Razib Kahn and David Sloan Wilson discuss multi-level selection theory.

Ross Douthat pretty much nails it: But you can see how it could all go bad — how a culture so intense clerical, so politically high-handed, and so embarrassed (beyond the requirements of Christian doctrine) by human sexuality could magnify the horror of priestly pedophilia, and expand the pool of victims, by producing bishops inclined… Continue reading

Book NotesI just finished William Trevor’s latest novel (his first since the disappointing Story of Lucy Gault) and am happy to report he’s back in the driver’s seat at age 82 or so. From Thomas Mallon’s New York Times review: There is a good deal of kindness in Trevor’s Rathmoye, and in the Rathmoyes he… Continue reading

Speaking of Siris, he does in one paragraph what many a teacher can’t explain in an entire semester. Evolution is not a means of creation; it isn’t very clear that the notion of a ‘means of creation’ is coherent. Evolution is a theory of generation; to be more precise, it is an account of how… Continue reading

Siris is all over Jerry Coyne, who, I guess, just can’t help himself.