Monthly Archives: September 2016

You can characterize a group by its gene frequencies – which can be thought of as a point in a very high-dimensional space. Another group is a different point, and the between-group difference is a vector in that space. Ignoring … Continue reading →

Who should be head of the FDA? Ideally he should understand how drug development is drying up and have some decent notions about fixing it – this is probably the biggest current problem. He should understand big pharma’s sins and … Continue reading →

Just to make things clear, most political reporters are morons, nearly as bad as sports reporters. Mostly ugly cheerleaders for their side, rather than analysts. Uninteresting. how to analyze polls: Who ever is ahead in the polls at the time … Continue reading →

As I have said before, it seems likely to me that the Soviet Union put so much effort into treaty-violating biological warfare because the guys at the top believed in it – because they had seen it work, the same … Continue reading →

Back in the 90s, I spend a fair amount of time reading books about the Cretaceous extinction, including several by paleontologists arguing that the Alvarez impact hypothesis was a snare and a delusion, people like Charles Officer, Gerta Keller, and … Continue reading →

Once upon a time, I was arguing with some libertarians, who assuring me that it was impossible to stop people from toking (for example), even if we made sure that they could only obtain the ingredients by crawling over the … Continue reading →