Guy Gavriel Kay’s Children of Earth and Sky is set in the same world as the Sarantine Mosaic duology, and the Lions of Al-Rassan, The Last Light of the Sun, and A Song for Arbonne. I’ve enjoyed Kay’s work for more than half my life at this point, so no surprise that I enjoy Children of Earth and Sky. As I’ve noted before, Kay is arguably the world’s greatest historical fantasist, and for someone like me it’s always pleasurable to make connections between our own real history, and his secondary creation. This sort of fantasy is more magical, than characterized by magic.
I know I have readers in India because of IP addresses. Keep an eye out for my byline in India Today, where I’ll make some contributions now and then. The first should drop this Friday in print and online, a short review of Shadi Hamid’s Islamic Exceptionalism. An Indian friend told me that India is one nation where the sales of print are actually increasing, so I’m curious how this will go.
On Twitter most of my blocks come because I’m being tweeted at directly by someone. If I don’t follow you on Twitter in most cases I don’t want to be bothered. The main reason I block isn’t because I’m a coward or I feel unsafe. It’s because the person is probably stupid, and starting to annoy me. Sometimes, it’s because they want me to make a point that they want to make. Needless to say, I don’t take kindly to that. Between all my various adult responsibilities that I have now at this age, I don’t really feel guilty at all muting stupid people (who invariably think they’re genius, because you know, they’re stupid).
So you’ve convinced me that functional programming is the way to go.
Since my genotype is public somehow it got used in an rnsnps tutorial. Pretty funny.
Also, Running Structure-like Population Genetic Analyses with R. Looks like there are some interesting visualizations of admixture components which are feasible with the new program.
People keep emailing me about the HGDP plink data set. I think I removed where it initially was, and it’s linked to my old Admixture tutorials. Well, download this zip, and look at the .fam file. It has clear population labels, so you should be able to do what you want in Plink.
Should We Be Having Kids In The Age Of Climate Change? The arguments really go all the way back to the ZPG movement. Actually, they’ve popped up in philosophical movements from the beginning of time. The world is a “vale of tears”, etc. Myself, I have no guilt about having children. My children are attractive, and seem rather intelligent so far. Would that more children like mine exist in the world!
Stop Tweeting Your #Firstsevenjobs: It’s just a way to disguise your privilege. FUCK YOU. The author of the piece has a degree in French language and literature from Columbia university according to her Linkedin. She gets to write for a living for Slate about food, and was editorial assistant for Mark Bittman. What. The. Fuck. She gets paid to write about food! She was Mark Bittman’s assistant. I guess it takes one to know one. Not that the author tries to mask her privilege: “But this list doesn’t tell you that I went to an Ivy League school and graduated without debt, since my parents were able and willing to pay for my tuition.”
I hate it when people say that gender is a continuum, because that tacitly brings to mind a uniform distribution. It’s not. It’s highly bimodal.
Lou Pearlman is dead. The weirdest thing about his career is that several stories have implied he became a boy-band impresario because he was a closeted gay man, and that was a way for him to have access to young vulnerable teenagers. The fact that he became very prominent in the late 1990s boy-band boom was almost a coincidence.
Sarah Haider has been accused of being a white supremacist.
Let Caster Run! We Should Celebrate Semenya’s Extraordinary Talent. As they would say, “I don’t even.”
The company I work for has a 20% discount on kits right now. So if you want your dog to get genotyped on 200,000 markers, and get ancestry and health, it’s a good time as any.
What are you reading?
The Amazing Atheist youtube channel has some pretty funny videos. E.g.,
Comments are closed.