Charles Murray has an important new paper in press at Intelligence. Here is the abstract: The black-white difference in test scores for the three standardizations of the Woodcock-Johnson battery of cognitive tests is analyzed in terms of birth cohorts covering the years from 1920 through 1991. Among persons tested at ages 6-65, a narrowing of […]

A few weeks ago we discussed the extent of non-Islamic cultural practices in Iran, in particular, Noruz, the Zoroastrian New Year. In an article about the Kurds and Noruz here is a tidbit of interest: The holiday is a much bigger deal next door in Iran – ancient Persia is the birthplace of the Zoroastrian […]

Well, the poll has been running for a week. Nothing changes around these parts. 85-90% of regular readers are male. A plural majority identify as “libertarians,” though there is a rough political balance along the normal Left-Right range with a slight Center-Right skew. One thing that I will comment on though is the fact that […]

On the chat over the past few weeks I’ve been recommending that people just read the first half of The Genetical Theory of Natural Selection to get the most out of GNXP. I say this because I know time is finite, and it isn’t like most people have time to read The G Factor, Hartl […]

Virginia Postrel was asking whether Blogginheads.TV was worth it. Most of your probably know that I’m a regular watcher. Some of you might wonder, “Why???” The reason is simple, I don’t own a TV, nor do I read many political blogs or newspaper articles, so it is a cheap way for me to stay hook […]

Via Steve, Michael Blowhard’s magisterial review of 300. Labels: History

Genetic studies endow mice with new color vision Although mice, like most mammals, typically view the world with a limited color palette – similar to what some people with red-green color blindness see – scientists have now transformed their vision by introducing a single human gene into a mouse chromosome. The human gene codes for […]

Every now and then I take polls of GNXP readers. Been a while, so here I go…. (please check it out only if you are a regular reader, etc.) How long have you been reading GNXP regularly? less than 1 week less than 1 month less than 6 months less than 1 year less than […]

I know many of you are probably sick of chat updates, but please note. 1) The way the app works right now it autologs you on. But, 2) I’ve set up a filter so that your randomly assigned nickname (“zanon123…”) won’t show up. You can talk, but you aren’t seen. If you want to be […]

Over at her website Judith Rich Harris has posted her article, Parental Selection: A Third Selection Process in the Evolution of Human Hairlessness and Skin Color. When I asked Judy 10 questions I expressed some skepticism about this theory: 4) In your 2005 response to the Edge Question, “What Do You Believe Is True Even […]

OK, something for the elderings amongst us: nominations for the creepiest hair-band song. Post the link in the comments for YouTube. Mine is below…. Labels: Blog

Wendy Johnson, Thomas Bouchard, and their colleagues have an important paper in press at Intelligence reanalyzing data from the Minnesota Study of Twins Reared Apart (MISTRA). As many of you may be aware, the Minnesota group previously reported a correlation in IQ of 0.75 for 40+ pairs of identical twins reared apart (Bouchard et al., […]

After reading J.P. Mallory’s In search of the Indo-Europeans I am much more convinced of a possible analogy with the expansion of th Turkic peoples for the rise of the Indo-Europeans. Roughly, in 400 Turks would have been confined to the area around where presently the borders of Russia, China, Mongolia and Kazakhstan converge. 1,200 […]

I wanted to a wait a bit before I posted this, but the essential part of Elisabeth Lloyd’s essay Units and Levels of Selection is this: It is widely held, for instance, that the conditions under which group selection can effect evolutionary change are quite stringent and rare. Typically, group selection is seen to require […]

I’m rereading In Search of the Indo-Europeans by J.P. Mallory. Here is Mallory (1989) on the Etruscans: …This raises the entire problem of Etruscan origins which has filled volumes…and is as heatedly debated as the problems concerning Indo-European origins. There is no easy solution, since the evidence is extremely self-contradictory. Nevertheless, the present tendency in […]

The topic of “group selection” emerges many times on this blog. My own issue with this debate is that semantics are often rather tortured…and people have to be on the same page for any intellectual utility to be derived. With that in mind, I would like everyone who wishes to discuss groups selection to read […]

Recently, I’ve posted on economists’ attempts to use genetics to explain long-term economic growth. So far, I’ve talked mostly about data. Today, theory gets its due. Oded Galor (Brown) and Omer Moav (Hebrew U and Royal Holloway) have a simple story: The agricultural revolution set off a process of rapid human evolution that itself created […]

Here’s a question: what “invention” of the Greeks was the most significant? This is a subjective question as I’m not going to specify criteria to constrain you, I’d like get some nominations is all. And I’ll offer mine: the mathematical proof. I think one can make a case that the Greeks basically invented formal systematic […]

I’ve previously argued for the expansion of DNA databases to universal coverage. The reasoning being in part that all-or-nothing coverage is in many ways preferable to the patch-work system now in place. I’m not alone in making this argument, and I find it comforting that most authors commenting on this subject agree that some kind […]

I mentioned last year that a highly-praised new novelist, Emma Darwin, was yet another descendant of you-know-who. I will therefore provide a link to this interview with her in today’s (UK) Sunday Telegraph. I see that her novel is now available in paperback, and nominated for a prize. American readers may be puzzled by the […]