Maybe it has something to do with what Steve Sailer called "the perceived masculinity of the races". Camille Paglia, in Sexual Personae, posited that all of civilization, from math and science to art and literature to the rule of law, represents a male rebellion against the eternal feminine--i.e. nature. If caucasians and Asians have relatively the same IQs, but caucasians are, in general, more innately masculine, in might explain why, overall, caucasians seem to have pushed civilization further.  
 
I think you can find evidence for this in the different art forms native to the regions. Both caucasians and Asians have produced beautiful works of visual art representing nature (i.e. showing an affinity with the feminine) but there is nothing in Asia to compare to the Classical urge to control nature by depicting the artifically perfected human form.  
 
Also, I remember hearing that the world's first true novel, the Tale of Genji (sp?), was written in Japan centuries before anything of the sort appeared in the West. Literature is the most feminine of the arts (i.e. the one art form where women seem to have consitently made significant contributions throughout history). If East Asians really are somehow "more feminine" than caucasians, it seems appropriate that they perfected the novel first.

How similar to the WWI era conditions ("trenches in Western Europe and the open sick wards of hospitals [which] allowed the virus to spread effectively from incapacitated hosts to many new ones") might today's hyperpopulated third world metropolitan centers be for the purpose of viral evolution? 
 
In other words, if all that is needed for high virulence and high transmissability is for the virus itself to evolve in a situation where the sick and the dying regularly interact with the living, how wrong am I to believe that the Third World could provide such an environment in spades?

Like JK I also have ADD and scored well enough on my SATs to get into a decent university despite terrible grades. My strategy before taking tests back then was to get hammered the night before--the resulting hangover made some form of ponderous concentration possible.  
 
Anyway, non-ADDers taking these drugs experience something like the effects of cocaine or methamphetamine. The high of Ritalin or Adderall or Dexedrine - which people with ADD don't experience - can make you feel quicker, more confident, even euphoric. But the drugs don't really make you smarter, any more than MDMA makes you more of an empathetic person. Even among people with ADD, any rise in IQ scores is probably due to a new ability to focus. It's hard to do your best on any test if your mind is wandering off on its own accord every second or third question.

The second line in the second paragraph should end with the word "conceived", not "abandoned". Sorry, I typed in haste.

Two things: One, Tangoman said: 
 
"I would argue that the definitions of viability would tend to change. In terms of abortion, a pregnency that's past a certain point might be affected by viability and the state would intervene as they do now." 
 
As they do now? The state (here in America) does NOT intervene past the point of viability. Roe vs. Wade has made abortion legal up to birth, and no state law can touch it. (That's why the courts threw out the ban on partial birth abortion.) If we are going to discuss abortion, let's at least get our facts straight. Abortion is legal in America in every state for any reason at any point prior to birth, regardless of whether the baby could be expected to survive outside the womb.  
 
The second thing I wanted to say is in regards to the whole question of financial responsibility for unwanted fetuses raised outside the womb. The thing I don't understand about pro-choicers is that every one of them will agree that society has a right to tell parents that they have a responsibility to raise and provide for the children they have abandoned. If a man or woman leaves his child out on the street to starve, he or she is rightfully charged with abandonment and child abuse. Yet pro-choicers think that a parent's responsibility to their children only applies to children that are already born. Why does the mother of a child fifteen minutes before its birth not have the same responsibility to care for that child as the mother of a child born fifteen minutes ago?  
 
Some people might argue that parents have a responsibility to provide for their children, but NOT at the expense of giving up their sovereignty over their own bodies. I think this is a disengenous argument for the following reason. Imagine that a woman and her infant are "snowed in" her cabin during a blizzard for a few days. The infant is hungry and the woman is lactating, but she refuses, on principle alone, to breastfeed the baby and as a direct result, the baby dies. Would you have any trouble charging this woman for negligence? I can't imagine that anyone would. But she is merely taking the same principled stand that most pro-choicers take to its logical conclusion. So if you're pro-choice, how can you charge or even condemn her? Unless you fall back on the argument that different rules apply to unborn versus born children, which brings us back to the question I asked above of "Why?"