Ultra-orthodox Jewish communities known as the Hassidim create a cocoon to protect their people from the influences of the outside world. At least when it comes to other groups that seek to separate themselves out, like the Amish, they live in fairly isolated rural communities. But the Hassidim live right in the middle of urban centers like New York, so creating a self-contained world is quite a feat. [Read more…]
Due to various reasons, I became a member of various social networking groups such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and Google+, even though I do absolutely nothing with any of them unless I am forced to. I joined the last one because I was invited to a few of its so-called hangouts to discuss some issues. Of course, all these groups keep sending me messages about what other people are doing and people whom they think I would like to connect to. I completely ignore these messages and often delete them without reading. [Read more…]
The Jason Richwine dissertation, like its predecessor The Bell Curve in 1994, argued that IQ scores are a good proxy for intelligence, that intelligence has a substantial hereditary component and is thus largely immutable to change by external measures, and that high IQ levels are significant predictors of economic and social success in life while low levels predict a life of crime, unemployment, and general failure. According to Richwine, American Hispanics have average IQs around 89 (the overall average is fixed to be 100) and thus Hispanic immigrants will be a drain on society. (See here and here for earlier posts on this.) [Read more…]
He provides a pretty good summary and commentary of the issue that I have been writing about (see here and here).
The Colbert Report
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(This clip was aired on May 14, 2013. To get suggestions on how to view clips of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report outside the US, please see this earlier post.)
Mohamedou Ould Slahi is one of the Gunatanmo detainees condemned to indefinite detention. In 2005 he started writing his memoirs in English. His draft of 466 handwritten pages was completed a year later but the authorities suppressed it for six years. A redacted version has finally been published. Selected excerpts from the memoir can be here, prefaced by an introduction by Larry Siems who explains how Slahi ended up at Guantanamo. [Read more…]
I have heard about retroviruses and that HIV belonged to that family but not being a biologist knew nothing more about what a retrovirus was and how it differed from any other virus. This article by Carl Zimmer explains what they are and in addition says that new research about them has revealed that we all have a lot of retroviruses that invaded our DNA a long time ago and that over time have mutated to become either inactive or dormant. [Read more…]
If you asked me to list the names of 19th century American atheists, I would have said Robert G. Ingersoll (1833-1899) and stopped. He is clearly the most famous but it turns out that there is another person who preceded him, and that was Dr. Charles Knowlton. I became aware of him because of a new biography titled An Infidel Body-Snatcher and the Fruits of His Philosophy by Dan Allosso. [Read more…]
There is nothing intrinsically wrong with partisanship. We often have to decide one way or the other on some issue and in the absence of any significant information that dictates how to choose, it is not unreasonable for people to align themselves with ‘their’ side, with those with whom they feel generally close to on most issues. [Read more…]
Minnesota is now the 12th state, following Delaware and Rhode Island, to legalize same-sex marriage, with its senate voting 37-30 in favor of it. The lower house had already passed it 75-59 and the governor signed it yesterday. It will take effect on August 1. [Read more…]
On Sunday, one or more gunmen started shooting into a crowd of people at a Mother’s Day parade in New Orleans. They have not yet been captured though video footage exists of one of them firing into the crowd and later police identified one person they are looking for. [Read more…]