I don't believe these self-reported Americans are "probably just Scotch-Irish" is a rock solid statement - on what do you base this claim?  
 
The map of self-reported Scotch-Irish looks very different to the map of self-reported "Americans".  
 
For example, there are a lot of Scotch-Irish in the North West, why don't they call themselves "American"? (I have an answer). Is their life-expectancy longer? (I have an answer for that, too). 
 
And your "American" region extends well into German American ancestry regions. Your analysis is flawed. 
 
Wealth is the most likely the main factor in life-expectancy being picked up in this data. Look how well this US income map matches the white life-expectancy graph - note the pockets of high wealth/life expectancy in the East.

If I may continue OT,  
RE: Eoin 
A dis-united Kingdom.Yorkshire have an independence movement, if not quite fully fledged yet. 
 
If you look at a population density map of the UK they're on the periphery of the heartland. It may not be coincidence that the BNP are strongest in the North West of England, although their headquarters are in the south.

Is there any free factor analysis software or website? 
 
dtreg.com - windows (15 day trial) 
plainstat.com - Mac (10.4 required. beta - free)  
 
I don't think I produced anything meaningful with my first attempt (density, GDP, Han, IQ, South, West) but IQ and Han were highly correlated and the West negatively correlated. But then we already know the Uighurs and Tibetans are the two groups most content with PRC rule.  
 
An intra-Han analysis including IQ data would also be interesting. But I think we need more accurate data first because it is all questionable until we know the characteristics of the groups sampled. (Liaoning province, 107.9, is only 84% Han. Also, there is the Hebei anomaly of reported 98 IQ. Hebei province also reportedly has a large concentration of Catholics).  
 
I also wonder what impact the Cultural Revolution had on the South. It killed anywhere from 3 million - 30 million Chinese - if it killed near the upper end, that's surely significant given a lot of the deaths were intellectual elite. Additionally there was forced relocation of elites to the countryside. Its greatest toll was in the South of China.

Result for hebei province is very much distorted because brain drain effect of Beijing in the middle of Hebei province. True Hebei should be some thing of average between reported data for hebei and Beijing. 
 
Commentator here purports to cite research that Hebei province (towns) has an average IQ of 98.  
 
Clearly the most interesting IQ fault lines are between East and West, Urban and Rural, Coast, and Interior, and Han and non-Han. The Southern IQ while high, may indeed be slightly lower than Northern IQ. Point against: the Hebei score is an anomaly, and if there is a brain drain effect around Beijing, what about one around Hong Kong in Guangdong, and the other rich southern cities. The Shanxi (interior north) might be nearer 105 than 113, which would be closer to (interior south) Sichuan and Hubei.  
 
(Here's a just for fun map of IQ, provinces and GDP, based on the IQ scores in the various links so far on this comment page. More data is needed on Chinese provinces.)

Or, you can google "zhejiang iq jiangsu" and look for the "asiafinest" discussion forum among the results. 
 
I cannot read the original article - is it a government report?  
 
I've copied out the data I can read below. Also added are two articles with IQ data for that province. 
 
South 
 
Cantonese IQ: 101.1 
Fujianese IQ: 103.76 
Zhejiang IQ: 115.05 
Wang Y, Tu X, Huang X. 
Children in the capital city of Zhejiang province: 112.4 +/- 13.73. 
South interior 
 
Sichuan IQ: 105 
Hubei IQ: 104.7 
 
North 
 
Jiangsu IQ: 109.6 
Shanxi IQ: 113 
S. X. Wang, et al. 
Children in rural villages in Shanyin county, Shanxi province: 105 ± 15  
Liaoning IQ: 107.9 
Jilin IQ: 107.1 
 
West 
 
Tibet IQ: 77. 
Xinjiang IQ: 93

Remember the European Union "project" is to create one Europe full of "Europeans". 
 
Yes, every year billions upon billions are wasted on the achievement of this imperialist goal. 
 
So what is the Chinese word for "Han Chinese?" Is it simply "Han"?

razib, thanks for the links. 
 
I agree the interior-coast dynamic is the more interesting mechanism for change in China. Clearly, "Tang nationalism" doesn't make sense as an idea because 1. the South is more diverse than the North and 2. despite the cultural and genetic differences both Han populations consider themselves Han, and more alike than their potential enemies (who, throughout China's history, have repeatedly invaded from the West and North to devastating effect).  
 
Perhaps the interior-coast dynamic matters more in the South than the North because of subtle differences in topography and population density. The interior is a lot closer in the South. The wheelin' deelin' South (south of Shanghai) appears to be a relatively thin strip of densely populated coast land (these are also where the different language groups are, fairly close to the coast. I'm sure it's not a coincidence it looks like Northern Europe!). Whereas the Northern Han appears to be a mass block of unwashed agriculturalists. 
 
Pop density 
 
Languages 
 
China GDP Map (2000) 
 
Again refutation welcome. Think I'll make it my last post.

no. IQ is a weak independent predictor for this, if at all. at least for language. 
 
What about coming from it the opposite way: higher IQ populations better retain their language due to their high levels of literacy and advanced institutions of learning? 
 
The history of South China is not short of migrations and invasions. There is nowhere to go from the North and the West but the sea. Competition was historically very high. Hence frequent attempts by the invader to wipe out whoever was already there. 
 
You could say something similar about Northern Europe, a long fertile plain crammed with different languages because there was no outlet from the East or South. So no linguistic conformity over a land area the size of Turkey.  
 
Inferential evidence surely tips the balance toward the Southern Han being smarter than the Northern Han. Which would suggest what happens in the South matters more than what happens in the North. (No revolution in 1989)

Lynn and Vanhanen estimated Chinese IQ at 100. Lower than Hong Kong 107, Taiwan 104 and Singapore 103. 
 
what do you mean? how is the north european "more diverse" than the mediterranean? (it's false genetically for sure)  
 
Perhaps my hunch is wrong and I was seeing order where there is none? But I was thinking in terms of cultural/linguistic groups. I'm particularly struck by the line of different linguistic groups from Russia to France. 
 
http://www.mapsorama.com/maps/europe/733px-Simplified_Languages_of_Europe_map.svg.png 
 
If you walked along the coast from Lisbon to Istanbul you would cover approx 6500 km and pass through 11 linguistic groups. (Portuguese, Spanish, Catalan, Occitan, French, Italian, Slovenian, Serbo-Croation, Albanian, Greek, Turkish). 
 
If you were to walk along the coast from Brest to Saint Petersberg you also pass through 11 linguistic groups but you would have walked about 3000 km less. (Breton, French, Dutch, Fresian, Danish, German, Polish, Lithuanian, Latvian, Estonian, Russian.) 
 
Linguistic groups in Northern Europe seem to be restricted to smaller land area. There is diversity in the south of Europe too, but there is more packed into the north. Geography must play its part. But perhaps also demonstates a rule that may be present in China, that higher IQ populations generate more cultural diversity and therefore fragment more frequently?

Although Southern China is more diverse, the Southern elite appears to have a measurable cognitive edge over the Northern, which is contrary to the case in Europe.  
 
(In Europe the Northern coast is more diverse than the South. Like China, that's at least partly due to geography). 
 
Lynn and Vanhanen (IQ and the Wealth of Nations) estimate the average IQ of the Hong Kong population at 107. They scored Taiwan 104. Singapore, which is 75% Chinese, was estimated at 103. 
 
Northern Han are tall and white, Southern Han are darker and short. They're as different as Jocks and Nerds, but nethertheless identify with each other. You may draw an analogy with Americans, I don't see what's wrong with an analogy to Europeans. 
 
But unlike China and America, Europe is a much harder place to build and keep an empire. (I believe China and America are best thought of as empires).

Interesting post. 
 
The typical view - i.e. Stratfor (George Friedman) - is that the crucial faultline is North-South, and that this is due to climate and topography (the rivers). North (Beijing) has the political power, the South (Shanghai, Hong Kong) has the ports and the economic muscle.  
 
Additionally, the Southern Han are wealthier, consider themselves more sophisticated than the Northerners and have higher IQs. 
 
However, if it's change we're looking for I think the coast/urban interior/rural faultline is more of a mechanism. It is in the interior where the power of the state is always weakest, the people are poorest, and where the majority of non-Han people live. 
 
In Turchinian/Khaldun fashion, revolutions from discontented Han on the racial boundaries begin in the interior and then spread to the rich coastal cities where the wealthy Han are thought to have been corrupted by foreign influences.

Any link of rape to urbanisation, with which availability of porn also correlates? (And incarceration rates?) 
 
If you were going to commit rape you might think the best place to do it is in the country - nobody is about. But it is more common to read news stories of rapes in urban environs, in the victim's bedroom if it's date rape or urban parkland. Either that the victim is picked up in an urban area and taken by car to a rural location. 
 
Obviously, in an urban environment there are more targets for rape. That could be the "pull". OTOH in urban areas there are many more people around to be potential witnesses of the crime. So why do they risk it? 
 
Perhaps "safety in numbers" plays a role: the number of potential offenders within a 10 mile radius of a city would be much higher than in a rural area. In a rural community locals will have a good idea of the behaviour of people they know, and be able to point the finger. 
 
Like cases of sexual abuse, more often the offender is someone the victim knows (close friend of family, member of the family) because the offender believes that closeness affords some sort of protection from getting caught.  
 
So the city affords some anonymity which the rapist believes is a shield against getting caught. If this is the case better policing, CCTV and the practice of locking up rapists for long jail terms should result in a fall in rape in urban areas, even as access to porn rises.

though *some* of the science fiction of 1900 seems to have an idea of what will be going on in 2000, it seems most of it was wrong. 
 
Interesting. So where was this fiction wrong the most and where was it most right? 
 
I'd guess it was most inaccurate at predicting the pace of technological advance, and most right at guessing the political-social aspects of the human condition. (Not having read a lot of sci-fi I have no idea whether this is true). 
 
Is the science fiction of today still like this (as I imagined it to be) or does it conform to politically correct forms of social behaviour? 
 
I mean, you can't get much more acceptance of diversity than in the universe of Star Wars.

Intrade had British PM "Gordon Brown to quit by 30 June" on 95. 
 
That's hilariously bad. 
 
Everyone who knows anything knows he's not going to quit voluntarily, and is unlikely to be removed by the party, not least as quickly as the end of this month. 
 
Crowds are generally stupid in real time and only ever have wisdom in hindsight.

According to a Google Trends search for 'risk' searchers' interest in risk has decreased over a 5 year period while news reference volume of the term has quite dramatically increased. 
 
http://www.google.co.uk/trends?q=Risk 
 
The chart has a bit of a academic cycle to it. There also is an interesting significant annual dip in interest in risk just prior to the new year...

The Romantic theory that the relatively poorer off launch attacks, out of desperation, was disproved when people started studying hunter-gatherers like the Yanamamo 
 
The relatively less wealthy Sparta declared war on Athens, in last resort, and won. Neither did a period of great economic growth occur prior to the French revolution. 
 
It is not just the rich who cause conflict, the poor do too - if you deny this it is clear your anachist colours are still showing through. :) 
 
Peter Turchin says economic success causes the parasitic elite class to become over-populated. Eventually the resources available to pay for the elites shrink, the class becomes top-heavy, falls. 
 
Rising social tension is a sign of elite over-production - duals give way to leadership conflicts and eventually to civil war, as the elite class is reshuffled and pared down to a manageable size. 
 
With the sudden economic shock of the past year, say, 50% of available wealth vanishing overnight, a lot of people who recently considered themselves part of the world elite have suddenly lost that status. 
 
Some of them will be willing to slip down the pecking order of life without complaint. But some won't give up what they believe is their rightful place without a fight. Do the Russians fit this category? 
 
And that won't be because they are rich and looking for money - as you know, war costs too much to be profitable - but because they are newly poor but for as long as they still command some influence, won't accept a lower status. 
 
I think the historian Niall Ferguson also has argued economic instability - boom or bust - leads to conflict. So it is probably true that the process of entry into the higher class brings conflict as much as the exit from it. 
 
If we were fair we would say the rich and the poor cause war.

TangoMan, sorry to post an off topic comment here, however I have to commend you on your bitter sarcasm and wit in your reply to Rachel/Admin. 
 
Specifically... 
 
I'm starting to think that the bone density in your head must be pretty impressive, for the empirical results I referenced on bone density are not some wild theory. Look, a true scholar must engage against data that contradicts their world view, and not simply ignore it. Don't be a disgrace to your profession. 
 
LOL 
 
I think she is a disgrace to the academic profession. She is stupid and a racist. She is a black apologist who dreadfully needs to be escorted off any campus in order to prevent untold damage done to her unwitting students. Most who will be too insecure to take her psychotic stand head on. 
 
I have been reading her off and on for a while and I purposefully tiptoe around these issues and play dumb. I know much more than I lead on. Otherwise, as you correctly state, she'll quickly label anyone a racist.