Scott M, I'd peg his intelligence between 110-125. Certainly not the level of GNXP posters but well within a SD or two. 
What I am saying is, I think he is intelligent, just not amazingly so.  
 
All that and humble too. How do you do it?! ;-)

Ach, Miss Sweden isn't fit to be highschool prom queen. 
Jason Malloy  
 
Perhaps you missed her beach photo, which looked fine to me, though I'll admit the shadowing in the other face shots made her nose look wider than needed.

Might as well call me an Azerbijianian ;-)

Mongolia is another Asian area that may have a high prelavence of lactose tolerance, as their diet is based mostly on the milk and meat of goats. This makes perfect sense given the Gobi desert's colder temperatures which would preserve dairy products longer. 
 
I suppose some of the higher altitude regions of northern India have cold enough temps to keep milk longer, and have a correspondingly higher lactose tolernce index, but the lower lying areas may have less tolerance due to higher temps.  
 
Some actual data on the thermoclines of N. India, especially a map like the one for HIV resistance, matched over a map of the local's lactose tolerance, would be work well here.

In the US, shorter and wider king-sized mattresses are commonly sold in the NE called 'East Coast Kings'; while mattresses 4" longer and 4" narrower sell more commonly further west called 'California Kings', or 'Western Kings'. 
 
This is a good indication of average regional height variance, though immigration (especially to CA) is rapidly changing that. 
 
Since NE residents from Boston, NY & Philly generally make more $$ than other Americans, especially the taller US citizens of the upper mid-west, this is a variation on the theme that taller men make more money.

Agnostic, 
 
take a sub-average American guy like myself (5'8), transplant him to a country where the average height would put him at least 1 SD above the mean (say, Vietnam, where males average ~5'3), and see if after a year or so he developed a commanding presence, had higher self-reported confidence, had more success closing deals (or whatever my job would require), etc.  
 
Why do you think Thailand is such a popular global vacation spot? Not that I've been, but I've heard. ;-) 
 
Of course, tall height has disadvantages, like losing 5 years or so of life expectancy for every inch over 6'2". Ouch.

PConroy, 
 
Here's an interesting site - Arjan's Tall Pages - which categorizes male and female height for the USA, Germany, Japan and the Netherlands.  
 
Nice site, but their database seems a little old.  
 
I've heard since the 1970's that the average US male is 5'9", which should have gone down with as much immigration as we've had from lower height populations. Plus aging Baby-Boomers shrink a little. I would be surprized if the average male height in Los Angeles is over 5'6". Sorry, no metric equivalent.

India certainly seems to outcompete China in the more abstract pursuits like programming, software development, computer science and management, to name a few. 
 
China, however, is miles ahead as a low-cost producer of a world of products.

surely once you reach a certain level of IQ other factors determine success 
 
Many to most famous inventors and creative types I've heard of did not attend top universities or provide evidence of IQ's more than 2 deviations past the norm. 
 
Clearly the distinct advantages of high IQ's progressively diminish as scores rise over 125 or so. Beyond that, other factors like people skills, motivation, and innovation (thinking outside the box) play ever larger roles. 
 
but could Microsoft really have done better? (recruiting for creativity) 
 
Tricky skill, that. Pattern recognition tests are a start, though they don't ask for anything innovative. Essay type answers minimaly require creation of an essay, but are open to BS artists. 
 
It may sound silly, but for an engineering firm testing for creativity, perhaps giving applicants a set of Lego's, or similar building toys, and asking them to build something new without plans would be a good start. 
 
Can't remember if I heard about a company actually testing recruits with Lego's, but maybe...

Years ago a story circulated from the USSR about a human-chimp fetus that lasted into the 4th month of pregnancy. 
 
A successful live birth of such a creature would be...um...interesting. 
 
Perhaps as science advances this may happen in our lifetimes.

GNXP's influence is multiplied by the quality of viewership. 
 
Still, I wonder where it ranks compared with, say, Scientific American, Nature, or ESPN.

"There is no central body in Judaism that has the power of excommunication." 
 
True enough, as the below link asserts. The article also confirms Mr. Lieberman's excommunication, or beth din, by the New York Torah Court. Apparently their decisions apply to about 150,000 of the faithful.  
 
http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/hentoff110600.asp 
 
This link gives the details of the Court's objections: 
 
http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewPolitics.asp?Page=%5CPolitics%5Carchive%5C200010%5CPOL20001023i.html 
 
"Lieberman has been misrepresenting and falsifying to the American people the teachings of the Torah against partial birth infanticide, against special privileges and preferential treatment for flaunting homosexuals, and against religious intermarriage of Jews."

"leiberman (Joe) is perceived as being straight up" 
 
Funny that he still has his media 'halo', despite the fact he was excommunicated during the 2000 campaign from Orthodox Judaism for lying about their rejection of abortion. 
 
A Mormon friend once told me that they are required to wear, literally, 'holy underwear', 365 days a year. These undergarments are of a specific, set style, and actually blessed in a temple. Some other rumored details about wearing them even under a bath towel or robe escape me, but apparently this is taken quite seriously. 
 
Exceptions are made for some sports, like swimming.

Forget horses, Lance Armstrong's heart is about 1/3 larger than average. 
 
http://www.active.com/story.cfm?story_id=11857&sidebar=725&category=tdf2005_index

"Even the carjacker-roaster is considered unacceptable. It disfigures." 
 
Not to mention the paint. 
 
The old film 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea showed a submarine with a metal skin that could be electrified for defensive purposes. This seems like a better route. 
 
If someone patents this, you heard it here first.

"humans do need minimal supplements of protein and fats which are easiest to get via meat." 
 
Seems clear to me. 
 
"gorillas are specialized vegetarians...the analogy with humans is weak. certain nuts might substitute for meats." 
 
Weak or otherwise, gorillas are large primates with similar biologies to humans and larger protein needs. If they don't get their protein from animal sources, then they probably get it from plants.  
 
Of course their willingness to eat most any plant they can, including thistles and tree bark, and spend most of their waking lives doing so, probably makes up in volume the quantity of protein needed from their relatively low-quality sources. But hey, I could be mistaken. 
 
Doing this in a tropical rainforest with no real winter is one thing, and doing it in Siberia in January is another. Consuming meat, marrow and dairy products (eating animal foodstuffs produced from cellulose humans can't digest) were very successful adaptations for us. 
 
Pardon me while I leave to 'put meat on the table' by 'making a killing' and 'bringing home the bacon'... ;-)

Gorillas are vegetarians, and seem to get enough protein from mountain rainforests in Rwanda. 
 
Now naming the protein-rich jungle plants they eat I can't do, though I think certain beans and oil seeds fill this bill. 
 
Harvesting any of these in a snowy winter was probably tricky, and best avoided in favor of mammoth hunting. 
 
Go get 'em Ogg...

Rumor has it that Neaderthals had more cranial capacity, and therefore larger brains, than we sapiens- sapiens types do. 
 
This begs questions about determining the organ's processing power by measures beyond volume, like, say, surface area?

A good measure of medical doctors' real market value is what they make, and how they are respected, in other nations with freer supply lines of medical students. 
 
Most foreign MD's make a good living, and are respected, approximatley to the level of engineers. They are not close to double (or more) the salaries of engineers, nor do they inflate their egos with superfluous titles. The idea of calling someone Engineer Smith, Lawyer Singh, or Architect Kowalski shows how silly this has gotten. Personally, I will not see an MD a second time who corrects me on using the doctor title in conversation. 
 
Freeing the supply of MD's, allowing drug imports, and limiting medical malpractice claims (lower insurance bills) should effectively halve the US healthcare bill in a few short years.

Physician supply in America is artificially restricted to create a shortage which artificially boosts doctor wages and prestige. 
 
Simply certify more valid medical schools, then allow the gov't to guarantee as many medical student loans as they do all other disciplines, and the supply of doctors will boom, resulting in lowered salaries for them, and lowered medical costs for the rest. 
 
A side effect here would be to lessen the acrimony about the currently unfair, tribally based, distribution of the scarce resource of med school places by increasing the total size of that pool. Ending quotas would also help. 
 
FYI, as I heard it, the AMA has refused to certify any new US med schools since the early 1970's, despite obvious demand. Med schools' science demands are no harder, and usually easier, than graduate engineering/science schools. Yet while most 4-year campuses have a graduate engineering program, perhaps 1/4 or less have a med school.  
 
Also, Congress decides a total # of med school tuitions to guarantee annually thru loan guarantees, thus limiting the total # of med students. They do this not for law, engineering, MBA programs, or any other field, but only for medical education, and at the behest of the medical lobby. 
 
Stop this racket, and lower medical costs. Artificial market restrictions create artificially higher prices.