I found this video to a Arabic-speaking, “Jerry Springer” like show on the question of Jinn possession and faith healing. In the past, Razib has noted the rise in Indian society of skeptics of the “God men” who go to events arranged by them and demonstrate exactly how they performed their “miracles; he has also […]

Tunku Varadarajan, of the WSJ, has a humorous column in today’s WSJ online (free registration maybe required) in which he speculates on why five of the seven last spelling bee champions have been of Indian origin. Many of the possibilities he presents are ideas, which have been put forward here at this blog, including culture: […]

My friend Perry, over at his blog*, has a post up describing why conservatives should regard the recent Supreme Court decision allowing Federal law to overrule state laws on medical marijuana not as a victory (as it keeps pot out of peoples’ hands) but as a terrible defeat. The crux of his argument, which right-bloggers […]

Human Events Online has published a report of what works conservative scholars consider the most damaging. They asked each of the 15 judges to vote for ten books and score each of their votes on an inverse score scale (i.e. #1 on each person’s list received a score of 10, #2 a 9, #10 a […]

Ronald Bailey, of Reason Magazine, reports on a 3-day conference with prominent neuroscientists and theologians called ”Our Minds and Us”. Concerned subjects are: Mind-brain duality, bioethics involved in understanding which structures of the brain are involved in things like violence and depression, and existential questions of “What is the self”. Check it out. Posted by […]

Posted by scottm at 12:25 PM

What makes a Firefly’s tail glow? (I’m pretty sure Razib knows the answer, so I’ll ask him to sit this one out) UPDATE OK That one was easy and AG got it in the comments, so I’ll ask a second question: why is complete COX-2 inhibition not a good thing? (COX-2 is the protein implicated […]

This week, Jacqueline over at her blog is going to be discussing all the political issues that polite society avoids; abortion, God, discrimination, biological basis of race. Go and get into the fray. Posted by scottm at 12:41 PM

(All information in this blog post was found in an Advertisement in the Febuary 13, 2005 edition of the Imblerian, so nothing improper is being posted on this blog) A Lecture by Dr. Jeanne Chasseguet Quote from advertisement A rebellion against the biological order seems to have silently infiltrated our world view. Suicide bombers appear […]

I know it sounds like something only a kid would be interested in, but Caltech has a website up that very seriously looks into the Science of Snowflakes. It goes fairly in depth about how they form and why they form such different forms. A fun site that allowed me to draw on my crystallograhy […]

Stephen Green over at Vodkapundit has been delving into an old passion of his, maps and the true boundries of nation-states. It’s interesting that he is basing his mapmaking on the unconventional ideas of migration and “effective” governments. Here is his North American map Posted by scottm at 10:43 PM

I sure many of you have seen the study reported in the Washington Post on AA beliefs concerning HIV. Here’s the breakdown of data: These beliefs are explained in the article as being based on “This is not a bunch of crazy people running around saying they’re out to get us,” Akbar said. The belief […]

(Cross-posted at my site, Organic republican) Report on a South Asian, muslim, Norwegian born pop singer named Deeyah, whose slightly risgue style has angered enough muslims in Norway that she has fled to England for her own safety. Reading several reports on the subject of this singer and her plight, as well as watching some […]

Reuters reports that South Africa’s high crime rate has prompted the inventive class to produce some very interesting security-related technology. Some of these are impractical (like the flame thrower-equipped car) or just variations on an extant theme (computers that notify the owner and “squawk’ with a car-alarm like alert when stolen), but at least one […]

Reuters reports that the high crime in South Africa combined with an inventive class has produced some revolutionary security-based technology. Some of these are impractical (like the flame throwing car) or just variation on a theme (computers that notify the owner and “squawk’ with a car-alarm like alert when stolen), but one could be very […]

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 […]

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 […]

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, […]

We now all now about Steve Sailer’s story in the American conservative comparing State’s White Fertility rates and the likelyhood of that state going for Bush in the last election. As a followup to this story, Dave Kopel guest-blogging at Glennreynolds.com points out Kos, of the Arch-leftist blog DailyKos, trying to spin this as the […]

Reports about President Kweisi Mfume will be stepping down from his position, and that the organization will be looking for a new for a new candidate. Callers at C-SPAN have offered their views; Jesse Jackson, Barak Obama, Julianne Malveau, Colin Powell etc. Save for the last one I think each of them would be horrible, […]