Category: Culture
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When the gods come crashing down
Sometimes the old gods slowly fade into oblivion. Contrary to popular perception this seems likely the case for ancient paganism. The conversion of Constantine to the Christian religion began the process of a hand-off and the commanding heights of classical culture that took over a century to complete. There were punctuating moments, such as the apostasy…
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It doesn’t get better, blogging vs. YouTube and Twitter
Many of you know I use Twitter. It’s replaced a lot of the “link posts” I might have done in the early 2000s or so. Some have argued that Twitter cannibalized a lot of blogging, and that seems true. And that hasn’t always been for the good…there are some arguments and discussions which don’t work…
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Your ancestry inference is precise and accurate(ish)
For about three years I consulted for Family Tree DNA. It was a great experience, and I met a lot of cool people through that connection. But perhaps the most interesting aspect was the fact that I can understand the various pressures that direct-to-consumer genomics firms face from the demand side. The science is one…
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The Return
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Plato, St. Ambrose, Marcuse: heralds for our age
It galls me to agree with the proposition that Western philosophy consists of footnotes to Plato, but it is at least fair to admit that Western intellectual thought exists in dialogue with him and his thinking. But the spare and arrogant idealism which Plato and his followers promoted is not entirely alien to the landscape of human cognition. It is…
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Open Thread, 11/3/2013
After reading Ancestral Journeys, I decided to get J. P. Mallory’s The Origins of the Irish. A bit on the academic side for some, but definitely a good dive into the literature. Mallory is well aware of the latest genetic research, so this is as up-to-date as it gets. It’s a good case study in…
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Open Thread, 10/27/2013
I’ll be on the Kathleen Dunn Show on Monday, 2 to 3 PM Central Standard Time. You’ll be able to listen to the show after it airs on the website. It will be about my piece in Slate. I recently read Ancestral Journeys: The Peopling of Europe from the First Venturers to the Vikings by…
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The future is e-books!
Nicholas G. Carr, purveyor of high-brow neo-ludditism and archeo-utopianism, has a piece out in The Wall Street Journal, Don’t Burn Your Books—Print Is Here to Stay. The subtitle is “The e-book had its moment, but sales are slowing. Readers still want to turn those crisp, bound pages.” Here are some of his rancid chestnuts of…
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The Hobbit, part 1
I went and saw The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey yesterday with some friends. It’s been 20 years since I last read The Hobbit, and even longer since I watched the television film from the late 1970s. So I really didn’t notice all the differences between the three hour film and the original novel. Two quick comments:…
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The spread of ‘white people problems’
Life Expectancy Rises Around the World, Study Finds: A sharp decline in deaths from malnutrition and diseases like measles and tuberculosis has caused a shift in global mortality patterns over the past 20 years, according to a new report, with far more of the world’s population now living into old age and dying from diseases…
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The balancing act
I am going to expand this into a post on Discover, but it is useful here. Do my parents really want me to get married?: Abstract Evolutionary theory predicts that based on sex-specific reproductive interests maternal grandparents increase child well-being more … Continue reading → Related Posts: Abused by society no longer? Being against “Baby-boxes?” The…
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Ah, the joys of multiculturalism!
I’m not particularly close to my family, but this Christmas we are thinking of inviting my parents for a bit. The reason is that they haven’t seen their first grandchild very often since she was born. But for me the … Continue reading → Related Posts: Cultural differences in film Of course Huma Abedin’s parents…
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High culture in the mega-city
A Passage to Bangladesh: For years, Dhaka—the sprawling capital of Bangladesh—has been known for the ancient beauty of its mosques, its nauseating traffic jams, and the thick parade of rickshaws lining the narrow streets. But English literature? In Dhaka? Any … Continue reading → Related Posts: First Pakistani Academy Award (OK, it was a technical……
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Skydiving + cats = ?
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The rewilding of the Northeast
Lake Placid, credit: Wikimedia If you accept the thesis reported by Charles C. Mann the great eastern forest which the American settlers turned into farmland was actually secondary growth. The consequence of the depopulation of vast swaths of North A…
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Earthsea is Earth
Slate has a respectful take on Ursula K. Le Guin‘s oeuvre by Choire Sicha up. By way of surveying her contributions to the domain of fiction the author takes issue with those who would elevate ‘literary fiction,’ a term whose bound…
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I, for one welcome our yellow overlords!
The above infographic from The New York Times article For Asians, School Tests Are Vital Steppingstones, was titled “1027-asians” when I tried to save it. No idea why, but I think that’s an amusing file name. My offensively titled po…
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The real end of science
Fifteen years ago John Horgan wrote The End Of Science: Facing The Limits Of Knowledge In The Twilight Of The Scientific Age. I remain skeptical as to the specific details of this book, but Carl’s write-up in The New York Times of a new paper in …
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Who would vote for an atheist: Dems vs. Republicans
In response to a comment below, I thought this chart from Gallup is particularly informative:
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Knowledge, not opinion, information extraction, not persuasion
A few days ago I was having drinks with some friends, and it came up that some of them had only recently become conscious of the fact that I leaned more toward the Republican party than the Democratic (I had remarked that my wife preferred that I keep …