On a recent BHTV Jeff Sharlet and Amy Sullivan discuss a recent trend in the conception of Islam among the military: As I listened to them I got really annoyed. It is not accurate to say that Islam is an ideology and not a religion, but it is also not without foundation. Many Muslims would […]

The Dodecad ancestry project might be of some interest. In particular if you have ancestry from a gold-chain wearing culture.

I have a long post reviewing Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth?: Demography and Politics in the Twenty-First Century. Good book. In the process of blogging on the topic I found something kind of funny, but it was too immature to be posted there. I yanked some charts from Gallup Coexist 2009. Basically it shows […]

This should be good. Perhaps even top the D-Yikes! espide: It Came From JerseyTags: SOUTHPARKRandy Marsh,Eric Cartman,more…

I noticed this entry on Time‘s Healthland blog, Study: City Life Spreads Disease, But If It Doesn’t Kill You…. The author ends kind of strangely: The authors of the study expressed excitement about the merging of scientific analysis and historical records, but this is also a potential limitation. Scientific and historical conclusions are different in […]

I have posted a Q & A with author Hugh Pope over at Discover. Other 10 Questions can be found here.

I’ve decided to add a “user generated content” component to this weblog. The links submitted by users will now be at the top left. If you read this weblog, you know the stuff that readers (you) might find of interest. The main issue is getting to where you can submit the links.  First, initially I’ve […]

Genes and culture: OXTR gene influences social behaviour differently in Americans and Koreans. Korean Americans are more like white Americans than Koreans in the pattern of the effect of the allele on behavior.

One of the main issues that we as human beings have is that we don’t have a gestalt understanding of social data, and its change over time. Among biologists one of the major recurring problems is the gloominess which is a consequence of the Malthusian mindset (which is understandable because of their professional bias) which […]

Just want to note that GNXP contributor bayes has transformed A Replicated Typo into a fascinating group weblog. Feed here.

A week ago I reviewed The Price of Altruism: George Price and the Search for the Origins of Kindness. As I noted in the review, many individuals who are of interest to the core readership of this weblog make significant appearances in The Price of Altruism, John Maynard Smith and W. D. Hamilton most prominently. […]

I believe it was Bryan Caplan who introduced me to the analogy of a child’s personality being like a rubber band; parents, in particular adoptive parents, can twist and pull a child in particular directions so long as the child is under their direction, but once the child leaves the home the rubber band “snaps […]

If you haven’t, checked out the new weblog Genomes Unzipped. Familiar names & faces. The first posts are already must-reads, Testing for traces of Neanderthal in your own genome, and Personal genomics: the importance of sequencing.

I think about Luke Jostin’s analysis of the growth in cranial capacity in the hominin lineage from last spring a fair amount. In particular, in the comments he notes: The data above includes all known Homo skulls, but none of the results change if you exclude the 24 Neandertals. In fact, you see the same […]

I know that the simplest explanation for the Fermi paradox is that we’re the first intelligent technological life form in the universe. But thinking about Paul Bloom’s thesis that a sense of “authenticity” is necessary for pleasure made me wonder a bit more about the possibility that once intelligent life forms get to the point […]

I’m reading Brotherhood of Kings: How International Relations Shaped the Ancient Near East. The book basically outlines the international state system in the ancient Near East which fostered diplomatic relationships between the monarchies of the period. It is noted that this state system and diplomatic culture did not make it through the chaos which marks […]

Two papers of interest. IQ in the Production Function: Evidence from Immigrant Earnings (ungated). And Human Intelligence and Polymorphisms in the DNA Methyltransferase Genes Involved in Epigenetic Marking. My impression is that the focus on epigenetics has a higher-order social motive; even the sort of humanists who are involved with N + 1 have asked […]

A few days ago on Twitter I wondered if economists had calculated the costs of the world having a diversity of languages, instead of one language. The logic is that unintelligibility naturally throws up barriers to communication, and the flow of ideas and labor. This is one reason why the European Union necessarily has less […]

So asks Anthony Goldbloom: A British bioinformatician asks what bioinformatics has ever done for us? Or put differently, what is the single greatest biological discovery made possible by bioinformatics? He is offering $USD100 to the person who puts forward the most compelling answer (the prize is small but the idea is to stoke discussion). Kaggle […]

Over at Discover Blogs I have a very long post up on Jews & Genetics. In particular the recent paper in AJHG. One observation I have to make about Jewish genetics: when it comes to PCA plots which illustrate the relationship of Jews, in particular Ashkenazi Jews, to other populations I’ve noticed that two different […]