why human biodiversity is true…and why jason richwine is right

human biodiversity — the set of biological and genetic differences between (and within) groups — is true because The Theory of Evolution is true, and since The Theory of Evolution is true, human biodiversity must be the case. (of course, The Theory of Evolution might be wrong. if so, everyone will have to head back to the drawing boards. but all the scientific indications are that The Theory is correct, so now it’s simply a matter of working out all the details.)

most of the hysteria surrounding jason richwine’s crimethink (i.e. that hispanics have a lower average iq than whites) is coming from the politically correct chattering classes — most of them on the left of course, but there are plenty of examples to be found on the right as well. these are people who probably claim to be smart (and most of them are probably pretty smart, actually), modern, and well-read. many of them are likely skeptics and atheists, too. most all of them no doubt “believe” in evolution. the problem is that they don’t understand evolution.

if they did understand evolution, they would know that, thanks to natural selection, genetic differences between populations having had long histories of developing in different types of environments are inevitable. and if they understood anything at all about biology (perhaps i’m asking too much), they would know that dna contributes to (not determines) variance in all sorts of traits in humans and other animals like personality, physique, and yes … intelligence. frankly, we’d be one really WEIRD species if there were NO differences between us all! (the pc-crowd would all probably be horrified to learn that this evolution in humans has sped up in the past 10,000 or so years thanks to the hugely increasing sizes of our populations — i.e. the more individuals you have, the more mutations there’s gonna be, and the more on which natural selection can work.)

so, the fact that the average iq of hispanics has been found, by many psychometricians btw, to be lower than the average iq of whites — and, i’ll note, that the average iq of whites has been found to be lower than the average iq of east asians — should not be surprising. that is, that there are differences between the average iqs of these different groups should not be surprising. those are the sorts of differences you’re gonna get with EVOLUTION.

do these differences mean that some peoples should be considered superior or inferior to others? no. do these differences mean that some peoples should be treated differently before the law (or in our daily lives for that matter)? of course not. do these differences mean that we should give pause for thought when considering which groups — and, perhaps more importantly, how many of any one group — to allow to immigrate to our country? absolutely!

jason richwine was right in his ph.d. thesis to suggest that we ought to consider the natures of the peoples we allow to immigrate to the u.s. if we want america to remain american in nature, since different peoples are different by nature. the addition of large numbers of foreigners to any country changes the culture and the workings of that country. jason has apparently said that immigrants to the u.s. in the past — the irish and the italians, for instance — successfully assimilated, while hispanics will not. i would suggest that what, in fact, happened was that the irish and the italians, et al., while assimilating to a certain degree also changed the nature of the country. perhaps less so than tens of millions of hispanics will do, but they altered it from a mostly anglo-saxon nation into a more generic western european nation.

all mass immigration serves to alter recipient nations to some degree or another. even the slightest bit of rational thinking based upon an understanding of evolution would lead anyone to realize that is an inevitable consequence of human biodiversity.

sadly, we live in irrational times.
_____

see also:
- White v. Hispanic cognitive gap across 39 studies with 5,696,529 sample size from steve sailer.
- Generations of Exclusion from greg cochran via steve sailer.
- NYT: Dr. Richwine guilty of not being oblivious to the obvious from steve sailer.
- “Burn The Witch!” Heritage Foundation Scuttles Away From Jason Richwine — And The Cold Hard Facts – from john derbyshire.
- Christopher Jencks – “Who Should Get In?” – New York Review of Books from steve sailer.
- The Crucifixion of Jason Richwine – from michelle malkin.
- Jason Richwine and a bottle of Rich Wine from james thompson.
- Jason Richwine’s Racial Theories Are Nothing New @the atlantic.
- The IQ Test @slate.

further reading on human biodiversity:
- jayman’s hbd fundamentals
- hbd bibliography

update: see also “to disbelieve in witchcraft is the greatest of heresies”

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linkfest – 04/28/13

Questions you never thought to ask: Is inbreeding bad for democracy? – i thought to ask. so did a few other people (way before me!): steve sailer, stanley kurtz, parapundit. see also Cousin Marriage and Democracy. and, of course, see also woodley and bell. and see Question of the Day @breviosity. previously: consanguinity and democracy.

A Dose of Clannishness and What’s So Bad About Clanocracy? – @breviosity!

Where do those tensions come from? – “When the Milgram experiment was done with Jordanian assistants, they were just as willing as Americans to inflict pain under orders (62.5%). But they were more willing than Americans [1.4%] to inflict pain when no orders were given, with 12.5% of them delivering shocks right up to the top end of the scale (Shanab & Yahya, 1978).” – great post from peter frost!

Modern Europe’s Genetic History Starts in Stone Age – “Scientists create the first detailed genetic history of modern Europe.” – original research article. see also mtDNA haplogroup H and the origin of Europeans (Brotherton et al. 2013) from dienekes.

As women live longer and have fewer children, they are becoming taller and slimmer, study finds – “‘This is a reminder that declines in mortality rates do not necessarily mean that evolution stops, but that it changes.’”

Birth Defects, FBD Marriages – from anatoly.

HBD Fundamentals – from jayman!

Why the Tropics are an evolutionary hotbed – “Ant family tree shows tropical New World hosts fast speciation while also keeping older lineages alive.”

Study: People Who Believe in God Are More Responsive to Treatment of Depression – “It may be that ‘the tendency to have faith in conventional social constructs’ can be generalized both to religion and the medical establishment.”

Beauty isn’t skin deep – @mangan’s.

Social psychology fraud: Just tell professors what they want to hear – from steve sailer.

Book Review: Quiet – The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking (2012) by Susan Cain – from staffan. and a classic: Caring for Your Introvert. (just shush already! (~_^) )

Ethnic origins of Forbes world billionaires (2013) – @race/history/evolution notes.

Computer scientists suggest new spin on origins of evolvability – “‘[E]volvable species accumulate over time even without selective pressure.’” – in their computer simulations.

Culture — Not Just a Human Thing – vervet monkeys got culture. also Parrots Barter With Nuts.

Humans Evolved Flexible, Lopsided Brains – some of us more lopsided than others. (~_^)

When Do Babies Become Conscious? – “New research shows that babies display glimmers of consciousness and memory as early as 5 months old.”

Fish win fights on strength of personality – “When predicting the outcome of a fight, the big guy doesn’t always win suggests new research on fish.”

Feeding our gut bacteria meat may enhance heart disease risks – “Antibiotics or vegetarian diets block production of a risk-associated chemical.”

On Hold: Genes That Pause Pregnancy Discovered

Giza Secret Revealed: How 10,000 Pyramid Builders Got Fed – “This meat-rich diet, along with the availability of medical care (the skeletons of some workers show healed bones), would have been an additional lure for ancient Egyptians to work on the pyramids…. ‘They probably got a much better diet than they got in their village….’”

Earliest Mayan monuments unearthed in Guatemala. see also Ancient Maya discovery sheds new light on the origins of civilization.

bonus: Levels of Commitment to the Dark Enlightenment – @habitable worlds. also What are characteristics of the Dark Enlightenment? @occam’s razor.

bonus bonus: How Cuban Villagers Learned They Descended From Sierra Leone Slaves – “The amazing story of the traditional songs and dances, passed down over hundreds of years, that have tied a small Caribbean ethnic group to a remote African tribe.” – cool story!

bonus bonus bonus: Revealed: The Indian village with just 6,000 inhabitants … but more than 100 pairs of twins – another town of twins!

bonus bonus bonus bonus: Can Animals Be Mentally Ill?

bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus: not a news story, but here’s the definition of stubborn – Last Two Speakers of Dying Language Refuse to Talk to Each Other

bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus: Thanks to rare alpine bacteria, researchers identify one of alcohol’s key gateways to the brain – “Discovery is a step on the road to eventually developing drugs that could disrupt the interaction between alcohol and the brain.” – cool! wait. they want to disrupt the effect of alcohol on the brain?! hey!

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linkfest – 04/07/13

A Genome-Wide Association Study Identifies Five Loci Influencing Facial Morphology in Europeans – “Our results also suggest that the high heritability of facial phenotypes seems to be explained by a large number of DNA variants with relatively small individual effect size, a phenomenon well known for other complex human traits, such as adult body height.”

The Genetic Correlation between Height and IQ: Shared Genes or Assortative Mating? – “In this study, we used a large (total N = 7,905), genetically informative dataset to understand why two potentially sexually selected traits in humans—height and IQ—are correlated. We found that both shared genes and assortative mating were about equally important in causing the relationship between these two traits.”

ScienceShot: Monkey Smiles Are Contagious – “Previously, only humans and orangutans had been shown to quickly and involuntarily mimic the facial expressions of their companions, an ability that seems to be linked to empathy.”

No evidence for higher testosterone in black compared to white adolescent males – @race/history/evolution notes.

Brain scans decode dream content – “Researchers have decoded the content of people’s dreams using brain scanning technology”

Fertility and Happiness: A Global Perspective and A Fat World – With a Fat Secret? – from jayman (he was on a roll this week!).

Genes behind obesity mapped in large-scale study – “An international research team has identified seven new gene loci linked to obesity.”

Is Psychometric g a Myth? – @human varieties. see also Is the g Factor a myth? from steve sailer.

Darwin: Are the races of man separate species or merely separate subspecies? – from steve sailer.

Inbreeding, race replacement, genetic disease, “diversity” – @race/history/evolution notes.

Wyld Stallyns and House O’Rats and Undecidable Propositions – from greg cochran (he was also on a roll this week!).

Have We Evolved to Be Nasty or Nice? – from matt ridley.

Shocker — married mothers smarter than single moms – from the awesome epigone.

Sex, models and housework – b.s. king takes a critical look at the (suspicious) maths behind that “sex and housework” story that made the rounds recently.

The Parsis – “At present, we simply don’t know enough about Parsi history to understand what social and psychological characteristics may have been favored during the long centuries between the arrival of this community in India and its encounter with the British from the 17th century onward.” – from peter frost.

Mankind’s Collective Personalities – from john derbyshire.

Polynesian mtDNA in extinct Amerindians from Brazil – @dienekes.

Religiosity and fear of death: a three‐nation comparison – “Overall, the patterns in all three countries were similar. When linearity was assumed, there is a substantial positive correlation between most religiosity measures and fear of death…. [F]emales were more religious and feared death more than did males, and Muslims expressed considerably greater fear than did members of any other major religion.” – @mein naturwissenschaftsblog.

Researchers see antibody evolve against HIV

Shocker: Colorado shooter on prescription psychiatric meds – @mangan’s.

The average human vagina – yes, there’s a lot of variation down there (sorry, no exciting pics @the link!).

Great Scientist ≠ Good at Math – “E.O. Wilson shares a secret: Discoveries emerge from ideas, not number-crunching” – hmmmm. i still think that (*ahem*) being able to do maths is an awfully handy skill in biology, not to mention population genetics.

Could playing ‘boys’ games help girls in science and math? – “[M]en and women with either a strong masculine or androgynous gender-identity fared better in mental rotation tasks.” – so, the women who were more guy-like were better at the mental rotation tasks. duh!

Global E-mail Patterns Reveal ‘Clash of Civilizations’ – “The global pattern of e-mail communication reflects the cultural fault lines thought to determine future conflict, say computational social scientists.”

In Praise of Kinship – “You don’t have to be a relativist to see that one-size individualism can’t fit all cultures, or that clannish bonds are often deeply fulfilling.” – wsj review of mark weiner‘s book, The Rule of the Clan. see also What Modern Democracies Should Understand About Clan-based Societies Explored in New Book by Rutgers–Newark Law Professor.

bonus: The secret superdads: More than a dozen UK sperm donors have fathered 20 or more children EACH – “Five-hundred men have sired more than 6,100 children in Britain”

bonus bonus: French people mired in ‘collective depression’ – “A new survey published on Thursday found that 70 percent of them see their country as afflicted by a ‘collective depression’, with two thirds believing that France is ‘in decline’…. ‘This deep French depression is explained in large part by a sense of lost identity.’”

bonus bonus bonus: Xenophobia has no effect on migrants’ happiness, says study

bonus bonus bonus bonus: An Emergency Hatch for Baby Lizards – “Unborn lizards can erupt from their eggs days early if vibrations hint at a threat from a hungry predator, new research shows.”

bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus: Lego pulls toy following accusations of being anti-Islamic – but Lego denies discontinuing Jabba’s Palace over race claims – previously.

bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus: Boy, 17, builds DNA testing machine [polymerase chain reaction machine] in his bedroom to find out why his younger sibling has ginger hair

bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus: Chinese president urges openness, respect for diversity – of types of governments! (~_^)

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linkfest – 03/10/13

Low-hanging fruit? – “We need to go beyond intelligence and look at genetic differences that may underlie variation in personality traits, regulation of emotions, time orientation, and so forth. There is more to being human than just intelligence.“ – yes!! (^_^) – from peter frost.

this is kinda old (from jan) but i just came across it: Variants at serotonin transporter and 2A receptor genes predict cooperative behavior differentially according to presence of punishment – “We show that variants at the serotonin transporter gene (SLC6A4) and serotonin 2A receptor gene (HTR2A) predict contributions to the public good in economic games, dependent upon whether contribution behavior can be punished.”

Genetic Influences on the Overlap Between Low IQ and Antisocial Behavior in Young Children – “Genetic influences common to both phenotypes explained 100% of the low IQ–antisocial behavior relation in boys.” – via race/history/evolution notes.

Monkeys Stay Away from Mean People – “Capuchin monkeys show biases against humans who deny help to others.”

Genetic study of house dust mites demonstrates reversible evolution

Do species exist? – from steve sailer.

Fungus, Get Off My Lawn! – “Virginia wildrye, common on U.S. prairies and rangelands, often plays host to a fungus that helps this grass grow. But the plant pays a price. Researchers have discovered that infected plants produce less pollen than their noninfected counterparts. Instead, the fungus causes the rye grass to make extra seeds, which transmit the fungus to the next generation and new locations. This is the first time a fungus has proven capable of manipulating plant reproduction.” – manipulator!

E. O. Wilson vs. Jerry Coyne: The Group Selection Wars Continue – from helian.

Pathogens: Cause or Effect of Social Variation?

Can People’s Personalities Change? – “[P]ersonality was the strongest predictor of satisfaction with life. This is well-established and helps explain why some people have everything and are never satisfied and some people have next-to-nothing and seem quite happy with life. It’s not just what you have that makes you satisfied (or not), it’s how you think about it. And those habits of thought are heavily influenced by personality.”

Difficult Thoughts – “It’s depressing to see how irrational we are so much of the time, but there it is.” – from malcolm pollack.

The Shape of History – “Ian Morris, historian on a grand scale.”

bonus: Mystery bug found in Antarctica’s Lake Vostok – “There is something alive in Lake Vostok, deep beneath the East Antarctic ice sheet, and we don’t know what it is. Water samples from the lake contain a bacterium that does not seem to belong to any known bacterial groups….”

bonus bonus: The Dark Enlightenment and the Eco Fringe – paleo retiree goes all hippie on us. (~_^) (i’ll confess right now to being a tree hugger myself.)

bonus bonus bonus: foseti’s drunken rant – i love drunken rants! (~_^) (this one actually makes sense!)

bonus bonus bonus bonus: Only the toughest would survive on Tatooine worlds – h/t hbd bibliography!

bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus: Butt munchers – “[S]ea cucumbers can eat through their anuses.”

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linkfest – 02/25/13

Natural selection acts to maintain diversity between Out of Africa and sub-Saharan African populations in genes related to neurological processes and brain development – aapa abstract @race/history/evolution notes.

Hispanic Genomic Diversity, Part I: European, African, and Amerindian Admixtures and the Taíno ‘Extinction’ Controversy – “This post deals with the variance in European, African, and Amerindian/Taíno admixture in five of the twenty Hispanic subgroups….” – from nelson!

Misguided Nostalgia for Our Paleo Past – “Gregory Cochran and Henry Harpending even suggest that human evolution as a whole has, on the contrary, accelerated over the last several thousand years, and they also believe that relatively isolated groups of people, such as Africans and North Americans, are subject to differing selection. That leads to the somewhat uncomfortable suggestion that such groups might be evolving in different directions—a controversial notion to say the least.” – i dunno why that suggestion should be uncomfortable, but i guess it is. -?- see also steve sailer.

Predictable evolution trumps randomness of mutations – “Separate bacteria populations may respond to environmental changes in identical ways.”

Mediterranean Diet Cuts Heart Disease Risk – IN MEDITERRANEAN PEOPLE! – “Heart disease experts said the study was a triumph because it showed that a diet was powerful in reducing heart disease risk, and it did so using the most rigorous methods. Scientists randomly assigned 7,447 people in Spain who were overweight, were smokers, or had diabetes or other risk factors for heart disease to follow the Mediterranean diet or a low-fat one.” – *facepalm*

Where Men See White, Women See Ecru – “Neuroscientists prove what we always suspected: the two sexes see the world differently” – i love ecru!

Why Women Talk More Than Men: Language Protein Uncovered – FOXP2 gene. and an objection: The “Language” Gene and Women’s Wagging Tongues.

Bone Marrow Transplants: When Race Is an Issue – via hbd biblography.

“Know Thyself” Is A Lot To Ask

Low mobility associated with inherited ability is no social tragedy – from gregory clark, via jayman.

The sociology of dysgenia – “Eugenics is a great idea, and perhaps it’s not as complex as I make it to be here. But the fact remains that for all we speculate, we know very, very little about it.” – from spandrell. via foseti.

Modern sub-fertility may be a pathologically slow life history, triggered by a supernormal stimulus of modernity – from bruce charlton. see also mangan and malcolm pollack.

The Riddle of the Human Species – multilevel selection argumentation from e.o. wilson. i like the opening paragraphs very much. (^_^)

Can India’s Democracy Defeat Corruption? – “Of course, big corruption scandals are commonplace in the developing world (and the developed world, for that matter). Yet the scale and relative peacefulness of the corruption debate in India may be unprecedented…. And although the Indian political system is imperfect in ways too numerous to list here, the central authorities most of the time do respect free speech and free press. Civil society works. Freedom of association works….”

Study finds maize in diets of people in coastal Peru dates to 5,000 years ago – “Up until now, the prevailing theory was that marine resources, not agriculture and corn, provided the economic engine behind the development of civilization in the Andean region of Peru.”

Fun With HBD: Racial Differences in Women’s Asses – (~_^)

How Christianity stopped Anglo-Saxon England eating horsemeat: Church officials claimed it was ‘pagan’ food

bonus: The Big Question – “Q: What day most changed the course of history?” – i like freeman dyson’s response. (^_^)

bonus bonus: Dolphins Call Each Other By Name – “Bottlenose dolphins call out the specific names of loved ones when they become separated, a study finds. Other than humans, the dolphins are the only animals known to do this….”

bonus bonus bonus: The Meanest Girls at the Watering Hole – behavioral evidence suggests that hierarchy is heriditary in elephants.

bonus bonus bonus bonus: Grey langurs spotted treating a wild dog to a grooming session in India

bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus: How male alligators have PERMANENTLY erect penises which they keep hidden inside their bodies

bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus: Most zombie ant photographs are upside down

bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus: The 15th-Century Equivalent of Your Cat Walking on Your Keyboard – meow!

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linkfest – 02/12/13

(sorry. the dog ate my sunday linkfest….)

And Yet Another Tale of Two Maps – from jayman.

Why are girls and boys maturing earlier? – from peter frost.

When Did Humans Come to the Americas?

Large study shows substance abuse rates higher in teenagers with ADHD – “When the adolescents were an average of 15 years old, 35 percent of those with ADHD histories reported using one or more substances, as compared to only 20 percent of teens without ADHD histories.”

Tribal societies and war – from mangan.

Crime and Twins – from dienekes.

HVGIQ: Cayman Islands – from jason malloy.

Evil Genes and the Long Dark Tea Time of the Soul – @bad data, bad!

Digging Deep in the DNA – “‘I think I’m one of the few people,’ she said, ‘who have taken the rectal temperature of a grizzly bear.’”

Men are from Mars Earth, women are from Venus Earth – “That men and women approach their social world similarly does not imply that there are no differences in average scores between the sexes. Average differences do exist, write the authors.” – yes, average differences do exist.

Exercise linked with reduced prostate cancer risk in Caucasians but not African-Americans – “Studies have also revealed that African-American men have an increased risk of developing prostate cancer and of dying from the disease compared with Caucasians.”

Gene today, gone tomorrow: Genes for autism and schizophrenia only active in developing brains – “Genes linked to autism and schizophrenia are only switched on during the early stages of brain development, according to a study in mice led by researchers at the University of Oxford.” – curioser and curioser….

The Lab Accident That Led to the Discovery of Supertasters – “A cloud of chemicals. One researcher detects a smell. The other does not. What happens next? Science.”

So THAT’s why women’s feet and hands are always cold! Why they are slaves to their hormones

On Genteels – @bloody shovel.

Oral Mystery: Are Agriculture and Rats Responsible for Tooth Decay? – “Tooth decay is a relatively modern problem. The bacteria feasting on your teeth might have originated in the mouth of a rodent, and found their way to our teeth, thanks to agriculture.”

bonus: ‘Google for spies’ draws ire from rights groups

bonus bonus: ‘It’s a boy!’ Monkey midwife delivers baby

bonus bonus bonus: What Are Dogs Saying When They Bark? [Excerpt] – “Experiments have now shown that dogs use different barks and growls to communicate different things.” – see also: Your dog really does understand you… They’re more likely to steal food if they think you can’t see, research reveals.

bonus bonus bonus bonus: Pigeons Get a New Look – “Pigeons, a Darwin favorite, carry new clues to evolution.”

bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus: Do plants ‘veto’ bad genes? – “Latest evidence fails to quell doubt about whether plants can access “ancestral” genes outside their parents’”

bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus: Face-to-face with the earliest ancestor of all placental mammals

bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus: Penicillin Mold Can Reproduce Sexually, Which Could Lead to Better Antibiotics – “Penicillin-producing fungus, previously thought to be asexual, has a sexual side. The finding is the latest in a kind of sexual revolution in fungal genetics.”

bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus: Fast Food Robot Builds the Perfect Burger – won’t need mexicans for flipping burgers anymore.

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linkfest – 09/23/12

New genetic light shed on human evolution – “A new genetic study of a group of sub-Saharan peoples has challenged the prevailing view that modern humans emerged from one location in Africa before spreading out across the world.” – see also Complex origins and natural selection of the Khoe-San from dienekes. and also African neighbours divided by their genes.

Out-of-Asia and Into-Africa (?) – “[I]t is very likely that there was indeed such a migration into East Africa. What Pickrell et al. have added to our knowledge is that this migration is fairly recent.” – from dienekes.

Are We Really Getting Smarter? – from james flynn.

Neanderthals used feathers as ‘personal ornaments’

Are Neanderthals Human?

Genetic Obesity Risk Heightened by Sugary Drinks – “[P]ersons with a greater genetic predisposition to obesity appeared to be more susceptible to the deleterious effects of sugar-sweetened beverages on BMI….”

speaking of fat: Human biodiversity in adiposity – “[T]he manner in which fat is deposited in the body, e.g. viscerally vs. subcutaneously, as well as the amount of fat deposited, is substantially heritable, varies between races, and that variation may be due to differences in infectious disease risk over time periods long enough for natural selection to act.” – @the breviary.

Not Wanting Kids Is Entirely Normal – but won’t be selected for….

Why We Need to Study the Brain’s Evolution in Order to Understand the Modern Mind

Prehistoric Animated Cave Drawings Discovered In France – cool!

How to confuse a moral compass – “Survey ‘magic trick’ causes attitude reversal.” – people are really retarded. (no offense to retarded people.)

Contestants Race to Map DNA of 100 Centenarians

The 10 best-educated countries in the world

bonus: Warp Drives Might Be More Realistic Than Thought – zooooooooom!

bonus bonus: Bird brains? Crows remember your face (and know you’re hiding in there)

bonus bonus bonus: Ohio woman who unknowingly married her father says learning the secret was ‘devastating’ – oops! (they didn’t have any kids.)

bonus bonus bonus bonus: How the Tabby Got Its Stripes: It’s in the Genes – “Tabby cats get their stripes from two important genes, according to new research — the same genes that create a rare ‘king’ cheetah’s stripes. Cats with narrow stripes, the so-called ‘mackerel’ pattern, have a working copy of the gene. But if a mutation turns the gene off, the cat ends up with the blotchy ‘classic’ pattern.”

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linkfest – 08/12/12

Is corn the new milk? Evolutionarily speaking, that is. – “Corn, or maize, may have exerted natural selection on the human populations that first cultivated it.” – original research article: Evolutionary Responses to a Constructed Niche: Ancient Mesoamericans as a Model of Gene-Culture Coevolution.

New Fossils Indicate Early Branching of Human Family Tree – “The discovery of three new fossil specimens, announced Wednesday, is the most compelling evidence yet for multiple lines of evolution in our own genus, Homo, scientists said. The fossils showed that there were at least two contemporary Homo species, in addition to Homo erectus, living in East Africa as early as two million years ago.” – see also Fossils point to a big family for human ancestors.

Tree’s leaves genetically different from its roots – “Black cottonwood trees (Populus trichocarpa) can clone themselves to produce offspring that are connected to their parents by the same root system. Now, after the first genome-wide analysis of a tree, it turns out that the connected clones have many genetic differences, even between tissues from the top and bottom of a single tree…. ‘This could change the classic paradigm that evolution only happens in a population rather than at an individual level….’“

IQ Is A Social Construct Except When It Isn’t – “Stupid people are simply far, far more likely to be criminals than normal people.” – from anatoly.

We Thought Female Athletes Were Catching Up to Men, but They’re Not – “Across dozens of sports, women’s world speed records consistently fall 10 percent short of men’s records.” – the horror, the horror.

Study Reveals Anti-Conservative Discrimination Among Psychologists – “A significant number of social and personality psychologists have told researchers they would discriminate against conservatives in decisions about publishing, grant applications and hiring, according to a study published in the September issue of the journal Perspectives on Psychological Science.”

Wrongdoers Feel a ‘Cheater’s High’

Religiosity and crime – “[R]eligiosity reduces criminal involvement.” – from the inductivist.

Women and Bell Curves – “We have to understand that not only men and women are different as groups, there is also variance among them. People are different, and even though human societies assign different roles to each group, that often ignores biological variance.” – from spandrell via foseti.

Gender inequality in awarded research grants – oh, noes! – “[I]n our opinion, the most likely explanation for the difference in amounts awarded to women and men is that women are systematically less ambitious in the amounts of funding requested in their grant applications.” – oops!

bonus: African Grey Parrots Have the Reasoning Skills of 3-year-olds

bonus bonus: The Largest Ever 3D Map of the Universe – awwwwwwsome!

bonus bonus bonus: Science Proves Luke Skywalker Should Have Died In The Tauntaun’s Belly – hmpf. they’re obviously just missing some key parameter/s.

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