* Maybe it’s just about the right time to ask the signatories of the letter to the NY Times denouncing Nicholas Wade whether they’d like a Mulligan.
Hysterical obfuscation and conspicuous moral posturing isn’t really a good look for a scientist. They might try to save themselves a little dignity while it’s still possible.
* Problem is, there’s been lots of immigration into England in the last 100 generations. I’m not talking about the recent overflow of Pakistani Muslims, etc, who have come in during recent generations, though they probably are having an effect. They’re just not analyzed here since they focused on people with deep roots in England. I’m thinking alot of this is due to immigration and domination by Germanic peoples over the last millenia or so. Vikings, Danes, the Normans, hell, even the Windsors- They of course would directly bring in many of these phenotypes- blonde hair, blue eyes, lactase, etc- but also if they conquered, set themselves up as kings and leaders, then there would be selection for their traits. They would secure the best resources for themselves, they would probably take many native women for their wives, and likely as they came to be accepted as the local authority many native women would prefer them as they tend to chase after wealth and power. So question is, how much was directly imported in, and how much is selection from within the earlier population? If someone said Americans have evolved over the past few generations to be more brown, is that what actually happened?
* Were you, Steve, the one asking what a preprint is?
A preprint is an article prepared for publication. It is designed to get results out into the conversation, stake ground on certain research, and informally spread ideas. Preprints exist and are in the form of an article that would be submitted to a journal or conference, but often in longer format.
Perhaps no journal will publish it. Perhaps publication takes four years. In certain branches of physics research, like string theory and quantum computing, there were only 2 possible journals to publish in. Waiting for publication was useless for interesting results. More, so few “peers” exist, and all of them want to know what you’re doing anyway, that why bother with the fiction that journaled “peer review” is anonymous or somehow more noble than just letting people read and critique your work.
So preprint archives were invented.in part, to kill off the monopoly of publication, or to get out ideas otherwise unpublishable.
* Rosie, what first attracted you to multi-millionaire Jason Statham?
* When I grew up in the East, Persians had a specific look olive skinned (sabz) with dark hair and dark eyes (prominent nose) with a minority on the lighter side.
Then around early-mid naughties there came a huge wave of well-to-do Persians studying in London from directly from Iran. I was shocked to see that a vast proportion (plurality) had a new “Northern” (Caspian-Azeri) look of much lighter colours.
I thought nothjng of yet but then a friend from Kerman (sort of central-south Iran, the heartland of the Persian people) once randomly exclaimed to me “is it just me or are the new generation of Iranians much whiter?”
Post-revolution the country became much more integrated and the different regions started mixing; the old olive skinned Persian look (which even the Zoroastrians of Yazd sported) became increasingly diluted with mixture of the north (and the Azeri/Caspians of North Iran are particularly fair though ironically the Azeris of Azerbaijan are said to have a more Olive look).
This could be sexual selection on a mass scale in a generation or so. This of course happens in Latin American and especially Pakistan (as you scale up you marry light) but also in Iran the same general principles are operating (rich southerners marrying pale northerners in Tehran).
* Btw, whatever happened to Nicholas Wade and Troublesome Inheritance.
Maybe lack of overly hostile reaction buried it.
Despite the controversy, Bell Curve has entered the contemporary pantheon on discussion of sociology/biology cuz it stirred up so much discussion.
In contrast, Troublesome Inheritance was buried by polite disagreement by MSM.
Say BELL CURVE, and people know the book even if they disagree with it.
Mention Troublesome Inheritance, and it’s like… huh?
* In the fullness of time, truth will out, even very embarrassing truth.
One thing that this result is making obvious is that the truth of ongoing, and significant, selection in human groups is going to be verified from many angles, not just one. The most direct approach of course is to find the set of alleles that lie behind, say, IQ, and show that they are differentially distributed across human groups. Another way is now to show that in certain groups certain areas of the genome connected with IQ show signs of recent selection. I have little doubt that there will other methods to come to the same sort of conclusions.
There will come a time, likely within 5 years from what I’ve been hearing, in which it will be as discreditable for a geneticist or evolutionary biologist to dispute these conclusions as it became for physicists early in the 20th century to dispute the theory of relativity.
Which brings to mind the disgraceful letter sent to the NY Times by a number of geneticists and evolutionary biologists denouncing Nicholas Wade.
How will the signatories of this letter look come this new paradigm? Very much like those dogmatic physicists who rejected relativity. It may be that the single thing they are best remembered for is this disgraceful act of ignorance and suppression: they will be laughingstocks for the ages, a lesson taught to children to warn them of the dangers of ideology and dogmatism.
It really is time for them to get on the other side of this before their reputation and legacies are beyond repair.
* A quadruple bypass IS the surgery, not something you get after surgery. This in itself is quite hard on the body but he apparently had complications after the surgery – he didn’t really fully recover from it. Some people do OK after the surgery and are able to more or less resume their former lives and some people are never quite the same again. Clinton is in the latter category. The way the heart surgeons keep score, if you survive the surgery, it is a “success” for them. They don’t make any promises as to what kind of shape you will be in afterward.
Being a vegan isn’t that great for your appearance either. It’s hard to get enough iron in your diet without red meat and without it people tend to look pale and anemic. Also having a little fat on you makes you look better as an older man – the wrinkles show less.
Bill also has rosacea which creates that horrible looking redness around his eyes and nose.
We are used to seeing celebrity photos that are posed, with makeup and airbrushing and proper lighting, so a brutal flash photo like that is going to be shocking in comparison. In the old days kings used to get their portraits painted and the guy in the painting always looked a lot better and younger than actual man.
