Turkey, Shmurkey! — A Response to Das et al. (2016)

Jun 10, 2016 by

Turkey, Shmurkey! — A Response to Das et al. (2016)

As promised in an earlier post, I am presenting here an informal response to the article, published recently in Genome Biology and Evolution by Paul Wexler, Eran Elhaik and colleagues (henceforth, Das et al. 2016). To summarize my...

read more

Religiosity in Russia

May 6, 2016 by

Religiosity in Russia

[Thanks to Boris Denisov and Martin Lewis for helpful discussions of these issues.] A recent question from a student about just how religious Russians really are has sent me to look for statistics on this issue. As sociologists of...

read more

Why Are There Different Languages?—Response to Vyvyan Evans (Part 4, C...

Dec 3, 2015 by

Why Are There Different Languages?—Response to Vyvyan Evans (Part 4, Conclusion)

[Many thanks to Martin W. Lewis and Johanna Nichols for insightful discussions of some of the issues considered in this post.]   As discussed in the previous post, Vyvyan Evans advocates an alternative to the so-called saltationist...

read more

Brittany, Another Independence-Seeking European Region

Nov 18, 2015 by

Brittany, Another Independence-Seeking European Region

[Note to Readers: This post was originally published in January 2014.] Brittany in northwestern France is one of several regions in Europe that is seeking increased autonomy, if not complete independence, and instructive parallels...

read more

Hungary’s Rising Hyper-Nationalist Jobbik Party and the Legacy of Anti...

Nov 18, 2015 by

Hungary’s Rising Hyper-Nationalist Jobbik Party and the Legacy of Anti-Semitism and Anti-Gypsyism

[Note to Readers: Today’s news that the Hungarian government decided not to place special labels on products from the West Bank and the Golan Heights, as reported by the Jerusalem Post, came as somewhat a surprise, particularly...

read more

Using Grammar to Identify Language Relatedness

Oct 22, 2015 by

Using Grammar to Identify Language Relatedness

[Note: This post is aimed mostly at my current students, but comments from other readers are welcome as well. It is in a way a “prequel” to the mini-series, starting here.]   Most textbook that discuss language families and how such...

read more