Random Ramblings of a Raconteur

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The Howiesons Poort industry used to be seen as a distinct horizon marker that occurred at the same time in MIS 4 all over southern Africa. At Diepkloof the dates published by Zenobia Jacobs (science 322 (2008), 733–735) fell on a continuous unbroken line (more…)

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A general rule of biology states that small animals like rodents and deer require high-quality food like seeds, buds, and shoots while nutritionally poor fodder favours large species like mammoths. This is the probable driver behind the size of the dinosaurs as well as the size difference between gorillas and bonobos. So what Craine is obviously doing here is confusing (more…)

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Cacioppoa et al. is a typical example of a non-report not giving any of its results. That the differences in mean marital satisfaction scores (whatever that may be) look small doesn’t mean anything, but to evaluate those differences and to decide, whether they are meaningful or not, we’d need standard deviations and standard errors and none of those are given. (more…)

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I fail to understand how Morton et al. could ever have been accepted for publication. Just because someone prefers something does not in the least imply he’s going to get it. Older women may well be – and are – less desirable, but they’re available and get pregnant all the same. Later children of older women have siblings to care for and look after them (more…)

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In 1990 the rate of child deaths under five in the bottom quarter of countries was 14 times that of the top quarter. By 2011 that gap had risen to 23 times. So how do nature justify their ridiculous claim of a closing gap? (more…)

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Bowles and Choi make a testable prediction for some parts of the upper Paleolithic. Interestingly four of the seven Neanderthal teeth with cooked starches in Henry 2011 (PNAS 108, 486–491, list of 2011-01-14) are from their window of 38–36 ka BP and at 46 ka, (more…)

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The Toba eruption at 77 ka was a very nice explanation for lot of interlocking mutually confirming data and now all that seems to be completely thrown over by Lane et al. (more…)

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Years ago nearly all children went to small and largely unsorted local primary schools. Cheng & Xie show why this is important and why small local schools must be brought back.

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Jasechko’s model stands and falls on his assumption, that plant transpiration does not fractionate. Not only is that theoretically highly improbable, but Kahmen et al. have shown fractionation to be the case (more…)

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This week I’ll let the list speak for itself.