Monthly Archives: February 2019

If memory serves, both of Bruce Lahn’s parents were physicists. I believe they met while working in a coal mine.

There are those that think that there are no real, baked-in average differences in personality or smarts between different dog breeds.  Pit bulls are depraved because they’re deprived.  Border collies learn to herd at a special secret school, probably something … Continue reading →

I haven’t seen a lot of apologetic histories of the Soviet Union ( ” the gallant Lost Cause “): not yet anyhow. So far, just random garbage from the New York Times, about how sex was better under socialism. But … Continue reading →

Some people ( like Amy Harmon, but not her alone) have been saying that we don’t have genetic evidence for average differences in intelligence between different human races. Harmon tries to imply that this means that there are no such … Continue reading →

Amy Harmon keeps making mistakes.  Right now she thinks that the math establishment  must be out to get black mathematicians, since there so few of them.  But with an IQ gap, the fraction of a low-scoring group that scores over … Continue reading →

Back in 2002, I was sure that Iraq didn’t have a nuclear program (and  said so) , but the nation’s intelligence agencies ( along with the Administration, Congress, the press and the pundits) thought otherwise.  I was right. How did … Continue reading →

> Eric Turkheimer ‏ @ent3c Dumb (but real and research-related) question: Y1 = aX^2 + bX + c Y2 = dX^2 + eX + f What is Y1 in terms of Y2? r/t if you know a good high school … Continue reading →

There’s an interesting related  question: for a given country or geographic region, what would happen if the the rest of the world vanished?  How would they do on their own?

There are countries where many people have cellphones, but where neither cell phones or any of their complex components are produced or designed. More generally, there are countries that manage to implement some of the infrastructure and institutions of the … Continue reading →

The neutral theory of evolution  assumes that allele frequencies change stochastically: population sizes over time matter, but there’s nothing special about any particular allele. All chance.  It can be used to develop evidence for selection: if you see results that … Continue reading →