Daily Data Dump - Friday

Have a good 4th for those who live in the States. Fast selection in high altitude, but how fast? I'm not surprised that John Hawks has serious reservations about the population history of the model in the paper I reviewed below. Epigenetics and the Importance of a Nurturing Society. I don't mind the normatively directed focus on this area of research so long as there's some science squeezed out of it. I say normatively because people would really prefer a world where there was more elasticity in outcome, all things equal. What Cost for Irrationality? The standard stuff with people messing up probabilities, though some people end up in jail because of that! Though if someone at Less Wrong posted on the beauty of irrationality in some cases, now that would be a comment thread. A Nation of Neurotics? Blame the Puppet Masters? Pathogens and how they might affect culture, again. Ethnic Distinctions, No Longer So Distinctive. Belying headline I think the power of black African ancestry in American society is reinforced by the piece; no one would say that there's any ambiguity in Barack Obama being non-white in the United States despite his 50% European ancestry. This includes Obama himself, who is generally low-key about his multiracial identity.