote

Interesting article over at the Boston Globe by Peter Skerry discussing the political beliefs of muslims. Posted by scottm at 03:58 PM

No admixture with Neanderthals?

Modern Humans Did Not Admix with Neanderthals during Their Range Expansion into Europe. The authors seem to be using a demic diffusion model and suggest that the likelihood of Neanderthal mtDNA linages being eliminated through genetic drift alone is rather low.1 Even assuming a low rate of admixture, a population expansion out of the Southwest […]

A different sort of mutation

I’m about halfway through Albion’s Seed, and I stumbled upon an interesting historical tidbit. But first, an aside, in Our Kind of People: Inside America’s Black Upper Class by Lawrence Otis Graham he recounts a story about a very light-skinned black woman (phenotypically white) insulting his brother and future sister in law for perpetuating the […]

What has one to do with the other?

“What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?” -Tertullian The diagram below illustrates the general thesis of From Plato to Nato:It seems many of the disputes among intellectuals today recapitulate tensions between the various strands of Western culture. In From Plato to Nato the classicist David Gress sketches out how liberal intellectuals, inspired by the Enlightenment, […]

Would you buy a burger from this woman?

Well, McDonalds thinks you will One thing I will criticize about our consumer culture (and believe me I normally have little problem with it) is that it takes someone like Heidi who would normally not come within 100 meters of fast food, and turns them into their spokesmodel. I mean, wouldn’t Michael Moore be a […]

In other words, bring back the British Empire.

That’s the conclusion of this blogger who points out that the only real answer to constant lefty whining about tragedies in third world countries is to bring back western colonialism in those failed states. I agree, either we do that, or just shrug and ignore it. But if colonialism is our route we must make […]

First No-Vaccine Rabies Survivor

The New York Times reports that a Wisconsin teenager is the first person to survive rabies without the aid of a vaccine. The doctors: put the critically ill girl into a drug-induced coma and gave her antiviral drugs, although it is not clear which, if any, of the four medicines contributed to her surprising recovery. […]

Family

As some have guessed, Steve’s “mystery factor” is number of children for whites. Apropos that I post this on Thanksgiving when everyone is hanging out with their fam…. Update: The article. Update II: Randall weighs in. Free Republic links. Posted by razib at 02:46 PM

British HIV-AIDS rates soaring

The Scotsman reports that rates of HIV-AIDS infection are soaring in England, most of those being in and around London. The causes? The majority of new cases diagnosed in the UK are the result of people migrating from countries with the biggest HIV problem, especially Africa. Something else to consider in the immigration debate. GFA […]

Alexander

Just got back from seeing the Oliver Stone insult to the hellenes “Alexander” and I thought I would offer a few thoughts. First, if you are considering seeing this movie because you like war flicks, don’t. The battle scenes are so confused and a little bizarre (at one point the entire screen becomes tinged with […]

Spengler deconstructed?

I have only read two pieces by “Spengler.” One was about The Passion of the Christ and the other is this one titled Muslim anguish and Western hypocrisy. The second piece I think is interesting, because it is in line with my idea that Islam is a “brittle” religion (in general). After reading these essays […]

Evolution & kinship

I’m reading Evolution and Kinship (human). It’s a nice little (176 pages) theoretical mathematical treatment of human kinship in the Hamiltonian spirit. The first chapter is a philosophical overview that discusses the author’s methodology and angle on the differences within cultural anthropology. Published in 1988 it is a little dated, but I recommend readers check […]

Why they hate us

I have noted before that trite characterizations of why terrorists do what they do, be it “poverty” or a “hatred of freedom” are often inaccurate. ParaPundit points me to this article Understanding Terror Networks. The author focuses on the hardcore transnational terrorists rather than those engaged in national struggles. Highlights (sample of 400): ~3/4 were […]

Bacon Number

Here’s a post for the gnxp humor archive (hey Razib, how come there no “waste of time” category?) I came across the Oracle of Bacon and thought others might want to play around with it. Did you know that Kevin Bacon wasn’t really the best choice to be at the center of this game. In […]

Creationism: The Grand Canyon

No, the title isn’t a reference to the symbolism of some chasm that creationism has to cross. Simply, the battlefront has expanded from schoolboards to the tourist shops in the National Park: At a park called Dinosaur Adventure Land, run by creationists near Pensacola, Florida, visitors are informed that man coexisted with dinosaurs. This fantasy […]

The Martian Chronicler

Ray Bradbury has a really good short article in the WSJ about what it will take to get mankind back into the space race. Or, most incredible of all, imagine that the Vatican decided that Pope John III wished to build a spacecraft titled The Holy Ghost in order to fly across the universe in […]

Platypus sex

Nature reports today that the platypus has five chromosomes determing sex “What we’ve discovered is that these five Xs and five Ys line up in a great big long chain, that go XY XY XY XY XY XY, and then all the X chromosomes move to one pole, and all the Y chromosomes move to […]

The curves of mathematics

Just found out about this book The Mathematics of Sex by Dr. Clio Creswell. She seems decent looking, and certainly exploits it on the cover jacket. Here is a larger image. Her website seems out of date for an author promoting a book (no pictures), but here are some clips of her, she seems more […]

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