I don't suppose Godless Capitalist will be returning to blog here at any point...?

Well growing up in the inner city cost me 380 points on my SAT. How do I know this? When I took my GRE it increased over two standard deviations. And of course with low SAT scores my choice was limited. Vouchers for all kids in America.

One thing I've noticed, as a gay man who knows a lot of other gays, is that most of the gay men I know who have an ADD diagnosis have the inattentive (i.e. the non-hyperactive) variety, whereas a lot of lesbians with an ADD diagnosis the hyperactive variety (i.e ADHD, not ADD). It's interesting because in the general population men are much more like to be diagnosed with ADHD, and woman with ADD.

Has anyone come up with a good explanation as to why Ashkenazim exhibit higher rates of blondism than their putative source populations (southern Europeans and Middle Easterners)? I know this has been discussed on this blog before, but I can't seem to find the discussion, other than a mention of a study excerpted by Dienekes suggesting that blond Jews had higher rates of survival at concentration camps. Is it possible that living in a central/northern European climate for as long as they did also selected for fairness?

What are the prospects for estimating admixture in populations in regions of the world where archaic fossils would not be well preserved, or preserved at all (e.g. the tropics...)? Are there ways to ferret out evidence of admixture without having the genome of an archaic population to refer to?

Re: the idea that global communication might prevent future religious schisms, I think it is also possible that a religon whose adherents purposely remove themselves from modernity and codify natalism into their creed might eventually become a significant demographic force. Granted it is more difficult to grow a religion through natural increase than through natural increase plus prosteltyzing but it can be done. Hasidic Jews and certain anabaptist groups are doing it, though of course these groups splintered from the mainstream a long time ago and wouldn't themselves rebut razib's point even if they were to continue their rapid growth. 
 
My apologies if someone has already made this point; Internet isn't Llowing me to see all the comments for some reason. :(

Imposter John, 
 
According to wikipedia, there 50 million German Americans and 80 million Germans.

More Spaniards in Argentina than Spain too, if you don't mind classifying half-Spanish, half-Italian (and part Amerindian) persons as "Spanish." :-)

GB, 
 
As the child of a single mom - Dad's fault, not her's - I'm sympathetic to your point. But many gay families work out arrangements that ensure the children have both mothers and fathers. For example, my ex-bf had a kid with his lesbian best friend; they were both very active parents and the kid was happy as could be. As for me, I plan to find an egg donor/surrogate who will be involved in my kids' lives.

ColdEquation, 
 
I plan to use an egg donor/surrogate. Currently I am wrestling with the question of whether to go for a highly intelligent Italian-American egg donor or a highly intelligent Scandinavian-American egg donor. It would be nice to have tall, blonde chidren - I have recessive blonde genes - but is blondism worth risking the loss of that warmth native to the Italian character? What if I want to hug my kids and they can't relate?  
 
Maciano, 
 
Thanks! I stopped blogging because I started law school.

I firmly believe that people of above average intelligence have a moral responsibility to have 3 or more children: I'm gay and I plan on four. With today's technology, homosexuality is no bar to reproductive success!!!

It makes perfect sense to me, since testosterone increases mood, energy and motivation in men. 
 
Women respond the same, and it shows in their behavior. 
 
Thanks for the interesting article!

Ok, with the help of the Israeli Social Survey, I've calculated mean number of children for people by income group for all Israelis (Arabs, Jews, and others). Unfortunately, the website's options don't let you break it down by precise quintiles, but you get the idea. 
 
Mean number of children for... 
 
All income groups:..............3.017 
up to 2500:....................... 3.346 
2501 - 4000:......................3.229 
4001 - 5000:..................... 3.18 
5001 - 6500:..................... 3.269 
6501 - 8000:..................... 2.96 
8001 - 10000:................... 2.883 
10,001 - 13,000:............... 2.761 
13,001 - 17,000:............... 2.725 
17,001 - 24,000:............... 2.648 
24,000+ :......................... 2.981 
 
So the general trend is consistent with what we see in other developed countries. Looking just at the "Jews and Others" category: 
 
Mean number of children for... 
 
All income groups:..............2.826 
up to 2500:....................... 2.9 
2501 - 4000:......................2.915 
4001 - 5000:..................... 2.812 
5001 - 6500:..................... 3.013 
6501 - 8000:..................... 2.789 
8001 - 10000:................... 2.722 
10,001 - 13,000:............... 2.696 
13,001 - 17,000:............... 2.693 
17,001 - 24,000:............... 2.618 
24,000+ :......................... 2.927 
 
Interestingly, both the very poorest and richest Jews in Israel have slightly more children than average.

The interesting thing about Israel is that it may be or may soon become like many third world countires where the typical correlation between SES and innate cognitive potential does not apply. Not because the natural cognitive sorting that modernization causes hasn't happened yet, as would be the case in many third-world countries, but because large numbers of highly fertile Ashkenazi (i.e. smart) Jews choose to live in poverty for religious reasons.  
 
We tend to associate religion with stupidity (well, many of us do - just being honest here), but certain religious groups - most notably the Haredi and the Amish - are made up of relatively intelligent people, and actively negotiate their interactions with mainstream society in ways that seem to be conducive to long-term growth. In a couple hundred years, they may serve as islands of light in a gradually darknening cognitive landscape.

Any word on how representative these samples are? I'm scratching my head at the Ethiopian figures. Ethiopia has one of the highest tfrs in the world, but their numbers here are comparable across the board to those of Germany, which has one of the lowest...

David, 
 
Wouldn't "children who have undergone a specified amount of modern education" be precisely the ones we should be testing in Africa if we want to get a handle on African IQ?  
 
Anyway, their inclusion criteria were: 
 
1) Norms: "For our preferred estimate of mean IQ, we used only test scores for which western standardized IQ norms were available." 
 
2) Standardized test administration of entire IQ test: "The test should have been administered in accordance with the guidelines in the test manual... In addition, we only used test scores of IQ tests that were administered in their entirety." 
 
3) No reported problems during testing: "Test administration should not have been described as problematic by the original authors." 
 
4) No measurement bias: "We did not include in our estimate of average IQ of Africans data from tests that were found or expected (by the original authors) to be biased with respect to Africans." 
 
5) Normal samples: "We excluded from our preferred estimate of average IQ of Africans' data from unhealthy or special populations. For instance, we excluded the WISC-R scores from a sample of deaf children from Nigerian (Alade, 1992) and we excluded samples of test takers that were specifically sampled because of their poor health." 
 
Nothing there about modern education that I can see. But their exclusion of unhealthy children may help explain why blacks in Africa, in this analysis, seem to average fairly close to blacks in the United States. (Presumably, tests on severely malnourished children were not included...)

I'm surprised at the disparity between Ethiopians and Eritreans, but then it seems the latter's score is based on only one study. I would have expected Ethiopians to score higher, probably because all the Ethiopians I know here in DC are fairly bright. But selective migration might account for that.

African-Americans come overwhelmingly from Western Africa, right? Might be interesting to see what nations are included in this analysis, and where Western Africans score relative to their cousins in Ethiopia and Kenya, for example.  
 
Oh, if only I had $31! Damn my budget.

In the genomic era, with personal sequencing around the corner, is the study of IQ and race -- really that interesting?  
 
Well, yes, in that it can help us to better understand the world as a whole.  
 
Look at it this way. An understanding of an individual's genome may certainly help explain why he or she succeeds or fails, say, economically in life relative to others, but of course it won't tell you anything about why the racial or ethnic group that person belongs to succeeds or fails economically relative to other groups. Similarly, understanding the differences in mean levels of intelligence between racial and ethnic groups may help explain why, collectively, some groups succeed or fail economically relative to other groups, without telling us anything about why an individual member of any racial or ethnic group succeeds or fails relative to other individuals.  
 
Both the study of personal genetics and race and IQ are interesting because both provide one with a better understanding of the world.

Regarding the use of the word "gay" in the post and the objection another has taken to its use-- 
 
It was a particular group of people who decided to take the standard English adjective gay and apply a new meaning to it (in the early 70s, I believe) using it as both a noun and an adjective.  
 
BL,  
 
A pedantic point, perhaps, but I think gays started using the word "gay" to describe themselves in the 1920s.  
 
During this time, "homosexual balls" in urban centers like New York and Chicago were actually fairly popular, and as a result, public homosexuality became associated with festivity in some circles. Homosexual men traveling to urban centers for business or other reasons who wanted to meet other homosexual men would ask men that they met through friends or colleagues and whom they suspected might be homosexual if there was anything gay to do in the city, with a slight emphasis on the word "gay." Heterosexual men of course just thought they were looking for some fun, but other homoosexual men would catch the reference. 
 
That's pretty much the only thing I learned in four years as an English major in college, so it is with pride that I pass this knowledge on to you.