When is someone going to do a study on Ashkenazim to find their high intelligence genes?

One of the points he made on Econtalk was that steroids don't develop fast-twitch muscles, which are crucial for generating bat speed, and thus don't help for hitting home runs. But bat speed is only one part of the equation. F=MA. Steroids do help put on bulk and muscle. So mass is increased. Even if fast-twitch muscles aren't developed or decrease due to the steroid intake, as long as enough muscle mass is added to increase the force generated by the bat swing and override any potential loss of fast-twitch muscles, it should help to hit home runs, provided other variables like coordination remain constant.

"there’s really a diminishing marginal return on that kind of thing. And like I said, no one is really looking forward to the years between 80 and 90 anyway. They’re not bad, but not worth organizing your life around." Yeah. I think some of them are really banking on this Singularity thing. They think that if they do all this diet and health stuff, they'll live long enough so that by the time they're 80 or 90 they won't be miserable, dessicated husks but will have new bionic organs and limbs or be uploaded into computers or something.

"I’ve been getting into social and status-climbing lately, so I think I’ll join the Episcopal Church. Valid move, yes?" 'Twas ever thus. Read E. Digby Baltzell for the paradigmatic example of that of rich Philadelphia Quakers changing their denomination to Episcopalian.

Hiking is not normal?

Not sure if my post went through. 
 
I asked if you could provide links to some of these wonderful cyber-colloquia? I don't think many people know about them, including me.

Would you mind pointing us to some of these wonderful cyber-colloquia? I certainly don't know of any!

Kevin Phillips traces the broad cultural differences between the opposing sides of the US Civil Warall the way back from the English Civil War through the American Revolutionary period in his book The Cousins? Wars: Religion, Politics and the Triumph of Anglo-America. 
 
He interestingly identifies the losers in the conflict to be not Southern whites but Indians, Irish, ex-slaves, and mid-western German settlers.

Is this so stastically insignificant? 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_convict 
 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convicts_on_the_First_Fleet

Comparing the Shah to Ataturk is ludicrous.

Since the ethnic groups seem to have the same status to an outsider, they're on the same level, thus "horizontal". To quote Chris Rock, "Black people complaining about racism, white people complaining about reverse racism, asians complaining about sideways racism." 
 
In America, it seems to go: Japanese/Chinese/Korean > Filipino/Vietnamese > Hmong/Laotian > Cambodian 
 
This is from the perspective of a Vietnamese. I grew up with a darker-skinned sister that the family sometimes referred to as a "dirty Kampuchean". In a loving way, of course. Japanese and Chinese are seen as smart, and Koreans as smart but insane. 
 
Korean on Vietnamese (halfway through): 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-TPfgob3VQ

I have noticed in Sweden that the men dress more femininely and the women are less dolled up. In summer, both sexes more or less wear the same clothes. There seems to be a morphing of the sexes there, at least in the way the sexes choose to present themselves. There is more male preening and less female preening. The women don't appear to want to pursue the more extreme expressions of femininity that I see in the USA and Australia. The girls may still want a pony but they can generally do without the heavy make up and slatternly clothes.

Kudos for your comments on Richard Lewontin.

"[1] and [2] Being intelligent but uncurious seems to be substantially more common amongst Asians (and perhaps amongst high-IQ blacks and Hispanics/Amerinds as well) than whites, and more common amongst females than males. This is only my personal observation, and it may be an entirely sociocultural phenomenon even if it is real." 
 
I couldn't agree more with this observation, as sad as it is. I'm sure many other males out there can relate to the experience of dredging through hundreds of females for every one that shows even a spark of curiousity. I find that even in graduate school the girls' interests are incredibly narrow. What we really need is an explanation of this fact. You could add that Jews seem even more intellectually curious than generic whites.

"they don't engage in welfare abuse and what not" 
 
The FLDS do? I wasn't aware of that.

I thought you were about my age, but I was ten when Favre ended his college football career. So you are at least 30 I guess.

I can't get in the paper, how big is the deletion? The abstract or whatever says microdeletion but those are actually big aren't they? I didn't think stamdard autism would be caused by a large deletion (or even just related to, or predisposed by one, or whatever) because the kids look normal don't they, unlike other kids who have other types of mental retardation caused by deletions (prader willi, VCF, Sharp syndrome), who are usually a little funny looking God bless them.

pconroy: "... maternal uncle ..." 
 
Supposedly it's a recessive trait, so you'd have to have gotten it from your mom and your dad.

JSBolton: " ... the relatively quite short, functional part, which yields lactase-persistence ... " 
 
Correct me if I'm wrong, lactase-persistence is actually the loss of a function. 
 
Maybe pet cats have developed some lactose tolerance? And then there's that picture of rats drinking milk in India.

Great post. 
 
"... in the end they are animals to study." 
 
But nobody views the world in such as way, through such crystal clear goggles. And if it's the case that everything is in essence just potential knowledge, nothing higher, then I don't see where there's an obligation to investigate. I don't think it's always moral to want to know. Is there an imperative to study? Then where does it come from?