This is a post I’ve been meaning to write for a little over a year, which the obligations of the physical world have kept me from, but Razib’s recent series on the Hui has finally given me an excuse. Many of the Muslim immigrants to China were Central Asian mercenaries who settled in China rather […]

Contemporary Americans don’t eat the same dishes as Medieval Europeans because because many foods in a modern American diet were not available to Medieval Europeans. They either hadn’t been discovered by Europeans yet, such as New World foods like maize, potatoes, and chocolate, or were unavailable for other reasons, such as pepper and other spices, […]

Wouldn’t this have made a “30 Days”-worthy story of dispelling preconceptions? “Before, I thought the Americans were like the Europeans – no religion, no moral values, taking drugs, having sex, drinking all the time,” said Sirine, an earnest 17-year-old Tunisian who stayed with an Atlanta-area family. “But my opinion changed. I found people going to […]

Here is the explanation of Judaism and Islam in the “devout Christian spends a month as a Muslim” episode of “30 Days”.Jews believe in the existence of one true God and are still waiting for his son, the Messiah, to save them.…[Muslims] base their religions on the writings of a later prophet, MuhammadLet’s start with […]

Thought that would get your attention. The NYT also has an article on the evolutionary purpose of the female orgasm and the name of one of the scientists they quote is, get this, Dr Alcock. Posted by jeet at 06:33 PM

If you were conducting a campaign against pornography, would you include “Rub It Out” among your catchphrases? I wouldn’t be so sure about giving it the elbow either. via BBC News See also“Mine’s a Double” via FARKand“There’s still a lot of Queens in George Tenet“ Posted by jeet at 04:55 PM

Saturday’s New York Times“We are using too many raw materials to sustain this growth,” said Pan Yue, China’s environment minister, in a recent interview with the German magazine Der Spiegel. “To produce goods worth $10,000, for example, we need seven times more resources than Japan, nearly six times more than the United States and, perhaps […]

via Sepia Mutiny Ted Rall’s latest cartoon imagines a Zoroastrian United States without separation of church and state. What Mr. Rall leaves out of his cartoon is that the ancestral homeland of the Zoroastrians is currently under the rule of a regime repelled by the notion of separating church and state. The ancestral homeland of […]

…how Terry Schiavo’s parents feel about stem cell research and how well that jibes with the positions of their political patrons? Posted by jeet at 08:08 AM

…or does Paul Wolfowitz resemble a Mirror Universe Dennis Kucinich? (Or, alternatively, does Dennis Kucinich resemble a Mirror Universe Paul Wolfowitz.) All either one would need is a Spock goatee. Or maybe they used to be a single entity split in two by a transporter accident with the friendly-but-totally-pussified half becoming Kucinich and the hardass-psycho-motherf*cker […]

Some of those commenting on “Church & State in Togo” are speculating about possible religious syncretisms. In the spirit of Chrismukkah or, if you prefer, Chrismahanukwanzakah, I offer the following: Ramadan + Diwali = Ramawali Hajj + Hanukkah = Hajjnukkah Christmas + Nawruz = Feliz Navruz Oh, and happy Basant! Posted by jeet at 07:31 […]

From Saturday’s New York TimesFarah Siddique also knows what it means to feel marginalized, and she is grateful to “Postcards From Buster” for helping her feel less so. Farah, 12, lives in a Chicago suburb with Pakistani and Filipino parents who are Muslim. In a telephone interview, she explained why she was happy to appear […]

Heather Graham is on the EverCrack.I’d always wished I had the chance to play Dungeons & Dragons as a kid, but I never had friends who were into it. You know, Ms. Graham, I’m sure those kids who were into it would have extended a warm hand of welcome. Posted by jeet at 08:57 AM

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 […]

From the authors of the forthcoming Madame Bovary’s Ovaries: Biology for the Bookishvia Arts & Letters Daily The prospect of staying alive through time via future generations is the motivation underlying sex, love, and indeed everything in the organic world. …. In justifying [the society of Orwell's 1984], Winston’s torturer, O’Brien, explains: “You are imagining […]

Wilford, John Noble. “Even Couch Potatoes May Have Been Born to Run”. The New York Times. 2004 November 17. [T]here was the gluteus maximus, the muscle of the buttocks. Earlier human ancestors, like chimpanzees today, had pelvises that could support only a modest gluteus maximus, nothing like the strong buttocks of Homo. “Have you ever […]

The weather in New York has dropped into the 30s, which means only one thing. It’s time for dogs in sweaters. [rant]I don’t wish to offend the ardor with which dog owners love their dogs, but I feel compelled to point something out: dogs aren’t people. I don’t know what the EEA for various breeds […]

So is this the new status quo? From now on, will the leader of the most powerful country in the world come down to a knock-down, drag-out fight in a single state? Was 2000 a harbinger rather than an aberration? Posted by jeet at 07:51 AM

St. John, Warren and Rachel L. Swarns. “Politics Makes Strange Bedfellows”. The New York Times. 2004 October 31. In towns big and small across the country, couples and family members on opposite sides of the political fence are struggling to maintain amicable relationships as a highly polarized political season reaches its apex. With the presidential […]

Gladstone, Bill [I shit you not]. “From King David to Freud to Marx, new book traces a family’s history”. JTA. 2004 October 24. In [“The Lurie Legacy,” Neil] Rosenstein links the Lurie lineage — which includes such modern luminaries as Sigmund Freud and Martin Buber — to Rashi, the 11th-century sage, and many other revered […]