More sociobiology

John Wilkins and P.Z. Myers -- the former is an "unflinching sociobiologist" and the latter calls himself lapsed with positive views. Both, to my surprise, distinguish it from evolutionary psychology -- not in the sense I've seen before of evo psych getting more cautious than sociobiology and concentrating the science, but in an opposite sense of amplifying the flaws of sociobiology, being too eagerly adaptationist, and too committed to mental modularity, as in principle 4 of Tooby and Cosmides's primer. The latter might be a fair cop... but I also wonder if this is an atheist/agnostic like debate, where the real sociobiologists and evolutionary psychologists are all doing the same good science, but flustered and squabbling over labels.

A paragraph from Wilkins:

Now I want to note at the outset that there are several kinds of thing that get called sociobiology, according to one's attitude to biological accounts of social behaviour, and the age in which the writers under consideration worked. Few disciplines are as history-ridden as evolutionary biology, and few within that as social biology. I mark out three types of social biology: the standard Evil Demon of eugenics and "social Darwinism" (which is neither social, nor Darwinian, nor ever an actual historical movement, but that's for another day). We may dismiss this as being of no positive value apart from an object lesson in how not to apply science to society. The second is the movement of the 1970s to treat humans as social animals and discuss the ways in which evolution has shaped us. This is the sense of the term in Wilson and Wilson, and which I will discuss below. The third is that same evolutionary psychology. A few short words about that before we begin.

Mike Huckabee doesn't think; he just tells Chuck Norris jokes

First we had Fred "Ronald Reagan didn't ruin America enough" Thompson running for the White House. Now we have Huckabee invoking Chuck Norris:

Huckabee also previewed his first television ad of the campaign on the program. The 60-second spot, which features actor Chuck Norris, was to begin running in Iowa on Monday.

"My plan to secure the border. Two words: Chuck. Norris," says Huckabee, who stares into the camera before it cuts away to show Norris standing beside him.

"Mike Huckabee is a lifelong hunter who'll protect our Second Amendment rights" on gun ownership, says the tough-guy actor, who takes turns addressing viewers.

"There's no chin behind Chuck Norris' beard, only another fist," Huckabee says.

"Mike Huckabee wants to put the IRS out of business," Norris adds.

"When Chuck Norris does a push-up, he isn't lifting himself up, he's pushing the earth down," Huckabee says.

"Mike's a principled, authentic conservative," says Norris.

In closing, Huckabee says: "Chuck Norris doesn't endorse. He tells America how it's going to be. I'm Mike Huckabee and I approved this message. So did Chuck."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071118/ap_on_el_pr/huckabee_4 probably a short-lived link, but I couldn't find better