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Chiffchaffs are the first summer visitors to arrive, around here at least, and their distinctive song is hard to miss, and one day near the vernal equinox suddenly there they are. I have written down the date in my diary most years since 1990. Last night I went back through the diaries and collated the data. It’s […]

Genetic diversity within the Neanderthals is a more likely explanation Woke to find the newspapers all claiming a new “species” of human being discovered in central Asia. Here’s the Guardian: “The finding suggests an undocumented human species lived alongside Neanderthals and early modern humans in parts of Asia as recently as 30,000 years ago.” Leave aside the fact that […]

A new study reiterates a long-standing evolutionary conundrum So Man flu is not a myth, because testosterone inhibits the immune response. This has been known to biologists for ages. In The Red Queen, I challenged readers to explain why bodies should be designed that way: why set up an immune system in such a way that it […]

Between 1970 and 2006, the global poverty rate has been cut by nearly three quarters. Looking past the title (“Parametric Estimations of the World Distribution of Income”), an interesting NBER paper from Maxim Pinkovskiy and Xavier Sala-i-Martin shows that in spite of an 80% increase in population between 1970 and 2006, poverty rates have fallen by the […]

Very nice piece of rational optimism