Hugo nominations and thoughts

makinglight has this years list of nominees, and there are some interesting choices (remember, nominations are a ballot of members).( Some of the nominees, some observatios, Battlestar Galactica & Doctor Who are in, etc... )

Oh yeah, Jim Baen for best editor, naturally. While a lot of his books were pulp, they were great pulp, and his approach to e-books and the Baen free library were spot on, hope the industry catches up soon.  I have no Hugo vote, and there's no way I can get to WordCon in Tokyo, but always interesting to follow.

Nature versus nurture

So, where do you stand on that one? Which matters more, upbringing, or genetics? Me, I've always been on the nurture side, don't really like the idea of genetic determinacy. Except, um, chris_dillow_fd has some worrying research that seems to point that nature is more important:

If genes were all that mattered, you'd expect the education of biological parents to affect children's outcomes whether they were adopted or not. If nurture were all that mattered, you'd expect biological parents' education to have no effect on the outcomes of adopted children.
So, what did they find? That biological parents' education mattered even for adopted children.

Not a huge difference, but a difference nonetheless. It may just be that who you are matters more than what you were taught. I await further study on this one, because it really does go against some of my more basic instincts.