A primitive Y chromosome in papaya marks incipient sex chromosome evolution. Basically, the findings confirm what was hypothesized, that sex chromosomes are just modifcations of autosomal chromosomes. The Lord God did not just utter, “let their be sex,” once….
Posted by razib at 03:51 PM
It is a commentary on our culture that studies like this are worth being published.
Posted by razib at 03:21 PM
There’s been a lot of talk by people that Japan is a zero immigration state, and that it’s dealing well with its demographic decline. I would like to point out that Japan has been importing workers for quite some time now. They are Japanese Brazilians (yes, only 300,000, nothing compared to the United States)! One of the most successful groups in Brazil’s “racial democracy,” the Japanese who return to the “mother country” serve as the unskilled labor, unseen, unthanked, by the majority Japanese. Of course, the Axiom of White Perfidy has so far allowed the Japanese to engage in this explicit targeting of an ethnically similar labor force from a hemisphere away, despite the huge pool of unskilled labor on the Asian continent. Of course, Japanese men do sometimes get pliable brides from the continent, called “Asian Brides.”
Posted by razib at 06:06 PM
Apparently there is a new report out that suggests the Dutch are polarized. The fact that they’ve allowed immigrant children to be taught in their “native” languages in primary school hasn’t helped.
But here’s a question: the Dutch have a long history of pluralistic toleration. We know about the Jews, but there were also Huguenots, Puritans and a large native Roman Catholic minority. Something has changed. Is it the type of migrant, or is it the attitude of Dutch society? I think it is a little of both.
Here is an old report from The American Prospect-do you see any solution being offered here aside from broadsides against “hate” and platitudes? I complained to then web editor Chris Mooney about this report, and he forwarded my bitchy email to the writers, but I never heard anything back.
Posted by razib at 04:54 PM
A few summers ago GNXP had a friendly exchange with the Brit-libertarians over @ Samizdata. Perry de Havilland expressed the opinion that race relations are better in the UK than in the United States. Perry, being a hard-core libertarian, is not of the “but it’s better in Europe” school, so I paid attention to him. It seems many Brits and Anglo-philes have this idea (my Queen’s-English babbling roommate from Singapore would express the same opinion).
Well, what to make of this:
Four out of 10 whites do not want black neighbour, poll shows. This in a nation that is ~5% non-white (“black” includes South Asians in the UK)!
The story makes the point that the racialist feelings are concentrated among the older generations and the working class. Nontheless, the United States is a nation where 1/4 of the population is what Canadians would call “visible minorities,” and I suspect that there is less segregationist feeling (explicitly at least-thanks to PC) than over the on the other side of the pond.
Posted by razib at 06:36 PM
Sorry for the site outage-mix up with the billing from my webhost, they forgot to update my credit card expiration and I didn’t know I wasn’t being charged.
-Razib
Posted by razib at 02:38 PM
Article on the Jews of Uganda. There are Jews in strange places, for instance, in the northeast Indian state of Mizoram.
On a Uganda related note, I read a bit of Irshad Manji’s book The Trouble With Islam (here is her official website). I found her explicit and unapologetic anti-anti-Semitism refreshing. On the other hand, she starts off by talking about her family’s origins in Uganda as part of the Indian (Gujarati) community, but presents it in a way that will confuse those out of the know. She says that Idi Amin expelled all the Muslims from Uganda, not notifying the reader that many of the Indians in Uganda were Hindu, and that Idi Amin was a Muslim, so the expulsion was not religous, but ethnic. Not a big deal, but if you go into controversial waters, you better dot your i’s.
Also, Abiola blogs about the same topic, and states the obvious, if Jews worry about demographic collapse as a confession, why not accept ethusiastic converts? Well, because like the Parsis, modern Jews are to some extent a people, a nation, and ties of blood are a factor in this.
Update: You can listen to Manji being interviewed here. She speaks a lot of good sense, but I’m skeptical that Muslims in the West are going to listen to a lesbian.
Posted by razib at 03:06 PM
Listed below are some non-fiction books that have made an impact on me in the past 15 years. There is a non-trivial overlap with the list compiled by godless for GNXP readers, so I left off Blank Slate & Genome, etc.
If anything, there are good indicators of “where I’m coming from,” so to speak-though I’m sure there are plenty of great books I’ve left off, the fact that these come to mind in a short time says something about either the books or me.
History
A History of Byzantine State and Society
Life Science
Principles of Population Genetics
Math
Politics
Physical Science
Political Philosophy
Social Science
Philosophy
Programming
Religion
Biography
Posted by razib at 09:10 PM
Individuals preferred smaller eyes, thinner cheeks and larger chins in bad times, and women with larger eyes, fuller cheeks and smaller chins in good times, the study found.
Posted by razib at 08:12 PM