The “law school scam” media bubble
If you’re like me you have friends and acquaintances who want to go to law school. I often respond sarcastically that “a mind is a terrible thing to waste.” There have long been “law school scam” blogs, but it seems that r…
“Out of Africa” vs. “Multi-regionalism” revisited
A few months ago I exchanged some emails with Milford H. Wolpoff and Chris Stringer. These are the two figures who have loomed large in paleoanthropology and the origins of modernity human for a generation, and they were keen in making sure that their …
The loss of sacred belief?
Over at the Less Wrong blog there is a post, So You’ve Changed Your Mind. This portion caught my attention:
So you’ve changed your mind. Given up your sacred belief, the one that defined so much of who you are for so long.
You are probably…
The soft twilight of monarchies
Years ago I took a course on Tudor and Stuart England. Its primary focus was more on social and cultural aspects of British society at the time, rather than diplomatic history. Later I took an interest in the England of the Civil War era. One thing tha…
Open Thread – 4/30/2011
I haven’t had these for a while. Following a request from the new year I’ve been mulling how to write up Population Structure and Eigenanalysis in an intelligible manner to the general readership. Still kind of at an impasse. On a logistica…
Make your voice heard on genetic testing
Over the past few days some friends have started receiving their results from 23andMe’s last sale (others have put me on notice to inform them of the next discount window). This brings me to thinking about direct-to-consumer genetic testing, and …
The royal wedding and outbreeding
In the wake of the post from earlier this week on the inbreeding within the House of Windsor (and current lack thereof), Luke Jostins, a subject of the British monarch, has a nice informative post up, Inbreeding, Genetic Disease and the Royal Wedding. …
Friday Fluff – April 29th, 2011
1) First, a post from the past: Taste & behavior genetics.
2) Weird search query of the week (#5 keyword!): “china provinces”
3) Comment of the week, in response to “What is best in life?”:
You do know that Red Sonja is …
Love and arranged marriage
In the wake of yesterday’s review of a paper on heritable variance in trait preferences realized in romantic partners I couldn’t help but be intrigued by this new study out of PLoS ONE, Evolutionary History of Hunter-Gatherer Marriage Pract…
The three poles of South Asian genetic variation
Zack Ajmal has posted his K = 11 Reference 3 results including Harappa Ancestry Project participants. Below are the results sorted by the East Asian, South Asian, and Onge. I limited it to those who had 5% or more East Asian. All caps = reference popul…
A loss of literacy
The Case for Cursive:
For centuries, cursive handwriting has been an art. To a growing number of young people, it is a mystery.
The sinuous letters of the cursive alphabet, swirled on countless love letters, credit card slips and banners above elementa…
A loss of literacy
The Case for Cursive:
For centuries, cursive handwriting has been an art. To a growing number of young people, it is a mystery.
The sinuous letters of the cursive alphabet, swirled on countless love letters, credit card slips and banners above elementa…
Sheril Kirshenbaum’s lateral meme transfer
My friend Sheril Kirshenbaum at The Intersection is going solo and joining the crew at Wired Science Blogs. Since I have other friends there the RSS addition will be natural. They better take care of her there. I know from first hand experience that th…
Love is not a hardwired battlefield
Judging by some of the amusing search queries I find every Friday people have a wide range of tastes and fetishes when it comes to pornography. From what I can tell the realized phenotypic interval in mate choice is less varied and eye-opening, but exi…
Neandertal hybridization & Haldane’s rule
Mr. James Winters at A Replicated Typo pointed me to a short hypothesis paper, Neanderthal-human Hybrids. This paper argues that selective mating of Neandertal males with females of human populations which had left Africa more recently, combined with
The continuing tangling of the human tree
Last summer I made a thoughtless and silly error in relation to a model of human population history when asked by a reader the question: “which population is most distantly related to Africans?” I contended that all non-African populations…
1 billion year old freshwater life
There was a reference to complex pre-Cambrian life in a book I’m reading, Kraken, and it made me double-check Wikipedia’s Cambrian explosion entry. Lacking total clarity, I decided to read a new paper which was published in Nature, Earth
Cave of Forgotten Dreams
Horses from Chauvet Cave
I’m not particularly a fan of Werner Herzog films, but I think I might check out his new documentary on Upper Paleolithic art, Cave of Forgotten Dreams. Chauvet Cave in France is the subject of the film, which is in 3-D….
Changing your null on charities
My friend Holden Karnofsky has a review of the Greg Mortenson affair over at the The GiveWell Blog:
There has been a lot of coverage of the scandals around the Central Asia Institute. The founder has been accused of fabricating inspiring stories, as w…