Monthly Archives: December 2018

There’s a bit of excitement about Claas Relotius, a reporter for Der Spiegel who has the bad habit of making everything up. In one case, he wrote a ” tendentious, malicious portrait” of a small town in Minnesota ( Fergus … Continue reading →

As I have mentioned before, there are a couple of common mutations of the APOL1 gene ( (G1 and G2) that protect against one strain of sleeping sickness, but unfortunately greatly increase the risk of kidney failure.   The story was … Continue reading →

Agriculture emerged in several different places around the world not too long after the current interglacial began. At least some of those starts were independent, not inspired from others: certain agriculture originated independently in the New World. But in the … Continue reading →

I was explaining ( to one of my kids) that controlled fusion has been ten years away for my entire life, and wondered about examples of something that has been tried, and tried,  and tried, until it was an hissing … Continue reading →

Some time ago I mentioned an odd unsolved murder, at Harvard, back in 1969. One of our loyal readers noticed that the case has just  been solved. DNA – what can’t it do? Nothing very unusual about the perp, or … Continue reading →

You might also be interested in my booklists from 2014, 2016, and 2017. Ecological Imperialism Three Hearts and Three Lions The Searchers The Drawing of the Dark Quantitative Genetics The Rise of the West My Commando Operations Desolation Island When Titans Clashed  … Continue reading →