T. Rex Soft Tissue Found Preserved. The only caution I would offer is that I recall claims that T-Rex DNA was extracted back in 1994…though the consensus now seems to be that that was contamination. GFA adds: Here is Gary Hurd’s review of the last time rex molecules made headlines. On a related note, the […]

Are you a director planning on filming your latest cinematic masterpiece up here in Sweden? Then you better stock up on women first. In order to receive state funding, (which pretty much 100 percent of Swedish films depend on, go figure…), at least 40% of your producers, directors and script-writers better be women – otherwise […]

Over the past few days I have addressed the topic of intellectual due diligence twice, first, in a somewhat esoteric evaluation of the “situation” in cognitive science in relation to the public’s perception of paradigm acceptance within the field being at variance with the opinions of professionals, then, I moved to a more concrete critique […]

Widespread Parallel Evolution in Sticklebacks by Repeated Fixation of Ectodysplasin Alleles (free registration): Major phenotypic changes evolve in parallel in nature by molecular mechanisms that are largely unknown. Here, we use positional cloning methods to identify the major chromosome locus controlling armor plate patterning in wild threespine sticklebacks. Mapping, sequencing, and transgenic studies show that […]

Over at my blog, I’ve made two postings regarding interesting trends in the growth of religious minorities in two countries on the European Union’s doorstep. It seems certain that Ukraine’s Muslims are rapidly growing in number through migration; Algerian Christians, while still rarer, may also be growing sharply in number, not through immigration but through […]

Someone’s managed to damage the Homo floresiensis remains. Recall that there was a dispute over the bones when Indonesian paleoanthropologist, Teuku Jacob, ‘borrowed’ them apparently without the permission of the Australian discoverers. Well, Dr. Jacob returned the bones and now the Autralian team have claimed that he damaged them whilst making casts of the bones. […]

I have a diary over at Redstate.org as well as entry at Dean Nation on the need for those who revere and hew to the Western tradition to actually read history with a fidelity, depth and joy in keeping with the scholarship of that tradition. I’d appreciate if GNXP readers could “rate up” my Redstate.org […]

In the spirit of following up on my post in relation to Chris of Mixing Memory, here is his critique of Evolutionary Psychology.™ I added the “trademark” superscript because Chris is assailing the paradigm put forward by Leda Cosmides and John Tooby. It is conventionally asserted that EP is just a rebranding of the sociobiological […]

See this news report on research into ‘hard-wired’ behavio(u)r patterns among primates, some of which go far back into evolutionary history. The headline describes this as ‘surprising’, but it is only surprising if you start from the position of a ‘blank slate’ dogma. Posted by David B at 11:07 AM

My inital reaction to the virtual lesbian threeway depicted in the second edition of Masamune Shirow’s manga Ghost in the Shell, back when I first read it in January, was that it was just a throwaway scene aimed at a teenage male market. I’m not so sure now. To be sure, the teenage-male demographic does […]

This sounds amazingly bad. Algis Kuliukas tells me that Elaine Morgan, leading spokesperson for the horrid “Aquatic Ape Theory”, has a new book out that, in his words, “takes on the accepted wisdom which has lead to each and every aspect of neo-Darwinism being accepted without question in some circles. From E O Wilson’s ‘Sociobiology: […]

Seems that haloscan has rolled back to about 12 hours ago, though the newer comments do show up if you attempt to submit a comment, so it is likely a problem with the SQL query. Anyway, I know about the issue, so no point in emailing me ;) Posted by razib at 11:08 PM

Earlier this month, Turkey’s Ministry of Environment and Forestry altered the Latin names of three mammal species to expunge “divisive” reference to two of the country’s ethnic minorities — the Armenians and Kurds. The Turkish red fox subspecies Vulpes vulpes kurdistanica will have its name cut down to just Vulpes vulpes, the deer Capreolus capreolus […]

The UK’s Office for National Statistics has just published the annual survey of Social Trends in the UK. This provides (relatively) easily digested statistics and analysis on all aspects of the UK’s population and social life. The ONS website provides full access to the book here, either in bite-sized chunks or as the complete text. […]

Plant Is Found to Correct Its Own Mutated Gene. Over at Nature Genome-wide non-mendelian inheritance of extra-genomic information in Arabidopsis. Echoes of the RNA world? Update: Much more at Carl’s. Posted by razib at 08:59 PM

Race [an invited post]. Famous last words: “After reading the article, it turns out that Leroi is playing word games.” Related: Pattern Classification in Population Genetics. Posted by razib at 11:15 PM

More from the New York Times: Toward a Unified Theory of Black America, from Stephen J. Dubner.  Interesting article about Economist Roland G. Fryer, an assistant professor at Harvard who has some pretty outspoken views. “I want to have an honest discussion about race in a time and a place where I don’t think we […]

Steve’s latest VDARE column is, in my opinion, a marvel of exposition. Nothing new, but like a fine wine you can move past the lack of novelty and appreciate the familiar but richly nuanced flavors. One point that I think should be highlighted, especially in the context of Steve’s article which does much to strike […]

My friend Dymphna sent me this pdf, (one of her irish cousins is a co-author), on Constructing an Animat Mind Using 505 Sub-Minds from 234 Different Authors. Coolio. Animat looks like an excellent paradigm for growing a hive mind on the internet. Perhaps the Singularity is already underway. ;) And then I looked at the […]

Deseret News has a long piece titled “Utah’s non-war over evolution.” It is somewhat rambling, but it should be viewed in light of the fact Ronald L. Numbers in The Creationists recounts that ‘In 1935 only 36 percent of the students at the Mormon’s Brighman Young University denied that humans have been “created in a […]