Natural history of the present
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I am writing from the departure lounge at O.R. Tambo International Airport, waiting to leave South Africa after a flying visit to promote the South African edition of Sex, Genes & Rock ’n’ Roll, give…
The way we think about genes presents one of the biggest obstacles to understanding evolution and its relevance in the modern world. For natural selection to change a trait, there need to be genetic differences…
In most societies where marriage customs are documented, some men are allowed to take many wives. Only the wealthiest and most powerful men, mind you, get to marry multiply. And their sexual despotism…
For most of our evolutionary past, humans hunted and gathered their food, living in small groups on the African veld. By 2 million years ago, our ancestors had shifted from a mostly vegetarian diet to…
Right now, my Twitter feed is filled with furious 144-character rants about Pastor Sean Harris of Berean Baptist Church in Fayettesville, North Carolina, who was recorded last Sunday in a sickening rant…
“Religion is something left over from the infancy of our intelligence; it will fade away as we adopt reason and science as our guidelines. – Bertrand Russell” Few subjects generate as much friction among…
If you needed any more evidence that atheism is on the upswing, last week’s Global Atheist Convention in Melbourne was apparently a rollicking success. I was otherwise engaged, but would have loved the…
As an evolutionary biologist I get to spend my days thinking, researching and writing about ‘the most important idea anyone ever had’. That’s what the philosopher Daniel Dennett called evolution by natural…
China’s sex ratios are notoriously male-biased and becoming more so, but the worst famine in history created one tiny cohort in which almost as many girls were born as boys. The following dramatic graph…
My UNSW colleague Bill Sherwin just sent me a cautionary email. He’s part of an international team that studies the bottlenose dolphins of Shark Bay, Western Australia. Over the years their research has…