The act of asking shows your neighbour that you don't want your laptop taken: otherwise, they might think the theif was a freind.

I do not think the idea of our scientists eventually being able to design life through the manipulation of DNA, is unreasonable. I have a strong faith in the abilities of science in the not so distant future, to do things which at the moment may seem incredible.Scientists 50 years ago would be amazed at the science of today.

No I have not misunderstood evolution theory. Simply occurs to me that now our scientists are close to artificially creating life, that perhaps in the future they will gradually create more and more complex organisms.In other words and artifical evolution of design as opposed to a natural evolution of design

Is it possible that the progression of design, evidenced by the theory of evolution,is in fact evidence of progression of design by advanced science?

BL, you're absolutely right. Also, see the Snyderman & Rothman book 'The IQ Controversy' on how the media has generally distorted or avoided these topics misleading the public. 
 
In terms of the LA Times article here's a very negative piece by PZ Myers. He seems to protest a little too much? 
 
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/04/crank_science_is_as_crank_scie.php

Interesting article in the NY Times about 'the end of philosophy'. It covers similar research to that Steven Pinker's 'moral instinct' article a year or so ago. 
 
"Moral judgments are like that. They are rapid intuitive decisions and involve the emotion-processing parts of the brain. Most of us make snap moral judgments about what feels fair or not, or what feels good or not. We start doing this when we are babies, before we have language. And even as adults, we often can?t explain to ourselves why something feels wrong. 
 
In other words, reasoning comes later and is often guided by the emotions that preceded it. Or as Jonathan Haidt of the University of Virginia memorably wrote, ?The emotions are, in fact, in charge of the temple of morality, and ... moral reasoning is really just a servant masquerading as a high priest.? 
.... 
The rise and now dominance of this emotional approach to morality is an epochal change. It challenges all sorts of traditions. It challenges the bookish way philosophy is conceived by most people. It challenges the Talmudic tradition, with its hyper-rational scrutiny of texts. It challenges the new atheists, who see themselves involved in a war of reason against faith and who have an unwarranted faith in the power of pure reason and in the purity of their own reasoning." 
 
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/07/opinion/07Brooks.html?_r=2

Give me a couple of years, my wife & I will be starting a family soonish (we're both 30).

Yeah, a good review in Seed magazine also: 
 
"Even with its flaws, Cochran and Harpending?s book has provided the best example to date of what E.O. Wilson would recognize as consilient history: not history done just with science in mind or even done scientifically, but history done with human biology treated as an essential cause and effect of the stories that history tells, and as a key without which history cannot make sense.? 
 
http://seedmagazine.com/news/2009/02/be_fruitful_and_multiply.php

Off topic, but here is a review of 'The 10,000 Year Explosion' in New Scientist.  
 
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20126952.400-review-the-10000-year-explosion-by-gregory-cochran-and-henry-harpending.html

Gottfredson, L. S. (2005). Suppressing intelligence research: Hurting those we intend to help. In R. H. Wright & N. A. Cummings (Eds.), Destructive trends in mental health: The well-intentioned path to harm (pp. 155-186). New York: Taylor and Francis.  
 
http://www.udel.edu/educ/gottfredson/reprints/2005suppressingintelligence.pdf

As someone on Half Sigma pointed out, attributing group differences purely to unfairness leads to problems in education: 
 
"Perhaps it is so obvious that no one here needs to read it, but for the benefit of any newbies who wander in: 
 
We know empirically as well as theoretically that tracking (grouping students by ability; aka "streaming") produces the best educational results for kids at every ability level.* 
 
However, unless the school population is racially homogeneous, tracking will reveal racial disparities in ability. That is, you will end up with many NAM's in slow-track classrooms and few in fast-track classrooms. 
 
As soon as the race-grievance industry observes that ratio, no matter how color-blind the scheme for measuring student ability (and regardless of actual educational results however measured), they will accuse school authorities and teachers of conscious racism. They will sue. Pusillanimous judges will rule against the school staff, pinning an (undeserved) "racist" label on them and destroying their careers. 
 
School staff are not willing to sacrifice their own careers so that all kids may enjoy the most appropriate educations. Indeed, since "good test scores" and so-forth are not considered a valid defense to charges of racism, not even NCLB-type pressure can persuade school authorities to use tracking. Sure, tracking would improve the performance of all students-- but since it is legally** "racist" it is off the table. 
 
*Honestly, this is so. In "mixed ability" classrooms the smart kids are bored and troublesome, the dull kids are confused and troublesome, and the kids in the middle are distracted by the antics of the other two groups. Few teachers are willing to work twice or three times as hard giving different lessons and assignments (and tests) to kids of different ability levels, so they pitch to the middle-- the smart and dull kids both miss the opportunity to learn at their most appropriate paces, so the smart kids get shortchanged and the dull kids get left behind."

Isn't one of the dangers of the 'blank slate' view of human nature that any disparities must be due to unfair institutions or inequality? This can lead to resentment & persecution of successful groups.  
 
Having a more realistic view of human nature may reduce the risk of this?

Interesting interview. Is the book available in bookstores in the US yet? In NZ I had to ask a bookshop to order it (hopefully they'll order some more in later - I'm sure it would sell well).

B*st*rds rick rolled me! ;-)

Seems strange considering that 500 to 900 AD was a fairly cold period and adversely affected agriculture and pastures.

2) Scientific discourse that defends and gives special attention to an arbitrary categorization based on historical political/social realities. 
 
A quick note on that #2... if scientists are researching the nature and history of those political/social realities themselves, then I do support science giving the conventional ways of thinking about race "special attention."

We will not cease scientifically useful investigation merely because it is sociopolitically inconvenient. 
 
This is a straw man. I never said any type of research should cease. 
 
Do you hold similar objections to the arbitrary, fuzzy definitions that are associated with the concepts of family and color? 
 
You said this in response to what I said earlier: "My objection is not that they don't cluster, but rather, that they are arbitrary, and in the end based on history and appearance more than science." 
 
Before I respond to your comment, let me note that what I'm criticizing in that above sentence are attempts at trying to reify any sort of division of the human species on a global level. So let me be clear that as far as the conventional/American model, not only do I think its arbitrary, I also think it doesn't cluster. 
 
With that noted, let me state why I think arbitrariness is a problem for any attempt to divide humanity into categories at a global level. It's a problem because the arbitrary categories that are defended tend to be the ones that most resemble the conventional model of race. To me (and many others), this makes it look like people are trying to "slice the pie" of human variation in the way that most resembles their prejudices. The "arbitrary" category that's defended usually ends up being the one that's most in line with the history/culture of the time. So, to answer your comparison about the grouping of colors-- if a certain way of group colors completely dominated everyday discussion of color variation for purely historical/cultural reasons, then yes, I would oppose that categorization. 
 
Asher: 
 
I really only am interested if you address my specific example instead of fixating on an essentialist definition of "race, a term which I really don't use. 
 
I ignored your example earlier because it argued against something I wasn't claiming. But I suppose I should've made that clear... Your example assumed, like Caledonian just did, that I'm against the research of differences between populations. This is not the case. What I'm against here are two things: 
 
1) The claim that human "races" exist. This is not the case, by the phylogeographic definition of race/subspecies (the one most often employed). 
 
2) Scientific discourse that defends and gives special attention to an arbitrary categorization based on historical political/social realities.

asher, 
 
1) I made a typo in one of my comments and corrected it in the next one by saying "*subspecies.") So don't think I meant to say "Race = species". Rather, "race = subspecies". 
 
2) You point out that the categories of "race" used on the street overlap a great deal with gene clustering. This is correct. 
 
My objection is not that they don't cluster, but rather, that they are arbitrary, and in the end based on history and appearance more than science. 
 
Let me explain. The system of race used to classify people could just as well be more broad or more specific. We could make it more broad by thinking of all sub-Saharan Africans as a race, and all non-sub-Saharan Africans as the other race. We could make it more specific by identifying Somalians and Ethipoians based on their "white" skull shapes, and group other sub-Saharan Africans differently based on theirs, but we don't do that either. 
 
Both of the above possible systems of "race" are not adopted. Why? Because, the system of "race" employed in the street has its roots in New World conflicts between the indigenous peoples, slaves brought from Africa, and Europeans from West Europe. 
 
To say that it overlaps with genetic clusters to a certain degree is not to make much of a point. Thousands of other categorization schemes could fulfill this criteria. In the end, defenders of "race" are being more politically correct than it's opponents-- they're reifying an arbitrary scheme created by history and appearance rather than science.

*subspecies

Race = subspecies, therefore they aren't "racial groups" in the first place if they're not species.

Irrelevant. The lack of separation is a recent development. 
 
How is it irrelevant because it's recent? The phylogeographic definition requires that "members of a subspecies would share a unique, geographic locale." Notice how it's not in past tense.

My earlier comments might have come off as more aggressive than I was intending. It seemed to me like this article was defending the American racial schema, which was my main point of disagreement. 
 
It seems to me like you're saying the American conception of race works pretty well in America... I think we agree on that. But to me the important issue is that this view of race should be discouraged, because on a global scale it fails on numerous levels... 
 
Also, from a biological standpoint, the actual geographic seperation between these "clusters" in America doesn't exist in a notable way, so, by the phylogeographic definition, they're not biological races, are they?

is that not what I wrote in this post? 
 
it is what you said in the post, but since your post was about the "consensus on race", and the section was called "Clusters and race", i took it that you were using the situation in America to argue for the existence of races. afterall, it doesn't make much sense to say that races exist here but not there. 
 
i might have assumed wrong, in which case i apologize. if indeed i did assume wrong though, then im wondering why your article doesn't explicitly make the case against reifying the continental model of race frequently espoused on this blog.