Israel isn't poor. Its per-capita GDP is on par with those of Taiwan, New Zealand, and South Korea, none of which is considered a poor country in the global scheme of things.

I would think that a great deal of that is just bureaucracy behaving normally. Once someone has mastered the art of filling in the application and providing the results in the proper format his subsequent chances for success are magnified. 
 
The same thing applies to government contracting (which I have done). You see the same players over and over, only in this case the players are aging individuals.

I made the anonymous comment about the Raup book above. I did not mean it to be anon. Something must have happened to the cookie that puts my name on the header and I did not notice that it was not there. Sorry 
 
As regards the brouhaha over CRU, there was a study of the "hockey stick" that members of Congress requested a few years ago. Their methods were pretty well debunked at that time but there was no press coverage so few people have read their report. 
 
It is by imminent statisticians and somewhat deep for me (BS, engineering), but I imagine many of you will find it quite easily readable. 
 
It is very interesting and worth a read if you are at all interested in the debate over Global Warming. 
 
http://www.uoguelph.ca/~rmckitri/research/WegmanReport.pdf

I doubt that medicine except for antibiotics has lengthened life expectancy much. It is public health measures like clean water and sewers that have had the most benefit.

"didn't everyone assume that debt-driven consumption would eventually have to abate?" 
 
LARGE numbers of Americans not only do not understand that obvious fact, but are quite offended by the assertion. 
 
They think that someone did something wrong to bring the spiral to a halt and have no idea that something was wrong with setting the whole thing in motion to begin with. 
 
And I'm talking about many people who have "college degrees".

"There appears to be somewhat of a drawback, though: doing so makes you more miserable over the long term." 
 
I think the cause and effect may be reversed. I person who worries about the state of the world may well be more likely to postpone gratification to prepare himself for future storms. "Eat drink and be merry" is not so much a philosophy derived from situation as from personality.

I see two big problems that can be ameliorated: 
 
1. The corruption of the educational system trying to teach things to kids who do not have the intelligence to grasp them while simultaneously dragging the intelligent students down. Like Cliff Claven's buffalo, the class can only go as fast as the slowest student. 
 
2. The corruption of the political system that comes from blaming low IQs on "oppression", and the vast welfare system that has been built up on the lie that society is to blame for the lack of success of unintelligent people (this is not just a racial issue, the UK is doing quite well, thank you, at creating a white underclass).  
 
I'm all for charity and helping along folks who need it. I also understand that blaming the victim does happen. But we are about to ride this horse into the dirt. Western civilization really could collapse under the burden of imaginary "sins" (those who are cheered by that prospect should be careful what they wish for).

Increasing population and diversity.

Thanks for the data and analysis. Stuff like this is why I check out GNXP every day.

The makeup of the Episcopal Church has changed dramatically in the last few decades. Where it was once dominated by older upper/upper middle class families with fairly long colonial era pedigrees there is now a significant mix of people who have been attracted by the less rigid doctrinal stance. As a result the Church has become much more liberal politically. Many of the more conservative old-line Episcopalians have allied themselves with the Anglican Church.

This is one of those studies that only proves what everyone with any sense knew to be true anyway.

For a little trivia, the anomalous area around Columbus, Georgia, is probably related to the fact that RC Cola (a brand many of you may not know) was based there.

Thursday--I agree that Joyce, Woolf, and later, Nabakov and others presaged the current situation. But, as you note, they were great writers (though I sometimes have doubts about Woolf). Geniuses can pull these things off without the arid, disconnected quality that seems to characterize most current literary works. 
 
Nonetheless, to me the distinguishing feature of the current literary ecosystem is the utter dominance of writers loved by academic critics and unread by the intelligent reading public. That wasn't true in the past, even the fairly recent past of the mid-twentieth century, when the best writers were also widely read and enjoyed by serious readers. 
 
Having said this, there's obviously still some very good, even critically-acclaimed, stuff being written today. But you have to work hard to find it, and there's so much good older stuff and great current nonfiction that I seldom have the energy or interest to look deeply at contemporary authors.  
 
I'm waiting for Michael Blowhard to chime in. :)

Razib--yours is an accurate take, in my opinion, on the current literary scene and what drives it, with one exception--the academization of writing is also responsible for much of the modern wasteland.  
 
I rarely read any fiction written after 1950--the contemporary literary field has been usurped by people trained in writing workshops. The only current stuff I enjoy is genre fiction--mysteries, SF, and military fiction.  
 
I'm nowhere near Asperger's, and my favorite "serious" author is Jane Austen. Style and writing skill matter a lot to me, so I find much genre fiction simply unreadable--even when there's a good plot or interesting ideas. 
 
For a really tasty take on what's wrong with modern fiction--especially its fixation on language at the expense of both plot and character, see the classic essay A Reader's Manifesto.

Re: topless Muslim women. 
 
I recall an article in Nat Geo many years back that showed photos of topless Muslim women wearing facial covering and the text commented that these women would be ashamed to be seen without the covering. 
 
Whatever.

BTW, I'll vote for Romney, but I have no great passion for him, just the least negatives. He seems to have changed his rhetoric/positions to suit the political needs. I'd rather have a cynical pol than an idealistic one, they do less damage.

If I can be forgiven an OT, Hrundi, I love your handle. "The Party" was a hoot. I loved the scene where "Hrundi"/Sellers put his foot on the detonator to tie his shoe. One of my all time favorites.

Here's an interesting WaPo article that's not exactly on topic but periphreal and related to other discussions that have been on the subject here. 
 
"In India's huge marketplace, fair skin sells-  
White faces, mostly from Eastern Europe, dominate advertising" 
 
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22865130/ 
 
snip ***** 
 
"Indians have a longing for that pure, beautiful white skin. It is too deep-rooted in our psyche," said Enakshi Chakraborty, who heads Eskimo India, a modeling agency that brings East European models here. "Advertisers for international as well as Indian brands call me and say, 'We are looking for a gori [Hindi for white] model with dark hair.' Some ask, 'Do you have white girls who are Indian-looking?' They want white girls who suit the Indian palate." 
 
Indians' color fixation is also evident in classified newspaper ads and on Web sites that help arrange marriages. The descriptive terms used for skin color run the gamut: "very fair," "fair," "wheat-ish," "wheat-ish-medium," "wheat-ish-dark," "dark" and "very dark."

It seems likely to me that the selection pressure of skin cancer is not as strong as the pressure of vitamin D deficiency. Also, the timing and location of the spread into the Americas means that the people who arrived wore clothing probably to a greater extent than those who spread to India, Australia, and Micronesia, besides being less distant genetically from African ancestors. 
 
Do we know anything about the skin cancer rates of Native Americans? Could there be another protective mechanism at work?

RE: uu; "I wonder how African Americans or just Africans in general are suppose to do with this kind of infomation or even how to take or interpret it? Would people (read: non-black) expect them to reject or ignore the possibility that they may not be as smart as white people? Or would they expect them to be upset or even too ignorant to understand whatever implications could come from it." 
 
I think the point is that scientists really don't have a lot of expectations, they're just going where the evidence leads. It's the people who say this should not be discussed who seem to have expectations.