razib | October 14, 2006The 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 reality is that views on both sides are becoming more extreme," said Imam Wahid Pedersen, a prominent Dane who is a convert to Islam. "It has become politically correct to attack Islam, and this is making it hard for moderates on both sides to remain reasonable." Mr. Pedersen fears that onetime moderates…
razib | October 14, 2006This 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 someone who was raised in a Muslim family and has endured and observed the boom & bust cycle of Ramadan.
First, it matters where you live and when it happens. Since it goes by the lunar calender Ramadan could pop up in the middle of the summer or the middle of the winter. As someone who has…
razib | October 13, 2006Nobel Peace Prize to Muhammad Yunus, Grameen Bank. I'll comment a bit more about Bangladesh later when I have time....
razib | October 12, 2006In 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 them). I have spoken of the various faces of gods before. My own personal interest is the cognitive level since that is the one which I believe is fundamental, the layer of religious experience with makes it nearly inevitable that supernaturalism will be the 'default' human modality, the necessary…
razib | October 12, 2006DNA 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 here allowed human brain cell connections to form with greater complexity, enabling us to grow bigger brains, the researchers suggest.
From the interview with Bruce Lahn:
2. Your work on genes involved in human brain evolution (i.e. ASPM and microcephalin) has focused on amino acid changes. It has been…
razib | October 11, 2006The 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.
razib | October 11, 2006Sometimes 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 annoyance (e.g., "I don't have an infinite amount of time to look stuff up, what do you think I am, a nerd?"). But sometimes I follow another tack, I just plainly contradict what the individual asserted without any evidence from my own end, and simply say "my impression is contrary to your impression."…
razib | October 11, 2006Charukola in the house baby! Shout out to all the homeboys & girls in the old hood! Charukola @ DU represent!
razib | October 11, 2006They 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 the whole show!
Update II: You can hear me around 7:52 (52 minutes into it) for about 2 minutes.
Addendum: Let me make it clear that though the sound bite gave comfort to the "pro-technology" side of the conversation I probably lean a bit toward the traditionalist sentiments expressed by Martha…
razib | October 11, 2006I 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 response below the fold....
The fact that a "moderate" Muslim "intellectual" makes such a specious argument is a shocking testament to the lack of thoughtful criticism that Islam has been subject to in the Western world. By thoughtful, I mean to exclude the crude caricatures of the religion…
razib | October 10, 2006Brown 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.
razib | October 10, 2006Via Afarensis I got word that Four Stone Earth, an anthropology carnival, has just debuted. I will probably participate in the future.
razib | October 10, 2006Check, 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's a tossup, and my feeling may well have stemmed from my constant impatience with lack of progress in my own work and therefore the perception that grass is greener on the other guy's pasture
Get it? The key is to crank up the body count!
razib | October 8, 2006I 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 can be used to persuade people basically leaves liberals totally vulnerable to being laughed at (a lot of the stuff that Lakoff acolytes say about the Right is giggle-inducing! Pinker is describing a real phenomenon, as I've chuckled myself). If I was a particularly partisan non-liberal I would…
razib | October 8, 2006The 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 when people hear the words "a Catholic child", or "a Muslim child", they will wince, and ask how a child could already have formed independent opinions on transubstantiation or jihad.
When I reviewed The God Delusion I said that I wasn't really going to address the issue of parent-child…
razib | October 7, 2006A Firefox 2.0 preview is available now. Most of my plugins and extensions seem to work fine.
razib | October 7, 2006Update: 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 it. But Lakoff is not only famous, he's influential, and more than a few liberal bloggers take him seriously. So I feel compelled to say something. I guess the best way to go about this is to detail their disagreements, and show where Lakoff sinks to all new lows in defense of his position.
Read the…
razib | October 7, 2006Darwin Catholic comments on "The God Gene." More broadly he comments on the quest for a naturalistic model of religiosity.