Random Ramblings of a Raconteur

Roebroeks contradicts the hypothesis (Ragir 2000, Laden 2005, Wrangham 1999) that the release of nutrients enabled by cooking was important for the hominid development very early on.

Brumfiel and Ferguson talk sense about Japan’s nuclear problems. N. B: Just now the news announced that the Japanese political “elite’s” conclusion was to stop building new and safe plants and prolong the planned lifetimes of the much inferior old ones. I’m all for social participation of the mentally retarded, but does it have to be in parliaments and government?
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Nothing this week that I feel compelled to add my personal comments to. I refer you to the abstracts in the list.

Here’s the link to this week’s complete list.

This has been a quiet week. I have mainly been reading up on cultural evolution and group selection.

Here’s the link to this week’s complete list.

Current archaeological textbooks relate how the retinue of a dead queen donned their best garb, lay down in orderly rows and voluntarily drank cups of poison. Baadsgaard has scanned some skulls in a CT and found them neatly bashed in by the spike of a then current battle axe. (more…)

Ayala contradicts all those culture pessimists and shows that not everything of value deteriorated with the Neolithic. Where would be be without wine?

Borojevic is sure to concern not only plants and I wonder (more…)

science has a big supplement about data, data management and storage. Curry and Reed are the two most interesting articles.

I ought to take Clauset to heart really, (more…)

Antonov-Schlorke and Guissani are in conflict with received wisdom, that in pregnancy the fetus and especially its brain are preferentially supplied in malnutrition. For primates and in the first trimester this is clearly not the case. An extra warning for pregnant girls (more…)

There’s something wrong with Tucker-Drob. The ten months group shows no correlation to parent’s status at all. So either status does not correlate to intelligence (more…)

Richard P. Feynman already called modern pedagogics a pseudo-science. Now Karpicke demonstrates the fruitlessness of highfalutin learning techniques and proves the old experienced elementary teachers right, who have always stressed the importance of repetition and testing.

Miller sure won’t be read by epidemiologists. (more…)

Iona, de Dreu is a textbook example of how not to do diagrams. (more…)