LOL 
 
I have no time for footballers but I think Razib was a bit unkind characterizing one as a Neanderthal

Sounds pretty rubbishy to me. Australian Aborigines have very little trouble with childbirth because the babies have smaller heads -- and Abos ARE human. I think the big head problem is very recent.

JR

All the Scandinavian countries now have a lot of "wog" immigrants and are not liking it a bit. So their righteousness will not last long.

Of course the medieval warm period (Greenland etc) has been known for ages but it does not hurt to keep reminding people that there are natural climatic variations -- so I too gave the story a brief reference on my blog. Good to see that it was widely reported. JR

Below is what I blogged about that book on 11th Feb

In his book How the Scots Invented the Modern World, Arthur Herman points to the very substantial contribution made by Scots to the the development of modern Western thinking and the invention by Scots of much in modern Western technology. So how does that square with the contention that the modern world was essentially a Germanic invention? Surely the Scots are Celts rather than Germanic!

I doubt however that the Scottish case constitutes a crucial objection. Some reasons why:

* To my knowledge both the Chinese and the Russians make similar claims to have produced many great inventions. Most things seem to have had more than one "inventor"

* There is an awful lot that the Scots did NOT invent -- from the printing press onwards.

* The Scottish lowlands (where most Scots live) were thoroughly colonized by the Anglo-Saxons so most Scots have substantial Germanic ancestry.

* The Celtic Scots got at least Germanic culture via Protestantism and the English hegemony generally.

The reviews in the Amazon site linked above are well worth a read.

On the political front however, the Scots show very clearly the Germanic difference. Scotland has long been heavily socialist, returning very few Tory members to the Westminster parliament. When English voters swung very heavily towards Margaret Thatcher in 1979, Scotland actually swung away from the Tories! So the greater Celtic element in the Scots ancestry does seem to make a marked difference in politics. Where the Germanic English favour individualism and conservatism, the Celtic Scots favour collectivism and socialism.

************************

The Filipnas probably need to be treated as a special case. They specialize in marrying older Caucasian men. We have heaps of them in Australia.

Australians are rarely religious -- unless you count a love of the beach -- but our conservatives are just as conservative as US conservatives. Non-religious conservatives may seem odd in the USA but they are the norm in Australia. So what Murtaugh says is only "new" for the USA.

I would characterize your excellent essay as showing that Leftist ideology destroys good science among psychologists.

I have a fully referenced article making a similar point below:

http://foxhunt.blogspot.com/2003_01_01_foxhunt_archive.html#87583162

Lots of the Taiwanese economy was government-run for a long time after the war whilst that was never the case in HK and much less so in Singapore. And it takes a long time for an economy to recover from government meddling -- which is why Britain is still poorer than the USA and Taiwan is poorer than HK.

BIG DISSENTING NOTE: What about South Africa? Indians there even during Apartheid had near-white affluence and were said to be the richest Indian community anywhere. They came as labourers too but I seem to recollect that a lot were from Panjab (Sikhs mainly)

Ahh.. So Gujuratis are they key. Interesting. Parsees speak Gujurati too and they are the pinnacle of Indian success. And since most Parsees are pretty brown they are probably ethnically more Gujurati than Iranian.

On the Chinese: Over 90% may be HAN but that is like saying 90% of the people living in Europe are Europeans. You don't have to travel far in China to move from one dialect to another -- with a high degree of mutual incomprehension. And if you think they are "all the same" (how Western!) just ask a Shanghainese what they think of the Cantonese!

Yes. I no longer think the HIV/AIDS link is non-existent -- though many so-called AIDS cases probably do not have HIV.

I have just put up a draft evolutionary explanation of the vaccine finding on http://jonjayray.blogspot.com

Genetic basis for self-control or lack thereof ....

Hmmm...

Why do I think of negro crime rates when I read that?

Naughty, naughty me !!!

Wow! That's an incendiary comment. Race mixing is something that "decent folk rooted in faith, family and folk" will not do.

I am pretty incendiary myself but not that incendiary.

Anyway, you are wrong. The big race-mixers are the underclass, not the toffs.

Best JR

I suspect that the Uganda triumph is pretty mythical. Who knows what is really happening there. The triumph sounds to me like do-gooder propaganda.

Chris Brand replied to the Flynn & Dickens paper here:

http://www.crispian.demon.co.uk/dickensflynn2001.html

Hmm... Another amusing post from Razib. And I loved MarieClair's point about us WASPs being cusinely challenged -- how true. I think it is new theory: Bad food drives you to science. Could be true.

But I think the real point is the immigrant effect. Immigrants really try much harder. And an awful lots of Jews still have the refugee mentality -- for good historical reason.

And we WASPs have made the world in our image so we can afford to coast.

And don't forget that a lot of people with surnames like Brown are in fact negroes.

Dan is on the ball with the trihybrid theory about Oz blacks. He might find a kindred spirit via this link:

http://foxhunt.blogspot.com/2002_12_01_foxhunt_archive.html#86373954

But dinna fash about whether Chomskyan linguistics fit in. There is a view now that his linguistics are as bad as his politics.

Marc Miyake is often on that theme. See

http://www.amritas.com/

Razib You are right that the ruling class of Constantinople started out as Romans (though that was a very loose term by then) but the people of Byzantium were always Greek -- though the whole empire was not, of course. And not only Thrace but Magna Graeca was at the civilized core of the empire.

PDF! Spare us. I always ignore those slow-loading monstrosoties and I doubt that I am alone.