Monthly Archives: December 2018

Please keep the other posts on topic. Use this for talking about whatever you want to talk about.

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Another one is almost in the bag. Lots of interesting stuff this year, though probably the most important story in “world-historical” terms, the genome-editing of babies in China, hasn’t really ended. Ushering in 2019 with a $20.19 Ta…

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Sad to learn of the death of a major influence and dear friend, the brilliant and witty psychologist Judith Rich Harris. Too early for an obit, but the NYT review of her magnum opus may be found here: https://t.co/nrqZyHJqMc — Steven Pinker (@sapinker) December 30, 2018 With hindsight, I judge Steve Pinker’s The Blank Slate: […]

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Bangladeshis Must Choose ‘Lesser of Two Evils’ in Election: Per capita income has increased by nearly 150 percent, while the share of the population living in extreme poverty has shrunk to about 9 percent from 19 percent, according to the World Bank. Electricity generation has also increased drastically under Mrs. Hasina’s rule, helping to boost … Continue reading “Bangladesh elections”

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In a bit of “TMI”, I’m far more intellectually promiscuous than I am in my personal life. My primary focus on this blog, if I have one, is probably historical population genetics of the sort highlighted in David Reich’s Who We Are and How We Got Here. But I have plenty of other interests, from […]

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My review of Tony Joseph’s new book, Early Indians: The Story of Our Ancestors and Where We Came From, is now up at India Today. In general, I liked the book, and have only minor quibbles with Joseph’s reportage of the genetic results. He has very particular interpretations of results on some questions, but his … Continue reading “Tony Joseph’s Early Indians”

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Inspired by Tanner Greer, I’ve decided to put together a list of books that I think will useful to understanding the Romans from the perspective of a non-specialist without a background in Latin, or Classics more broadly (I am in this category obviously). First, I’m a big fan of Michael Grant’s History of Rome. Grant […]

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Last open thread of the year. Been busy with life obviously. Won’t be posting this on Sunday as usual, but just making up for missing the pre-Christmas weekend. Battling the Gods: Atheism in the Ancient World is an interesting book because it’s more about the nature of religion in the ancient world than unbelief. Much […]

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Please keep the other posts on topic. Use this for talking about whatever you want to talk about.

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A new preprint on bioRxiv, Strong selective sweeps before 45,000BP displaced archaic admixture across the human X chromosome, is suggestive of an exciting new phase in human evolutionary genomics. Basically, leveraging whole-genomes in diverse populations to explore selection dynamics. The authors looked at X chromosomes in males for reasons of technical tractability. Human males carry […]

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The latest BP Podcast is up. You can listen on Libsyn, iTunes and Stitcher. Probably the easiest way to keep up the podcast since we don’t have a regular schedule is to subscribe at one of the links above. Thanks to everyone who reviewed the podcast! Please leave more 5-star reviews. If this podcasts interests … Continue reading “Brown Pundits – Episode 6, Chinese history, pop culture and strategy, with Tanner Greer”

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There was a comment below on the positions of Pathans genetically in relation to South Asians and Iranians. The “Pathan” samples are from Pakistan, while “Pashtun” are from Afghanistan. What you can see is that the “Pathan” samples are more like Punjabis, while Pashtuns are like Tajiks. The Iranian samples are from western Iran. You … Continue reading “Pathans between Hind and Iran”

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From the Wikipedia entry for Angkor Wat The initial design and construction of the temple took place in the first half of the 12th century, during the reign of Suryavarman II (ruled 1113 – c. 1150). Dedicated to Vishnu, it was built as the king’s state temple and capital city. As neither the foundation stela … Continue reading “The power of the nameless”

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Azar Gat is one of my favorite scholars. He does not seem to be one who bows before fashion. If you haven’t, I recommend War Before Civilization a great deal. With that being said, perhaps an overlooked work is his more recent Nations: The Long History and Deep Roots of Political Ethnicity and Nationalism. It […]

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Very interesting preprint, A global view of pleiotropy and genetic architecture in complex traits. Nothing too surprising, but worth a read. After a decade of genome-wide association studies (GWASs), fundamental questions in human genetics are still unanswered, such as the extent of pleiotropy across the genome, the nature of trait-associated genetic variants and the disparate […]

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This week, Spencer and Razib discuss the stories which defined 2018 in genomics. Show notes: https://pxlme.me/35Tq7n7g

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The Insight Show Notes — Season 2, Episode 10: 2018 in genomicsThis week we reviewed the “big stories” in 2018 in genomics. There were a lot of possibilities, but we narrowed down the list.First, we discussed Neanderthal art. And, it’s ramifications fo…

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I have mentioned Alister McGrath’s The Twilight of Atheism: The Rise and Fall of Disbelief in the Modern World several times on this weblog. When I first read this book, about twelve years ago, its overall argument seemed unpersuasive. It was already clear then that the United States was going through a wave of secularization, […]

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The data for the above chart was assembled from press reports of various personal genomic companies with a public profile. So the values act as lower bounds. Additionally, the total numbers are from a comment in Genome Biology that I coauthored in the …

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If you are a nerd you have been waiting for George R. R. Martin to complete his A Song of Ice and Fire series. But if you are a next level nerd, what you’ve been waiting for is for Donald Knuth to finish The Art of Computer Programming. If you’ve never heard of Knuth, The […]

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Razib Khan