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November 30, 2006
Brighter than Isaac Newton? permlink
Category: Science
In his presentation for Beyond Belief 2006 Neil deGrasse Tyson offered Isaac Newton as his candidate for the most brilliant intellectual ever. Because he is trained as a physicist Tyson can be accused of some bias, but the impact on...
Posted by Razib at 10:39 AM • 19 Comments
November 29, 2006
Radical Muslims are similar to moderates permlink
Category:
Foreign Policy has a interesting selection of charts. They show that "radicals" and "moderates" in the Muslim world are not that different. Below the fold is a chart which offers two facts 1) Radical Muslims are, on average, more educated...
Posted by Razib at 11:20 AM • 19 Comments
God or tongue? permlink
Category: Culture
Over at Michael Brendan Dougherty's place a debate broke out over the relative importance of language vs. religion in the Irish identity. This could perhaps be abstracted and extrapolated to many peoples and nations. In the comments Daniel Larison offered:...
Posted by Razib at 10:05 AM • 13 Comments
My "dialect" permlink
Category: Blog
I grew up in the Northeast (almost New England) and the Pacific Northwest. Here is a map of American English dialects. Via Shaitan. You can take the quiz here....
Posted by Razib at 1:48 AM • 13 Comments
November 28, 2006
Neandertal teeth permlink
Category: Evolution
Science Daily summarizes findings that Neandertal teeth grew at the same rate as modern humans. John Hawks applies the skeptical eye of a scientist. N matters.......
Posted by Razib at 12:17 PM • 2 Comments
November 27, 2006
Eugenics, the genetics that dare not speak its name permlink
Category: Genetics
Orac has a rather thorough post on eugenics, and what Richard Dawkins has recently had to say on it. Here is the dictionary.com definition of eugenics: ...the study of or belief in the possibility of improving the qualities of the...
Posted by Razib at 4:05 PM • 12 Comments
November 26, 2006
Scientism, huh? permlink
Category: Blog
Update: Chris has a follow up post. Chris leaves nothing unsaid. A sample: In that talk Dawkins sounds, at times, like a 5-year old with the vocabulary and factual knowledge of a world-renowned scientist.... I find it hypocritcal and, as...
Posted by Razib at 8:12 PM • 34 Comments
Viva proportional representation! permlink
Category: Politics
Interesting article which surveys the confusion in Europe right now as countries whose electoral systems are based on proportional representation are seeing a tendency by the populace to vote for parties of the far Right and far Left. This has...
Posted by Razib at 7:51 PM • 2 Comments
November 25, 2006
Heritability of religiosity permlink
Category: Religion
Below I made a reference to the heritability of religiosity. In a chat with Christer Chris that the heritability for religiosity was 0.5, and he was surprised at the result. I decided to double-check, and here is the latest paper:...
Posted by Razib at 12:04 PM • 5 Comments
November 24, 2006
Kat permlink
Category: Blog
Samuel 17:36 - Thy servant slew both the lion and the bear: and this uncircumcised Philistine shall be as one of them, seeing he hath defied the armies of the living God....
Posted by Razib at 6:40 PM • 0 Comments
You're either with us, or against us.... permlink
Category: Blog
How has your post-T-day been if you are a citizen of the Greatest Nation in the World?TM Wow, I woke up this morning to a flare up in the Ed vs. PZ battle here on SB and elsewhere. Bora has...
Posted by Razib at 4:29 PM • 4 Comments
Friends with unbelievers? permlink
Category: Religion
Does Islam Forbid Befriending Non-Muslims?. It is obvious that Jews patronize the Jews and Christians patronize the Christians, so why not Muslims patronize Muslims and support their own people. This verse is not telling us to be against Jews or...
Posted by Razib at 3:29 PM • 0 Comments
Ass-kicking is stochastic permlink
Category: History
Via Kambiz I found this post which argues that the high-protein diet of the Mongols was important in allowing them to defeat their enemies, who were relatively nutritionally deficient. Perhaps. But history isn't that simple, after all, if "more meat...
Posted by Razib at 12:27 PM • 33 Comments
November 23, 2006
Colored folk - we ain't all the same permlink
Category: Culture
Shelley Batts has a post, Whites-Only Scholarship as "Reverse Affirmative Action". Shelley sayeth: ...In order to ensure that universities, and students, benefit from a diverse education, often pro-active techniques are utilized to recruit minorities. When the race war comes all...
Posted by Razib at 6:48 PM • 9 Comments
Copy number variation in genes permlink
Category: Genetics
A new paper in Nature, Global variation in copy number in the human genome, suggests that it isn't just SNPs that matter in regards to human variation. Those of you who are "in the know" aren't surprised, so this press...
Posted by Razib at 12:16 PM • 3 Comments
The Messiah on In Our Time permlink
Category: Evolution
The Messiah will be on In Our Time to discuss the evolutionary origins of altruism. They are pretty good about getting the archive up in a day or so. Interesting that they illustrate the idea with Mr. a priori Kant,...
Posted by Razib at 7:53 AM • 0 Comments
