Here's the note I sent to my congressman: Dear Congressman-- The FDA is about to implement a regulation which would require a person to go through a doctor to access information about one's own genome sequence. To allow the FDA to create such a rule would be a diminution of our liberties. I own my body, and any information about it, not the federal government. This is not just some obscure regulatory issue. People do care. We do not wish to be forced to go through a “professional” to get access to our genetic information. If you wish to have a staffer look into this, the issue is Direct To Consumer (DTC) genetic testing (Docket FDA-2011-N-0066). Thank you for your attention to this.

The population sizes in Ethnologue are generally pretty unreliable, and often outrageously outdated. I'd also be interested to see the details for your area calculations - some Ethnologue maps would allow that data to be determined, but many would not. The other obvious problem here is that the size of the phoneme inventory often varies significantly between dialects of the same language (not to mention between different analyses of it) - how do you handle that?

This result comes as a complete non-surprise; in many of the best-documented directly observable cases, like Germanic or Romance or Semitic or Egyptian, the structure of the languages has changed drastically within historic times, while their basic vocabulary has been quite well conserved. Structural variables tend to be binary or multiple-choice, and hence provide far weaker arguments for classification even when they are preserved. On top of this, they are often highly susceptible to calquing ("metatypy", if you prefer) from languages around them.

As far as linguistics is concerned, this mostly just reaffirms accepted ideas. Phylogenetic principles were imported into biology from linguistics in the first place, as you note; historical linguists since the 19th century have taken vertical transmission to be overwhelmingly dominant in the "core" vocabulary and morphology of a language, and have known that we can generally reconstruct trees despite the presence of borrowing. (What's relatively new, in fact, is the realization that there are a handful of unambiguously mixed "hybrid" languages, such as Michif or Copper Island Aleut, that simply don't fit a cladistic model.) More linguistically interesting are the studies cited in the first paper, on North Coast New Guinea and Africa, in support of the idea that cultural branching tends to correspond pretty well to linguistic branching. Such work goes some way towards justifying efforts to reconstruct Proto-Indo-European mythology, and more generally the use of Wörter und Sachen techniques, which have sometimes come in for severe criticism. But one wonders how applicable these principles are to parts of the world where empires and large religions have played a greater role.

Something for Miller's next book? He mentions this in The Mating Mind:Museum collections of art from primitive societies routinely label almost every item a fertility god, an ancestral figure, a fetish, or an altarpiece. Until recently, archeologists routinely labeled every Late Paleolithic statue of a naked women as either a "goddess" or a "fertility symbol". Usually, there is no evidence supporting such an interpretation. It would be equally plausible to call them "Paleolithic pornography". The importance of church-commissioned art in European art history may have led archeologists to attribute religious content to most prehistoric art. (page 263)

I am just a lowly undergrad but I am prescribed Adderall for diagnosed ADHD and Effexor for diagnosed depression. I don't like taking drugs so I have slowly stopped taking any of them although recently I've noticed certain problems which may result in me going back to taking those damned drugs.

Josh: The study is from 1968...

This article? Hughes, W.O.H.; Sumner, S.; van Borm, S.; Boomsma, J.J. Worker caste polymorphism has a genetic basis in Acromyrmex leaf-cutting ants Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 100, pp.9394-9397, (2003).

By the end of college I had started noticing that my best grades were in the spring and summer, I was more interactive with my professors, etc. The first fall of my sophomore year was hideous. I wasn't out partying, I just hadn't been motivated to leave my room. (And fall is my favorite season.) It was actually when I was out partying that I made great grades (4.0 summers taking 15 hours). I think I'm out of that seasonal pattern though. 
 
As for "ass-weather", I live in the DC area now and its summers are nothing compared to TX despite the constant whining up here the unbearable heat. I like TX, but not the summers.

A long time ago a racialist white liberal (No, it is not a contradiction of terms!) said the same thing in AR...that the welfare State didn't really work in multiracial states that the minorities were not true liberal, etc.

Read the following links:

http://www.amren.com/004issue/004issue.html#cover

http://www.amren.com/004issue/004issue.html#article1

Mr. Rienzi on Kevin Macdonald and John Derbyshire:

http://www.legioneuropa.org/Front/derbymx.htm

The "White history"book is a fraud!!

And a refutal about white history section on Portugal and Spain:

http://www.geocities.com/refuting_kemp

http://members.odinsrage.com/racofspain/MarchOfTheTitans.html

http://www.geocities.com/racial_myths/paulswain.html

what is wrong with a voluntary ethno-nation??

I am pro-abortion