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Time has a worthwhile piece up, How to Save a Trillion Dollars. One thing the author brings up in relation to our exorbitant military spending is that in certain sectors the lead of the American armed forces technologically is such that we do not to need to significantly upgrade our matériel for a generation to maintain at least a marginal level of superiority. The F-35 is clearly superior to the F-16, but is it worth it to increase the gap between our air superiority and our nearest competitors at $125 million per unit cost? Not only that, but the American military clearly “sets the curve,” so that the more we invest in our own technological superiority, the more our rivals will have to invest so as to “catch up” and keep the gap relatively constant. The reality is that basically developed nations just need to be advanced enough that they can pummel the leaders of select lesser nations, such as Libya or Ivory Coast, and, have a military beefed up enough to be respectable in the eyes of their peers. An “arms ...

Two years ago Reconstructing Indian Genetic History reframed how we should view South Asian historical genomics. In short, Indians can be viewed as a hybrid between a West Eurasian group, “Ancestral North Indians” (ANI) and a very different group, “Ancestral South Indians” (ASI), which had distant connections to West and East Eurasians. At least to a first approximation. Last fall I posted on a new paper which surveyed the Austro-Asiatic speaking peoples of India, and concluded that they were exogenous to the subcontinent. This is an interesting point. Prehistoric treatments of South Asia often use linguistic terms to denote putative ancient populations. One model is that first it was the Munda, the most ancient Austro-Asiatics. Then the Dravidians. And finally the Indo-Aryans. These genetic data imply that the Munda arrived after the initial ANI-ASI synthesis. The Munda people of India can be thought of as ANI-ASI, with an overlay of East Eurasian ancestry.

Zack Ajmal’s K = 11 ADMIXTURE run has highlighted some further issues. He has a set of Austro-Asiatic samples, as well as a host of Indo-Aryan and Dravidian speaking populations. I now believe we can now further clarify and refine our model of the peopling ...

Simply beautiful. (Expand to full screen)

The Mountain from Terje Sorgjerd on Vimeo.

Top twelve picks

Adam Rutherford’s documentary The Gene Code was an utter triumph – complex and cutting-edge science rendered clear and compelling. Let’s pause for a second and note that the UK is a country where we talk about Archaea and recombination in detail on national TV. For this alone, Adam is my hero.

Eric Michael Johnson’s superb piece on chimps, bonobos, the Tempest and the “killer ape” concept is one of the highlights of the week. David Dobbs’s follow-up is well worth your time too.

Brian Switek is on incredible form this week with no fewer than four superb posts: on primate “grief”, on the evolution of mammal ear bones from reptile jaws (with the perfect headline), on the world’s oldest toothache, and on exhorting people to stop comparing every dino to T.rex. I have immortalised his sentiments in T-shirt form.

Chris Mooney writes about the science of science denial for Mother Jones.

Tigers Are Less Important Than Warblers. A wonderful, witty and compelling piece by Madhusudan Katti.

“Well-read isn’t a destination; there is nowhere to get to.” Linda Holmes urges you to embrace sweet surrender

This excellent piece looks like it’s about roller-derby, ...