Eden in the East is a weird book. Written in the late 1990s before modern-day genomics, its central thesis about the origin of Southeast Asian people in Pleistocene Sundaland seems likely to be wrong (at least most of their ancestry). But the author, a polymath medical doctor, marshals an enormous amount of archaeological and textual data supporting old ideas of cultural diffusionism, much of it plausible.
Despite my skepticism of the general theses promoted, reading Eden in the East is useful insofar as you need data and interpretive sieve for the swell of ancient DNA.
The University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point is eliminating many majors and adding new ones. This is eliciting a lot of outrage on Twitter.
Public universities are funded by the public. If they aren’t fulfilling the public role then things will have to change. Unlike many people, I don’t shed too many tears about the elimination of some of these majors because most graduates of them are stupid and uninformed (some of them actually have a less accurate view of the world coming out than before they arrived at university).
Here’s the breakdown:
| Expanding programs | Change into majors | Discontinuing the programs |
| Chemical Engineering | Aquaculture/Aquaponics | American Studies |
| Computer Information Systems | Captive Wildlife | Art – Graphic Design will continue as a distinct major |
| Conservation Law Enforcement | Ecosystem Design and Remediation | English – English for teacher certification will continue |
| Finance | Environmental Engineering | French |
| Fire Science | Geographic Information Science | Geography |
| Graphic Design | Master of Business Administration | Geoscience |
| Management | Master of Natural Resources | German |
| Marketing | Doctor of Physical Therapy | History – Social Science for teacher certification will continue |
| Music Literature | ||
| Philosophy | ||
| Political Science | ||
| Sociology — Social Work major will continue | ||
| Spanish | ||
Let’s set aside the fact that some of these programs, such as sociology and American Studies, are often de facto political action outfits. As someone who has talked to people who have history degrees from universities of various prestige and stringency, institutions of higher learning are doing a really shitty job inculcating knowledge into these kids. Or love of the topic. Also, their critical faculties aren’t the best. Too much critical theory, not enough critical thinking. Recitation doesn’t cut it.
Aquaculture and aquaponics is a vocational program of study which isn’t sexy, but at least it aims to impart skills. That’s what a lot of these kids need.
So my buddies at DNA Geeks unveiled a new t-shirt, Pipe(tte) Dream.
I kind of thought it was funny, but it turns out there’s some demand for stuff like this. Is bench biology still a thing? I guess so…. Anyway, if you are interested, click on through!
Evolutionary inferences about quantitative traits are affected by underlying genealogical discordance. This is an important preprint. Read it.
The Silicon Valley elite’s latest status symbol: Chickens. Some of the people caught up in this are quite self-aware: Citroen’s 19-year-old son, Luca, who grew up around the family business, puts it this way: “Being able to say you have chickens says, ‘I have a back yard,’ and having a back yard says, ‘I have space.’ And having space means you have money, especially when it comes to Silicon Valley real estate.” Chickens are a “hard to fake” signal of wealth. Yeah (the Romans had sacred chickens).
My main hope is that some of these rich Silicon Valley hobby-farmers pick up a copy of Introduction to Quantitative Genetics. It would do them some good (and perhaps the world?).
Do any readers have a review copy of She Has Her Mother’s Laugh: The Powers, Perversions, and Potential of Heredity? It’s Carl Zimmer’s new book and the publisher is out of galleys.
Speaking of reviews, I’ll be writing one up for Who We Are and How We Got Here: Ancient DNA and the New Science of the Human Past for a publication most of you have heard of. Have to put the “writer hat” back on for a bit. Between my job, my intellectual interests, and family, I haven’t put much effort into that.
You probably know that Antifa went after Christina Sommers:
Diversity Dean at Lewis & Clark was present.She approached podium in middle of my talk & asked me to wrap up my speech & take questions. I was never able to develop my argument.Shouldn’t the dean have insisted protesters allow me to finish, rather than cut speech short? https://t.co/1d43iDeo7P
— Christina Sommers (@CHSommers) March 5, 2018
To be honest these forays by centrists (Sommers is a registered Democrat with libertarian leanings, similar to Steven Pinker) into the academy are starting to remind me of those ridiculous “debates” that Jews had to have with professional anti-Jews (mostly apostates) in the courts of medieval European monarchs. There were the outward forms of debate, but everyone knew what it was about (since Sommers and Pinker are from Jewish backgrounds perhaps that’s apposite).
Similarly, when the campus Left is against some speaker many people roll their eyes, and the administration makes the usual noises, but you know that the protestors are going to get a slap on the hands no matter how obnoxious or aggressive they are. For most academics, for various reasons, there are no enemies on the Left. Communists and Communist sympathizers like Angela Davis can be fulsomely praised with no worries about reputation, but those academics who think Sommers or Pinker are making reasonable points have to furtively communicate on secret direct message groups.
That’s where we are.
I now understand why Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities has been assigned to so many undergraduates: it’s a short and simple book. It’s depressing but unsurprising that it could be so influential. More on that later.
The criticisms that Enlightenment Now doesn’t really delve into the intellectual archaeology of the Enlightenment are spot on. But this seems a case where the title is a bit off, but the text itself is solid. I have seen on Twitter quotes about how Pinker has apologia for the Tuskegee experiment. My prior at this point about these sorts of invidious accusations is that they’re lies. For a variety of reasons, people lie about Steven Pinker. That’s sad, but we live in a world where liars prosper, so it shouldn’t be surprising.
My podcast with Spencer, The Insight, has been pretty successful so far. I just submitted it to a bunch of podcast directories this weekend to cover bases. Our goal is to get highlighted by iTunes, so if you haven’t, subscribe and leave a good review! (also, there are only three reviews on Stitcher so far)
We interviewed Chris Stringer a few weeks ago. This week we’re trying to get Milford Wolpoff recorded (to be posted next week). We have some ideas about guests we might have on. Currently, we want to mix personal genomics/biotech, genetics, and paleoanthropology. I think I want to mix in some straight history at some point, since so much ancient DNA is starting to percolate into that field.
Retweets Are Trash. Basically, the argument is that if you get rid of RTs some of the toxic effects of Twitter are dampened. Skeptical, but hopeful.
How Twitter Lost The Internet War. The most important part is the assertion that Twitter has a lot of tech-debt that it hasn’t retired or discharged, and that’s why it hasn’t been able to solve its troll problem in a non-manual manner. I have a hard time crediting this. But perhaps that’s how it is?
Turkey Is Turning Into the Next Pakistan. Being totally honest, it’s hard for me to believe that the media hasn’t been underplaying this story. Back when ISIS was a thing, Turkey was turning a blind eye to thousands of foreign fighters that were streaming into Syria. Even if Turkey isn’t pro-Islamist (and it kind of is), they are clearly backing Sunni Islamists who will impose a nasty majoritarianism if they ever win. Not that the anarcho-communist Kurds we’re backing would be any better in the long run.
Ultimately in Syria, I can’t begrudge ethnoreligious minorities for siding with the Assad regime against the rebels. And, I can’t begrudge the Sunni population their reliance on militants who are more fierce and principled in defending them and their interests against the government. But we’ve been through Iraq twice. Our Saudi ally has birthed monsters over the past generation. We turned a blind eye when our ally of convenience in the 1980s, Iraq, engaged in gas attacks against Iran and the Kurds.
We need to learn, and just stop. Stop!
On the lookout for Kindle deals in books. Here’s what I got recently:
* The Rise and Fall of Communism.
* Carthage Must Be Destroyed: The Rise and Fall of an Ancient Civilization
* The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914.
I have a lot of books on Communism that I need to read!
Interesting paper, Understanding the factors that shape patterns of nucleotide diversity in the house mouse genome.
The 500 errors on this site are due to a plugin and some of the issues with porting this blog over a few months ago. I need to allocate a day to figure this out, but I’ll do it. The same issues with the South Asian Genotype Project. I will update it. But I need to have four or five uninterrupted hours, and that’s just hard to come by.
SXSW should be interesting this week. As per usual I’ll avoid most of the festivities.
