To be brown is to be a civilization
Though I often disagree with him, I do enjoy Zach’s perspective on things because they are different from mine, though we exhibit similarities (e.g., both of us generally align with the center-Right in Anglophone societies). Zach may be one of the first cosmopolitan desis in his pedigree; he, himself of part-Persian heritage, marrying a South Indian Sindhi, … Continue reading “To be brown is to be a civilization”
Why Trump could murder someone and people would still support him
In 1683 the Ottoman Turk marched toward Vienna. John Sobieski, the king of Poland, became a hero to all Europe because of his defense of the Habsburgs in their time of need. In contrast, France had traditionally been a rival of the Habsburg monarchy. In honor of their tacit alliance with the Ottomans they rejected […]
Why Brown Pundits?
This post is in response to Zach and Zimriel. Why Brown Pundits? Why this blog? And why do I post here, as opposed to Gene Expression or Secular Right, or various other venues which I have access to? To a great extent the origins of this blog for me go back to the early 2000s, … Continue reading “Why Brown Pundits?”
Why Brown Pundits?
This post is in response to Zach and Zimriel. Why Brown Pundits? Why this blog? And why do I post here, as opposed to Gene Expression or Secular Right, or various other venues which I have access to? To a great extent the origins of this blog for me go back to the early 2000s, … Continue reading “Why Brown Pundits?”
The war between the Aesir and Vanir
In Snorri Sturluson’s preservation of pre-Christian Scandinavian mythos, he outlines two groups of gods, the Aesir and the Vanir. Though ultimately presented as a united pantheon in comparison to beings such as the giants, there are references to a war between these two divine factions. But, there is still scholarly debate as to the significance […]
This time it was different
As a child I was a consumer of a fair amount of environmentalist alarmism. Not the standard stuff you see on the news, but books like The Population Bomb. I also read the science fiction classic Stand on Zanzibar. Stand on Zanzibar is about an overpopulated Malthusian world. It is the world of 2010, and […]
Khoisan may not have diverged ~300,000 years ago
A few years ago I contributed to an op-ed which defended the utility of the race concept in biology in USA Today (which by the way prompted a quite patronizing email from a famous doyen of population genetics who wished to correct my ignorance; here’s a clue: “Out of Africa again & again”). In my […]
Selection for pigmentation in Khoisan?
In the recent paper, Reconstructing Prehistoric African Population Structure, there was a section natural selection. Since my post on the paper was already very long I didn’t address this dynamic. But now I want to highlight this section: The functional category that displays the most extreme allele frequency differentiation between present day San and ancient […]
The macaque’s voyage?
The Monkey’s Voyage was one of the more interesting books I’ve read in the past few years. Basically the author shows that the idea that islands like New Zealand are living mengaries of a lost Gondwanaland is false. Due to extinction islands have high turnover rates, and most species in New Zealand descend from relatively […]
The macaque’s voyage?
The Monkey’s Voyage was one of the more interesting books I’ve read in the past few years. Basically the author shows that the idea that islands like New Zealand are living mengaries of a lost Gondwanaland is false. Due to extinction islands have high turnover rates, and most species in New Zealand descend from relatively […]
The Asian world
We live in interesting times. The world system is slowly shifting back to the historical norm. That norm being that most people and economic production would occur in Asia. The book When Asia Was the World chronicles period the between after the fall of the Roman Empirea and on the cusp of the European Age […]
Yes I think about 1% of Afrikaner ancestry is probably Khoikhoi
As a follow-up to my previous two posts on Afrikaners, I wanted to reiterate something that I implied/said earlier: yes, I think about 1% of the ancestry of modern day Afrikaners derives from Khoisan pastoralists of the Cape who were resident there when the Europeans first arrived. These people are often called Khoikoi. Unlike the […]
The 100 Million Killed Under Communist Regimes Matter
Growing up as a child I didn’t know much about Communism except that it was bad. I knew that it was atheistic from what I had heard at the mosque……View Post
The cretin shall rise again
Roy Moore is almost certain to be the Junior Senator from Alabama soon enough. That much we know. Part of me takes pleasure in the victory, as it is true that the Republican establishment of states like Alabama is sclerotic and corrupt (just like the Democratic establishment of Illinois or California). Roy Moore is certainly […]
The 100 million killed under Communist regimes matter
Growing up as a child I didn’t know much about Communism except that it was bad. I knew that it was atheistic from the mosque…but early on I knew I was quite atheistic, so that was not a major issue to me (though the religious oppression was). There was a period when I was eight […]
Religion trumps race in Sri Lanka
Monk-led mob attacks Rohingya refugees in Sri Lanka: “These are Rohingya terrorists who killed Buddhist monks in Myanmar,” the monk said in his live commentary on Facebook, pointing to Rohingya mothers with small children in their arms. Sri Lanka’s extremist Buddhist monks have close links with their ultra-nationalist counterparts in Myanmar. Both have been accused … Continue reading “Religion trumps race in Sri Lanka”
The cuckoldry rate in complex agricultural societies is probably ~1%
One of the most interesting and strange things I’ve ever posted about has to do with extra-pair paternity rates. Basically, the rate of cuckoldry. I first got interested in the topic because people get bringing up the chestnut that 10% of children have misattributed biological paternity. That is, their biological father is different than the […]
Open Thread, 09/24/2017
Reading Harold Marcus’ A History of Ethiopia. So far a little too heavy on diplomatic as opposed to social history. My curiosity was piqued when reading The Fortunes of Africa when the author observed that the geopolitical extend of the modern Ethiopian state was partially a function of a relatively late state expansion in the 19t […]
No, Afrikaners do not have British or English ancestry
kan In my post below on the non-European ancestry of Afrikaners, several readers mentioned that friends of Afrikaner background were rather chagrined to have reported British ancestry from genetic tests. The cultural reason for this is well known: many Afrikaners exhibit hostility toward British imperialism due to the deprivation and death which was the consequence […]
Postcolonialism as theory often fails; it would be nice to actually know something
The cognitive psychologist Pascal Boyer introduced me to the phrase “theory is information for free.” It’s a succinct way of saying that if you have a theoretical framework you can deduce and extrapolate a lot about the world without having to know everything. And, you can take new information and fit it quickly into your […]