Gene Expression

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...

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Posted by Razib at 10:39 AM • 19 Comments •

Radical Muslims are similar to moderates  permlink

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...

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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:...

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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....

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Posted by Razib at 1:48 AM • 13 Comments •

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.......

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Posted by Razib at 12:17 PM • 2 Comments •

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...

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Posted by Razib at 4:05 PM • 12 Comments •

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...

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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...

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Posted by Razib at 7:51 PM • 2 Comments •

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:...

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Posted by Razib at 12:04 PM • 5 Comments •

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....

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Posted by Razib at 6:40 PM • 0 Comments •