Carl Zimmer writes about the muddled genetic state of race in the United States. We’re a mongrel nation, even if many people don’t want to admit it — but a recent analysis of data from the 23andme program shows a substantial mixing of races in the US. Well, except for Minnesota. Look how white we are up here!
The percentage of self-identified European Americans who have one percent or more of African ancestry.
David Duke, the ex(?)-Ku Klux Klan leader and wanna-be politician, leapt to the defense of Steve Scalise, the Republican who has spoken for a white supremacist organization. That’s self-defeating right there — I would hope that the Klan would never speak in my defense — but what he said.
In an interview with Fusion.net explaining his connection to current House Majority Whip Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA), Duke said that he is exceptionally well-connected within the U.S. political class and that charges of racism against him are a product of the media’s “zionist” and “tribalist” mentality.
It is every mother’s worst nightmare to lose a child, and I have to feel Carla May Alcorn’s pain.
My sweet 16 year old son, Joshua Ryan Alcorn went home to heaven this morning. He was out for an early morning walk and was hit by a truck. Thank you for the messages and kindness and concern you have sent our way. Please continue to keep us in your prayers.
This is certainly not the time to take exception to the religious sentiments in her announcement. Except…
Scott Aaronson is clearly afflicted with the plight of the male nerd. He’s written a heartfelt comment about his misery as a young man.
Since we still have someone arguing poorly for the virtues of the ENCODE project, I thought it might be worthwhile to go straight to the source and and cite an ENCODE project paper, Defining functional DNA elements in the human genome. It is a bizarre thing that actually makes the case for rejecting the idea of high degrees of functionality, which is a good approach, since it demonstrates that they’ve at least seen the arguments against them. But then it sails blithely past those objections to basically declare that we should just ignore the evolutionary evidence.
Always good to see the police intimidating the dangerous characters.
Scalzi has made an announcement and revision.
A couple of years ago, I wrote a piece on my personal feminism, in which I noted that while I can be considered a feminist on the fundamental level of “women are entitled to the same rights and privileges as men, with everything that implies in terms of access to education, economic opportunity and personal liberty,” I usually didn’t call myself one, for various and what I thought at the time were perfectly reasonable reasons.
Then 2014 happened, and those reasonable reasons now kind of feel like careful, rationalizing bullshit to me.
So, as an update to my thoughts on my personal feminism:
Hell yes, I’m a feminist.
The Atlantic has a rather depressing article on The Tragedy of the American Military. Here’s the kernel of the story: the knee-jerk idolatry of the military by the American public is leading to a decline in its effectiveness and to wasteful expenditure of human lives.
If I were writing such a history now, I would call it Chickenhawk Nation, based on the derisive term for those eager to go to war, as long as someone else is going. It would be the story of a country willing to do anything for its military except take it seriously. As a result, what happens to all institutions that escape serious external scrutiny and engagement has happened to our military. Outsiders treat it both too reverently and too cavalierly, as if regarding its members as heroes makes up for committing them to unending, unwinnable missions and denying them anything like the political mindshare we give to other major public undertakings, from medical care to public education to environmental rules. The tone and level of public debate on those issues is hardly encouraging. But for democracies, messy debates are less damaging in the long run than letting important functions run on autopilot, as our military essentially does now. A chickenhawk nation is more likely to keep going to war, and to keep losing, than one that wrestles with long-term questions of effectiveness.
