Author: Razib Khan
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Open Thread – December 4th, 2010
A few people have asked about me the assertion I made about the decline in violence over time. This doesn’t seem to pass the smell test for many moderns. In particular, I think the objection about the magnitude of modern wars is a valid one…but the main issue to remember is to focus on the…
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The great northern culture war
A new paper in The New Journal of Physics shows that a relatively simple mathematical model can explain the rate of expansion of agriculture across Europe, Anisotropic dispersion, space competition and the slowdown of the Neolithic transition: The front speed of the Neolithic (farmer) spread in Europe decreased as it reached Northern latitudes, where the…
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Friday Fluff – December 3rd, 2010
1. First, a post from the past: A prayer for the Emperor. 2. Weird search query of the week: “what it means to be a turk”. 3. Comment of the week, in response to Latitudes and continents: Why are you reviewing Physical Geography for Fourteen Year Olds? Back to the genetics, please. Sorry, I’ve just…
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Humanity+ conference in Pasadena
I was going to try and make it to the Humanity+ conference this year, but life intruded and the scheduling didn’t work out. Here’s the program. If you live in the LA area and this is your cup of tea, registration still looks open. Also check out H+ magazine. I noticed that my friend […]
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Men at work: hoes, ploughs, and steel
Ancient Egyptian farmer ploughing a field Recently several weblogs have pointed to a new working paper on the role of plough-based agriculture vs. hoe-based agriculture in shaping cultural expectations about male and female labor force participation specifically, and the differentiation of gender roles more generally. My first reaction was: “doesn’t everyone know this already?” I…
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Dennis Miller vs. Dennis Miller
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The naked years: the end of privacy
I do talk periodically on this weblog about the coming ‘transparent society.’ The main reason I bring up the issue is that I think it is probably inevitable, and, I think we’re sliding toward it without even reflecting on it too much. Many people are very surprised at how little time it takes to find…
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Of interest around the web & elsewhere – November 29th, 2010
Goodbye November. Male Reproductive Problems May Add to Falling Fertility Rates. There’s an implication that there may be epigenetic and developmental reasons for this phenomenon. But check out this quote: “Today, at least one in five 18-25 year old men in Europe have semen quality in the subfertile range.” I’m starting to wonder about genetic…
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No Romans needed to explain Chinese blondes
Uyghur boy from Kashgar Every few years a story crops up about “European-looking” people in northwest China who claim to be of Roman origin. A “lost legion” so to speak. I’ll admit that I found the stories interesting, amusing, if implausible, years ago. But now it’s just getting ridiculous. This is almost like the “vanishing…
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Slouching toward transparency
In regards to the WikiLeaks story, it seems that: – The explosive stuff is really a shift from assumed understanding to explicit acknowledgment. For example, that Arab nations are just as terrified of Iran’s nuclear program as Israel. – The surprising stuff is more funny or strange. More like gossip you wouldn’t have guessed, but…
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Internet usage by country
In my post below on the rise of China, I ran into the data on internet usage by country again. I was online regularly by the spring of 1995, and it’s amazing to think that there are hundreds of millions of Chinese on the internet now! The World Bank estimates that both China and […]
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Latitudes and continents
Thanksgiving in the tropics: Finally, here are some pictures I took today. It was way too hot and humid when we first got to Taiwan, but now we’re getting some lovely winter weather – Taiwan is about the same latitude as Hawaii It sure doesn’t feel like Thanksgiving or Xmas around here! One aspect of…
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Taking the end of the age seriously
I am about two-thirds of the way through Why the West Rules-for Now: The Patterns of History, and What They Reveal About the Future, and I have to agree with Tyler Cowen’s assessment so far. The author is an archaeologist, and though a little less shy in regards to general theory than most in his…
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Open Thread – November 27th, 2010
Hope Thanksgiving went well for Americans. I didn’t gain weight at all, 142lbs as of Friday morning! Out of curiosity, what fiction do you read? Also, check out Dienekes post on the ability to generate disjoint clusters in the DODECAD sample set. He asserts that one may now be able to generate extreme fine-scale assessments…
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Assorted links related to this weblog
23andMe kits are discounted to $99 from $499 today. My twitter account: http://twitter.com/#!/razibkhan My total content feed: http://www.razib.com/wordpress (rss: http://www.razib.com/wordpress/?feed=rss2) The blog’s Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/GeneExpression (content gets fed onto this page via Networked Blogs) My ResearchBlogging page: http://researchblogging.org/blogger/home/id/1604 (65 posts) The original Gene Expression: http://www.gnxp.com And finally, my “personal home page”: http://razib.com If you have…
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Friday Fluff – November 26th, 2010
1. First, a post from the past: Innate social aptitudes of man. 2. Weird search query of the week: ‘evolutionary biologist studies porn.’ 3. Comment of the week, in response to The cult of Korea: Razib, as you say they are literate, but not in a free way. Note that I didn’t say North Koreans…
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Eating, and eating well
Credit: tuchodi Happy Thanksgiving Day to all the Americans out there. This is a day to loosen the belt a bit, but after the Holidays you probably want to think about slimming back. So, ScienceDaily, Obesity Riddle Finally ‘Solved’, and, Diets with High or Low Protein Content and Glycemic Index for Weight-Loss Maintenance. The upshot…
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We were all Africans…before the intermission
Quick review. In the 19th century once the idea that humans were derived from non-human ancestral species was injected into the bloodstream of the intellectual classes there was an immediate debate as to the location of the proto-human homeland; the Urheimat of us all. Charles Darwin favored Africa, but in many ways this ran against the…
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North Korea vs. South Korea
There isn’t a lot of good data coming out of North Korea, but I thought the following charts would be of interest. USA and Mexico included for comparison. In case you don’t know, the South Korea = Republic of Korea, North Korea = Democratic…