My post The Ultimate Health Food, Revealed! generated a number of comments, some of them quite critical of foie gras and gavage, the process by which ducks and geese are fattened. Fortunately, one reader (Bruce) weighed in on the opposite side and I reproduce his response here, becaus

This is Christmas and I think it’s a good time to switch to some lighter topic than our usual fare of social science and history. Although history is still going to be a part of today’s post, as you will see. Today is one of few days in a year when we are supposed to gorge ourse

The current controversy about how to deal with Ebola in America tells us a lot about America, and very little about Ebola. In an excellent blog, Scott Alexander discusses how Ebola has become the latest battleground between the ‘red tribe’ and the ‘blue tribe.’ Source It’s very tellin

Dr. Craig Spencer of New York-Presbyterian/Columbia University Medical Center went to Guinea in September to help combat the Ebola epidemic. He returned to New York City on Oct. 17. He rode on the subway, went bowling, and basically led normal life until his temperature went up to 100

It’s been a while since my last update on the Paleo diet (perhaps a better name for it is ‘Post-Neolithic diet’). Here are the links to previous blogs on this theme: http://socialevolutionforum.com/2012/08/23/an-update-on-my-so-called-paleo-diet/ http://socialevolutionforum.com/

The very first time I ever heard about the paleo diet was one and half years ago. Now it’s all over the traditional media, blogosphere, and twitter. I just finished reading a long article in the Atlantic magazine, This Is Your Brain on Gluten. The author, James Hamblin, builds the art

Readers who have been following this blog for a while know that in addition to being a professor at the University of Connecticut, I wear a second hat as the Vice-President of the Evolution Institute (EI). The chief goal of the Evolution Institute is to connect the evolutionary scienc

In my previous blog on War Before Civilization I used the paintings by a French artist Jacques Le Moyne de Morgues. Although there was some controversy on the authenticity of his depictions of life in Southeastern North America in sixteenth century, I believe that at this point the ve

I am in Oslo, attending an Evolution Institute-organized workshop led by my EI colleagues Jerry Lieberman and David Sloan Wilson. We are in Norway because this country is well known for a very high quality of life. In fact, during the last decade Norway has reliably occupied the numbe

Every year the humanity consumes an enormous amount of wheat. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), around 700 million tons of wheat are produced every year, and most of it is eaten as bread and pasta* (with the rest fed to livestock). That’s 100 kg per person per