Monthly Archives: February 2019

A post from Kevin Drum, Once Again, a New Book Debunks Some History I Never Knew In the First Place,* made me wonder a few things. First, Kevin’s confusion: Am I befuddled by history? Or by historiography? Or do I need a different word altogether? Until five minutes ago, before I read this book review, […]

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The Insight Show Notes — Season 2, Episode 16: Blueprint, a conversation with Robert PlominCorrelation on a scatterplotThis week on The Insight (Apple Podcasts, Stitcher and Google Podcasts) we discuss behavior genetics with Robert Plomin, one of the e…

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Like many of you, I’m monitoring what’s going on in the Indian subcontinent. I’m not saying much because I don’t know much. No value to add. But then this showed up in my timeline, and I honestly could not believe that even the confluence of characteristics we’ve been talking about recently might lead to such …

Continue reading “A toxic cocktail of American narcissism and Indian American self-righteousness”

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In the spring of 2010, I went to the studios of KQED in San Francisco to record an interview with a radio show on the BBC about PGD. Preimplantation genetic diagnosis. I haven’t thought much about the issue in the near ten years since then. Which in a personal sense certainly reflects my luck and […]

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In the spring of 2010, I went to the studios of KQED in San Francisco to record an interview with a radio show on the BBC about PGD. Preimplantation genetic diagnosis. I haven’t thought much about the issue in the near ten years since then. Which in a personal sense certainly reflects my luck and […]

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Another 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. You can also support the podcast as a patron (the primary benefit now is that you get the podcasts considerably earlier than everyone else…). Would …

Continue reading “BrownCast Podcast episode 17: India-Pakistan conflict, Hindu nationalism, Cosmopolitanism”

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This week we talk about behavior geneticists with one of the doyens of the field, Robert Plomin. Show notes: https://pxlme.me/wv1-WXQK

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Since the emergence of the field of genetics over a century ago the question of “nature vs. nurture” has loomed large over the field when it comes to the nature of “human nature.” The very term “human nature” is a tell as to its origins and early conno…

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A Harvard Law Professor Is Representing Harvey Weinstein. Students Say This Makes Them Unsafe, Demand His Resignation: Harvard’s administration is taking students’ concerns seriously, and has agreed to conduct a review of Sullivan. “In this situation, we would like to have a more complete understanding of the current environment at Winthrop House,” wrote Dean of …

Continue reading “I now support quotas on (South) Asian Americans at elite universities”

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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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Indian Jets Strike on Pakistani Side of Kashmir Line: Indian warplanes conducted airstrikes in the Pakistan-controlled side of Kashmir on Tuesday, Pakistani officials said, in an escalation of tensions between the nuclear-armed nations after a suicide bombing against Indian troops in the disputed region this month. If confirmed, it would be the first time that …

Continue reading “The airstrikes”

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There is a weird controversy about a white knitter who was perceived to be racist against Indians because they were worried about going to India because it was so alien from her experience? At least that’s what I get from the conversation. See the above exchange for some more context. The mainstream website Vox, published …

Continue reading “Do people in India care about ‘racist’ knitters?”

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 Probably don’t watch this if you are hungry. It’s on Netflix. The latest episode of The Insight featured a very long discussion with Jeffrey Rose. If you are curious about the relationship of southern Arabia to the cultures of northeast Africa during the Middle Paleolithic, check it out! The Freemasons. Not the deepest book. […]

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Sometimes charts are useful. The above plot does not have branch lengths which are proportional to length. But, they capture I think the rough topology. I’ve also put notes on there.
Some of the branches are certainly wrong. We’ll know mor…

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The above chart is from The Simons Genome Diversity Project: 300 genomes from 142 diverse populations. The basic outlines of this tree were evident as far back as L. L. Cavalli-Sforza. But there were always small details that caused issues. In particular, were East Asians a more natural clade with Australasians or with Europeans? Today […]

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The figure to the left is from Paleolithic DNA from the Caucasus reveals core of West Eurasian ancestry. It is a graph which captures general features of human population historical relationships as we understand them today. Or at least the model fits the data (remember, many models may fit the data!). The graph is complex…but […]

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Following up on the post below, The Deep Origins Of East African Hunter-Gatherers, as well as some discussions on Twitter, I think I want to do some clarification about where I think we are now. My thoughts shouldn’t be a surprise if you have read everything I’ve said, but I may not have put them […]

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The Insight Show Notes — Season 2, Episode 15: The Prehistory of the Arabian PeninsulaDhofar, Oman, during the “wet season”This week on The Insight (Apple Podcasts, Stitcher and Google Podcasts)we discuss the prehistory of the Arabian peninsula with ar…

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Because some commenters on this weblog have a lot more lived experience within India than I do, you try to bullshit me. I suspect it, but I can’t prove it. But I realized today that World Values Survey is broken down by region within countries. This means I can at least doublecheck some of the …

Continue reading “Indians in Kerala are less religiously polarized, those in Bihar are more polarized”

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There emerged a question in the comments below as to what was “brown” or “desi”? Ah, the old demarcation problem! Since there is no “Pope of Brownness” we can all offer our opinions. I take a “liberal” and “broad” view. There are children adopted from India in the United States who are as physically South …

Continue reading “Brown is all, all is brown”

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20/55
Razib Khan