Random Ramblings of a Raconteur

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Every time you think the question of American settlement is near to becoming settled something new turns up to upset the apple-cart. This time Skoglund et al. have turned up evidence of two founding populations (more…)

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There is one inconsistency Leppard fails to explain. Seeing how little we find in regions, we consider to have been continuously inhabited for hundreds of thousands of years, how is it that artefacts left by single individuals in single lifetimes are found at all in the frequencies they obviously are on islands all over?

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Several of the studies cited in Cressey share the same common mistake. While purporting to examine recreational use, what they are really looking at is equal to getting drunk every day. That is not recreational use, it’s abuse. Recreational drinking means a glass of whine with a meal with friends or even, as in the case (more…)

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Whatever the risks and benefits of vaccination may be, what the study by Horne et al. really is about is the efficacy of large scale brain washing programs. So every responsible citizen and critical journalist should (more…)

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I had wanted (on 07-02) to let Alessia Errico’s stand as the final words on the Tim Hunt affair. It’s not to be. Reporters for The Times[1] have finally done what should have been any responsible journalist’s job in the first place and looked into the facts. They found Prof. Hunt’s words to have been (more…)

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Abramson is not just about religion and not just about Judaism, but about the general question of individual freedom versus the totalitarian aspirations of the state. And as Abramson clearly states it is completely wrong for anyone to watch from the sidelines as the American Jews do, just because we are not currently the targets. As notably said by Martin Niemöller[1], Totalitarianism is never sated and devours its victims singly, one group after the other. The only way (more…)

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In the past century and probably already 3.5 millennia ago in Mesopotamia (Altaweel 2012) there are dozens of cases where scientists and advisers went out and told farmers what to do, just as Schiermeier wants them to do today. In most cases that advice turned out to be counterproductive or even catastrophic in the long run. Farmers tend to be cautious and conservative and over centuries and millennia they managed to improve, not degrade continuously famed lands. (more…)

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In their comparison Beltrán-Sánchez et al. stress the higher male mortality rate in late middle and early old age and try to find reasons for it. The relative rates for individual causes of death that they look at are meaningless and rise just because people stop dying from other causes. They totally fail to look at absolute age-specific rates. (more…)

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It seems that beneath Kehdy et al.’s results lies the fact, that as a group Africans carry far more harmful mutations than Europeans do. This apparent fact is neither clearly stated, nor explained nor discussed.

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In this week’s list we find two new takes on the Bronze Age side by side. First there is the deconstruction by Kienlin and then the article plus comments by Ling & Stos-Gale that strengthens the old World System view with interconnections as represented by Kristiansen, Kienlin’s nemesis.