Monthly Archives: March 2018

Sickle-cell is a standard textbook example, but there are subtleties that those texts never mention. Not just the point about the advantage of early lethality in homozygotes. Ask yourself why, over thousands of years, falciparum malaria never became resistant to … Continue reading →

A recent paper on the origin of sickle-cell was being discussed, and an interesting question was posed [ by Razib Khan]: why haven’t modifier genes emerged that reduce the bad effects in homozygotes? Let me say something about those bad … Continue reading →

Every now and then someone tries to give some genetic argument showing that population A and population B can’t possibly be significantly different in any trait that hurts someone’s feelings. They’re all bullshit. The most famous one is probably Lewontin’s … Continue reading →

Was thinking about how there are far too many reviewers, and far too few movies worth reviewing. It might be fun to review the movies that should have been made, instead. Someone ought to make a movie about the life … Continue reading →

Suppose you have a well-mixed population with some set of traits that have some kind of social importance or interest. Or for that matter, suppose their traits are utterly boring: that’s unusual and would be interesting. You have to put … Continue reading →

I have figured out a sure-fire way of preventing New Mexico from coming in last in education stats: D.C. Statehood!