Postings on books (mainly non-fiction), a few films and matters of interest by Lorenzo from Oz (aka Downunder)
Saturday, September 26, 2020
There is more to human evolution than African savannahs (and other problems of human nutrition)
Spread of farming and farmers.
Humans, the genus Homo, evolved in Africa. For most of the history of our genus, even for most of the history of our species Homo sapiens, we were foragers in Africa.
Homo sapiens are probably about 300,000 or so years old as a species. We did not leave Africa until maybe 80,000 years ago, with another exit wave about 50,000 years ago. Our species then spread out, still being foragers, across every continent except Antarctica.
Around 10,000 years ago, some of our ancestors started farming. Farming was invented again and again. In each case, farmers spread out, absorbing and replacing (mostly replacing) foragers. Some foraging populations have persisted to the present day. Those populations have no history other than being foragers. But they are a tiny proportion of present day humans.
The genetic record suggests that farming (and a bit later pastoralism) sped up human evolution, rather than slowing it down. It sped it up because it changed the selection pressures dramatically. Farming was distinctly less healthy than foraging, but massively increased our access to usable calories, and so won the demographic struggle against foraging.
What were the effects of these changes? Many and varied. Among pastoralist populations, lactase persistence, the ability to consume milk as adults, evolved. It also seems that our normative capacity evolved, with a shift towards moral norms because that made group stability easier and so enabled us to operate in larger (and more hierarchical) groups.
It also, fairly clearly, increased the variety of our response to food. Different populations had systematically different food patterns and selection pressures from those food patterns.
Where does that leave us?
Understanding that the notion of nutrition guidelines, especially enforced nutrition guidelines, is a complete crock. First, humans are simply too varied in their responses to food for a one-size-fits-all set of nutrition guidelines to be sensible.
Human responses to nutrition will not be random, just varied. So, responses will be distributed, probably in a fairly normal Bell-curve pattern (though that is a guess, not an inference from clear evidence). Thus, there will be patterns, potentially strong ones, in human responses to nutrition. Though the patterns are still likely to be varied enough that one-size-fits-all guidelines are still going to be a bad idea.
That 10,000 years or so of farming experience (which in many populations is rather less than that), is hardly going to completely overwrite 300,000 years of experience of being foragers (plus all that prior evolution). With even those foragers had significant variety in their diets between groups.
But those patterns are unlikely to be remotely uniform enough to make nutrition guidelines useful as anything more than a very general guide for people to discover what works for them.
The other problem with nutrition guidelines is (1) nutrition science is difficult and (2) the chances of government nutrition guidelines being solidly based on good nutrition science are vanishingly small.
Nutrition science is difficult because our responses to food are somewhat varied, our food intake is very varied and food is not remotely the only thing that affects our health and longevity. So, trying to tease out the effects of different foods, different food groups, different eating patterns, on our health and longevity is inherently complex and so inherently difficult.
The sheer difficulty of doing good nutrition science actually makes problem (2) worse. If it is hard to do good nutrition science, it is easy to do it badly. If it is easy to do it badly, it is very easy to do it to support an agenda. There are massive income flows at stake in food, nutrition and health, so there are massive social selection pressures in play to support, sustain and expand access to those income flows.
Which is how we have ended up, across the Western world, with nutrition guidelines that clearly do NOT promote health and active longevity. That, on the contrary, are presiding over us collectively getting chronically sicker, particularly through the dramatic increases in metabolic syndrome, as that is what maximises income flows to a lot of interested parties.
Big Food Products that wants us to eat more and more, to eat to our (manipulated) palates not to our health. Big Pharma that wants to sell symptom suppression drugs so makes more money the more symptoms there are to suppress. Ordinary medicos who make more money prescribing symptom suppression drugs to the chronically metabolically ill. Big Health Advocacy whose income comes from Big Food Products and Big Pharma and who get more income and importance the bigger their issue is. Big Government Health Bureaucracies, whose revenues go up the more chronically sick we collectively are.
With all those selection processes at work, the likelihood of nutrition guidelines being actually based on the science and actually promoting health and active longevity is close to zero. As we have collectively experienced.
And this without considering the ideological pressures also in play, such as religious and other commitments to vegetarianism.
Government nutrition guidelines have been a serial disaster and were never a good idea in the first place. Our metabolisms were collectively much healthier when we were not afflicted with government nutrition guidelines.
Humans are too nutritionally varied, and the social selection processes operating on bureaucracies and political processes far too perverse, for government nutrition guidelines to be an idea that anyone should support.
Quotations
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"If she measured her own feeling toward the world she must have been pretty
well able to gauge those of the world to herself and perhaps she reflected
th...
SHE BE BLESSED
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The pause before she says she’s “blessed” by the electricity she’s stealing
from her neighbor says it all. Plus she’s living off of Social Security and
dis...
All You Need Is Love
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Recently I found myself trying to explain to someone just beginning on the
road of art (is rocky. Also ink and paint stained) why having your “thing”
that ...
A TikTok Ban Passes, But the Courts Are Next
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American consumers have the constitutional right to choose the speech
platform of their choice, even if it is a choice that unnerves the national
security ...
Ouch.
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Something had my back all jacked up last night. I didn't get a lot of
really good sleep.
Hopefully tonight will be better.
I did have a really long detail...
Vulnerable populations
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A whistle blower steps up:
I am a 42-year-old St. Louis native, a queer woman, and politically to the
left of Bernie Sanders. My worldview has deeply sha...
Avar Sex And Marriage Patterns From Ancient DNA
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The Avars (see also here and here) were a historically attested Altaic
(probably Turkic) language speaking people of Eastern Europe who expanded
as far as...
Ignorance, Its Uses and Nurture
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Democracy may not be the silliest idea concocted by man but, for anything
larger than a small town, it is crackpot. It consists in the idea that a
public, ...
Wednesday assorted links
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1. U.S. vs. Taiwanese work culture. 2. Albert Wensemius and the rise of
Singapore. 3. Unusual questions answered by Megan McArdle. 4. Why Panama
dollariz...
Will Jewish Democrats Finally Wake Up?
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"How many of the thousands of individuals who gathered in Times Square on
Oct. 8, 2023 and chanted 'resistance is justified' and “glory to our
martyrs” a...
One For the Gen-Xers Out There
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Devotees of the film Say Anything… and of Lili Taylor’s character Corey
will appreciate this song, which riffs off of one of the sixty-some-odd
songs that ...
Pasternak from Toronto-Scarborough to Maryland
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Avia Pasternak, currently associate professor of philosophy at the
University of Toronto Scarborough will be moving to the Department of
Philosophy at th...
This zig-zagging slows it down
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Swarms of drones, David Hambling explains (in Swarm Troopers), might follow
the model of pack-hunters like wolves: Wolves are unusual among carnivores
in t...
The FUD-Packer’s Ball
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Throughout the Cold War years, it was a standard claim from the people
called the left in America that the intelligence services manipulated
domestic polit...
Approximating the Interest Rate for a Lease
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[image: Tesla Model 3 (2023)by Kazyakurumaon Wikimedia Commons.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tesla_Model_3_(2023),_long_range,_Japan,_left-front...
Is Politics Immoral? Meet Princess Mathilde
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Political and moral philosophy are related to economics, and even less
stealthily to the older political economy. The economist cannot recommend a
govern...
Columbia Blinks
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The word on Columbia’s president, Nemat Shafik, calling in the NYPD to
arrest students who refused to leave what they called the “Gaza Solidarity
Encampmen...
In the News (#1432)
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The privacy threats posed by facial recognition technology are, in many
ways, unprecedented. – Michal Kosinski To Molest and Rape Cops are a
menace to wo...
Practicing Civic Behavior: A Key Student Priority
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As a countermeasure to action civics, which aims to convert the
“traditional subject of civics into a recruitment tool of the progressive
left,” it is cr...
Love and War in the Apennines by Eric Newby (1971)
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Eric Newby (1919 to 2006) was a much-loved travel writer, author of such
British travel classics as ‘A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush’ (1958) and
‘Slowly Dow...
“Higher” “education”? In a pig’s eye
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Another plainspoken, common-sensical missive from the febrile mind of Mike
Rowe, whose Twitter/X/Whatthehellever feed I am pleased and proud to
subscribe/f...
Elcho Castle in Scotland reopens
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A 16th-century tower house in northeastern Scotland has reopened to
visitors after Historic Environment Scotland carried out necessary repairs
to its masonry.
Can González Urrutia Win the Venezuelan Presidency?
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This former diplomat, now endorsed by María Corina Machado, could hand the
opposition a victory in July according to polls. But the road ahead is, to
say t...
Teocintle
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This is what early domesticated corn (maize) looked like. It was
domesticated from the plant "teocintle" (meaning "grass of the gods" in
Náhuatl), most l...
Enabling Genocide Is OK, Hush Money Not OK
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W.J. Astore What a country! I’m already drowning in mainstream media
coverage of Trump’s trial for paying hush money to Stormy Daniels and
hiding it under ...
The Quest for Motherhood
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I have a friend who is going through something terrible. I’m going to give
her history, even though she is not the main subject of this post, just the
jump...
Three Options for Taxing Wealth
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Extremely high levels of wealth are were not typically generated by people
who were saving out of the income that they earned. Instead, high levels of
we...
Quasi-Refusal and Teens
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by Dominic Wilkinson In an interesting legal case earlier this year, the
court held an emergency hearing about the medical care of a 16 year old,
recentl...
2024 Rangemaster Roundup
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Two weeks ago, I spent three days teaching and learning at the Rangemaster
Tactical Training Conference in Dallas. I’ve now taught at the last 11
Tactical...
The Other Type of Mountain Wave Cloud
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Folks love to talk about *lenticular clouds*, which are generally produced
by air moving up (and down) downstream of a mountain barrier (see picture
bel...
Kosovo’s Serbs still not happy
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There's more trouble in northern Kosovo, as a referendum that was supposed
to undo farcical elections turns out to be equally farcical in its turn.
My Passover press release
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – From the university campuses of Assyria to the
thoroughfares of Ur to the palaces of the Hittite Empire, students across
the Fertil...
My Passover press release
-
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – From the university campuses of Assyria to the
thoroughfares of Ur to the palaces of the Hittite Empire, students across
the Fertil...
Culture As A Cruel Master
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Thomas Carlyle famously warned against stuff that is “a good tool to have
as a slave, but a bad master to be ruled by." Consider applying this
warning to c...
Barclays Bank
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Cunts. Okay, let me clarify. Yesterday I bought a motorcycle. This beauty
is a direct replacement for my 2018 Z900RS. Normally, I don’t buy
privately, [...]
ANTI-HERO…
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I do not want to write this. Of all the things I haven’t wanted to write,
this is at the tippy top of the list. Throughout my “commentary” career,
I’ve w...
61 billion reasons to hope
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That’s the size of the aid package for the Ukraine that the US Congress has
finally approved after six months of dithering. It would be easy to ascribe
the...
Shibboleth Gold
-
A world of muffled noise and muted color, personal space that speaks in
inches, bland food served cool. It’s an apt time for reflection.
Retrospection, I ...
The New Jihadists Are Our Kids
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“I will use my knives and machete to slit their throats and kill them."
Coeur d’Alene, an Idaho city with a population of over 50,000, had too many
chur...
The problem is you?, part 2
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I won't try to give a table of regression coefficients in this post, just
summarize the differences between the analysis of the geographical origins
of ...
The Democratization of Crappy Stuff
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So, fun fact, Amazon blocked this book review from their site. Then they
sent me a nasty email with a ‘warning’ not to do it again. Now, I’m not a
polemici...
From a Persisting to a Raiding Strategy
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A current overview of changing Israeli fighting doctrine in Gaza 20 April
2024 By: David Brock Katz Overtaking the headlines on 8 April, which stated
that ...
Ukraine, and the World Outside US Borders
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I don’t think I’ve ever seen a worse and more simplistic ‘debate’ than the
arguments taking place in the US over aid to Ukraine. There are big quality
prob...
Gould’s Belt
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29.2 – 27.7 million years ago Logarithmic History has had a lot of geology
and biology lately, not so much astronomy. But all is not peaceful in the
heaven...
The Octave Of Intelligence
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With a hat-tip to Charles Murray on X: The Seven Tribes of Intellect. (One
has to wonder: what must it have been like to be John von Neumann?)
Specialized Markets
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The death last week of the pathbreaking comic book artist Trina Robbins
reminded me of an odd bit of history. Before she was a cartoonist, Robbins
owned an...
The order of inequality
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Professor Tongdong Bai (whom I had the pleasure to meet in Shanghai and who
kindly alerted me to his new book) has recently published a book called
perha...
Sam Harris and Alex O’Connor Debate Morality
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I was delighted to see that Alex O’Connor recently debated Sam Harris about
whether ethics is objective and, if so, on what grounds.
The post Sam Harris ...
It's complicated
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Three important manuscripts appeared recently at bioRxiv, mostly dealing
with the origins and expansions of proto-Germanic and proto-Indo-European
populati...
First Thoughts on Pettit’s Republicanism
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I want to get some basic thoughts on Philip Pettit’s book, Republicanism: A
Theory of Freedom and Government, on the record. Pettit’s ideas have the
virtue...
Daniel Dennett (1942-2024)
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Prominent philosopher of mind, apostle of Darwinism, and New Atheist writer
Daniel Dennett has died. I have been very critical of Dennett over the
years...
Braunstein Play is Fundamental to D&D
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Braunstein has been framed as being an intermediary form in the evolution
of wargame to roleplaying game. I have demonstrated that Braunstein play is
integ...
No Unmoved Movers
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Economists must find academics confusing. When investors put money in a
company, they have some control over what that company does. They vote to
decide a ...
Kazakh Towns Inundated as Spring Flooding Hits
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Satellite imagery shows the extent of Kazakhstan's dramatic spring
flooding, which has hit both large cities and remote steppe villages.
The post Kazakh ...
My New Paper on Hawtrey Is Available on SSRN
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Last fall and early winter I posted a series of four blogposts (here, here,
here, and here) about or related to Ralph Hawtrey as I was trying to gather
my ...
How to Make Peking Duck…
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Can I tell you I was ridiculously excited to see the Pickle Lady post
this?? I want to try making one so badly. It’s one of my fave dishes.
Something for the Mullahs to Think About
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Against the background of the continuing Iranian-Israeli tensions, it may
be useful to take another look at what is at stake. Iran is a large country
com...
The Dark Forest Anthology of the Internet
-
My essay The Extended Internet Universe, where I coined the term “cozyweb”
(probably in my top 5 most successful memes) is featured in this cute
little col...
How to Eliminate Impermanent Loss
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Generally, markets are efficient in that it isn't easy to make
above-average returns day-trading, and most mutual funds underperform
market-weighted ETF...
The hawkish case
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The future course of the economy always involves a bit of guesswork. But it
seems to me that the following two claims are pretty likely to be true: 1.
Over...
Police, in the Real World
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For years I worked as police reporter for the Washington Times, spending
long hours in squad cars in various cities getting to know cops well. Now I
listen...
The ANES wins AAPOR’s 2024 Policy Impact Award
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The American National Election Studies (ANES) has been recognized by the
American Association for Public Opinion Research (AAPOR) with its Policy
Impact ...
McCarthyism: The long shadow of a false narrative
-
Sen. Joseph McCarthy's anti-communist crusade lasted only four short years.
Seven years after the Wheeling speech he was dead. The caricature of the
man e...
Announcing a New Paradigm for Economics and Beyond
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One thousand critiques of neoclassical economics are not going to be
effective unless the critiques hang together.
The post Announcing a New Paradigm for...
Some defunct economist
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"To understand the man you have to know what was happening in the world
when he was twenty." Napoleon's claim helps explain one of the big problems
with ce...
Fertility and Income: Some Notes
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*UPDATE: Forgot a section! Added now!*
Pretty much everybody has seen a graph showing that richer countries have
fewer babies. Here’s an example from the...
Dad Joke
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Since my offspring refused to appreciate it, I will share here for even
more mockery :D See, there's this grumpy woman who lives on the edge of the
city. S...
Why I have an OpenAI subscription
-
It's $20 per month. Here are the features I value and use:
- Others' custom GPTs
- My own custom GPTs
- Integration into email (Thunderbird) a...
The Men Coming Out on Top
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The “Women can do everything men can do” craze — that’s what it is, a
craze, as in it doesn’t make any sense — started somewhere in the late
1960’s to earl...
The Palestinian “Two-State” Plan: Duping the West
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One of the great unsolved mysteries of the 21st century is why, given what
a catastrophe it proved to be, anyone, much less a whole phalanx of
politicians,...
My Six-Step Plan for a Two-State Solution
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Has the time come to implement the two-state solution – that is, to
recognize the semi-sovereign Palestinian Authority (PA) as a state, as
"Palestine," alo...
High Culture and Hyperstimulus
-
What’s the difference between a Renaissance nude and a Playboy centerfold?
Mark Twain sardonically called the painting above “too strong for any place
but ...
Hypatia – Myths and History
-
The story often told about Hypatia of Alexandria was that she was a great
scientist, rationalist and scholar who was brutally murdered by a mob of
Christ...
SOCIOLOGY OF THE GAZA WAR
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What can a sociologist say that hasn't been said many times about the
Hamas raid and Israel's retaliatory war in Gaza? I will draw on
theoretical gener...
On Whale Carcasses
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On whale carcasses, parasites and the rot of our institutions There has
been a spate of articles written lately—and indeed of books—by academics
who have b...
February
-
February is one of the most beautiful and painful songs ever written, by
Dar Williams. March is nearly over already, and I didn’t write in January.
But I’v...
Vale, Felix!
-
This plucky little blog began life almost exactly 18 years ago with a
cluster of posts on 26 March 2006 - including one that introduced our
(then) young ...
The Love Of Daredevil
-
I’ve been reading the current run of Daredevil by Saladin Ahmed and have
been pleasantly surprised at how good it is–and how based it is at the same
time. ...
Piece of music
-
A new bill, currently under public consultation, is poised to introduce
quotas, yes, for music: Greek-Language Music Quota Bill Sparks Controversy
(BalkanI...
An arrest raid in Gush Etzion
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Jerusalem Post, 16/2 “You meet the terrorist at the end of the process, on
the road, but there’s a whole system that leads up to that point, so if you
can ...
The Big Picture
-
It is natural for wars to draw observers into ever-more detailed studies of
their events and potential lessons from them. But the result can be an
instinc...
Let’s just defund the UN and leave it immediately
-
Hidden deep below the headquarters of the United Nations’ aid agency for
Palestinians here is a Hamas complex with rows of computer servers that
Israel’s...
Speaking trip this April
-
I'm speaking at Libertycon in Tbilisi on April 20th, will probably either
go or come via London. Anyone interested in a talk? I'll probably be in
Europe ...
What I’ve been listening to lately
-
A lot of stuff went onto my playlist late in 2023 that I didn’t have time
to digest until recently; many of these could have made my best of the year
list.
Chortle
-
So, the stats for last year’s Hugos in China were recently released. A
number of veterans of the Puppy Wars are passing around the popcorn and
inventing cl...
Tools for Thinking About Censorship
-
“Was it a government action, or did they do it themselves because of
pressure?” This is inevitably among our first questions when news breaks
that any expr...
Amazonian "Garden Urbanism": A skeptical account
-
This new paper in Science is getting alot of publicity, and people are
asking for my views (Rostain, et al. 2024) The paper presents fascinating
new evide...
Iowa Caucas: The Polls Meet Reality
-
Summary: On Monday Iowa Republicans will caucus and vote on the candidates.
The candidates have made bold claims that they are going to win big. By
10:00...
An Unprecedented Crime?
-
In the pursuit of avoiding a repeat of the October 7th Hamas atrocities,
Israel is shooting and bombing among Palestinians, at close quarters and in
an enc...
Uninteresting things
-
Now I deny that anything is, or can be, uninteresting. —G. K. Chesterton,
‘What I Found in My Pocket’ In the noble little essay from which this noble
littl...
Arno Mayer, 1926-2023
-
The historian Arno Mayer, who had such an influence on my work and
eventually became a friend, has died at 97. He wrote books on everything
from the French...
What I Wish Someone Had Told Me
-
1. Optimism, obsession, self-belief, raw horsepower and personal
connections are how things get started.
2. Cohesive teams, the right combina...
Books 2023
-
You might also be interested in my booklists from
from 2014, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, and 2022. The Balance of
Tomorrow Stirling’s Desert Rai...
Good People Break Bad Laws
-
Topher Field directed 'Battleground Melbourne' and has now released 'Good
People Break Bad Laws' addressing Dan Andrews' insane COVID lockdowns.
I interv...
25 THINKERS FOR A WORLD ON THE BRINK
-
It was most unexpected, but most welcome. I’ve been nominated by Prospect
magazine as one of “25 thinkers for a world on the brink”. “Kenan Malik…
earns a ...
Who Got What, and Why? A Nobel for Claudia Goldin
-
How have women been paid for their work? More broadly, how are different
skills in general rewarded in the labor market? The prices of different
things are...
Recent work
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The New Labor Antitrust, SSRN The Trump Indictment and America’s Political
Order, Project Syndicate, June 14, 2023 The Revised Merger Guidelines Will
Resto...
#257 – Qing 3: Lose Your Hair, Or Lose Your Head
-
Manchu occupation of the lands south of the Yangtze River proceed smoothly…
right up until Prince Dorgon is convinced by some of his advisors that
everyone...
ASHTON PARKS’ DIRTY “SNACKS” ADDICTION
-
Snacks, aka “Bread” or “The Louisiana Succubus”, is infamous within the
sector.…
The post ASHTON PARKS’ DIRTY “SNACKS” ADDICTION appeared first on
TheRa...
The Tragedy Of Richard Dawkins On What Is A Woman
-
Richard Dawkins has recently written an article in The New Statesman
defending the position that “woman” means adult human female. Dawkins bases
his positi...
On the Dangers of Futile Appeals
-
In 2016, Gary Pavela, a longtime educational consultant and fellow for the
National Association of College and University Attorneys (NACUA),
referenced the...
New Yorkers are Getting What They Deserve
-
They are paying the just tax for willful self-enstupidation. Vote Democrat,
get more crime. The morally decent should leave NYC, and indeed every
Democrat-...
"Realist Jurisprudence: Selected Essays"
-
A Spanish translation by Dr. Francisco M. Mora-Sifuentes of eight of my
essays on realist jurisprudence and related topics (with a new preface by
me and an...
A pyramid scheme of misery
-
Róisín Michaux at The Critic on the mothers who affirm their children's
trans identities: I’ve spent the last couple of years lurking on their
online fora....
Thatcherism is dead: Thatcherism lives
-
Thatcherism is dead. It has ceased to be. It has expired and gone to meet
its maker. It has kicked the bucket, shuffled off this mortal coil and
joined the...
A Crusader’s Mom
-
Something a bit different. Early crusaders were volunteers, who took vows
to go on a crusade, rather than members of a professional army. As a
result, they...
U.S. Openly Militarizes Space
-
The media have noticed that the new USSF Doctrine is more focused on
aligning space activity with the twelve principles of warfare as a whole
The post U....
One Day Towards the End of Summer
-
The following is an extract from something I am working on at the moment -
an analysis of the killing of Earl Rǫgnvaldr of Orkney, as reported in
chapter...
Rochester gets burned over
-
Fenster writes: The burned over district: The term “burned-over district”
refers to the western and central regions of New York State in the early
19th cen...
Lionising the lionesses
-
Football has kept me sane during a difficult part of my life. There have
been weeks in the past two years when the only place I’ve left my home to
visit ha...
Author’s notes: Britannia and Beyond - Hibernia
-
If you’re reading this, that probably means you’ve purchased a copy of the
latest *Cthulhu Invictus* sourcebook from Golden Goblin Press: *Britannia
and ...
Russia: Defend Boris Kagarlitsky!
-
News of Kagarlitsky's arrest has sparked anger and empathy among a wide
range of activists. People may perish, but ideas do not, and Kagarlitsky
has done...
"Pre-Galilean" Foolishness
-
I am currently reading *The Master and His Emissary*, which appears to be
an excellent book. ("Appears" because I don't know the neuroscience
literature...
Geoffrey Brennan (9/15/44-7/28/22)
-
Long-time Duke faculty member and friend Geoffrey Brennan died in Canberra,
Australia of complications from acute leukemia.
“Geoff” joined the Duke ...
The persistence of belief and certainty
-
Long thought. Don’t say you had no warning. The explicitly secular
perspective is that there is no proof of a spiritual layer to human
experience,
Continue...
Draco Layer Four: The Anagogic or Mystical Sense
-
Here be dragons. And doves.
Human beings long for transcendence. Such longing is, for the world, always
out of fashion because, of course, it is not a long...
UN Special Rapporteur Releases Guantánamo Report
-
On June 26, United Nations Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and
Counter-Terrorism Fionnuala Ní Aoláin released her report following a technical
visit ...
Conversations With Cabbies
-
Many a foreign correspondent, sent to an obscure country of which he knows
nothing but which has suddenly drawn the world’s attention to itself by a
terrib...
Moving to Substack
-
Hi all, this is a pointer to direct you over to Substack. I’m moving the
Econ Growth Blog over there, with the hopes of creating a little more
interactio...
A Few Quick Announcements
-
By James As I wrote a couple of years ago, I don’t post here anymore. I
just have a couple of updates for people who subscribe and may be
interested in my ...
Genspect 2023: Transgender as Political Backlash
-
This was my contribution to the Genspect ‘The Bigger Picture’ 2023
conference on Saturday 29...
The post Genspect 2023: Transgender as Political Backlash...
Breaking my Flag
-
For those who missed the previous announcements, please read the previous
posts for the details, but after 18 2/3 years here, I will no longer be
posti...
(How) Do We Talk about Fascism?
-
When the sports presenter Gary Lineker sent a tweet about the Illegal
Migration Bill, comparing some of the language around the policy to 'that
used by...
Hanging Up The Keyboard
-
I wrote this incomplete draft way back in 2019 but never finished or
published it in the mêlée of law school. Posting the fragments now for
completeness....
Hope Springs Eternal...
-
In preparation for a return to active blogging I have torn down this server
to the root and reinstalled everything clean. I am hoping the errors and
probl...
Wrapping things up here
-
I thought I should mention to any long-time readers that I am going to be
letting this domain name lapse at the end of the month. I notice that
certain p...
Understanding the Rise of Transgender Identities
-
The social dynamics of girls’ and women’s friendship groups, including a
desire to fit in and avoid conflict, may make them more susceptible to
social cont...
Heather’s Funeral Service
-
A Service for Heather Hastie will be held at 2:30pm NZ Time on Thursday 9th
February. If you would like to view the service please click on the link
belo...
AI Will Kill Literature, and AI Will Resurrect It
-
The literary novel, as far as genres go, is not that old: novels have
existed in our culture for about three hundred years. If you had a time
machine, you ...
Bitcoin is the Detector of Imbeciles:
-
Bitcoin is the Detector of Imbeciles*On The Cluster of Charlatans, Zero
Interest Rate Virgins, & Crypto Tumors*
*Interview with Laeticia Strauch-Bonart in ...
The British Land Corporation : A Housing Manifesto
-
In recent decades, successive governments have presided over a crash in the
level of home ownership in the UK, coinciding with skyrocketing inequality.
30 ...
-
Year To Date Inflation -- Not the Right Metric
During the Great Moderation, the Fed kept the inflation rate close to its
target of 2%. However, ther...
Subscribe to my Substack
-
For most intents and purposes, this blog is dead. Comments are still
permitted and errors will be corrected if pointed out. Nevertheless, all
new writing w...
Blog Migration!
-
Birds migrate, butterflies migrate, whales migrate, and this blog is
migrating! It's being moved over from Blogger to Substack. The URL is
currently http...
How Eric Hobsbawm anticipated Synthetic Marx
-
I have to admit that I expected some pushback against the thesis of my
paper (co-authored with Michael Makovi) “The Mainstreaming of Marx:
Measuring the ...
Have the Baby Boomers Ruined Society?
-
Introduction.The author is a young energetic historian who has entertaining
and insightful ideas. His exuberance on occasion leads him astray, he can
be to...
As Good As A Rest, They Said
-
Or, The Cause Of All The Banging And Salty Epithets. After close to sixteen
years, this blog has a new home. Come see. Bring cake.
Another one bites the dust.
-
I don’t usually cover the events of the day, because one loses track of the
big picture. The events of the day only reveal their meaning when viewed
months...
Who blew up the Nordscream Popelines?
-
Well, one does have his or her sources … But, honestly, anyone with a brain
can solve this no-brainer. For once – Russia has absolutely no interest do
to s...
10 Predictions for the next 5 to 10 years
-
A friend asked what the big trends in American society over the next five
to ten years would be. This is a fun time frame to think about, because you
don’t...
Getting Down To Basics with
-
Bar Mitzvah Food Catering – Tips For Budget-Conscious Caterers For lots of,
bar mitzvah food catering is a high-ticket item. […]
The post Getting Down To...
Good and bad ways to learn
-
[image: anonymous kid in helmet riding run bike on pavement in countryside]
Learning a new skill is hard. Part of what’s so hard about it is, by
definition...
CSPI is Moving To Substack
-
A couple of months ago, I wrote about why, if you’re a writer, you should
be on Substack. At the same time, CSPI was publishing all of its material
on ou...
Who Cares About Diversity?
-
All across the Academy, schools are requiring “Diversity Statements” as a
condition for new hires. Everyone has to submit a statement explaining how
they a...
Moving to Substack . . .
-
The times, they are a changin'. Going forward, I will primarily be blogging
on Substack: https://stevewinkler.substack.com.
Bryan Caplan, who else, convin...
Appeasing the Dead
-
*I’m more…than just…a little curious…how you’re planning…to go about…Making
your amends…to the dead. To the dead* — A Perfect Circle, *The Noose*.
Dea...
My Final Post
-
For various reasons, I have decided to quit blogging. For one thing, my
numbers are down to a level that it doesn’t seem worth it to continue,
though let m...
AdSense became unusable
-
For several months, I have been getting direct censorship requests from
Google AdSense. In recent days, the frequency increased to "several
articles to be ...
RIP, Amy's Blog: 1997 to 2021
-
I have two intense books I'm completing, and I've been increasingly unable
to put the effort into blogging that I have done for years...
Filtering For Truth In The Age Of Google
-
Over the years, I’ve met several individuals of immense capacity for
logical deduction, genuinely impressive education, and sky-high IQ (we’re
talking well...
The shameful silence on the Waukesha massacre
-
Is silence still violence? If it is, then a whole lot of people, from the
Hollywood set to the virtue-signalling left, are guilty of some serious
violenc...
Customer Agent Rendering
-
A customer representative or perhaps buyer broker is the strategy of a
brokerage or property broker symbolizing a client in an financial
commitment transac...
The blog has moved
-
It is now on substack (In My Tribe). There is still no charge to read it. I
am trying to maintain the feel of this blog, including the daily scheduled
post...
Good Chart Checklist
-
Note: this was prepared for my ECON 3403 students, and is a list of all of
the mistakes I commonly see in student charts. Please add your suggestions
for t...
Hotel Bar Sessions, Ep 31: Whose History?
-
The HBS hosts sit down with Dr. Charles McKinney, Jr. to talk about whose
history is (and isn't) being taught.
Following on the heels of a recent and ...
Thank You
-
[image: 11032021Thanks1]
Thank you for supporting my work. As you know, my work is vital,
difficult, and sometimes – well, in wars, dangerous.
There ...
Thank You
-
[image: 11032021Thanks1]
Thank you for supporting my work. As you know, my work is vital,
difficult, and sometimes – well, in wars, dangerous.
There ...
Moved to Substack
-
This post is long overdue.
About a year ago, I copied over all posts from here to Substack, and have
been publishing occasional posts there ever since. ...
A Few Thoughts
-
It occurs to me that not enough people are really looking at the glaring
hypocrisy currently unfolding in our post-pandemic world. The most obvious
one b...
AmoLatina Revisión
-
AmoLatina anuncia los medios de acceso impresionante latinas contactos
mujeres y comunicación usándolos. La cosa es que estas damas son conocidas
como atra...
What does Lisa Birnbach say about preppy cars?
-
I happen to have a copy of The Official Preppy Handbook, and it seems that
preppy cars barely changed at all since the book was written in 1980.
That’s 41 ...
18 Theses on Poetry
-
The principal purpose of poetry is to lay bare the hidden powers of the
language in which it is written. These powers are found both at the level
of the ph...
Today
-
[cross-posted at facebook] Today’s a fine day an especially beautiful day
the kind of day when you know just how you want to spend it but the place
you wan...
Dr. John McAdams
-
*October 26th, 1945 - April 15th, 2021*
Dr. John Charles McAdams passed away on Thursday, April 15th, 2021, at the
age of 75. He was a devoted husband, ...
health care
-
These two graphs really say it all:
A few years ago I got a freak knee infection that landed me in the
hospital. The experience was so smooth, non-st...
A new legend
-
Unauthorized is very, very pleased to announce that MADE BY JIMBOB has
joined the intellectual outlaws of the Internet. Look for his videos on the
Made b...
A handy guide to getting pinged
-
The NHS App could be expanded to help us make ‘informed decisions’ in all
kinds of everyday scenarios. AI algorithms would replace the flawed notion
of ‘wo...
The Sad, Discordant Ballad of Husham al-Hashimi
-
The man who pulled the trigger on Husham al-Hashimi—by first misfiring an
assault rifle and then pulling out his pistol to shoot the victim at
point-blank ...
I’ve moved my blog to Substack…
-
Hello I now blog HERE. If interested in why I did the referendum, read
THIS. In 2019, just before going to No10, I wrote about the likely failure
of UK cri...
I’ve moved my blog to Substack…
-
Hello I now blog HERE. If interested in why I did the referendum, read
THIS. In 2019, just before going to No10, I wrote about the likely failure
of UK cri...
IEA World Congress 2021
-
A few words on the International Economics’ Association online World
Congress, July 2-6, on the theme “Equity, Sustainability and Prosperity in
a Fractured...
“Old Chicago” and the Freiburg School
-
Stefan Kolev and Ekkehard Köhler have published a paper in the Working
Paper Series of the Stigler Center at Chicago University on the history of
the polit...
Still Distracted, But Not Here
-
My online writing goes back to Usenet, early bulletin-boards and the pay
service GEnie, but my public identity as an online writer really began a
few years...
Money “Front & Center”
-
This is a note to my long time readers that I have earlier this year moved
my blogging to Substack. At Substack, posts are called newsletters, and so
no on...
Money “Front & Center”
-
This is a note to my long time readers that I have earlier this year moved
my blogging to Substack. At Substack, posts are called newsletters, and so
no on...
Movie Night – Dry Wind (2020)
-
Marketing a movie in the midst of a pandemic is a tough job. Doubly so when
it’s a piece of esoteric queer cinema. At least one clever person has
figured o...
the future
-
Hey gang, I’m excited to say that Substack approached me recently and made
an attractive financial offer for me to blog over there. Given that I’ve
been ou...
Finito Sic Semper Tyrannis
-
We are done here. turcopolier.com is working now. I have cancelled all
guest author ships here. RSS is enabled on the new blog. Comments will no
longer be ...
‘Feel Our Pain,’ Politicians Demand
-
Congress is increasingly not a place where the average member partakes in
what’s generally understood as legislative activity, but rather engages in
a va...
Mailbag: “Avoidant”
-
I get a lot of good feedback on my attachment books, even seven years after
publication. This one was really touching. I hope you’re well. I read your
book...
Introducing Astral Codex Ten
-
Thanks for bearing with me the past few months. My new blog is at
https://astralcodexten.substack.com/. I’ll try to have a less unwieldy
domain name workin...
We lost. Now what?
-
I was preparing this post, anticipating that nothing would happen on
January 6, that the certification of Biden would go forward with minor
bluster and maj...
Apakah Slot Online Terbaik Punya Banyak Bonus
-
Situs judi slot online kini hadir sebagai solusi ketika banyak orang tidak
bisa mengikuti gambling secara konvensional. Sejak internet mulai menjadi
tekn...
An amazingly short history of philosophy
-
1. In the beginning everyone searching for knowledge was doing
philosophy. There was nothing else.
2. Then, gradually, one scientific discipl...
Noahpinion has moved to a new website!
-
Well folks, it's been a fun 10-year run at this little website. I'm moving
on to a new platform: Substack!
Here's the new Noahpinion:
https://noahpin...
Storytelling: Friday Chart Edition
-
I have not posted here in awhile, so I thought it would be good to share a
few recent charts that tell interesting stories.
*Central Bank Balance Sheets*
F...
‘Test & Trace’ is a mirage
-
Lockdown II thoughts: Day 1 Opposition politicians have been banging on
about the need for a ‘working’ Test & Trace system even more loudly than
the govern...
Review of Rod Dreher’s “Live Not By Lies”
-
Two years ago, when reviewing “The Benedict Option”, I wrote, “Almost all
Dreher’s critics accuse him of crying wolf or being a Chicken Little at
best … Me...
A Letter to TAI’s Subscribers and Readers
-
Dear TAI readers,Due primarily to financing difficulties, The American
Interest is taking a hiatus from publishing new material.We are glad that
there is...
Biotin for hair: what can this vitamin do to hair?
-
What is this vitamin? How does it act on the wires? Does it make hair grow
faster? For more insights jump to: best biotin shampoo
We know that our hair l...
2020 Update
-
Civil Politics remains a free resource and we continue to support some
partners who we previously worked with but due to time and funding
constraints, we a...
Socialism: The Greatest Enemy Of Freedom
-
Every nincompoop who’s been educated into stupidity will define socialism
as state or social ownership of the means of production. Socialism is
basically...
Left Critics and the Biden-Harris Ticket
-
.. . By Darren Barany Unsurprisingly (and sadly), many Americans relate to
campaigns for major elections in ways that reflect the society’s pervasive
indiv...
Humanity’s second “cradle” in Southeast Asia
-
Pleistocene Sundaland
This week on The Insight (Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and Google
Podcasts) Razib and Spencer talk about a topic which they hav...
The spin on the spin
-
There's been something of a triumph of spin on the EU's MFF share-out. Oh I
don't mean the headlines, which we summarised last week, but the rationale.
Spa...
In Memory of Bob Rossana
-
Robert “Bob” Rossana died back in February of this year. I was
inadvertently left off of the university announcement email and did not
hear about it until ...
Migrating the blog
-
It should be back soon. If you really want it find something right now,
it’s all still there, just hiding at a slightly different (temporary)
address: http...
Turkey: 28.5% of Generation Z have abandoned Islam
-
A recent study conducted by Gezici Research Center recorded a massive shift
in social and religious attitudes in Turkey among cohorts of Generation Z.
In t...
The End
-
Back in 2011, a group of academic philosophers started a blog called
“Bleeding Heart Libertarians.” The idea behind that blog was simple, but
also somewh...
A good run: Overlawyered, 1999-2020
-
I published the first Overlawyered post on July 1, 1999, and I expect this
post on May 31, 2020 will be the last. As someone in the entertainment
world o...
Cold War 2 Propaganda
-
So it seems that hostility to China is now official American policy.
Redgov, i.e. the Military Industrial Complex has been pushing it for quite
a while, ...
Recent writing
-
I haven’t written recently on this blog. I wrote for a year at The American
Conservative. All the pieces are available here. I also wrote a piece
Covid-19 ...
One flu over the cuckold’s nest
-
There have been a few articles like this doing the rounds: What It’s Like
to Isolate With Your Girlfriend and Her Other Boyfriend Humiliating and
degrading...
The real problem is also nominal
-
The real problem is also nominal
March 15, 2020
*Confidence level (?): thinking out loud*
If I closed my eyes and completely wiped from my mind the fac...
We need our fear and anger to tackle COVID-19
-
The most important thing that the response to COVID-19 has lacked in the
West, compared to East Asia, is fear. President Xi and his subordinates are
afrai...
Outbreak: Anatomy of a Plague
-
[ by Charles Cameron — scientific [precision meets human error in cases of
outbreak — with links to a terrific science thread by Palli Thordarson
@PalliTho...
Steno Majesty
-
This beautiful lady, known as the White Rose, was Queen Consort Geraldine
of Albania in the 1930s. Don’t look closely into her politics – she and her
husba...
Network Behavior and Christian Ethics
-
In designing software for computer networks, the Robustness Principle
states
"Be conservative in what you send, be liberal in what you accept"
The firs...
In spite of Brexit…
-
Now that the British exit from the European Union is a legal reality, the
economic situation in the UK has been surprisingly sedate. This will be a
surpris...
Message heard.
-
I’ve been deeply moved and humbled by the overwhelming response to my post
announcing that I planned on shutting down the blog. I’ve reconsidered and
deci...
Is evolutionary psychology impossible?
-
p.caption { font-size: 0.7em; } Subrena Smith recently argued that
“evolutionary psychology, as it is currently understood, is…impossible”
(Smith 2019). I ...
I now blog on the Volokh Conspiracy
-
For the past few months, I have blogged at the Volokh Conspiracy, hosted by
Reason. I had hoped to give to give this blog, which I founded in September
200...
The utility of directly regulating Floor Area Ratio
-
In my last post on the obesity of midrise apartments, I mentioned that one
possible solution to what I perceive as a problem is to restrict FAR (Floor-Area...
Refuge Seeking in Relative Safety
-
There is a common misconception among Christians in particular that I’ve
been mulling over these past weeks. As usual, my thoughts have been
straying to Aa...
The Braais that Bind
-
A brief meditation on the meanings of South African cuisine for Anthony
Bourdain’s Parts Unknown. Excerpt: South Africa’s identity is complicated,
contest...
The Twelve Days of Christmas: An Analysis
-
There was a funny piece on the radio about the song "The Twelve Days of
Christmas," imagining the woman's response to all those gifts. She starts
out thril...
The Cold War Roots of the African Swine Flu Plague
-
*[This is the script of a segment on African Swine Flu that I did for
Newsbud China Watch in July 2018. Things have gotten worse since then,
with the vi...
Sex, Schisms and Pseudo-Scholarship
-
We are seeing open warfare between various feminist and other progressive
factions on social media and in the universities. A key divide is between
so-call...
Giving Credit Where It’s Due
-
The US economy is probably going into recession. Manufacturing production
is down from the late-2018 highs, retail spending growth, wages and payroll
gai...
The CTRL ALT Revolt Controversy
-
The Original Blog Post and some Thoughts on the Crisis of Where We Find
Ourselves As the current culture war escalates into a series of
asymmetrical engage...
Moved to http://nymensactionnetwork.org
-
This site is no longer moderated. Newer posts are at
nymensactionnetwork.org and these posts have been moved there also.
http://nymensactionnetwork.org Ad...
Important: Nintil.com is moving!
-
IMPORTANT NOTICE: I’ve been making changes to the way the blog looks like,
making it load faster, and adding it a much needed feature, browsing by
category...
A Corrigendum to V1.3.2 and a Comment to V1.3.3
-
Preface The publication of the book written by Richard Lynn and me (Lynn &
Becker, 2019) and of V1.3.2 of the NIQ-dataset got a lot of attention and
feedba...
Last Posting
-
To everyone that reads this blog, I want to thank you for following Gavin
Kennedy 's expert insights into Adam Smith from this site. Unfortunately,
Gavin ...
Crypto-Current (064)
-
§5.8612 — Decentralization of the ledger requires massive multiplication,
and thus an effective method of compression. Only in this way does it
become trac...
Blog moving to Spandrell.com
-
***This blog is moving to Spandrell.com ***Please update your bookmarks/RSS
readers. Spandrell.com, two ls. First they banned Youtubers, but I didn’t
say a...
Some news + MMT and endogenous money
-
I know I haven’t posted in a long while, but I thought I’d give some news.
And no it’s not an April fools’! Work and personal matters have taken much
of my...
Why Are Children So Expensive?
-
I wrote this a few months back, but never got around to posting it. Scott’s
post on wage stagnation reminded me to post it, because I discuss some of
the s...
Seumas Milne and the Stasi
-
Spectator Few noticed in 2015 when Seumas Milne excused the tyranny that
held East Germany in its power from the Soviet Invasion in 1945 until the
fall of ...
Diversity’s Dilemma
-
There’s a sort of prisoner’s dilemma now facing a federal judge in the
ongoing Harvard race discrimination court battle. As you know, the
prisoner’s dilemm...
Moghul Emperor Jahangir's Interest in Science
-
*by Salman Hameed*
Growing up in Pakistan, I did hear a lot about the Moghul Emperors, but
rarely about science. In fact, if science was brought up, it wa...
When big data are bad data
-
As archaeologists turn increasingly to the analysis of large, systematic
databases, we need to confront an epistemological problem: How do we
identify bad...
Weekend update: Tedx restored to youtube
-
Apparently the original posting of this (staggeringly brief) talk suffered
from imperfect audio (I never listened to it, so I can't say first-hand
whethe...
IDW Halloween Cards
-
Happy Halloween Folks!
(I'll add the rest below the blogpost)
I thought I’d have some fun with IDW/Classical Liberal Halloween cards.
There's so many more...
Like a Fish Needs a Bicycle
-
Gloria Steinem once famously said that a woman needs a man like a fish
needs a bicycle. Point taken, but let’s play with it a bit. Let’s ask
whether a woma...
Saudi Arabia Lightens Up on Women – A Little
-
Saudi Arabia is about to become slightly less like a Taliban state.
Hardline Sunni Wahhabis have long enforced strict gender segregation and
the veiling ...
Top 100 in Global Economic Weight
-
According to the IMF China is the largest economy in the world and has been
since 2014.
This is on a PPP basis (see here for discussion) and all data is re...
The Power of Positive Persistence
-
Strategies to flip negative attacks by Republicans into positive progress
for Americans Like some foreign dictator, the Republican in the White House
will ...
Assorted Thoughts #1: Applying Averages
-
This series contains some of the key books, studies, papers and events that
I’ve read over the last year. I’ve decided to try to write one of these
posts f...
The Last Jedi AAR
-
The Star Wars movies have never been particularly concerned with accuracy
when it comes to military tactics and strategy. From the start, the movies
are de...
A living fossil, back to GNXP.COM
-
Just a note. I am moving back to the original Gene Expression domain. If
you consume my content through my Twitter auto feed (not my main Twitter
account) ...
New Immigration Blog
-
Long time no see! Just popping in to point toward a new immigration blog
fresh on the ‘blogosphere’ (is that still a thing?). It’s infrequent, maybe
a post...
Labour repression & the Indo-Japanese divergence
-
There used to be more research and debate on the negative effects of labour
resistance on economic development, but that topic has been crowded out by
the ...
Book review: Western Fringes
-
When I read the blurb of Western Fringes – a Muslim man trying to find a
Sikh woman who has run away from home to escape an arranged marriage – I
admit tha...
Dunkirk: A Deliverance Worth Cheering
-
My review of the film Dunkirk and case for celebrating the evacuation:
https://warontherocks.com/2017/08/dunkirk-a-deliverance-worth-cheering/
For Democratic Internationalism
-
Recently while surfing the Twittersphere I came across an incredibly
moronic tweet by the everlasting twit that is Mark Ames, who likes to make
alot of no...
This blog is now closed...
-
...and I'm now blogging at http://www.ecosophia.net. All of the posts that
appeared here during the eleven-year run of *The Archdruid Report* will be
issu...
The Sovereign Myth
-
States have never had full control over their outcomes — a fact we tend to
ignore only while things are going well.
The post The Sovereign Myth appeared ...
Heroic Age Issue 17
-
On behalf of the Heroic Age board and my co-editor, I would like to
announce the first parts of Issue 17!! That will be further explained
below. We are ve...
How the Democrats can Rebuild
-
Appearing in:
Orange County Register
Numerous commentaries from both the political left and right have expounded
the parlous state of the Democratic Part...
Goodbye
-
[image: Snapshot corrected moving to unz]
It’s goodbye to drjamesthompson.blogspot.co.uk
After 4 years of blogging, and 1,062,720 page views, here i...
The Things You Learn from the Internet
-
The Spiritual Science Research Foundation (“Bridging the known and unknown
worlds”) has discovered the cause of homosexuality for 85% of all gay
people: 4....
Moving house
-
People connected to me have justifiably asked that I move my blog to a more
anonymous platform. Although I’ve made an effort to remove my name from
this bl...
Europe is collapsing
-
A mini Brexit is happening in Italy and socialist policies are slowly going
down, one by...
The post Europe is collapsing appeared first on The Gorka Bri...
Anarchism
-
Anarchisms are highly diverse in their visions of the society to replace
both the State and other forms of social life which they judge undesirable,
inclu...
501 Treasures of Byzantium: No. 41-50.
-
No.41: Troyes casket with emperors and hunters, 10th century, Catherdral of
Troyes, France. This surprising treasure resides in the Cathedral of
Troyes, in...
Teen Wolf – Ranking the Seasons
-
MTV’s hit show Teen Wolf returns this fall for it’s final season. It’s an
emotional time for its fans. So I decided to take a look back at the
seasons and ...
THINGS ARE MOVING - AGAIN
-
The WSJ’s Peggy Noonan checks US election numbers: The polls are tightening
and no one is sure why. A Reuters/Ipsos poll through…
The Redistribution of Humiliation
-
The recent EU referendum in the UK has drawn a great deal of attention to
voters who had previously been ignored. Communities left behind by the 21st
Centu...
My Blog Has Moved Again!
-
My new blog location is www.richardcarrier.info. I will maintain this old
blog as a historical archive as I did before. But every other post I've
blogged s...
Walter Bagehot
-
The distinguished-looking gentleman in the portrait is Walter Bagehot
(pronounced “badget”). Dubbed “The Greatest Victorian”, Bagehot was a
founder of the...
‘Gen Why?’ – Perception Deception
-
“Most days are full of meaningless uninvited interactions with the same
kind of simple minded individuals, that indeed would have definitely
complained abo...
My blog moving to my website
-
I just wanted to give a heads up to readers that I have moved my blog to my
website, which now houses all my work, videos, press coverage, photos and
more....
Posiitive progress for Venezuelan Socialism
-
“We have been impressed by the great effort that your government has taken
to improve the living standards of the majority of Venezuelans. … what
Venezuela...
Along came Phil
-
Gramm, former Senator from the state of Texas to set a few facts straight in
the Wall Street Journal about the cause of the financial crisis. I.e., it
was...
Fiscal Policy and the ZLB
-
I have been doing some reading for my undergraduate thesis, which looks at
the role of credit-supply shocks in the Spain during its housing boom and
bust, ...
Samurai Gifts
-
The book's third chapter examines the role of gift exchange and other
ritual performances in the politics of warrior relations in the late
sixteenth and ...
Where are the “devaluationists”?
-
A Resolution Foundation report on UK monetary policy reminds me of
the near absence of discussion about devaluation. The report has a section
on policy op...
Changing Stations
-
At the beginning of October, I packed up my family and we made the move
‘home’.
The house is fairly new, but the place is old. It has a lot of history...
do france and belgium have a berber problem?
-
i don’t know the answer to that question — i only ask because it turns out
that several of the paris terrrorists (from the recent attacks) are of
berber ex...
Treasure and mystery in Byzantine Cappadocia.
-
Before the Romans, other ancient civilisations, notably the Achaemenid
Empire, once inhabited the mountainous region of central Anatolia called
Cappadocia....
Salvaging the Tatters of the Obama Doctrine
-
When president Obama told George Stephanopoulos only hours before the Paris
attack that his administration had “contained ISIS” he may have been wrong
but ...
We've Moved
-
The Mischiefs of Faction is now located at mischiefsoffaction.com. Here's
how to follow us:
All our posts will appear on our new homepage, here.
You can...
A Koku of Rice
-
Lately, I’ve been fascinated by the concept of a koku (石) of rice: I find
it pretty neat. A koku was a Japanese unit of volume (of rice) in use
especially ...
Book Review: Intelligence (2015) by Stuart Ritchie
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An Uphill Battle It’s no easy task to explain why intelligence is so
important. The reason for this is oddly enough that many highly intelligent
people i...
A CryptoFiction
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Here’s a micro-story I started with the Access Crypto Summit flash fiction
prompt in mind, left half done, and then belatedly finished off anyway,
because ...
Canada Day, 2015. Mahsie, Nika Illahie.
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Further to my Canada Day column Finding the Right Words for Canada’s
History I thought I’d put this up. It’s from Rain Language, a long poem in
translation...
It Is Accomplished
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As Gandhi never quite said, First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you.
Then they attack you. Then you win. I remember one of the first TV debates
I had...
Why Mothers Are So Special
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Mothers hold a privileged status within the human experience. I address
some of the foundational evolutionary principles that explain the
mother-child bond...
Obama’s comments on the Great Barrier Reef
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In the last few days I’ve carefully read comments emanating from the
Coalition government that suggested an undue intervention in Australian
politics by Pr...
Our first virtual Screenwriting Workshop!
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T woke up on Monday with the idea,
bubbling with notions, and I think it's
a fabulous way to explore the new
media potentials for a virtual classroom.
We c...
Taxation vs. Expropriation
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What’s the difference between a 50% marginal tax rate on income vs. 50%
expropriation by a kleptocratic ruler or corrupt officials? Some models
might sug...
By: Anonymous
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Great article, however, I don't see yet a study explaining the effects of
Cannabis being freed completely overnight, lifting all restrictions and
allowing ...
Governance, aesthetics and architecture
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I have been meaning to write up a few thoughts that came out of a
beer-fueled conversation with a friend some weeks ago. We both lived in
Austin, TX for so...
Norman Geras: 1943-2013
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I am very sad to announce that Norm died in Addenbrooke's hospital in
Cambridge in the early hours of this morning. Writing this blog, and
communicating wi...
OxcOOd1199 Error
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Windows Media Player is a great way to view your favorite movie content.
However, with the program comes the risk of the occasional OxcOOd1199 error
occuri...
Jide Who Played Jesus to be Ordained
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*MEDIA *INFORMATION
*NEWS FROM THE EAST HAM TEAM*
For Immediate Use
11 June 2013
*Jide who played Jesus to be ordained*
The man who played Jesus in the N...
Skill Scores: Re: Nick Rowe
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But if both forecasters are imperfect, how do we use the data to tell us
which forecaster was better? Or how good each one is on a scale with pure
gue...
An Independent Wild Hunt
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We at the Patheos Pagan channel bid The Wild Hunt much luck in its new
phase as an independent website. To catch the latest from TWH, please check
out wild...
The myth of “they weren’t ever taught….”
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A year or so ago, our math department met with one of the feeder middle
schools to engage in a required exercise. The course-alike teachers had to
put toge...
Modeled Behavior’s RSS Feed
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Hopefully within the next day or two we will be able to get Modeled
Behavior.com to redirect to our Forbes Blog. Yet, it looks as if there is
no way to ge...
Actually, maybe it is the NGDP after all
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I’ve gotten a lot of really smart pushback on my claims about the UK
economy, and I think I have significantly underestimated what I already
believed to be...
The tax forum as a platform for a grand bargain?
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In his Challenges of Federation speech we referred to in a previous article,
Prime Minister’s Department Secretary Terry Moran said:
*There are business l...
The satisfaction of learning a new skill
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Today I learned how to do short row shaping in knitting. It's a technique
that is easy to do, and hard to explain. I've tried several times in the
past. so...
The Rand Paul reality for gays
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Some Republicans are trying to brush it off as the kind of debate you have
in you freshman dorm at 2 a.m. Not so for us gays. The objection raised by
Rand ...
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EVEN THE LIBERAL NEW REPUBLIC... (PART II): The cover of the current issue
of the New Republic blares, The Battle for Tora Bora: The Untold Story.
It's a g...
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