twitter dodgeball

because we’ve all got to choose sides, apparently. (what’s being discussed in this tweet session.)

previously: “to disbelieve in witchcraft is the greatest of heresies”

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andrew sullivan talks sense on iq

re. the richwine affair:

“Race And IQ. Again.”

“We [humans] remain the same species, just as a poodle and a beagle are of the same species. But poodles, in general, are smarter than beagles, and beagles have a much better sense of smell. We bred those traits into them, of course, fast-forwarding evolution. But the idea that natural selection and environmental adaptation stopped among human beings the minute we emerged in the planet 200,000 years ago – and that there are no genetic markers for geographical origin or destination – is bizarre. It would be deeply strange if Homo sapiens were the only species on earth that did not adapt to different climates, diseases, landscapes, and experiences over hundreds of millennia. We see such adaptation happening very quickly in the animal kingdom. Our skin color alone – clearly a genetic adaptation to climate – is, well, right in front of one’s nose.”

gee. i wish i’d thought of saying something like that (in the context of the richwine affair)!

oh, wait. (~_^)

previously: why human biodiversity is true…and why jason richwine is right and “to disbelieve in witchcraft is the greatest of heresies”

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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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“brainwash – race”

episode six of “hjernevask” (“brainwash”) entitled “race.” feat. greg cochran, charles murray, and richard lynn.

_____

previously: brainwash and brainwash e01: the gender equality paradox

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 – 01/27/13

A Fat Problem With Heart Health Wisdom – awesome post from jayman. look at the chart. just look at it!

Stress’s impact can affect future generations’ genes – “For the first time, genes chemically silenced by stress during life have been shown to remain silenced in eggs and sperm, allowing the effect to be passed down to the next generation…. They found that a tiny number of methylated gene regions survived unerased: an average of just 233 out of approximately 25,000 in the germ cells examined…. Do the markings survive simply because the erasure process may not always work properly, or are they deliberately spared so that the information they carry is passed to the next generation? The finding ‘doesn’t solve this question’, says Hackett. ‘But it’s a proof of principle for one possible mechanism by which traits might be inherited epigenetically.’”

four part series from frank salter — deals mainly with australia, but still an important read for everyone: The War Against Human Nature in the Social Sciences and The War against Human Nature II: Gender Studies (Part 1) and The War against Human Nature II: Gender Studies (Part 2) and The War Against Human Nature III: Race and the Nation in the Media

HVGIQ: Haiti – “A weighted average of the Cotten study and the de Ronceray study gives us an IQ of 68 for Haiti. More or less identical to the estimate currently used by Lynn.” – from jason malloy @human varieties. see also A Note on the Hypothesized Haitian Average IQ from nelson.

Sex differences on g and non-g intellectual performance reveal potential sources of STEM discrepancies – “Sex differences in cognition are masked by the general factor of intelligence (g). The difference in favoring boys increases across adolescence up to 4 IQ points. Boys show an advantage in mechanical reasoning irrespective of latent g. This advantage might help to understand sex discrepancies in STEM disciplines.” – via mangan.

News in Brief: Ancient human DNA suggests minimal interbreeding – “Genetic analysis indicates Stone Age people mated infrequently with Neandertals and other close relatives” – see also dienekes. also peter frost: When was the split?

Messing with the privates – “[W]omen in the generality are physically different from men.” – thank you for noticing, john! (~_^) – the derb on, amongst other things, the physical differences between men & women and what that means wrt women in the military and on the front lines (bad idea!). eg.: “‘Using the standard Army Physical Fitness Test … the upper quintile of women at West Point achieved scores on the test equivalent to the bottom quintile of men.’”

The case for earlier Out-of-Africa – @dienekes’.

The Liberals’ War on Science – “41 percent of Democrats are young Earth creationists….”

Emotional Smarts Tied to General IQ – “The same brain regions that perform cognitive tasks may also provide social intelligence, according to a new study.”

Social evolution: The ritual animal – “A major aim of the investigation is to test Whitehouse’s theory that rituals come in two broad types, which have different effects on group bonding. Routine actions such as prayers at church, mosque or synagogue, or the daily pledge of allegiance recited in many US elementary schools, are rituals operating in what Whitehouse calls the ‘doctrinal mode’…. Rare, traumatic activities such as beating, scarring or self-mutilation, by contrast, are rituals operating in what Whitehouse calls the ‘imagistic mode’. ‘Traumatic rituals create strong bonds among those who experience them together,’ he says, which makes them especially suited to creating small, intensely committed groups such as cults, military platoons or terrorist cells…. [L]ow-frequency but high-arousal imagistic varieties that were more common in societies with a smaller average community size, and high-frequency, low-arousal doctrinal rituals that were more established in societies in which communities are larger.”

‘Man Flu’ might not be a myth after all – “‘Man Flu’ might not be a myth after all as they have different brains, a female academic has claimed. Dr Amanda Ellison claims that men really do suffer more with coughs and colds as they have more temperature receptors in the brain which causes them to experience the symptoms more acutely than the fairer sex.”

Polynesians reached South America, picked up sweet potatoes, went home – “Tubers were spread from New Zealand to Hawaii before European contact.”

Diet, Parental Behavior, and Preschool Can Boost Children’s IQ – wonder if the effects are permanent? the diet one (3.5 points w/omega-3) certainly might be.

bonus: echidna penises have four heads – what more is there to say?

bonus bonus: Ethnic origins of US attendees of 2013 World Economic Forum in Davos – @race/history/evolution.

bonus bonus bonus: Chinese man kept alive by self-built dialysis machine – extra iq points can come in d*mn handy!

bonus bonus bonus bonus: HIV-like viruses in non-human primates have existed much longer than previously thought – “Viruses similar to those that cause AIDS in humans were present in non-human primates in Africa at least 5 million years ago and perhaps up to 12 million years ago….”

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linkfest – 10/14/12

today, some classics (and soon-to-be classics?):

Latitude, elevation and the tempo of molecular evolution in mammals – “[B]ecause climatic variables change with latitude and elevation in a similar manner, our results suggest that climate has influenced the tempo of genetic change in mammals…. These findings provide new insights into microevolution that are likely to have important implications for understanding global patterns of biodiversity and diversification.”

An Asian perspective on early human dispersal from Africa – “Asia might not have been the passive recipient of whatever migrated out of Africa but might have been a major donor to speciation events, as well as dispersals back into Africa. Such two-way traffic is well documented for other mammals in the Pliocene and Early Pleistocene, such as Equus and bovids, with more taxa migrating into than out of Africa. There is no reason why hominin migrations were always from Africa into Asia, and movements in the opposite direction might also have occurred, as has been suggested for the Olduvai OH9 (refs 13, 58) and Daka specimens. We should even allow for the possibility that H. ergaster originated in Asia and perhaps explain its lack of an obvious east African ancestry as the result of immigration rather than a short (and undocumented) process of anagenetic (in situ) evolution (Dennell and Roebroeks 2005:1100-1101).” – see also: Did Early Humans First Arise in Asia, Not Africa?

Recent acceleration of human adaptive evolution – “It is sometimes claimed that the pace of human evolution should have slowed as cultural adaptation supplanted genetic adaptation…. Cultural changes have reduced mortality rates, but variance in reproduction has continued to fuel genetic change. In our view, the rapid cultural evolution during the Late Pleistocene created vastly more opportunities for further genetic change, not fewer, as new avenues emerged for communication, social interactions, and creativity.” – hawks, wang, cochran, harpending & moyzis.

Innate Social Aptitudes of Man: An Approach from Evolutionary Genetics [opens pdf] – w.d. hamilton.

How obedience of marriage rules may counteract genetic drift – “Continuous unilateral or bilateral cross-cousin mating, reflecting the most common form of prescribed marriage, increases homozygosity but at the same time slows down considerably the loss of gene diversity due to genetic drift.”

It’s All Relative: Race as partly inbred extended family – from steve sailer.

Human genetic diversity: Lewontin’s fallacy [opens pdf] – “In popular articles that play down the genetical differences among human populations, it is often stated that about 85% of the total genetical variation is due to individual differences within populations and only 15% to differences between populations or ethnic groups. … This conclusion, due to R.C. Lewontin in 1972, is unwarranted because the argument ignores the fact that most of the information that distinguishes populations is hidden in the correlation structure of the data and not simply in the variation of the individual factors.”

Discerning the Ancestry of European Americans in Genetic Association Studies – “Here we mine much larger datasets (more markers and more samples) to identify a panel of 300 highly ancestry-informative markers which accurately distinguish not just northwest and southeast European, but also Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry.”

Genes predict village of origin in rural Europe – “After excluding close kin and inbreeding, village of origin could still be predicted correctly on the basis of genetic data for 89–100% of individuals.”

E Pluribus Unum: Diversity and Community in the Twenty-first Century [opens pdf] – “New evidence from the US suggests that in ethnically diverse neighbourhoods residents of all races tend to ‘hunker down’. Trust (even of one’s own race) is lower, altruism and community cooperation rarer, friends fewer.” – robert putnam.

The Misguided Advocates of Open Borders – “Rising diversity within human societies tends to drive people apart, causing them to take sanctuary in individual pursuits and ethnic communities. The practical consequences are reduced public altruism or social capital, evident in falling volunteerism, government welfare for the aged and sick, public health care and a general loss of trust. Ethnic diversity is second only to lack of democracy in predicting civil war. Globally it correlates negatively with governmental efficiency and prosperity.” – frank salter.

Why g Matters: The Complexity of Everyday Life [opens pdf] – linda gottfredson.

State IQ estimates (2009) – from the awesome epigone.

Inbreeding depression and IQ in a study of 72 countries [opens pdf]. see also Consanguinity and national IQ scores.

American Murder Mystery – “Why is crime rising in so many American cities? The answer implicates one of the most celebrated antipoverty programs of recent decades.” – h/t anonymous.

bonus: Ethnic differences: Variation in human testis Size – jared diamond.

bonus bonus: Late Middle Eocene primate from Myanmar and the initial anthropoid colonization of Africa

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linkfest – 05/06/12

One gene helped human brains become complex – “A single ancestral human gene that made two copies of itself may have helped the evolution of our large brains 2.5 million years ago, as our ancestors were diverging from australopithecines.”

Blonde hair evolved independently in Pacific islands

Humans Really Are Still Evolving, Study Finds – “Natural forces of evolution still continue to shape humanity despite the power we have to profoundly alter the world around us, researchers say.” – duh. original research article: Natural and sexual selection in a monogamous historical human population

The Great White Horse – “A racial group is a partly inbred extended family. The inbreeding gives races more coherence and persistence than typical extended families.” – from steve sailer.

Blacks more likely to commit hate crimes than white – from the audacious epigone.

Rushton on the skin color/behavior correlation – “[T]he theory that genes explain the worldwide correlation between skin tone and important behaviors” – from the inductivist.

HBD and Atheism – from jayman.

HBD and policy: Which questions to ask? – from m.g. @the hbdday blog!

World’s Oldest Blood Found in Famed “Iceman” Mummy

Amish farm kids remarkably immune to allergies: study

9-Month-Olds Show Racial Bias When Looking at Faces – “‘These results suggest that biases in face recognition and perception begin in preverbal infants, well before concepts about race are formed.’”

Study: Aversion to the smell of meat may be genetic – “[P]eople who have two copies of a particular odour receptor gene variant [OR7D4 RT] are more likely to find the smell of a hormone that occurs in pork unpleasant.”

Did Ancient Germans Steal the Pharaoh’s Chair Design? – “Roughly 3,500 years ago, folding chairs remarkably similar to ones found in Egypt suddenly became must-have items in parts of northern Europe.”

‘Inhabitants of Madrid’ ate elephants’ meat and bone marrow 80,000 years ago

bonus: Dark Matter May Collide With Atoms Inside You More Often Than Thought – ouch!

bonus bonus: Scientific Evidence Proves why Healers See the “Aura” of People – synesthesia.

bonus bonus bonus: Are Educators Showing A “Positive Bias” To Minority Students – and Keeping Them From Doing Their Best?

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