As you can see, I got the DonorsChoose widget to work. Here’s the Discover Blogs leader board. Sean Carroll et al. are “beating” me by an order of magnitude right now. Not that that’s the point….
It’s a Jersey Thing. New South Park episode. I noticed a bunch of references to The Lord of The Rings which don’t seem to have made it into the Wikipedia summary of the episode. The depiction of “Snooki” was very funny.
How Worrysome is Habitat Loss? In relation to bidoversity I’ve argued that biologists sometimes confuse their normative with their scientific concerns, and this muddles the message. Environmental activists don’t have this problem because they’re plainly engaging in activism.
The Cost Of Standing Idly By. The story of a gay Orthodox Jew. Human cognition is complex. Trembling Before G-d is an interesting documentary on this topic you can find on Netflix. The issues here to me seem to be similar to those of liberal Roman Catholics who “rationally” should just become Episcopalians, but who emotionally can not let go of their affinity with the Universal Church. I don’t get it personally obviously, but it’s important to understand these sorts of dynamics, because this tribalism lay are the root of much social phenomena. Though honestly I do kind of get irritated by gay religionists who seem to exhibit all the exclusive and intolerant ticks toward outgroups which non-gay religionists do, excepting their broad-mindedness on the gay issue (the lesbian couple in Trembling Before G-d had a hint of this). But we’re human.
Walk To Cut Memory Decline In Half. I don’t know of the efficacy of walking to prevent memory decline. A lot of “health” research is junk in a deep causal sense. On the other hand there are some broad heuristics you can utilize and trust, and it seems walking more than the average American does is one of those.
Spatial dispersal, parallel adaptation, and the “Stooge effect.” John Hawks discusses in depth the paper I pointed to yesterday, Parallel Adaptation: One or Many Waves of Advance of an Advantageous Allele?