razib
Posts by this author
October 17, 2006
Sunn vs. Shia on the other blog. My conclusion:
Of course, this isn't the sort of thing that is interesting to most people. It would obviously be best if government officials who played a role in making decisions where this knowledge would be critical would be aware of the details. But I'm not…
October 17, 2006
What is a Good Society? What values should we has a society hold to be Good and True? These aren't light questions, but we often neglect them. I believe that many "political" differences can ultimately be traced back to the weights placed on these initial axioms of value. Ruchira Paul comments…
October 17, 2006
This is the shape of things to come for mankind is an article which claims that "Variations in skin colouring are expected to be smoothed out, with most humans moving towards a brown tone." The source of this is an evolutionary psychologist, Dr. Oliver Curry, but, it seems to me that Dr. Curry is…
October 16, 2006
JP has an interesting post, Why the regulatory changes vs. coding sequence changes debate is inane:
Here's the question we're supposed to answer: which are more important-- protein-coding changes or regulatory changes? And here's the problem with that question: how do you define important? Let's…
October 16, 2006
Josh Rosenau has a review of The God Delusion which is, I think, a little bit harder on Richard Dawkins than I. The comments are hopping, so you should check it out!
Let me reiterate my general position re: Dawkins & The God Delusion:
My own personal assessment of the universe as it is…
October 16, 2006
Polish MEP calls for 'scholarly debate' on evolution:
'I am a scientist, I am a geneticist, my specialty is population genetics and I reject the theory of evolution on the basis of the field of science I represent. I find that in many fields of science there are scientists who reject the theory of…
October 16, 2006
The cover of this month's SEED has a small blurb on the bottom front left (your left as you face the cover) which refers to "Intelligent Design on the Arab Street." My first thought was, "Interesting, the only Muslim Creationists I know are those weird Turkish groups." So I open up the article…
October 16, 2006
It's been a few weeks since I posted on the Tripoli Six, but while I've been busy with other things there are still six lives in the balance. Revere has more details, and Janet has a long post on the importance of writing letters. The trial starts October 31st, so let's raise some consciousness…
October 15, 2006
Mendel's Garden #8 is up at Discovering Biology in a Digital World.
October 14, 2006
The New York Times has an article titled Across Europe, Worries on Islam Spread to Center. It is a string of anecdotes and examples which show that criticism of Islam is now becoming acceptable in non-extremist circles. I am frankly pleased by this. Consider:
Whatever the motivations, "the…
October 14, 2006
This week's Ask a Science Blogger:
A reader asks: Is severely regulating your diet for a month each year, as Muslims do during Ramadan, good for you?...
I will not offer a very scientific response because I suspect others have more to say from that angle, rather, I will offer my own perspective as…
October 13, 2006
Nobel Peace Prize to Muhammad Yunus, Grameen Bank. I'll comment a bit more about Bangladesh later when I have time....
October 12, 2006
In my post below I mooted the issue of conflating race & religion. There were many interesting comments, and Ruchira Paul has offered her own response. I would like to elucidate a few points here and frame the issues in their proper context (or at least the context in which I meant to explore…
October 12, 2006
DNA trail points to human brain evolution:
A new study comparing the genomes of humans, chimps, monkeys and mice found an unexpectedly high degree of genetic difference in the human DNA regions that influence nerve cell adhesion, compared with the DNA of the other animals.
Accelerated evolution…
October 11, 2006
The Dark Side of DNA is a review of Genes in Conflict, Austin Burt and Robert Triver's magisterial survey of the extant literature of 'selfish genetic elements.' Do you know what the killer 't-haplotype' is? You should, it is pretty bizarre.
October 11, 2006
Sometimes I get into an online discussion with someone on another blog, and the person will assert a point, without any quantitative or qualitative supporting data. My normal tack is to demand that they offer some evidence to support their assertion, which usually results in irritation and…
October 11, 2006
Charukola in the house baby! Shout out to all the homeboys & girls in the old hood! Charukola @ DU represent!
October 11, 2006
They might use an interview with me on Radio Open Source today during the last 10 minutes of the show. You can listen live here (starts 7 PM Eastern Standard Time, about 3.5 hours after this post).
Update: They might drop my interview elsewhere, so if you want to hear my crooning voice, listen to…
October 11, 2006
I listened to Akbar Ahmed on Fresh Air today. Ahmed made the following point: there is an understanding that there will not be any acceptable public mockery of black Americans, e.g., the use of the "N-word," so by analogy one should not mock Muslims as a group. How do readers feel about this? My…
October 10, 2006
Brown blogger Ruchira Paul offers her opinions about the veil. Fellow ScienceBlogger James responded with his own thoughts about indoctrinating children. ASSman has a long post about between cultural variation in personality.
October 10, 2006
Via Afarensis I got word that Four Stone Earth, an anthropology carnival, has just debuted. I will probably participate in the future.
October 10, 2006
Check, 10 questions for Bruce "Gene Thug" Lahn. Check this player's ambitions out:
10. Looking back, would you make any changes in your educational path? If so, what?
Looking back, I might have chosen economics instead of biology, as it might have allowed my work to have a broader impact. But it'…
October 8, 2006
I have a post on my other blog about why Lakoff matters. Here is the conclusion:
In short, I think the problem with Lakoff's ideas are two fold: 1) the science is probably wrong, so it has little utilitarian value aside from enriching Lakoff 2) the false perception that the science is correct and…
October 8, 2006
The Economist has a review of The God Delusion up, and it concludes:
First, Mr Dawkins wants to subvert the mode of transmission between parent and child. He calls a religious upbringing a form of indoctrination and equates it to child abuse. He wants to encourage a change in the Zeitgeist, so that…
October 7, 2006
A Firefox 2.0 preview is available now. Most of my plugins and extensions seem to work fine.
October 7, 2006
Update: OK, a pro is in the house. Chris of Mixing Memory starts:
I don't really know where to start on this. Lakoff's reply is one of the most intellectually dishonest pieces of writing I've seen from a cognitive scientist, and if anyone other than Lakoff had written it, I'd probably just ignore…
October 7, 2006
Darwin Catholic comments on "The God Gene." More broadly he comments on the quest for a naturalistic model of religiosity.