It has been awhile since my last link round-up.  I few months ago I had gotten in the habit of book-marking items I came across online that I thought were interesting or relevant to the topics of this blog, and then posting them online every two weeks.

Jason Collins over at Evolving Economics posts a similar round-up of links weekly. A few months back, when I went to post my bi-weekly list, I discovered that he had already posted ~90% of them. So, as not to be redundant, I gave up for awhile and decided to finish my dissertation instead.

However, now that the dissertation is over, I am getting back to blogging. I also have not been reading as much on the internet lately, so this week’s list will be relatively short:

Florid or falsifiable? The use of metaphors in science. Cultured Primate’s discussion of the “ratchet effect.”

Steven Pinker embraces scientism. Bad move, I think. The internet seems to be well over Pinker’s seemingly humanities-dissing essay.  But I think Massimo Pigliucci’s response is worth a link.

Neville Chamberlain Was Right: The maligned British prime minister did what we would want any responsible leader to do.

Some friends may have moved to the Switzerland of Europe, but I have moved to East Tennessee, the Switzerland of America.

Journal article of the week (a new feature):

War, space, and the evolution of Old World complex societies by Peter Turchin, Tom Currie, Edward  Turner, and Sergey Gavrilets (disclosure: Gavrilets in my post-doc mentor) in PNAS.  The article is open access. It was covered in Wired and a lot of other outlets. Peter Turchin blogs about it here and here.

Entertaining in that internet sort-of-way:

Every Second on the Internet