Monthly Archives: July 2016

A while ago I was wondering about who you could trust to work in a modern equivalent of the Manhattan project. Thinking about it again, one problem is that people, if for example you consider the typical recent Ivy League … Continue reading →

There’s a new article out in Science tracing the splits in gut flora. It looks as if the gut bacteria in chimpanzees split with those in humans 5.3 million years: doesn’t quite match our genetic estimates based on Human/chimp autosomal … Continue reading →

In the early days of the empire, Rome was big, probably around 1 million. There were some number of Jews (thousands at least, perhaps as many as 40,000 by some estimates, although that’s probably high). There were also other foreigners … Continue reading →

There’s yet another paper out on Ashkenazi ancestry. It’s clear that this problem is a bit tricky, because the ancestral groups are not as different as one would like – this makes distinguishing the origins of chromosomal segments more difficult. … Continue reading →

Sometimes when reading a piece in a paper or magazine, I get the impression that the reporter is not necessarily 100% on board with the official editorial position, particularly when it is ripely insane, as is so often the case … Continue reading →

Recent work indicates that there were high levels of genetic differentiation between the early farmers in the Levant, Anatolia, and western Iran. What this means that is that before the Holocene, they didn’t mix very much – probably less than … Continue reading →

As far as average IQ scores go, this is what the world looks like. But there are two relevant tests: the Stanford-Binet, and life itself. If a country scored low on IQ but at the same time led the world … Continue reading →

It seems to me that Western economists didn’t do very well in understanding the Soviet economy, or that of other East Bloc countries. According to Paul Krugman, “typical estimates of the GDP of East Germany before the old regime collapsed … Continue reading →