An important point that Pinker makes in Blank Slate is that this "50% hereditary 50% environmental" claim is in a sense highly misleading. The variation that is not hereditary is presumably in some sense environmental, but it is for the most part not explainable by systematic differences in environment, at least not in first world countries. For all practical purposes it is not explained at all. That being said, I have to agree with Jason and Eli. Even if it were true that there were no meaningful inherited differences between individuals, that would not be an argument for a centrally planned society.

The ELCA are the mainline non-evangelical Lutherans You're aware that that the E stands for Evangelical, right? I guess the word has changed connotations over the years, but it seems strange to label a group whose name starts with "evangelical" as "non-evangelical".

More likely they'll switch the other way if it's about the economy. Wine gives you more bang for the buck at the low end.

Actually wasn't "Smith" the name used by all the aliens in that Buckaroo Banzai movie, which came out right around 1984---so maybe the Martians got scared their cover had been blown! 
 
No, they were all named John (even the women) including such notables as John BigBooty, John Yaya, and John Smallberries. But as I recall, no John Smith.  
 
I think there has to be an error.

I don't think you can meaningfully compare standards of living in places sufficiently distant that trade is prohibitively expensive. You get very different results if you say a pound of gold here = a pound of gold there from what you get if you say a pound of steak here = a pound of steak there. 
 
Eating steak doesn't select for lactose tolerance anyway, eating cheese and yogurt does. Probably benefits the middle class more than the rich.

I'm not quite sure what Flynn means by "Sunday Truth". According to this "Sunday Truth" is an expression invented by Bertrand Russel meaning something we agree on in form without agreeing on anything in substance. I can see how that would apply to human equality in the abstract, but it seems to me that the idea of equal intelligence is reasonably well defined.

Well, you can imagine there being some kind of frequency dependent selection where the advantage of having the same phenotype as everyone else is large but which particular phenotype becomes ubiquitous for the species doesn't really matter much. I'm thinking pheromones and such.

Isn't it likely that girls like pretty boys for the same reason that boys like pretty girls, that prettiness is largely a proxy for parasite/disease resistance?

Most likely that's part of it, but my understanding was that the Flynn effect shows IQ gains long after cranial capacity has reached its max. 
 
I think in terms of raw processing power the brain peaks around 20 but IQ test scores peak closer to 50.

The idea that someone who steals food is to be pitied is a modern notion, and clearly a product of an affluent society. It wasn't that long ago that one could be hanged for stealing bread in western nations.

I thought for sure there would be plenty of Northeast Asians, but there's nary a one to be found. 
 
Maybe Asian gamers are geekier on average, but Northern Europeans have a higher standard deviation of geekiness and are thus overrepresented among ubergeeks. 
 
Sorry, couldn't resist.

A waitress sexually taunted at work over her red hair has been awarded £17,618 compensation by an employment tribunal 
 
I assume the jury verified that she's an authentic redhead?

Is it possible they have things almost exactly backwards? Given that sperm really doesn't cost that much and replenishes pretty quickly, maybe it's not so much that multi-dude pron makes guys shoot bigger loads, but rather multi-chick porn that causes smaller ones. I figure the only strong reason not to shoot your whole wad is if you will likely be banging a different chick in the very near future. 
 
I have some ideas as to how one might go about testing this theory.

Jessica Alba - much more instructive. 
 
But what if it turns out it really is full of cat dna? That would be so weird... 
 
I'd still do her, of course, but it would be weird.

Slightly OT, but does anyone know how George Will became the most well-known conservative columnist in the first place? As far as I can tell, he's not a particularly good writer, nor is he particularly conservative, he's like a slightly less gay version of Andrew Sullivan.

When I first heard of the idea of taxonomy by clads it seemed to me to be brilliant. But later I read a book which pointed out that following cladism there shouldn't be categories like reptiles (since iguanas are more closely related to us than to turtles) or fish (since mudskippers are more closely related to us than they are to tuna).  
The point was to argue that it's proper not to classify humans as apes, even though we're clearly more closely related to chimps than chimps are to orangutans, and probably closer than chimps are to gorillas. Clades are great if you take it as axiomatic that taxonomy should reflect ancestry, but if you think taxonomy should indicate salient features of the species, clades just don't cut it. 
 
I should mention that about half the book was stab-yourslef-in-the-forehead-with-a-fork-while-you're-eating stupid.

As a self-proclaimed ethicist, I proclaim that questions as to whether the knowledge gained from an experiment justifies suffering to the subject are very complex, and cannot be answered by applying simple general rules, but must be answered on a case by case basis by an ethicist. I'm willing to answer any specific questions as to what proposed experiments are or are not justifiable for what is (in my professional opinion as an ethicist) a very reasonable fee.

It seems to me a lot more plausible that a single mutation could make a monogomous species turn libertine than vice versa. Dollars to donuts the ancestral form was monogomous.

There's something I'm not getting here. 
 
My impression is that when one takes an antibiotic for an infection, the desired (and usual) result is that the infection is completely killed off, the patient is "cured" and doesn't need to take more antibiotics. In the rare case, the patient already has some resistant bacteria when he begins taking medication, and the antibiotics kill off the nonresistant ones leaving the patient infected with a pure antibiotic resistant strain. Maybe this is completely wrong? Because from the description it sounds like the plan here avoids the development of resistant strains, but at the cost of never actually curing anyone.

Hitler probably wasn't 1/4 Jewish either. It's unknown who his paternal grandfather was, but I think the evidence that he was Jewish is primarily "wouldn't that be funny."