US immigration reformers might take heart from the recent announcement of this policy proposal from Australia’s major centre left opposition[1]: Foreigners working in Australia would be issued with a photo identity card and, if found working without one, would be deported, the Opposition Leader, Mark Latham, said yesterday … All non-residents with the right to […]

OK, this piece on shotgun weddings in India is just too hilarious to go unnoticed. It is a big mistake to venture out at night if you are young, male and unmarried in the Indian state of Bihar. Subhash Kumar, a bank clerk in Patna, let his guard down and paid the price by being […]

The following finding cited in this article speaks for itself and suggests that the generalisation that ‘Jews vote left’ (expanded into something sinister by the likes of Kevin Macdonald) does not necessarily hold true in countries other than the US, even those with roughly the same cultural foundations, Evidence suggests that most Australian Jews follow […]

Right wing news polls a select group of bloggers on who they think are the worst figures in US history and they come up with this list: 17) Franklin Delano Roosevelt (6)17) John Walker (6)17) Lee Harvey Oswald (6)17) Robert Byrd (6)16) Aldrich Ames (7)14) Richard Nixon (8)14) Aaron Burr (8)12) Al Sharpton (9)12) Charles […]

So much for rehabilitation: TEACHING prisoners how to think and giving them social skills has failed to stop them returning to a life of crime, according to Home Office research. The Prison Service had invested £200 million in the courses which aim to cut reconviction rates. Prisoners who attended the courses were just as likely […]

I’m currently reading Hitler’s Jewish soldiers, an important and disturbing book I’ve blogged about before but hadn’t actually been able to get hold of until now (I bought a copy at Waterstone’s, an excellent book store chain here in London). This work fascinates me as much for its study of human psychology and as a […]

Some pretty hilarious stuff can be found on these websites which profile presidential candidates for the 2004 election. Take a look for instance at the site for Other Republican candidates: Rev. Jack Fellure previously registered with the FEC as a Presidential candidate in 1992, 1996 and 2000. Days after the 2000 election — but before […]

Richard Dawkins is trying to form some sort of movement to get atheists or non-theists called ‘brights’. His explanation: A triumph of consciousness-raising has been the homosexual hijacking of the word “gay”. I used to mourn the loss of gay in (what I still think of as) its true sense. But on the bright side […]

One of the weirdest stories I’ve ever read about – half black man becomes neo-Nazi activist. What a sick puppy: In October 2002, I drove to the Plymouth County Jail to see Leo Felton. It was a bright fall Saturday, and the drive was long, so it gave me a chance to ponder what I […]

A while ago, a commentator on one of my posts asked me to elaborate on my view on free will which I claimed was a useless concept. I suppose the next question would have been how my agnosticism about the existence of free will is reconcilable with classical liberalism. Well on this issue I get […]

Gene enhances prefrontal function at a price Studies of a gene that affects how efficiently the brain’s frontal lobes process information are revealing some untidy consequences of a tiny variation in its molecular structure and how it may increase susceptibility to schizophrenia. People with a common version of the gene associated with more efficient working […]

A recent study by the Department of Immigration in Australia confirms the Borjas effect and proposes a solution to it. Note also the reference to the US’s ability to absorb immigration which is relevant to the discussion I had with zizka in comments on a previous posting: Poorly educated city dwellers should be given a […]

This article documents the extent to which even some semi-respectable lefty intellectuals like Eric Alterman have descended into anti-neocon paranoia/hysteria. Let me say that I’m making this point as someone who has castigated what I regard as the utopianism of the neo-con foreign policy mavens on my own blog. I also have cited favourably Steve […]

A magistrate in Australia has been rebuked for trying to talk some sense into a defendant. Before passing sentence, Mr Frederick told the defendant: “You’re a druggie and you’ll die in the gutter . . . I don’t believe in that social worker crap . . . You can go to work. “Seven million of […]

Obviously we in Australia are doing something right despite our official Multiculturalism policy: Teenage children of migrants have better language skills than their classmates, while students who have spoken English for less than four years have higher literacy rates than Aboriginal students, according to statewide test results. The English Language and Literacy Assessment (ELLA) results […]

Economist Steven Levitt has won the prestigious John Bates Clark medal in economics. Levitt’s most famous co-written paper is The impact of legalised abortion on crime: We offer evidence that legalized abortion has contributed significantly to recent crime reductions. Crime began to fall roughly 18 years after abortion legalization. The 5 states that allowed abortion […]

Check out this very amusing taxonomy of personality types one encounters on the Net. Here are two types we’re all very familiar with: Ethnixis an extremely powerful Warrior who effectively exploits his minority status and the general nervousness about race to gain advantage in battle. Ethnix deftly wields his ethnicity and can instantly shift from […]

The Sydney Morning Herald today features an article byBill McKibben who celebrates and romanticises human imperfections and then uses his tastes to mount a *moral* argument against improvement through genetic engineering. Let me place a disclaimer here – I’m not trying to argue that genetic engineering should be compulsory, I’m not even trying to argue […]

This article from the UK Times summarising some recent research on handedness was published last year but I thought it might still be worth bringing to GeneExpressors’ attention so that it can be enriched with their unique insights. I’ve long been fascinated by left-handedness and its ‘feast or famine’ aspect which is quite similar in […]

Ultra high IQ societies like the Mega Society are an interesting development – they were formed by Mensa members who thought that Mensa was basically a f*** club for the high IQ and not sufficiently intellectual. Many prominent members of these societies are promoting the idea of Power tests, that is, IQ tests with no […]