Genetic Future has moved!
The day has come! Dr. Daniel MacArthur has finally gotten the stamp of approval from Tobias MacArthur, and Genetic Future is over at Wired, with all their other great science blogs. Since it can sometimes be a bit difficult to figure out where these di…
Around the Web – January 18th, 2011
Yes, The Singularity is the Biggest Threat to Humanity.
Imitation and Social Cognition in Humans and Chimpanzees (I): Imitation, Overimitation, and Conformity. Doesn’t fall into the trap of either/or, where chimpanzees are qualitatively different…
Open Thread – January 15th, 2011
Interesting review of the history of the term ‘group selection’. After taking a long break and coming back to it I’m almost done with War in Human Civilization.
Friday Fluff – January 14th, 2011
1) First, a post from the past: More complex than simple addition. 2) Weird search query of the week: “kiera knightly naked truth”. 3) Comment of the week, in response to The genetic affinities of Ethiopians: First of all, you should know that Behar’s Oromos were sampled in areas neighboring the Kenyan border, while Ethiopian […]
Around the Web – January 12th, 2011
Sex and Statistics or Heteroscedasticity is Hot. Heteroscedasticity just means differences in variances. So it turns out that two women who have the same expected attractiveness rating from different males can still exhibit a difference in variance of evaluations. So a woman who is average, and everyone perceives her as average, gets less attention than […]
Around the Web – January 10th, 2011
Denisovans did not have red hair. John Hawks pokes around the Denisovan genome. Interesting that he notes that the coverage of the Denisovans is very good in comparison to the Neandertals. I Won’t Hug This File — I Won’t Even Call It My Friend. A weird screed against the internet and free content, posted on […]
Open Thread – January 8th, 2011
What books are you planning on reading this year? I have The Last Lingua Franca: English Until the Return of Babel in the stack. Also, in case you’re curious: My Pinboard page: http://pinboard.in/u:gnxp My Pinboard RSS: http://feeds.pinboard.in/rss/u:gnxp/ The Pinboard app on my Evo means I’ve started archiving stuff from my phone too. I may start […]
Friday Fluff – January 7th, 2011
1. First, a post from the past: The ancient origins of African pygmies. 2. Weird search query of the week: “method man wife”. 3.Comment of the week, in response to The empires of American English: I live in the Galesburg, Illinois area and here there still is a noticible boundary, that runs just north of […]
Around the Web – January 3rd, 2010
I don’t do too many New Year’s Resolutions. My main goal this year which is of interest readers is increase total quantity of quality in terms of content. In other words, I want to keep volume up, but increase the quality of posting. If you haven’t contributed to the Open Thread this week, it’s about […]
Open Thread – January 1st, 2011
So what should I post about this year? I do get a fair number of ideas from reader comments & emails, so this thread might be useful.
2011, onward, ho!
I’m not big for introspection. So I’ll keep this plain & simple. Thanks to Amos Zeeberg & Gemma Shusterman for taking care of the technical details of this weblog so I don’t have to deal with it. This is not a trivial matter; I’ve dealt with the technical upkeep of other weblogs for many years, […]
Friday Fluff – December 31st, 2010
1. First, a post from the past: Golden ideas. 2. Weird search query of the week: “young girls gone mature”. 3.Comment of the week, in response to Slouching toward idiocracy: JWM and Dave Both hit on key concepts here. Its not just cats, cattle and humans, in fact the relative brain size of almost all […]
On to 2011….
Predictions, expectations, etc. More use of the term “polytypic”. Ötzi turns out to have Near Eastern affinities. The Hobbits finally have some genetic material successfully analyzed. Many, many, more human origins stories spun out of control by the press. Without a rock-hard interpretative framework like “Out of Africa” there is less “functional constraint.” Facebook peaks […]
Top 10 Gene Expression posts of the year
According to Google Analytics, they are: 10 – 1 in 200 men direct descendants of Genghis Khan. 9 – Most atheists are not white & other non-fairy tales. 8 – Which American racial group has the lowest fertility? 7 – No Romans needed to explain Chinese blondes. 6 – To classify humanity is not that […]
Around the Web – December 27th, 2010
Hope Christmas went well for everyone. No complaints about mine. Pinboard. Thanks for the Delicious replacement recommendations. I know that Delicious is going to be sold and not shutdown, but confidence is lost. Pinboard seems to work well, and you can import all your Delicious bookmarks. Additionally, there’s a serviceable Chrome extension so that I […]
Open Thread – December 25th, 2010
This is a scheduled post (As many of my posts are by the way. Shout out to the stupid readers who occasionally wonder why I’m not partying when a post goes live on Friday night!). Merry Christmas! I’m probably playing around with my HTC Evo 4G if you’re reading this on Saturday, or eating, etc. […]
Friday Fluff – December 24th, 2010
1. First, a post from the past: Lions, and tigers, and snow leopards! Oh, my!. 2. Weird search query of the week: “Lions, and tigers, and snow leopards! Oh, my!”. 3.Comment of the week, in response to Heritability and genes as causes: I knew some people thought I had over-reacted to the initial item/press release. […]
Around the Web – December 20th, 2010
Countdown to Christmas! Hope everyone has pleasant holidays. Apple v Google. Very long article highlighting the different strategies of the two companies. I do though think Google is starting to get a touch annoying trumpeting their “open ways.” They’re not a struggling start-up, they’re a massive corporation. More on “culturomics”. Also see the #ngrams hash-tag. […]
Open Thread – December 18th, 2010
I really enjoy Frederick Pohl’s The Way the Future Blogs. If Isaac Asimov had made it to the internet age I’m sure he would have blogged quite a bit.
Friday Fluff – December 17th, 2010
1. First, a post from the past:
Grooming => Language ~ Larger Social Groups.
2. Weird search query of the week: “scottish hair”.
3.Comment of the week, in response to