BBC – Future – How human culture influences our genetics

BBC has an interesting article on the effects of culture on evolution. You shouldn't be able to drink milk. Your ancestors couldn't. It is only in the last 9,000 years that human adults have gained that ability without becoming ill. Children could manage it, but it was only when we turned to dairy farming that … Continue reading BBC – Future – How human culture influences our genetics →

Ants Build Complex Structures With a Few Simple Rules

Give a colony of garden ants a week and a pile of dirt, and they’ll transform it into an underground edifice about the height of a skyscraper in an ant-scaled city. Without a blueprint or a leader, thousands of insects moving specks of dirt create a complex, spongelike structure with parallel levels connected by a … Continue reading Ants Build Complex Structures With a Few Simple Rules →

Tegmark’s Level II Multiverse: bubble universes

I recently finished reading Max Tegmark’s latest book, ‘Our Mathematical Universe‘, about his views on multiverses and the ultimate nature of reality.  This is the second in a series of posts on the concepts and views he covers in the book.  Tegmark postulates four levels of multiverse.   In the first post of this series, I described Termark's Level I … Continue reading Tegmark’s Level II Multiverse: bubble universes →

Visualization of ancient cosmological models

Just to keep the discussion of the posts I'm doing on cosmology in context: As part of Topoi 1, Group-D, Sebastian Szczepanski and I developed software for the visualization of ancient cosmological theories. These included the 4th cent. BCE planetary models of Eudoxus, Aristotle, and Calippus, as well as the basic planetary models of Ptolemy’s Almagest. … Continue reading Visualization of ancient cosmological models →

Language structure: You’re born with it — ScienceDaily

More evidence that we are not born blank slates, and that language is probably very ancient, developing over hundreds of thousands, if not millions of years. Humans are unique in their ability to acquire language. But how? A new study shows that we are in fact born with the basic fundamental knowledge of language, thus shedding … Continue reading Language structure: You’re born with it — ScienceDaily →

Tegmark’s Level I Multiverse: infinite space

I've just finished reading Max Tegmark's latest book, 'Our Mathematical Universe', about his views on multiverses and the ultimate nature of reality.  This is the first in a series of posts that I plan to do on it.  Tegmark postulates four levels of multiverse.  This post is about the first, and simplest version, the Level I … Continue reading Tegmark’s Level I Multiverse: infinite space →

Humans and Neandertals interbred, new method confirms — ScienceDaily

  Technical objections to the idea that Neandertals interbred with the ancestors of Eurasians have been overcome, thanks to a new genome analysis method. The technique can more confidently detect the genetic signatures of interbreeding than previous approaches and will be useful for evolutionary studies of other ancient or rare DNA samples. via Humans and … Continue reading Humans and Neandertals interbred, new method confirms — ScienceDaily →

The value of history

Tom Chivers has a particularly misguided post up The Telegraph arguing that science is better than history.  Given how under siege many in the humanities feel themselves to be today, this post is unnecessarily adversarial.  Chivers does claim to recognize that history is a valuable endeavor (albeit limited in his view), but argues that if you … Continue reading The value of history →