linkfest – 05/05/13

Mental Health Diagnoses and Recidivism in Paroled Offenders – “Offenders with borderline personality disorder and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder were significantly more likely to recidivate or be suspended.”

Psychopathic Traits Seen in Children’s Brains – “Children with severe behavioral problems have a suppressed response to others’ pain, according to new brain-scan research.”

Cultural modernity and behavioral modernity – “Some societies have gone farther than others along the trajectory that leads to cultural modernity and, in time, behavioral modernity.” – another great post from peter frost! (he forgot to mention the likely effects of mating patterns on societies, but that’s ok. (~_^) )

The Split Personality of America – “The 20 states scoring highest on Neuroticism are all bordering to the [mississippi] river or east of it. Of the 20 states that score the lowest on this trait, 16 are in the western region – including all of the bottom 10.” – nice post from staffan!

Obesity and IQ and IQ and Death – from jayman.

Music and class – from the awesome epigone.

HVGIQ: Bermuda – from jason malloy @human varieties.

Disputed Results a Fresh Blow for Social Psychology – “Failure to replicate intelligence-priming effects ignites row in research community”

and speaking of frauds: Symmetry study deemed a fraud – “University finds evidence of fakery in Jamaican dance data.”

Modern European ADMIXTURE components = Neolithic ecological zones (+ post-Neolithic in-situ expansions) – The revenge of the hunter-gatherer genes! – @eurogenes, via charles.

Monkey math – “Zoo baboons shed light on the brain’s ability to understand numbers.”

Small-bodied humans from the Terminal Pleistocene in Tanzania – @dienekes.

“Selfish Spermatogonial Selection”: A Novel Mechanism for the Association Between Advanced Paternal Age and Neurodevelopmental Disorders

Older U.S.-born Mexican-Americans have more physical limitations than Mexican American immigrants: Study

Study: How Yoga Alters Genes – not genes, but gene expression.

bonus: Suicide rate up sharply – “‘The suicide rate among middle-aged Americans climbed a startling 28 percent in a decade, a period that included the recession and the mortgage crisis, the government reported Thursday. The trend was most pronounced among white men and women in that age group.'” – from mr. mangan.

bonus bonus: Path From ‘Social Butterfly’ to Boston Suspect’s Widow – the elder tsarnaev’s wife was caught shoplifting once (before she ever met him). men always marry their mothers! (~_^)

bonus bonus bonus: If American Guns Wrecking Mexico Why Not Canada? – excellent question from parapundit.

bonus bonus bonus bonus: “Everything You Have Learned in School is Wrong” – nightmare immigration stories from norway @gates of vienna. don’t miss the follow-up.

bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus: Skeleton of teenage girl confirms cannibalism at Jamestown colony

bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus: A 17th-Century Russian Community Living in 21st-Century Alaska – “This clan has traveled from Russia through China, Brazil, and Oregon to make a home in the remote north, struggling to avoid modernization.”

bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus: Vatican uncovers ‘first Western painting of Native Americans’ – “They have remained hidden for more than five centuries, but tiny figures of naked men wearing feathered head-dresses could be the first Western depiction of Native Americans, the Vatican claims.”

bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus: Rolling fistfight erupts in Venezuelan parliament over disputed election – i love fights in parliaments. (~_^)

bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus: New Study Finds Nothing That Will Actually Convince You To Change Your Lifestyle So Just Forget It

_{(note: comments do not require an email. taiwan parliament fight.)}

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vancouver

when i was reading about canada last week, i was surprised to learn that 30% of vancouver’s population is chinese. i mean, i knew that there was a lot of chinese folks in canada/british columbia, but i didn’t realize it was quite that many. (i know — where the h*ll have i been? well, obviously not in vancouver!)

which made me wonder: how civic are the chinese-vancouverans? so i checked the world values survey (couldn’t find any data by ethnic groups on statistics canada) for canada (2006) by region and ethnic group for the standard “civicness” questions.

couldn’t look at vancouver directly — just british columbia — although i think it’s a pretty safe assumption that most of the chinese in british columbia are in vancouver or some other urban area. unfortunately, the number of east asians (chinese+japanese) surveyed in british columbia was on the small side for each of the questions – n=32 or 33. *sigh* well, here are the results anyway — the percentages of those whites (n=210) and east asians in british columbia responding that they are active members of various types of voluntary organizations (click on chart for LARGER view):

east asians in british columbia appear to be less civic than whites in the province. the two groups score pretty closely on some of the questions — sport/recreation and art/music/eduction, for instance — but are worlds apart on others — charitable/humanitarian organization, church/religious, labor union, political party (0% for east asians).

still worried about the small sample size, i thought i’d check another province where a greater number of east asians were sampled. i found the sample size in ontario for east asians was n=49 to n=51 (depending on the question). for whites it was n=660-661. here’s what i got:

in ontario, east asians score more like whites in “civicness,” even surpassing them a LOT in being church goers. still lower on professional organization, labor unions and political party (0% again), but scoring higher than whites on all the other questions.

not sure why the numbers are different for east asians in ontario vs. british columbia. maybe it’s the sample size. maybe it’s because only 5% of the population of ontario is chinese/japanese versus 10.9% for british columbia, so east asians are more integrated in ontario? in terms of raw numbers, there are more chinese in ontario than british columbia: 576,975 vs. 407,225 (in 2006).

maybe it’s something else altogether. where in china the different groups came from perhaps? dunno.

previously: civic societies – where you can see the civicness scores for china, btw.

_{(note: comments do not require an email. oh, yeah: death to america!)}

canadiens

i referenced an article last week which claimed that, out of all the provinces in canada, quebec has the most corruption. i wondered out loud what the story was with french canadians, but françois objected saying that the problem is not (only?) the french canadians in quebec, but rather multicultural montreal inflating the corruption numbers for quebec on the whole. he pointed out that montreal has its share of italian mafioso types, for instance. certainly, as we all know, italians are no strangers to corruption and nepotism, and so it might, indeed, be a problem for montreal — and quebec — that seven percent of montreal’s inhabitants have an italian background. not to mention, like i already said, the general multicultiness of montreal. that doesn’t ever seem to lead to less corruption (unless you have an unbelievably wise leader).

still, i wondered if françois was right and that, if you took montreal out of the mix, that quebec wouldn’t look any more corrupt than, say, saskatchewan. so i looked around for corruption data for canada broken down by province and came up with…

…nada. (mind you, i didn’t really look all that hard, so it might be out there somewhere on the innerwebs.)

what i did find, however, are some neat data on the civic behaviors of canadians by province: things like amount of time spent volunteering, donations, and trust in others, etc.

before i present some of that data, i want to make it clear that complaining that canadians aren’t civic enough would be like complaining that germans don’t like beer enough — totally nonsensical! by any sort of metric that you look at — transparency international’s corruption perceptions index (canada was number 10 in 2011) or the world values survey civicness numbers — canadians are a very civic bunch. living anywhere in canada — quebec included — would obviously NOT feel like living anywhere in eastern europe or the arab world.

having said that:

so the québécois trust others quite a lot less than other canadians do. a lot less. now, maybe that’s all down to the presence of montreal in quebec, but then why are the people in ontario so gosh-durned trusting? i mean, ontario’s got toronto and last time i checked that is very multiculti city. (the greater toronto metropolitan region, btw, comprises nearly half of ontario’s population — 5.5M out of 12.8M — and the montreal metro area is about the same for quebec — 3.8M out of 7.9M.)

couldn’t find this trust data broken down intra-regionally.

but here are some data for donations that i did find broken down by cities within regions — this chart is sorted by “mean charitable donation” (note that the figures for percent english or french for each city come from either wikipedia or here which is where most of the wikipedia figures seem to have come from) [click on chart for LARGER view]:

as you can see, the six quebec cities in the survey all rank right at the bottom of the list wrt how much money they donated in 2010. british columbians, otoh, are right up there at the top. i found a positive 0.57 correlation between the percentage of english-canadians living in a city and mean donation size, and conversely a negative 0.58 (-0.58) correlation between the percentage of french-canadians living in a city and mean donation size. in other words, if you want to benefit from large charitable donations in canada, make sure you live where there are lots of people of english ancestry — british columbia seems to be your best bet.

françois might make the montreal objection again, but what about places in quebec with high numbers of french-canadians but negligible numbers of other ethnic groups (like italians) — sherbrooke and saguenay, for instance — why are the people in those places so comparatively ungenerous?

the funniest contrast is between gatineau in quebec and ottawa in ontario which are right across the ontario river from each other. in 2001, 37.6% of the gatineau population responded that they had french ancestry, but only 6.4% said they had english ancestry. the next biggest group after french was the irish at 7.6%. italians were only 1.4% of the population. otoh, gatineau’s neighbor, ottawa, had 24.3% of english decent. and more italians than gatineau (4.9%). but ottawans were much more generous than people from gatineau in 2010.

here are the data sorted another way — by the percentages of taxfilers in each city who claimed deductions for their donations:

i found no correlation for either percent of english or french living in a city and the percentage of the population having given a donation (and claimed it on their taxes) in 2010. still, you can see on the chart that five of the six quebec cities are still in the lower half of the chart, four of them below the national average. but, most of the british columbian cities were also below the national average wrt the percentage of people in those cities actually giving donations. they may be big donors, but fewer of them actually donate than compared to people in, say, ontario.

so, the people in canadian cities with relatively high percentages of french-canadians give smaller charitable donations compared to the national average for canada, and they seem to give less frequently, too — although the connection between that latter behavior and french or english ethnicity doesn’t seem to be so strong. and the people in the province with the most french canadians — quebec — trust others much less than the rest of canadians. and, as seen in the previous post, quebec experiences the most corruption.

there’s something up with french canadians, i think. my guess is that, like other inbred populations, they’re more family-oriented than anglos. they might not be giving so generously to strangers because they’re busy giving generously to close and extended family members. i dunno. this is hardly the last word on the social/civic behaviors of french canadians. further research is required! (~_^)

previously: what’s up with french canadians?

_{(note: comments do not require an email. quarter of quebec’s maple syrup reserves stolen!)}

french canadians still evolving

(~_^)

i haven’t had a chance to read the research article yet, but here from nicholas wade in the nyt:

“Natural Selection Leaves Fresh Footprints on a Canadian Island”

“From parish records in a French-Canadian island, researchers have uncovered what may be the most recent known instance of human evolution in response to natural selection.

“The island, Île aux Coudres, lies in the St. Lawrence River 50 miles northeast of Quebec. Its church registries hold an unusually complete record of births, marriages and deaths. From this data, a team of researchers led by Emmanuel Milot and Denis Réale of the University of Quebec at Montreal have extracted the histories of women born on the island between 1799 and 1940.

“Over this 140-year period, the age at which a woman had her first child — a trait that is highly heritable — fell to 22 years, from 26. Because of this change, women on average had four more children during their reproductive lifetime, the researchers report.

“The finding ‘supports the idea that humans are still evolving,’ the researchers write in Monday’s issue of The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.”

cool!

but wait! there’s more:

“Dr. Milot said the genetic changes in his study showed up so clearly because other factors that might cloud them had been held to a minimum by the particular social conditions on Île aux Coudres. The island was granted by royal decree to the priests who managed the Quebec seminary and was settled by 30 families who arrived between 1720 and 1773. The families took up farming, then other professions, like fishing. Throughout the period, considerable equality was maintained, and the population lacked the gradations of wealth that can influence who has how many children.

“Also, because most people married locally, the island’s population became considerably inbred, despite a ban on marrying first or second cousins.

“These two factors, and the homogeneity of the population, left the field open for genetic effects to become prominent, Dr. Milot said.”

inbreeding?! wait, wait, wait. of course this somewhat isolated population could’ve evolved faster ’cause they were homogeneous so the “genetic effects” could more quickly “become prominent.” but couldn’t it be that they just had more babies ’cause they were inbreeding?! (or maybe the two are the same thing….)

i gotta go look at the research article.

(see, françois? a post about french canadians! at least one sub-group of you guys anyway. (^_^) )

see also: amish paradise from greg cochran.

_{(note: comments do not require an email. i <3 canada!)}