Top all-time · #2221
West Hunter
Personal blog · westhunt.wordpress.comsciencehistory
West Hunter is a personal blog at westhunt.wordpress.com about science and history. Since 2012, 34 different Hacker News readers have linked it 48 times. It is still writing: the last post was on 2025-12-13, and you can follow it by feed.
Omnes vulnerant, ultima necat
Most-linked posts?
- /2013/01/15/a-three-hour-tour/2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2017-03-24
- /2012/02/16/depths-of-madness/2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2018-07-21
What Hacker News says?
from Feb, 2019: Who is Slate Star Codex? - A thread https://twitter.com/TLDRSlateStar/status/1100867507194396673 Slate Star Codex is one of the biggest dangers to people (esp marginalized groups) who want to use the internet without being abused. TLDR is that Slate Star Codex is a blog that promotes platforming white supremacists and the like, whips up frenzies about the dangers of feminism, and serves as a vector f…
Comment linking /2012/02/16/depths-of-madness/
on “I Am Deleting the Blog”Submitted Assortive mating and income inequality as a story · 4 points
HN discussionNo it doesn't https://westhunt.wordpress.com/2015/03/21/y-chromosome-crash...
Comment linking /2015/03/21/y-chromosome-crash/
on “On incels, dead bedrooms and the hard problems of loneliness”Submitted Inverse weathervanes as a story · 2 points
HN discussionhere's some interesting speculation on this topic: https://westhunt.wordpress.com/2013/01/15/a-three-hour-tour/ Basically there's genetic (Y chromosome) and linguistic evidence suggesting an infusion of Indian immigration (~5000 years ago so maybe a distinct event from this). One plausible explanation is that some Dravidian seafarers crash-landed in Australia and got absorbed by the local population. From their pers…
Comment linking /2013/01/15/a-three-hour-tour/
on “Tamil Bell”Submitted The Moriarty MOOC as a story · 2 points
HN discussionActually most of the world, that has gotten rid of royalty, seems to be doing its best to bring back at least some of the trappings; for example, http://westhunt.wordpress.com/2012/07/21/presidential-transp...
Comment linking /2012/07/21/presidential-transportation/
on “On Patents”Submitted What is to be done about coronavirus? as a story · 1 points
HN discussionI'm not an expert, just an interested layperson, but from what I read, I am starting to wonder whether cancer cures might be more basic than we realize, we're just not looking at the right things. The example that keeps coming to mind is HPV - it can cause cervical cancer etc. And, since there is an immunization for HPV, the disease is preventable, and to the extent it is the "only" cause of certain cancers, would a…
Comment linking /2012/02/22/low-hanging-fruit/
on “Killing cancer like the common cold”Submitted Plague of Frogs as a story · 1 points
HN discussionCalories. Cheese has only about 60% the calories of a starting volume of milk. [1] Plus, animals can graze on land you can't farm, and they're very portable. [1] http://westhunt.wordpress.com/2012/01/21/the-indo-european-a...
Comment linking /2012/01/21/the-indo-european-advantage/
on “The lactose-tolerance mutation”Submitted Cell Line Infections, or, my dog has no bones as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSaving money on the vaccine while enacting much more expensive lockdowns is beyond silly. https://westhunt.wordpress.com/2021/04/06/scientists-against...
Comment linking /2021/04/06/scientists-against-time/
on “Israel may have achieved herd immunity against Covid-19”Submitted The Experts as a story · 1 points
HN discussionI would not forget that he was co-founder of China's missile program too. And given how many Chinese-Americans turn out to be passing secrets to China, it's pretty disingenuous to go 'oh, he only worked for them because the US mistreated him!' He would be far from the first person whose loyalties turned out to lie where you would expect them to lie. Let them go home? This issue has come up before. The Feds locked up…
Comment linking /2013/10/01/who-can-you-trust/
on “Qian Xuesen dies at 98; Co-Founder of JPL and China's space program (2009)”Submitted Low-Hanging Fruit: Consider the Ant as a story · 1 points
HN discussion>I focused on lessons I had learned reading Lt. Col. Dave Grossman’s book “On Killing,” Dave Grossman reportedly cites someone named S. L. A. Marshall who made the claim that only a small percentage of infantry ever fired their weapons, to support the idea that most people have some natural reluctance to kill in battle. I just want to point out that there is zero evidence for this claim: https://westhunt.wordpress.c…
Comment linking /2014/12/28/shoot-to-kill/
on “How We Learned to Kill”Submitted National Greatness (on the development of penicillin) as a story · 1 points
HN discussionGreg Cochrane mentions that here, http://westhunt.wordpress.com/2012/08/22/paternal-age/ , in the context of the influence of paternal age on mutation rates, and excessive numbers of mutations having negative influences on fitness and health.
Comment linking /2012/08/22/paternal-age/
on “An Immune Disorder at the Root of Autism”Submitted Manifest Destiny as a story · 1 points
HN discussionanthropologist greg cochran has made the same point: https://westhunt.wordpress.com/2018/08/18/ptsd/ then again, from what we can tell about the premodern world it seems much more violent than what we are accustomed to.
Comment linking /2018/08/18/ptsd/
on “Book Review: The Body Keeps the Score”Submitted A Neanderthal with a Consensus Genome: What's the Catch? as a story · 1 points
HN discussionThe stagnation of growth isn't unique to the US. All developed countries have stagnated [1], with little regard to government politics and policies. [1] https://westhunt.wordpress.com/2016/08/12/the-great-stagnati...
Comment linking /2016/08/12/the-great-stagnation/
on “Robots Aren’t Killing the American Dream”Submitted Educational Reform as a story · 1 points
HN discussionhttps://westhunt.wordpress.com/2016/07/09/our-dumb-world/ and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_fertility_rate
Comment linking /2016/07/09/our-dumb-world/
on “World Population Growth”https://westhunt.wordpress.com/2013/10/31/lost-and-found/ > Marcus Terentius Varro was called the most learned of the Romans. But what did he know, and how did he know it? I ask because of this quote, from Rerum rusticarum libri III (Agricultural Topics in Three Books): > Precautions must also be taken in the neighbourhood of swamps, both for the reasons given, and because there are bred certain minute creatures whi…
Comment linking /2013/10/31/lost-and-found/
on “Psychiatry’s Incurable Hubris”"rate of boiling off of young Amish each generation might act like truncation selection in favor being Amish, whatever that might be" https://westhunt.wordpress.com/2014/02/07/inferring-an-aq/ https://westhunt.wordpress.com/2014/10/10/draft-of-paper-abo... “[T]he difference in mean AQ [‘amishness’] between young Amish men and their non-Amish neighbors is about 2.8 standard deviations. In the IQ world this would corr…
Comment linking /2014/10/10/draft-of-paper-about-amish/
on “Two centuries of rapid global population growth will come to an end”A scenario: http://westhunt.wordpress.com/2013/01/15/a-three-hour-tour/
Comment linking /2013/01/15/a-three-hour-tour/
on “Genetic evidence suggests that, four millennia ago, Indians landed in Australia”Greg Cochran, an expert geneticist who wrote 'The 10,000 Year Explosion' has a different view. 1) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3310KWlDXg (especially the Q&A which is dominated by epigenetics). 2) This explains it in text -> https://westhunt.wordpress.com/2012/10/26/epigenetics/
Comment linking /2012/10/26/epigenetics/
on “Heredity Beyond the Gene”Greg Cochran has been making that argument for some time now. Here's his take on the issue: http://westhunt.wordpress.com/2014/07/03/rasmus-nielsen/
Comment linking /2014/07/03/rasmus-nielsen/
on “Extinct Humans Passed High-Altitude Gene to Tibetans”
