I no doubt oversold my case a bit, as the timing is still in dispute and there does seem to be some mixture, but the Andamese islands appear to have been settled in two early and distinct waves, the remnants of which still strongly echo in the native populations today.  
 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andaman_Islands 
 
"male Onges and Jarawas almost exclusively belong to Haplotype D, which is also found in Tibet and Japan [Ainu], but is rare on the Indian mainland" and "Male Great Andamanese, unlike the Onge and the Jarawa, have a mixed presence of Y-chromosome halpgroups O, L, K and P, which places them between mainland Indian and Asian populations" 
 
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC378623/

I've recently lost confidence in the assumption that of course humans and Neanderthals mated (Leaving open only the question as to whether these pairings were productive or not.)--the idea being that humans will always mate with their neighbors when given enough time. 
 
What about the Andaman islanders? There have been two isolated and distinct lineages present there for at least the last 20k years. On a tiny little island.

Interesting study. One concern though. (perhaps unfounded) By adjusting for education and smoking, you are adjusting for behaviors which are likely themselves influenced by genes-- and some of the same genes, in fact, that may impact height, which is one of the traits this study was following. I'm curious how this adjustment was done.

I'm unconvinced by the underlying logic of the whole premise. (Big brain / better adoption of ideas = greater selective advantage on larger, wider continents.) 
 
How many new ideas were likely to filter into a far-flung village per generation? One idea? None? When an idea DID filter in, it would likely be adopted quickly by the entire community, and would thus quickly negate any selective advantage bestowed on the early adopter.

"In particular, a hypothesis: many otherwise negative predictors of success change their sign at a certain extremely high level of intelligence." 
 
ASDF, I completely agree with this.  
 
Attention Deficit Disorder springs to mind. At an IQ of 90, ADHD can be debilitating. In individuals with IQ's of 120 and higher, it's probably an advantage in many fields.

Well said, Hyperbole. 
 
Talent pops up everywhere, but how and where that talent is applied is largely modulated by social forces. High IQ, for example, is ability with a universal adapter kit attached, yet groups will vary massively in where they tend to funnel their best and brightest, producing a skewed occupational landscape. 
 
There is no "lawyer gene" or "NFL player gene"; small genetic differences that may provide advantage in a particular occupation will always be subsumed by and made secondary to the larger social forces that guide occupational choice.

Pconroy, I was just curious if you had the seven-repeat allele. (It seems to be implicated in a lot of behavioral /personality studies, and is likely an allele of large effect.)

Pconroy, that is just cool as hell. Do your genetic results mirror what you know about yourself? (I'm guessing you're a smart, creative guy.) Just out of curiosity, which Drd4 alleles do you have?

Pconroy, I'm curious how you came to know your genotype at this loci. Is there a commercial test? Were you a research subject?

"Kosmo, you sound like classic attention deficit problems. You should get it checked out." 
 
Chris, funny you should mention that. My doc prescribed adderol, but I can't make myself take the first pill.

"Kosmo, Sister Y, finally people to empathize with! What do you do to cope?" 
 
-- I write. It keeps me sane. (or at least sane-ish) 
 
:)

As a counterpoint to Carbon, I'm not a PhD student, but my IQ is also about +2SD, and I *do* get bored very easily. I am driven to new stimuli. It has been a problem.  
 
I'm incapable of paying attention to things I'm not interested in except through massive force of will. I can't sit still. I work in a research lab, but I'm not like the other researchers, many of whom seem to have a nearly bottomless reserves of focus which they can wield in a variety of directions. If my brain latches onto something, I can dive deeply into it; I can even become a bit obsessed, thinking deeply about one thing for hours-- but I can't just turn it on and off. I can't *choose* what I'm interested in. I can't stare at slides for three hours without going totally out of my mind.  
 
School was difficult. (Please note which one of us-- Carbon, who does not bore easily, or myself, who does-- is on track for his PhD.) My grades were all over the place, a strange and pathetic mix of A's and F's. But my SAT's were in the top two percentile. (Thank God, or I'd never have gotten into college.)  
 
I feel like I've spent my life fighting this hunger for the new. The new horizon. The next book. The new idea.

"IMHO this sort of meta-thinking is what distinguishes civilized humans from the wild type." 
 
You could be on to something there. It would be interesting to see how academic achievement corresponds to flexibility in saliency detection. To what extent is intelligence secondary to the ability to simply pay attention to low-stimuli things you are not interested in? 
 
Regarding ease of boredom as it relates to intelligence, I wonder though if ADD doesn't provide a special case. Intelligence my be protective against boredom in general, but I suspect that ADD risk alleles like the 7-repeat allele of DRD4 would still have an impact on attention (and ease of boredom) regardless of IQ, and likely provide another layer of modulation.

"Is the disinclination to breed based on the male nerd factor here... or what? 
 
I seriously do not understand." 
 
Donna, I think I remember Razib doing a survey a while back on the number of children that readers of this forum have, so his comment about us being disinclined to reproduce is based on that data. If I remember correctly, it was starkly evident that this forum should have a label on the back: "Warning, the reading of this forum has been found to inhibit get-some." Or perhaps it is the want-some that is inhibited. 
 
Though in actuality, I'm sure that the correlation between low fecundity and the reading of this forum and is more a co-morbidity thing, rather than cause and effect.

Interesting. So coat-type is controlled by three genes? Just from the info in the article, it's clear there must be at least a fourth gene that hasn't been identified yet.  
 
If the beagle and basset breeds are examples of dogs who carry all three wild-type (wolf form) genes for coat-type... well, nobody would ever confuse either of those breeds with having wolf fur, would they? Actually, I'd feel comfortable going out on a limb and saying that beagle fur and wolf fur are vastly different and could never be confused. Not ever. Not if you were blind. Obviously then, if bassets and beagles have these three genes in common with a wolf, and yet there is a difference, then those three genes can't be the whole story.

"I think that associative mating is more likely to happen with intelligence" 
 
It's certainly already happening. Silicon Valley has one of the highest rates of Asperger's children in the country. They suspected it was something in the environment. Turns out, it's engineers marrying engineers.

Sadly, I can't access the article. The abstract pins down the mean, but I'm curious if the meat of the study reveals any indication of a broader, flatter area under curve? Does higher genetic diversity translate into higher cognitive diversity, resulting in longer tails and more outliers?

In foxes, if you breed for tameness, you get white spots and floppy ears. 
 
In college, I bred mice for maximum expression of white spotting and got floppy ears and tameness.(The floppy ears got me first place for "Most Unusual" at a rodent show in Chicago.) The very first droop-eared mouse to show up in my colony was the offspring of my first all-white, black-eyed mouse. (A mouse for whom simple Irish-spotting had extended over the entire mouse through selection for plus-modifiers.) 
 
It is very interesting how all these characteristics are connected.

Fascinating link, P-ter. I wonder what the selective advantage of downregulating colostrum production coul be? I was under the impression that colostrum was very beneficial to newborns.

Razib, just out of curiosity, what is your IQ? I suspect you've been tested at some point.