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 – 12/02/12

Human Evolution Enters an Exciting New Phase – “In the most massive study of genetic variation yet, researchers estimated the age of more than one million variants, or changes to our DNA code, found across human populations. The vast majority proved to be quite young…. ‘Most of the mutations that we found arose in the last 200 generations or so….’ said geneticist Joshua Akey of the University of Washington, co-author of the Nov. 28 Nature study. ‘We have a repository of all this new variation for humanity to use as a substrate. In a way, we’re more evolvable now than at any time in our history.’“ – i think greg cochran and henry harpending are now permitted to say — “we told you so!” — as much as they like and as often as they like. even to the point when it becomes annoying. (~_^) — see also: Too Much Diversity.

The Dark Enlightenment – “‘The fundamental realization of the Dark Enlightenment is that all men are not created equal, not individual men, nor the various groups and categories of men, nor are women equal to men, that these beliefs and others like them are religious beliefs….’” – @mangan’s. see also malcolm pollack. (come to the dark side … we have cookies!)

Origins of English Individualism – from peter frost. (h/t jayman and bob!) – see also “mating patterns in europe series” in left-hand column below ↓, particularly the section on the english (you might start with this one), and … oh … pretty much every post on this blog for the last year and a half. (~_^)

Native Americans and Northern Europeans more closely related than previously thought – “According to Nick Patterson, first author of the report, ‘There is a genetic link between the paleolithic population of Europe and modern Native Americans. The evidence is that the population that crossed the Bering Strait from Siberia into the Americas more than 15,000 years ago was likely related to the ancient population of Europe.’” – see also peter frost.

Expectations and reality: a window into the liberal-conservative baby gap – “Genotypically, White Americans are getting more conservative, and the future will come to be dominated them (and the non-White groups in the country).” – from jayman.

The Beatings Will Continue Until Morale Improves – from malcolm pollack.

Ancient poo gives clues to human impact on environment – “Researchers were able to use prehistoric poo to establish the presence and size of a population dating back over 7,000 years.”

No, 10,000 Hours of Practice Won’t Make You An Expert — gladwell debunked in fifty words or less. — see also “you, too, can have…” series.

Odd Reason Some Guys Have Fewer Sex Partners – “Men who were born without a sense of smell report having far fewer sexual partners than other men do….”

Prenatal exposure to testosterone leads to verbal aggressive behavior – “Relative length of adults’ fingers an indicator of verbal aggression.” – r2d2 2d:4d stuff.

The geography of selfishness: Regional interest in Black Friday – from agnostic.

The Autism Advantage

Body language, not facial expressions, broadcasts what’s happening to us – “‘[W]hen emotions become extremely intense, the difference between positive and negative facial expression blurs.’”

Why do humans have so little body hair? – from the straight dope.

bonus: Quiz: Can you pick out the “white Hispanic” amidst all the Hispanic Hispanics? – from steve sailer. heh.

bonus bonus: Can a Jellyfish Unlock the Secret of Immortality?

bonus bonus bonus: Grand Canyon ’64 million years older than previously thought’

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familism and facebook

vasilis asked a good set of questions the other day:

“I wonder, doesn’t immigration break apart the extended family into nuclear family fragments? Does anyone actually bring along all 52 first cousins with them, along with spouses, children, parents etc? Of course ‘familismo’ values will be carried over the border, but to what degree can they be instilled in the next generation in the absence of all these people in their daily lives?”

now that i’ve thought about it a bit, though, i wonder if the picture he paints isn’t one that was more true of 20+ years ago than it is today in our über-connected world. i mean, i can follow in real time how my 12 year-old first cousin-once-removed’s gymnastics competition is going — or commiserate with her on how horrible her school lunch was today — and she lives in a different country! i can keep in touch with her and her brother and all my other cousins’ kids in a way i couldn’t do with their parents. back in the day, it was the odd phone call and even (omg) letters. now it’s email, facebook and txt messaging. instant gratification for the familist! (~_^)

and anyway, we’ve seen that both italian-americans and r.c. irish-americans are more familistic than anglo-americans, and … how long have they been in the country now? how long does this assimilation business take anyway?

assmiliation? pshaw. here from “Who is to blame for fractured Britain?” published last year in the telegraph:

“What ruined our community and the personality of our neighbourhood were the young Eastern Europeans who poured in from 2004 onwards. I am not criticising the character of these young migrants. They were generally hardworking, eager and ambitious. But they arrived all at once in large numbers and, most significantly, had zero interest in integrating. They lived and socialised exclusively together, watched Polish television channels via their satellite dishes, chatted to family back home for free on Skype, set up Polish shops to sell Polish food, newspapers and books, and they learnt only as much English as they had to. Seeing shop after little shop put up the words Polski sklep marked the end of the village I knew.”

mexicans in the u.s. don’t even need satellite television. they’ve got univision which is available on cable. any idiota can hook it up. i don’t know how much mexicans/hispanics in the u.s. use facebook, or if they’re all still on myspace, but they’ve (nearly) all got cellphones afaict and, i’m sure, can txt pretty easily to family members back home in mexico/wherever.

nope. i have a bad feeling that modern communications — not to mention the ease of travel nowadays — prolly lends itself to greater opportunities for immigrants to practice familism if they want than ever before. i know i can.

previously: hispanic family values and anglo-american vs. mexican family values and familism in the u.s. of a.

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linkfest – 10/29/12

a day late. sorry! sometimes sh*t just happens. (~_^)

Ethnic disparities in breast cancer survival remain despite socioeconomic similarities – “All-cause survival was worse for African-Americans and better for Latinas and Asian-Americans compared with non-Latina whites after adjusting for age, study and tumor characteristics. When the researchers additionally adjusted for treatment and reproductive and lifestyle factors, they found that African-Americans had similar survival rates to non-Latina whites, but the survival rates of Latinas and Asian-Americans remained better.”

Diversity may be fatal, says new government health study – “[P]eople suffer less cancer and heart disease when they live among their racial or ethnic peers.” – via mangan’s.

If Smart Is the Norm, Stupidity Gets More Interesting – “Human intelligence varies.” – you don’t say?! (it’s in the nyt, believe it or not!)

Do Intelligent People Drink More Alcohol? – yes. yes, we do. (*hic*)

A detour through Europe? – “The lithic technology of southwestern France (c. 22,000-17,000 BP) strangely resembles that of the first paleo-Amerindians (c. 12,000). Some people speculate that early Europeans reached North America by crossing the Atlantic. The truth is even more incredible. Early Europeans spread eastward and became the ancestors not only of the Amerindians but also of East Asians.” – from peter frost.

Secular change in the B/W IQ gap (in the US) – from chuck. see also steve sailer.

Penis size and infant mortality – from the autistic nerdling epigone.

Placebo effect may be ‘down to genes’ – “Those with a particular version of the COMT gene saw an improvement in their health after placebo acupuncture.”

The Evolution of Female Bisexuality – from jayman.

Pitch Perfect: It’s All In The Genes” – maybe/prolly. see also you, too, can have perfect pitch!

Hispanic Bio-Diversity: A Primer – from nelson.

Smoking causes asthma in second generation offspring – epigenetic effects in rats.

Epigenetic inheritance is a wild goose chase – “Epigenetics matters, but not between generations.”

Appearance-based politics: Sex-typed facial cues communicate political party affiliation – republican women more feminine looking than democrat women.

Men better multi-taskers than women: study

Who Would Win in a Fight: a Modern Human or a Neanderthal? – “We beat them at evolution. But what about fisticuffs?”

The Island Where People Forget to Die – “[P]eople on Ikaria were, in fact, reaching the age of 90 at two and a half times the rate Americans do. (Ikarian men in particular are nearly four times as likely as their American counterparts to reach 90, often in better health.) But more than that, they were also living about 8 to 10 years longer before succumbing to cancers and cardiovascular disease, and they suffered less depression and about a quarter the rate of dementia.”

bonus: More Intelligent Birds (Like More Intelligent Humans) Have Evolutionarily Novel Preferences

bonus bonus: Electric Bugs: New Microbe Forms Living, Deep-Sea Power Cables

bonus bonus bonus: New study sheds light on how and when vision evolved – “Opsins, the light-sensitive proteins key to vision, may have evolved earlier and undergone fewer genetic changes than previously believed….”

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hispanic family values

lots of conservatives (rinos in particular maybe) like to talk about how great hispanic/mexican family values are, and what a wonderful addition these will be to american society (never mind the sky-high illegitimacy rates in the hispanic community) — but what these so-called conservatives don’t understand is that hispanic/mexican family values are different from our (well, your, if you’re a wasp that is) family values.

it’s called familism (familismo — no kidding!) — and hispanics/mexicans got it in spades [pg. 314 - pdf]:

“Familism can be defined as a social pattern whereby individual interests, decisions, and actions are conditioned by a network of relatives thought in many ways to take priority over the individual. This social pattern manifests itself through three dimensions: (1) the attitudinal, expressed in dispositions, values, and beliefs that prioritize the welfare of the family; (2) the behavioral, expressed in everyday actions, or major decisions, informed by one’s attachment to family ties; and (3) the structural, expressed in the spatial architecture of family networks (Steidel and Contreras 2003; Valenzuela and Dornbusch 1994). Researchers from several disciplines have observed that familism is an important component of Hispanic culture (Okagaki and Frensch 1998; Oyserman, Coon, and Kemmelmeier 2002). At the attitudinal level, Hispanic adults and adolescents value interdependence, as well as family support and obligations, more so than whites (Fuligni, Tseng, and Lam 1999; Harrison et al. 1990; Sabogal et al. 1987). At the behavioral level, Hispanics report higher degrees of familial cohesion and intimacy than whites (Niemann, Romero, and Arbona 2000; Sabogal et al. 1987) and assist family members in instrumental ways more so than whites (Sarkisian, Gerena, and Gerstel 2006). And at the structural level, Hispanics, and Mexican Americans in particular, live in larger and denser kinship networks than whites (Sarkisian et al. 2006; Valenzuela and Dornbusch 1994).”

well, that all sounds great — and it is, in its own way — but what it isn’t is anything like the anglo/anglo-american family tradition which is based upon the nuclear family and the individualism of its members, a societal structure that appears to go right back to the thirteenth century (see also here and here). if someone says to you “hispanic family values,” you should absolutely not picture in your mind june and ward cleaver along with wally and the beav — and, maybe, uncle billy coming over for thanksgiving dinner every other year.

no. hispanic/mexican familism (and, of course, there is a lot of variety here — latin america is a big place) means a lot of extended family — and, for whatever reasons, a lot of extended family obligations. which is also fine — but there are only twenty-four hours in a day, and if you’ve got obligations to your immediate family AND your tío jorge and all his kids, and your tía rosa and all her kids, etc., etc., there’s simply going to be less time in your day to devote to other things like the broader community. as someone who comes from a large clan (52 first cousins!), i know this to be true — there’s just not a whole lot of spare time for anything other than family (except you guys, of course! (~_^) ).

“but won’t hispanics quit being so extended-family oriented once they assimilate to american culture, hbd chick?”

i dunno. and neither does anyone else.

there are some indications that the amount of some aspects of familism is lower among hispanics/mexicans raised in the u.s. than their immigrant parents, but not all aspects — and all of these familism metrics remain higher in hispanic groups than for white americans. (what would be interesting to know is how much familism there is in the new mexican hispanic population. i couldn’t find anything on that anywhere — might try to dig some data up from the gss myself….)

i’m of the opinion that the development of strong feelings towards one’s extended family (or not) is a question of evolution, so changing those feelings, afaics, ought to take some time. the english (see links above or the “mating patterns in europe series” below ↓ in left-hand column) have had a loooong history of individualism and nuclear families, a process which started, i think, in the early medieval period with the bans on cousin marriage by the roman catholic church. mexicans, and other hispanics, have had a very different evolutionary history when it comes to family feelings and cohesiveness.

the colonial mayans, for instance, had close, endogamous mating patterns — and they lived in extended-family settlements, just as their pre-columbian ancestors had done, indicating that extended-family-ness in mayan society goes way back [pgs. 368-369]:

“[T]he Mayas divided up house-plots or treated contiguous plots as one so that what might have officially been nuclear families living on separate house-plots were really multiple-residence extended-family household complexes. Not only have such patterns of residential clustering survived to the present in much of Mexico, but they have been observed by archaeologists for a number of pre-Columbian Maya sites — most notably Coba, Dzibilchaltun, K’axob, Mayapan, and Tikal….

“[A] typical grandfamily household might occupy adjacent house-plots and its member frequent the neighboring plots of related households of the same patronym-group or alliance of patronym-groups.

“The free movement of family members and animals between plots symbolized the blurred lines between separate and joint…. To avoid cutting up parcels of land … Mayas made use of the parallel principle of multial, ‘joint ownership.’ Typically then, a plot of land was placed in the hands of a representative of the household or, in the cases of large cultivated plots, the patronym-group….

“Because those household members who lived on or from a plot of land were in some sense considered its joint owners, family members effectively held shares in such property, which they then left to successive generations.”

the spanish tried to break down these extended family units by forcing the natives to register their houses/lands according to nuclear family units (eg. one house with a certain amount of acreage connected to it), but as restall describes above, the maya simply worked around these bureaucratic nuisances. what needed to be done, of course, was to ban close marriages in the new world — but that was too much of an imposition on all those potential new world recruits that the church so desperately wanted to harvest, so they gave much of latin america a (beyond first cousin) cousin marriage dispensation in 1537 (including mexico, i think, but i do need to double-check that).

aztec society was structured quite differently from that of the maya, but from what i understand (so far) about the aztecs, extended families and “clans” (calpulli) were also very important there. (i’ll get back to you on aztec society when i get through reading more about them!)

in any case, hispanics/mexicans are still devoted to their extended families. not that there’s anything wrong with that! except that familism does tend to go along with some other, undesirable societal features like corruption (see lipset and lenz) — fyi, mexico ranked #100 in transparency international’s 2011 survey.

true conservatives would hold off on inviting tens of millions of people from a very differently behaving population into this country — at least until we understood something of why the behaviors differed.

previously: mating patterns in colonial mexico: the mayans

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hispanics don’t think of themselves as hispanic

from pew’s When Labels Don’t Fit: Hispanics and Their Views of Identity, 51% of hispanics in the u.s. prefer to refer to themselves by their specific ethnic group (i.e. family’s country of origin):

they also don’t trust other people very much. whereas 35% of americans feel that most people can be trusted, only 12% of hispanics think so. and that includes just 13% of hispanics who were born and raised here but have immigrant parents (pew’s “second generation” hispanics):

and hispanics luuuuuv big government. even 3rd+ generation hispanics prefer big government much more than your average american (58% vs. 41%). no wonder big government loves them:

previously: trust me on this and mexicans think mexicans should be mexican and a sense of entitlement ii

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linkfest – 07/29/12

Inbreeding’s Downside Is Not All in the Genes – epigenetics and inbreeding. ruh roh. – “[T]he abnormal methylation might result from some of the rare genes exposed by inbreeding, especially if these genes help regulate the attachment and removal of methyl groups.”

Social Deprivation Has a Measurable Effect On Brain Growth

Hunter-Gatherer Energetics and Human Obesity. see also: Hunter gatherer clue to obesity – “A study of the Hadza tribe, who still exist as hunter gatherers, suggests the amount of calories we need is a fixed human characteristic.”

Did Modern Humans — Not Environmental Catastrophe — Extinguish the Neandertals?

IQ estimates from wordsum scores by ancestry – from the awesome epigone.

Hispanic performance by generation and Hispanics, the NLSY 97 – from chuck (the occidentalist).

Did Ron Unz Score An Own Goal, Too? – from anatoly.

bonus: The spectre of plagiarism haunting Europe – “Last month it was revealed that more than a third of a new book for law students on how to write papers properly was plagiarised, including liberal smatterings from Wikipedia. Fittingly, even the chapter on plagiarism was plagiarised.”

bonus bonus: The Redder the Better: Wing Color Predicts Flight Performance in Monarch Butterflies

bonus bonus bonus: Estimate: A new Amish community is founded every 3 and a half weeks in US

bonus bonus bonus bonus: The skin’s secret surveillance system – “Microorganisms that reside on the skin found to influence host immunity.”

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civicness in the u.s. by race

following up on civicness in the u.s. by region, here is civicness in the u.s. by race.

the data are taken from the world values survey, 2005-2008 wave (2006 for the u.s.). note that these are people who claim that they are active members of voluntary organizations. here’s what i found (click on chart for LARGER view):

so totally, whites are a bit above average while blacks are a bit below average. hispanics, otoh, are quite a bit below average. the “others” (asians?) are in the lead, but note that the sample size for that group is rather small (n=62). (note that i also left out the “mixed race” category ’cause the sample size was way too small [n=14]. i also skipped the “other organization” category, again because the sample sizes were too small.)

african americans, then, are like their distant cousins back in africa — very civic-minded, civic here meaning inclined to join together in voluntary associations.

white americans score above average in joining: political parties, sports/recreation organizations, charities/humanitarian organizations, art/music/educational organizations, professional organizations and environmental organizations.

black americans score above average in joining: church/religious organizations (average), art/music/educational organizations and labor unions. the church/religious organization really seems to have pulled their total average up.

hispanic americans score above average in joining: church/religious organizations and labor unions, pretty much like they do back home.

previously: civic societies and civic societies ii and civicness in the u.s. (by region)

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