Sg is right. French muslims are mostly of north african origin and probably have a tendency to be more easy going about a lot of things(including religion) than many pakistani, indian etc muslims you might find in the UK. They are from Mediterranean cultures just as much as they are from muslim ones.

...and yeah, Germany loves porn

Well, I actually live in Indonesia, and I can say first-hand that as a muslim-majority country, Indonesia is quite different from most others. This region transitioned from animism and Buddhism to Hinduism, and then finally to Islam, but quite peacefully, with trade and proselytization being the main vehicles.. In parts of Java people are Muslim, but have all kinds of notions of spirits and ghosts and magic... a volcano called Merapi is on the verge of erupting right now and it is being looked after by it's guardian, some local mystic. People are pretty chill. They have a distinct Eastern tolerance about them. Social harmony is of absolutely utmost importance. However, this is changing because of Saudi money. Radicalism has been growing rapidly in Indonesia and, I believe, other poor muslim countries, mostly because the local governments can't provide decent free schooling. As an alternative, poor people send their children to free schools, called pesantren here, or madrassah in general. Most of these schools are ok, having existed for hundreds of years. But the ones funded by these Saudi charities are virtual terrorist training facilities which teach religious intolerance and the most puritanical Wahhabi form of Islam. I think polarization is probably increasing in the muslim world at large, and we'll definitely see an increase in social conservatism. I have my eyes on places like Turkey, which has been a secular-muslim experiment for 80+ years. That's changing too. How do we deal with these issues? What's the state of research on ways of mitigating religious extremism? I'm inclined to believe that personal wealth would negatively correlate with extremism, and so would level of education. I'm sure Razib knows of studies of religosity vs a number of variables. I'm personally interested in whether there are large-scale social engineering projects that could reduce this kind of extremism without being heavy-handed or cruel. *I assume that most readers of gnxp are probably opposed to religious intolerance and fundamentalism / extremism.

I'm just waiting for the day when I can pay a doctor to inject tons of my own stem cells induced to become neurons into my own brain. Maybe I could even target it, more neurons in the occipital lobe, I need better memory, put some in my hippocampus... Is there any indication that this might one day be feasible? Unfortunately, if it is, I bet that the drug companies will find the most profitable location for stem-cell injections to be the penis... The next generation of spam: V1a9ra, cia1i5, 5t3M C311 1njecti0n5

my last post didn't go through... I was trying to change the topic back to what the possibilities are for direct injection of stem cells into the brain to actually work. Obviously more than 100 neurons would have to stick, but I don't know much about this line of research... anyone know?

What's the median household income for the parents of those at top-ranked schools? From my experience, Ivy-leaguers are disproportionately from wealthier families.If you consider people who choose public U over Harvard, a lot of the selection effect you will see will be between kids from wealthy families and those from middle-class or below families. If your parents make 50k / year, you would probably much-rather take a free ride at state U in their honors program, than shell out the money for the financially burdensome tuition at Harvard. Being from a wealthy social circle must play some part, although I don't doubt that there are effects from going to the school as well...

are these really the 1,700 best athletes who could be playing in the NFL? 
 
I don't think so. I think the 1700 best athletes who could be playing in the NFL are probably distributed in a bunch of different sports, as well as in regular careers and educational tracks that they chose over pursuing professional sports. 
 
This reminds me of a lot of faulty thinking that people engage in when attempting to estimate the average IQ of certain select groups. Are the 5 Putnam Fellows in the William Lowell Putnam math competition the 5 people who are best at math in the country for example? The eliteness of a group is usually overestimated by neglecting chance as a factor in their ascension, and by assuming that the pool of talent that is being chosen from is much bigger than it actually is.

It's interesting how folk knowledge is often correct for these sorts of things. A lot of psychology research tends to just give scientific credence to otherwise well-"known" facts. It's also interesting how this same folk knowledge is often so wrong on more abstract scientific questions. It seems that humans are much better at understanding themselves than anything else.

Cause and effect could easily be conflated in this situation. It goes without saying that larger brains could have lead to higher population. Still, based on how much work the brain does to understand social cues, I think it's a very reasonable hypothesis that social living drove brain growth in human history.

I'd just like to point out that in 1900 probably 0% of champion runners were of african descent, and now probably close to 100% are. I mean, maybe the sport just opened up to new competition? 
 
Still, the comment about producing super-athletes is interesting, and the analogy to IQ is also very interesting. 
 
I think it's a glimmer of hope for those who believe there is massive dysgenia going on because of the inverse-relationship between IQ and fecundity. Even though the smart people are not spreading their genes as fast (or possibly not even replacing them as they die out) they do seem to be concentrating, as people don't mate randomly, and probably assort far more efficiently than they did at anytime in the past. 
 
Thus, given a possibly dysgenic trend, we may well continue to produce ever smarter people through the concentration of certain genes in a portion of the population, even if the rest just gets dumber (which I actually don't believe). Morloks and Eloi anyone? 
 
For athletes, I think as people mentioned, with nutrition, medicine, steroids and the inclusion of more people (from different genetic backgrounds), genetics is probably not the best explanation, though obviously possible.

I must carry the extra-sleepy allele...

"These individuals were born into upper middle class families, with gifted and well educated parents, and often with gifted siblings. They sometimes even had famous relatives. They attended prestigious colleges, became doctors, lawyers, professors, or joined some other prestigious occupation, and have friends with similar histories. They are the optimally adjusted. They are also the ones most likely to disbelieve that the exceptionally gifted can have serious adjustment problems." 
 
My last comment as well.  
 
First, I actually did drop out of highschool, but still went to college the same year as my cohorts. 
 
Second, that's a massive overgeneralization. The rich kids were indeed mostly well-adjusted, but most of the school consisted of asian immigrants and eastern-european jewish immigrants. 
 
Smart kids only have problems when they are surrounded by people who are actively hostile towards intelligence. Maybe it's different in different regions. I'd still say that plenty of people, even really dumb people, have a lot of respect for intelligence.

Your comment shows part of the problem outlined in the article. That people generally don't want to believe that the intellectually gifted have issues stemming from their advanced abilities. It's that kind of incredulous "what are you complaining about" attitude that stops us from really understanding the issues that face gifted individuals. 
 
Well, I seem to remember being intellectually gifted as a child. In fact, I remember going on to a highschool for the intellectually gifted. It's kind of famous... maybe you've heard of it. I'm writing from experience.  
 
I was friends with or knew many people who were in the top fraction of a percent of the population in terms of intelligence, including several intel science talent search finalists, a 17 year old chess master, runners-up on the US math olympiad, a bunch of people with 1600 SAT scores, etc etc. 
 
Most of those people were not tormented souls who were too smart. Some people were kooky and neurotic weirdos who were really smart, and probably had some atypical neural profile or whatever, but plenty of people were more or less well-adjusted kids who liked to do normal teenager stuff, even if they were far beyond normal intelligence. At most people were a little thirsty for intellectual stimulation before highschool.

"Other children do not share their interests, their vocabulary, or their desire to organize activities. They try to reform their contemporaries but finally give up the struggle and play alone... forms of solitary play develop, and these, becoming fixed as habits, may explain the fact that many highly intellectual adults are shy, ungregarious, and unmindful of human relationships, or even misanthropic and uncomfortable in ordinary social intercourse" 
 
...and the rest of the highly intellectually gifted children, who are not autistic, carry on playing with other children and developing into balanced human beings with healthy social lives.

Yeah.. I think I just read everything. I remember reading some really random stuff. I read Coming of Age in Samoa when I was 11, because I was at my grandparents house and it was the only book in english. It was pretty shocking to find something like that on the shelf. I read a lot of OLLLDD science fiction... Jules Vernes, H.G. Wells, Isaac Asimov (I'm in my mid-twenties).  
 
Choose your own adventure books were awesome, and I think I read every single Michael Crighton book by 6th grade. I was obsessed with insects and other arthropods, as well as with sharks, and I had a bunch of books about them.  
 
Getting off of the topic of myself for a second, I think the tendency to create a narrative to explain events and facts is absolutely essential for understanding the world. I mean, isn't that what science is all about. You hypothesize a narrative (cause and effect, relationship, model etc) that explains observations. Then you try and see if it is a believable story and if it explains other things as well. 
 
Do you think science should strive to avoid any kind of interpretation of that kind?

This is interesting if it is true: 
http://www.websters-online-dictionary.org/coreimages/contemporary/NIAAA/spc96.gif 
 
it seems that alcohol consumption is inversely related to life expectancy... 
 
weird. 
 
Also, about Nevada standing out, well, it has the highest rate of alcoholism in the country, so...

Try comparing this to the distribution of 1. obesity rates, 2. alcohol consumption per capita, and 3. ratings of healthcare systems 
 
This seems to correlate very strongly with obesity rates, see: http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_XDLnpGlOHFU/SSQM51KxrqI/AAAAAAAACNI/dBuLAyaLyXo/s400/obesitymap463.gif 
(i couldn't find one that has more refined county-by-county data) 
 
there are some places that don't match the trend (notice a huge splotch of unhealthiness around las vegas, nevada) but I think that that might have a lot to do with unhealthy lifestyles. 
 
In general, I think this map says more about cultural and culinary differences in the different regions than anything else. 
 
Fat people don't live as long, and eating fried food and mega-sized portions doesn't help. People in the south and midwest are notorious for being overweight, and floridians at the very least go to the beach and probably try and keep in shape. People in places like idaho, even without a lot of income or the best healthcare probably engage in more exercise and have healthier lifestyles (those are my preconceptions anyway)

I think a good analogy would be surveys where they ask the two questions "should government spend more to help people" and "should taxes be lowered". People will reply "yes" to both questions even though they are somewhat opposed to each other.

Actually, I take back what I said. I think I misunderstood at first. I take it that they are two seperate questions and a score of 6 means that the ratio of agreement with the statements is 6:4? It's probably a useful measure. I just wonder how many people agreed with both. It could be measuring something else, like people's tendency to criticize others which I think men are more likely to do... I'd probably say the first question, about taking responsibility is the more ambiguous one.  
 
perhaps splitting the results into 1-10 scales for agree / disagree for each question would reveal more.

I think this question is kind of misleading, since the two answers are not necessarily opposed. Someone could quite conceivably agree with both statements. I know I do.