Monthly Archives: April 2016

“transgender” people aren’t: they’re just crazy. Whittling doesn’t change the wiring of the brain, or the chromosomes. But in principle, such a transformation is possible. It would be an example of real, deep biological change – not the the tinkering … Continue reading →

“there’s no such thing as race” is a standard sentence in the United States and Europe. Conventional wisdom, and like so much conventional wisdom, false. Of course there is. First you need to define your terms. I would suggest that … Continue reading →

If you had a reasonably cheap particle accelerator, one that could produce a high flux of few-GeV neutrinos, you could make yourself some real money.

For a while now we have seen occasional articles about how people outside of sub-Saharan Africa may have more genetic load, generated by drift over a population history in which Eurasians generally had a smaller effective population size. This is … Continue reading →

We don’t see people today with Neanderthal Y chromosomes or mtDNA. I keep hearing people argue that this means that mating between Neanderthal males and AMH females must have produced sterile males, or that matings between AMH men and Neanderthal … Continue reading →

They’ve managed to sequence a bit of autosomal DNA from the Atapuerca skeletons, about 430,000 years old, confirming that they are on the Neanderthal branch. Among other things, this supports the slow mutation rate, one compatible with what we see … Continue reading →

Henry Harpending has died. He suffered a stroke 3 weeks ago. Within a few days, he also had a MRSA infection in his lungs. The docs eventually cleared that, but his lungs never recovered. He died this afternoon of Adult … Continue reading →

There’s a new paper out on Amerindian genetic history in Science,mostly looking at 92 ancient mitochondrial genomes (500 to 8600 years old). Because mtDNA has a high mutation rate, it’s useful for seeing rapid changes in population size (Bayesian skyline … Continue reading →

Ron Unz has talked about how labile national IQ is, and how Mexican Americans are all going to be watching reruns of Don Adams and Barbara Feldon real soon now. Here are the National Merit Semifinalists out of the Albuquerque … Continue reading →