Kevin Drum has a post over at his blog about affirmative action, and many commentators, in an attempt to defend large-scale preferences, have questioned the validity of standardized tests. Most of their criticisms are nonsense. First, Claude Steele’s “stereotype threat” is (almost) pure bunk. From the American Psychological Association: C. M. Steele and J. Aronson […]

Although no disparity in the general factor was found, Demetriou et al. (in press) uncovered large differences in visuo/spatial abilities between their Chinese and Greek samples. Not very exciting in itself. But what I did find interesting was their perferred explanation, which I haven’t seen (or don’t recall having seen) before. In the present case, […]

A disappointing entry from Nick over at The Pandas Thumb. He’s upset that Joe Carter would suggest differences in black and white educational attainment might have something to do with ability as opposed to (from what I can gather) historical injustices. He claims his distaste for the argument comes from having read The Mismeasure of […]

I was listening to C-SPAN this morning when they had some guy on to interview and he kept saying things like “the gap” and “the core” so I became interested. It was Thomas P.M. Barnett and he is a strategic consultant who works for the U.S. Naval War college. He’s a professor, but his writings […]

Drunken Elephants Kill Six. Posted by razib at 02:48 PM

If you don’t have a science background you might want to listen to this BBC programme which discusses the omnipresent 2nd Law of Thermodynamics (my personal recommendation is to perk your ears up when Pete Atkins talks but tune out when John Gribbin pipes up). Posted by razib at 12:00 PM

Sikh protesters storm theatre: HUNDREDS of Sikh protesters stormed a theatre and clashed with police during the performance of a controversial play depicting rape, corruption and murder in a temple. India? No, Great Britain! Offensive to religion? Why yes! I listen to the BBC a lot and they’ve been running interviews with “Sikh spokesmen.” These […]

I’m cross posting this on GNXP-SciFi but I thought it was relevant to the topics on this blog (e.g. multiculturalism) to post here. Apparently, a university in Decatur, IL is considering offering a course in Star Trek. The idea behind the class? “This class will boldly go where no one has gone before, as we […]

About 2 years ago a study came out which indicated that there had been some decoupling of ancestry from phenotype in the case of Brazil. That is, a large number of people who were phenotypically “white” had a great deal of African (and Amerindian) ancestry, while a large number of “black” individuals had white ancestry. […]

According to David Buss, “the younger woman involved in a love triangle is at a high risk of being killed”. If she’s usually killed by the older woman, that one’s pretty easy to figure out. So what explains the apparent high risk of pregnant and new mothers being killed, even by those who are not […]

Interesting article in PNAS, Molecular origins of rapid and continuous morphological evolution, of which Science News has a good summation. The low-down is that tandem repeat mutations might be crucial in reshaping the morphology of the domestic dog. The Science News article points out that a common conception of dog breeding is that the morphological […]

CNBC has a story up about a woman, Kathy Brittain White, the former CIO of Cardinal Health, starting a company called Rural Sourcing. The aim of the company? To move low paying IT jobs to the dirt-poor parts of rural America instead of to foreign countries such as India. Now, I am not an economist, […]

Hat Tip to Geek Press, I thought this was quite clever Psychiatric Diagnosis of Gollum Posted by jnutley at 12:30 PM

When talking about evolution to the public it is very important (in the American context) to emphasize that religion & Darwin are not plainly at odds, that there are many religious folk who accept the basic fact of evolutionary theory. Nevertheless, via Chris Mooney, I see that Greg Graffen of Bad Religion has published a […]

When talking about evolution to the public it is very important (in the American context) to emphasize that religion & Darwin are not plainly at odds, that there are many religious folk who accept the basic fact of evolutionary theory. Nevertheless, via Chris Mooney, I see that Greg Graffen of Bad Religion has published a […]

Abiola points me to this fascinating piece in The New York Times (originally published in Der Spiegel). What many people forget when using the world “Turkey” and the term “Turkish” is that the nation has a fair amount of texture and detail. I recently listened to a BBC piece which noted that western Anatolia has […]

The Economist has a great essay about apocalyptic beliefs across the political and religious spectrum (including secular atheists). Much of the material has already been discussed in different texts already, such as the apocalyptic beliefs of Marxists and National Socialists, but it’s neat seeing it all in one short, concise essay that covers both political […]

Out of curiosity… Frank Salter’s new book, On Genetic Interests, was released earlier this month. From what I gather, its very Rushton-esque in arguing that ethnic nepotism increases inclusive fitness. However, Tooby and Cosmides level some very convincing arguments against “genetic similarity theory,” particularly the lack of a clear evolutionary impetus in the absence of […]

The human brain uses about 25% of the energy your body has to dole out to its various organs. That’s a big cost. Explaining why we have such proportionally large brains is the subject of many books. But in any case, Carl Zimmer writes about recent research which hints as greater fitness of “dumb” individuals […]

Over at Washington Monthly Kevin Drum recently had a series of “Holiday Books” for political junkies. I emailed TangoMan (“our man at WM” so to speak) and asked him if Drum had posted any science book recommendations, but it seems like it was a political fest. I guess I understand why it had to be […]