No clue about how pervasive my experiences are, but from the semi-rural area where I attended high school, AP tests are increasing but are hardly being shoveled on unqualified students. When I entered high school (it would've been 1999), there were 5 AP classes (Calc AB, Stat, Biology and English Lit, with American history being taught through a distance learning setup with the state's academic magnet school). The prereq classes were structured such that you were really only able to take the AP classes your senior year with Calc and Stat usually being taught at the same time so taking both was out. By the time I graduated high school, they added a few more classes but all were distance learning and taught by less able teachers than the AP American history class. While in theory, there were 7 AP classes (Calc AB, Stat, Biology, English Lit, American History, Physics B, and Psychology), again the guidance counselors either were inflexible enough or the prereqs were structured so that taking more than 4 AP classes was unusual. 
 
If these areas act in a slightly more reasonable manner, then there seems to be plenty of AP test takers from the high achieving groups that will be taking more AP tests than they have in the past.

JH: By the way, the earliest use of "phreak" that I can find in LexisNexis is January 17, 1978 (an untitled AP story by Jane See White).

That makes sense, as it's the same phenomenon with language. 
 
That distance from Africa is the sole determinant of language diversity, while climate (and geography) plays no role? And the diversity of languages in Pre-Columbian California and Papua New Guinea fits in well with this claim (along with the Caucasus, Amazonia, etc)? I may be dull, but that doesn't make much sense to use one variable when many seem to be at play.

When the Europeans arrived in North America and Australia they perceived the land to be "empty." Now, obviously there were peoples settled in these territories, but they're average density was simply far lower than was typical in Europe. Why? Because these peoples did not have the cultural toolkit to extract as many calories per unit out of land.True, but also keep in mind by the time many European settlers reached areas, diseases had already ravaged the native population.

More (slightly off-topic) facts: 
Recent VP candidate alma mater's have been: 
2008: Joe Biden (University of Delaware and Syracuse University College of Law) vs. Sarah Palin (University of Idaho) 
2004: John Edwards (North Carolina State University and UNC-Chapel Hill) vs. Dick Cheney (University of Wyoming) 
2000: Joe Lieberman (Yale) vs. Dick Cheney (University of Wyoming) 
1996: Al Gore (Harvard and Vanderbilt) vs. Jack Kemp (Occidental College) 
1992: Al Gore (Harvard and Vanderbilt) vs. Dan Quayle (Indiana University School of Law - Indianapolis and DePauw University) 
1988: Lloyd Bentsen (none) vs. Dan Quayle (Indiana University School of Law - Indianapolis and DePauw University) 
1984: Geraldine Ferraro (Marymount Manhattan College and Fordham University School of Law) vs. George H. W. Bush (Yale) 
1980: Walter Mondale (Macalester College and University of Minnesota) vs. George H. W. Bush (Yale) 
1976: Walter Mondale (Macalester College and University of Minnesota) vs. Bob Dole (Washburn University) 
1972: Sargent Shriver (Yale University (BA & JD)) vs. Spiro Agnew (Johns Hopkins and University of Baltimore School of Law) 
1968: Edmund Muskie (Bates College and Cornell University) vs. Spiro Agnew (Johns Hopkins and University of Baltimore School of Law) 
1964: Hubert Humphrey (University of Minnesota, Drew College of Pharmacy and Louisiana State University) vs. William E. Miller (University of Notre Dame and Albany Law School) 
1960: Lyndon B. Johnson (Southwest Texas State Teachers' College) vs. Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. (Harvard) 
 
Interesting how the Republicans have not come from particularly distinguished universities compared to the Democrats.

The Gettier problems/cases.

agnostic: No family history so you can safely rule out Finns?

John Emerson: Even Frank Sinatra often had to pay for it, though. 
 
Did he pay because he didn't have other options or did he pay because he wanted them to go away?

The citation info for the study Sebastian Flyte cited is: RD Clark, "Gender differences in receptivity to sexual offers," Journal of Psychology and Human Sexuality, Vol 2, Iss 2, p.35-55. 
 
The raw data can be had here. 2 studies, N=9 in each. Tiny studies from a population that isn't likely to be generalizable so be careful extrapolating.

I too once had sympathies for the view all of culture was getting more and more degenerate, but one day I read a passage by Nietzsche where he claimed that the music of his era were debased and needed to return to the stylings of the previous era. Now I question those sorts of thoughts. 
 
There certain seems to be an increase in anxiety over the future, but much of the data that I have for that is circumstantial (increased emphasis on children's education a la baby Einstein, for instance).

The comments (well, those which were moderated highly at least) over at Slashdot mostly consisted of objections based on not needing to remember unimportant facts. I partially sympathize with this view but do have some reservations and I think you'll sympathize with this as well. 
 
To form a coherent picture of any complex situation, you need to pull knowledge from a diverse number of fields/sources. So to be able to seriously consider say the history of a certain ethnic group or a certain geographic region you need history (both economic and social), religious studies, linguistics, climatology, etc. But with the advent of the type of thinking this article attributes to Google, it may not be clear whether a piece of knowledge is meaningful or not either now or later in your studies/thoughts.

Audacious Epigone: What program are using for that graphic?Wikipedia.

Hrundi V. Bhakshi: Nothing beats the Marko Jaric and Adriana Lima pairing.

John Emerson: One exception to that trend is the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy which is quite good but somewhat spotty in what topics have articles.

Re: Mormons 
 
I saw somewhere that Robert Putnam (Harvard, of Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community fame) and David Campbell (Notre Dame) are writing a book that deals with Mormonism, their high SES, etc, etc. So keep an eye out for it. If my note is correct, it is supposed to be titled American Grace.

Fuzzy: Geoffrey Miller (an evolutionary psychologist) in The Mating Mind: How Sexual Choice Shaped the Evolution of Human Nature claims that the clitoris requires so much stimulation because this is a mechanism of female choice. So it requires the mate to be somewhat athletic (so as not to tire), somewhat interested in pleasuring the female, and intelligent enough to figure out how to please the female. He justifies this by claiming each the penis and the clitoris are outcomes of Fisher-esque runaway sexual selection, a highly developed male trait designed to stimulate a highly discerning female trait. The particular quote I like is "As a mechanism for female choice, we should not expect female clitoral orgasm to respond to every male copulation attempt, however inept, lazy, inattentive, brief, and selfish" (239). 
 
But then again, this is an evolutionary psychologist saying this.

iamaatta: I am not talking about Estonia and Sweden. What I am saying that Finnish population in general tend to travel +1000 km trips more often than say, South Dakotans. (I have no stats to back this, of course.) 
 
1000km is roughly 621 miles. Here's where that'll get you from the middle of South Dakota (this is using Google Maps, so it's a very rough guide): 
Minneapolis, Minnesota (517mi); Omaha, Nebraska (424mi); Denver, Colorado (549mi); Kansas City, Missori (609mi). 
 
Here's what 2000km (1242mi) will get you: 
Chicago, Illinois (846mi); Detroit, Michigan (1100mi); Nashville, Tennessee (1162mi); Memphis, Tennessee (1132mi); Dallas, Texas (1058mi); Austin, Texas (1247mi); Cincinnati, Ohio (1120mi); Columbus, Ohio (1175mi); Cleveland, Ohio (1156mi); Salt Lake City, Utah (929mi). 
 
Americans have their problems especially when it comes to being cultured, but the US is fucking big. You can get from Helsinki to Stockholm and cover less distance it took my family to drive to the mountains of our state (although this is unusual since North Carolina is a particularly wide state). I do suspect you are underestimating how much families travel in the US, but it probably is less than your claims about the average Finns.

UK-Econ: Or then they haven't decided yet... 
 
It claims "Religious unaffiliated" is 5.8% of the 16.1% composite unaffiliated. 
 
Another interesting shift is the 1.5% of the population raised as nondenominational Protestant has resulted in 4.5% who currently report as such, along with the 'Nothing in particular' group's shift from 6.6% to 12.1%. 
 
Also razib, how does your comment about Buddhism being more amenable (than Islam) to American's Christian sensibilities mesh with the table in Chapter 2 on page 6 of the pdf: 40% of Muslims came from outside the Muslim religion. 
 
True, the Buddhist figure is 73%, so comparably Buddhism may be more amenable. But Islam's 40% figure isn't remotely close to the 10% Hindu figure, the 11% Catholic figure, the 15% Jewish figure. Maybe more exposure to Islam (and greater missionary spirit) can explain the conversion rate, but  
 
Another note, I wonder how many of the 24% of people who raised Protestant but later converted to Islam are like these people.

You don't happen to have any of the earlier History of Hip Hop podcasts do you? They only go back to "History of Hip-Hop Vol. 11: 1989" on their page. Thanks for the links though!

albatross: The character or the editor?