Foreign rule & cultural domination characterize the histories of Finland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. And yet all four nations have preserved an independent linguistic identity apart from their rulers and rivals. Finland’s literary tradition did not mature until the Kalevala was composed in the 19th century. After a long period of Polish high cultural domination […]

I’m sure you’ve all read this article about talller people making more $$$ (big surprise!), but check out this interesting commentary from Future Pundit. He switches back & forth between the height (important) and IQ (more important) variables and compares & contrasts.

This article about India’s economic progress is the most e-mailed over at The New York Times website right now. India has a mean IQ of about 80. It is, broadly speaking, a very under-developed nation. It will be interesting to see if the mean IQ increases in value as the educational qualifications begin to be […]

I knew Lisa Kudrow majored in biology at Vassar, but I didn’t know she wanted to do research in evolutionary psychology. Listen to a full interview with her, she’s intelligent & delightful.

Two articles that try to put Howard Dean in a socio-historical context: Is Howard Dean a modern Puritan? and Shock of the Old. It seems that to many New England is an exotic and peculiar place that needs illumination. Posted by razib at 03:00 PM

Derb over at NRO posits a thought experiment, an immigration reform candidate throws a monkey wrench into the 2004 election. Pat Buchanan ran in 2000 on a platform that was more generally nationalistic and socially conservative than pure immigration reform and won .42% of the votes. Most Americans are ambivalent about free trade (leaning to […]

The Los Angeles Times has an in depth report on the goings on in Bolivia. The basic events reflect what was depicted in Amy Chua’s World on Fire, a market disadvantaged majority (the indigeous Aymara of Bolivia) revolting against the push toward globalization spear-headed by the market dominant minority (whites). The article regales us with […]

Carl Zimmer blogs about FOXP2, the “language gene” that has been getting a lot of press in the past few years. The scientists found that a change to FOXP2 changes the way the brain handles language. Specifically, in people with mutant copies of the gene, a language processing area of the brain called Broca’s area […]

A leprechaun pointed me to this site that shows surname distributions in Ireland. Posted by razib at 02:09 AM

Future Pundit posts on the sex ratio imbalance in Taiwan (2 boys for 1 girl) and the possible sociobiological ramifications.

The title is somewhat deceptive as the original Federalist Party circa 1800 believed in a more centralized national government than their Democratic rivals. Nevertheless, this article in Slate makes explicit an open secret, that the parts of the country that vote for the ostensibly anti-federalist party today, the Democrats, subsidize the part of the country […]

Interesting article in The Economist on the self-perception of European nations in relation to their past history. Posted by razib at 09:27 PM

Well, if Jane Galt is putting up a picture, I guess I might be able to do so as well. Here’s a shot from the not-so-distant past, to preserve a degree of plausible deniability: Probably not what you expected, huh?

In an earlier post here I discussed the educational performance of ethnic minorities in Britain. This week the Guardian newspaper has a feature report here on education in Birmingham (England, not Alabama) which highlights the poor performance of African-Caribbean children. Despite the active efforts of the education authorities to assist ‘disadvantaged’ groups, ‘the attainment gap […]

The Next Joe Millionaire has a bunch of European women. The website is pretty sparse, but the clips I saw tonight for next Monday’s preview suggests that the new girls are HOT.

One survey in mid-2001 estimated that 2.5 million people had died since 1998 due to the conflict in The Democratic Republic of Congo. King Leopold’s policies resulted in 5-10 million deaths in 20 years. If the world community does something that sort of catastrophe can be averted….

Julian Sanchez of Reason makes the case that libertarians should not be reflexive Republicans. I should note that I went to a CATO event this spring where Fareed Zakaria gave a talk based on his book Future of Freedom. Most of the people there were obviously known Republicans (columnists like John Fund or Deroy Murdock) […]

Honor the Uprooted Germans? Poles Are Uneasy asserts the headline. As the article notes, over 10 million Germans were expelled from the nations of central Europe after World War II. Of course the Germans in places like Sudetenland were no patriots in the nations created from the break-up of Austria-Hungary. Then again, after the creation […]

PLOS article on skin color. Short, sweet and interdisciplinary.

Wired has a long profile of Linux dictator Linus Torvalds. Note the contrast with Richard Stallman as far as personability. Though Stallman is probably the more brilliant individual, it is Torvalds who is more prominent because of his people skills. The point is that Torvalds is smart, but he combines it with a personality that […]