I take back my earlier statement. I don’t truthfully know who either is, but I do not think it likely they are the same person.
Apologies for the lack of posts. I finished Collapse without having more I felt like saying about it, and while I’m enjoying Daniel Dennet’s Darwin’s Dangerous Idea I haven’t yet had anything to say about that either. E. O. Wilson’s Consilience is up next and after that I figure why not dive into the Bell Curve? To complete the terrible triumvirate opening the Blank Slate I would then have to read Thornhill and Palmer’s A Natural History of Rape, but that isn’t as widely available. Speaking of sociobiology though, I think the Sahlins guy everyone is making fun of here is the same one Tooby & Cosmides take down (among others) in The Psychological Foundations of Culture.
August 26, 2008 at 4:30 pm
If you have access to a university library or interlibrary loan, you might want to read The Causes of Rape instead of ANHOR. The quality of sociobiology and comprehensiveness of data are superior to T+P’s effort. The sections reviewing rape across the animal kingdom are second to none. Two facts discussed here that don’t get a lot of attention elsewhere are:
1) Rapists have more sexual partners, not less.
2) Men who commit rape are, largely, just as likely to commit other crimes too, and men who commit other crimes are just as likely to rape.
The first follows from the second. Criminals, in general, have more sex partners. The reductionist view of rape, then, is the reductionist view of criminality: criminals are men with short time preference and low levels of empathy. Therefore they are willing to hurt and exploit to satisfy immediate wants.
August 26, 2008 at 6:16 pm
I’m not? That’s a relief. But you’re right, I’m not. At the moment I’m rarely providing new content on only two blogs.
KK’s Men of Letters is funny, a nice find. Since you’re discussing rape see this entry there that made me laugh:
http://menofletters.org/blag/?p=465
August 26, 2008 at 6:24 pm
I have graduated and so no longer darken university doors. The local library has pretty lousy selection, but I can get the Bell Curve on loan.
I remember GNXP once had a recommended reading list that included the Bell Curve, but I can’t seem to find it anymore.
August 28, 2008 at 11:17 am
I thought KK’s comment on OS was just a very understated porn spam… now I wish I hadn’t deleted it.
August 29, 2008 at 1:12 pm
I’m trying to imagine what constitutes “understated porn”. Perhaps references to “knowing in the Biblical sense”.
September 3, 2008 at 8:21 am
It was something along the lines of “Words never lose their meaning when I talk dirty. Come by my site and I’ll tell you all about it.”
September 3, 2008 at 9:32 am
The strange thing is that the posts on her site are generally dry, high-brow stuff while her comments elsewhere bear little resemblance. Something like a reverse of Larry Teabag who would mix bayesian probability theory with vulgar shock-jockery on his own blog but use more polite language to draw people in.
September 6, 2008 at 5:37 am
I’d like to meet my blogging opposite, but do you think we’d annihilate each other like matter and antimatter if I went and left a comment?
September 6, 2008 at 10:52 am
No, I think she’d like it.