LinkFest 2016-05-06
The 'white squatter camps' of post Apartheid South Africa
The South African apartheid regime was memorably described as "socialism for the Afrikaners, capitalism for the English-speaking whites and Indians, and fascism for the blacks." Now that the boot is on the other foot, the Afrikaners and other whites are either spiraling into poverty, or leaving if they can.
Ross Douthat was always one of John J. Reilly's favorite political commentators, and here he channel's John's Spengler with a Smile theories of history.
Woman says selfie provoked argument that led to fatal shooting at Texas Walgreens
This should be a case study for people who carry guns. There is a reason cops hate DV calls.
Alton Brown: The Bitter Southerner Interview
I do love Alton Brown, and this is a really interesting interview. I enjoyed learning about Brown's personal history, but I also felt a little sad for him.
Coordinated attack feared after massive cathedral blaze
Several Orthodox chapels across the world were burned on Pascha, Easter as observed by the Eastern Christians.
Myers' Race Car versus The General Fitness Factor
Scott Alexander takes a outsider's look at the argument between Steve Hsu and P. Z. Myers on whether you can genetically engineer smarter humans. I'm rather more sympathetic to Hsu than Myers for lots of reasons, but part of what is going on here is Hsu is making an argument that what we know of genetics means this should be possible, whereas Myers' response is it would be hard to execute. Well, yeah. Thus, Myers is both correct, and completely fails to refute Hsu's point. As a footnote to Alexander's footnote, just because an allele has an advantage doesn't mean it will necessarily spread. The approximate theoretical chance of a gene with survival advantage s going to fixation [100% of the population] is 2s. s is here defined as the extra kids you have compared to others with the current alleles instead of the variant, and it tends to be really small. An s of .1 is big in this context, and thus you would expect an allele with this big of an effect to disappear from the gene pool 4 times out of 5. Most gene variants just disappear, even when they are useful.
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