razib
Posts by this author
August 29, 2006
Look at this bitch. No, seriously, check it out, he has this long ass post on fossils and paleoanthropology. How the hell am I supposed blog about human evolution with some pride & self-respect if John Hawks has to cover every damn angle!!!. I know a little about fossils, words like…
August 29, 2006
Real Clear Politics has a column titled The Secular Right which reflects upon the Mac Donald vs. God affair. Interestingly, the author linked to my post where I followed the debate in The Corner. A few months ago my summary of John Derbyshire's summary of Judith Rich Harris' work was linked from…
August 29, 2006
Check out the tour (taxonomy?) of the ScienceBlogs over at 3.14. There are promises of summaries of each SB (I assume I'll be the handsome ScienceBlogger!).
August 28, 2006
As a child it seemed that everyone preferred Lion Voltron to Car Voltron. I was a contrarian and asserted that I preferred Car Voltron, and yet in my heart of hearts I knew Lion Voltron was the true bomb. Is there an evolutionary psychological reason why Lion Voltron would be more popular than…
August 28, 2006
Last week I pointed you to 10 questions for Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza, and hinted that there is another 10 Qs for another student of R.A. Fisher. Well, that time has come, today David B. posted his 10 questions for A.W.F. Edwards. I want to follow up last week's theme in regards to population…
August 28, 2006
Recently, myself, RPM, afarensis, Robert Skipper, John Wilkins and John Hawks made about 10 assertions about evolution of about 10 words or less (some participants fudged, no worries, I'm not Tony Soprano). We all went in different directions, but issues that cropped up several times
* The…
August 27, 2006
OK, so I finally read Coming to Life by Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard. Unfortunately, I am having a hard time finding something original to say. To recap, Janet, Shellee, Bora (hey, check out Bora's link, books_coming_to_life_by_christ.php!), RPM, The Poreless One and PZ hit this book hard. The…
August 26, 2006
"...you know, Microsoft is like a cush government job."
-friend who is an ex-Microsoft employee.
"I just noticed in this year's update to Excel that they finally added that feature I worked on 10 years ago!"
-friend who is an ex-Microsoft employee.
August 26, 2006
In an entry below I offer that the citation of a Wikipedia reference is not reliable, and I can't take responsibility if someone changes the entry between my link and your click. I am not totally kidding, I "Wikipediaed" a semi-famous individual recently and the entry described him as a serial…
August 26, 2006
Like sex, altruism is a great mystery in the life sciences, especially in the case of humans (because of is generous expression). Neither kin selection nor reciprocal altruism seem able to explain the scale of human societies, their cooperativeness, their often unselfish nature. Several years…
August 26, 2006
Kathryn Jean Lopez is very skeptical of the new stem cell method. I think you might have to put a pitchfork in it then, it seems like she would be hyping it if she thought it could go anywhere....
August 25, 2006
RPM comments on some issues relating to human genetics. First, he points to the article about how conservatives are going to outbreed liberals, etc. etc. etc. The problem with this article is that the Left & the Right have been around since the late 18th century and history marches Leftward…
August 25, 2006
My post a few days ago about multiracial humans elicated many comments, and not all of them were flip or for amusement. There are some serious issues, like synergistic and antagonistic epistasis, which I would like to explore in the future. But, I think there are two primary "take home" points:
1…
August 24, 2006
Some of you know that I have been in a discussion with Right Reason about the relationship between Christianity and altruism. I will address in full this weekend when I have time many of Steve's arguments. Suffice it to say that I think he places more emphasis on the emergence and crystallization…
August 24, 2006
Over the past two weeks I've avoided coffee. The main reason is that at my occupational habitat soft drinks are provided gratis, and I've been taking advantage of the opportunity to give my wallet a break. Additionally, the nearby coffee shop is a bit crowded both when I get to work, and during…
August 24, 2006
Shellee asks:
"Are you for or against the death penalty, or (if its conditional), in what cases? Furthermore, do you believe that societies that sanction war are hypocritical for opposing the death penalty?"
There have been many good answers so far, though I'll leave it to Shellee to sum things…
August 24, 2006
Over at my other blog I post 10 questions for Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza. If you are a genetics nut, what are you waiting for!?!?! Click! (unless you are the type bored by human population genetics) Now that you are back, there is one question that is relevant to the race debate that I had with…
August 23, 2006
Stem cell breakthrough promises to overcome ethical objections. I don't know, this is going to be all over the news, well, it already is. I don't think Ramesh Ponnuru or Kathryn Lopez are going to shut up about it for a long time. I am cautiously optimistic, but unfortunately this will be…
August 23, 2006
Heater Mac Donald has a lengthy follow up article where she responds to her critics.
August 23, 2006
Update: Over at Genetics and Health:
Last month, 12-year-old Bobby Stephens, Jr. died after football practice in Florida. This week, his family learned that he carried genes for both Hemoglobin S and Hemoglobin E. There have only been 27 documented cases world-wide of people who've died as a…
August 22, 2006
Curious about what's going on in the Paleo-shire? John Hawks is all about one stop shopping, just fill your mind-cart and you're good to go.
August 21, 2006
Unfortunately I haven't had time to set aside a good portion of time to read Coming to Life with any level of depth...so my review will be tardy. But, I do want to point to the others at SB who are stepping up.
Shellee the Church Girl.
Bora
RPM
Nick Tall Dark and faux British
PZ
Others...including…
August 20, 2006
WorldNut Daily has a story up about a new "documentary" which will try to show how Darwin's theory led to the abomination that was the Holocaust.
First, there is a truth which right-wing religious fundamentalists leverage in these sort of claims: during the early 20th century "progressives" of all…
August 20, 2006
Steve at Right Reason offers up his reasons for how Christianity inculcates a Golden Rulesque altruism.
First, Steve is focused on textual evidence. References in the New Testament. The key issue is this: text can justify behavior, but can it bias it? I am agnostic on this issue at this point…
August 19, 2006
William Saletan has a roundup and commentary on the ruckus surrounding circumcision and HIV transmission. There are two issues here,
The health & public policy
The cultural angle
The think the evidence is pretty clear from individual studies and cross-cultural comparisons: all things being…