Having sexy sons doesn't necessarily mean ugly daughters, if you are not concentrating only on sexually dimorphic traits like size and robustness. For instance, South European men are considered sexy (at least in Finland), but they will have both sexy sons and daughters. Many of their appreciated features (beautiful face, good dancing skills etc.) are more or less independent from their sex. 
 
And by the way Finnish women are not ugly (ask Razib). Finland also has very low HIV rates. 
 
You should correlate these results with alcohol consumption (and when people drink, how much do they drink on one occasion).

Be careful of using the label "developing country". For instance Armenia has probably demographics and history quite similar to some other "East European" countries (which definitely wouldn't call themselves a "developing country").

You should control the mean and distribution of age, income and income by age. I think one of the main factors effecting the attitude might be the perseption of an individual wheather or no it would be beneficial for them. 
 
For instance, the majority of bangladeshi men might be so poor, that they cannot afford another wife. Thus, they calculate that at best, they will loose their wife to someone richer. In coutries, where most of the men believe for one reason or another they would benefit from polygyny, their attitude would be much more positive towards it.

Well, I don't want to be rude but there are a lot of shitty things happening in China. Major example is animals, which include both endangered and non-endangered species, from all taxa. For westerners live-culling of dogs and foxes and treatment of bears is very appalling, but same stuff happens to all sorts of creatures, for instance snakes. My father filmed some live-skinning of snakes in an outside market, it is just beyond belief. So, no, I don't believe Chinese are a particularily empatic people. 
 
No one wants to mention this animal-issue in order to avoid getting stigmatized but I will do it anyway...

"Chinese people (by the way, is it the fathers or the mothers doing the dastardly deeds?) are killing their infant female children" 
 
It is the combined effects of abortions, killings and perhaps most importantly, treatment after birth. In many cases girls are not killed per se, but less money is put into their medication etc.

"When you can no longer take care of yourself, you should consider self deliverance." 
 
That is nonsense. It is easy for someone coming from a country with pension system to make such statements. Chinese elderly people are probably much younger than westerners, so they requre only basic help. They cannot afford to expensive treatments anyway.

http://www.hs.fi/kuva/1135234955796 
 
this graph is in Finnish but anyway... The percentage colours on the left say "percentage of young adults of all adults". So merely a large young adult population seems to be related to violence... Red countries are the ones in which young adult population is over 50 % of the population.

This guy has written something about it: 
 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunnar_Heinsohn 
 
increasing number of young men will make a violent conflict more likely.

Did you erase all my previous comments from this blog, razib? Or what happened, should I start writing as an anonymous? 
 
I think the research on good looks is apparently missing something. I think FA is not the biggest component - you will find even relatively asymmetric models etc.

Well, I have not read any books about the topic. 
 
Hinduism is not converting today, at least, that is my impression. I haven't heard of convert hindus in western countries. There are some convert buddhists and Hare Krishna (which is actually almost the same as being a hindu but the name is different). 
 
I think it was pretty easy to spread Islam to formerly Christian areas however. If people and their leaders were told that "it is not a completely different thing, it is the same but there is now also the biggest and last prophet, you should update your religion", I think the conversion is much easier. The same tactics is used to some extent by modern Catholics, who allow the locals to keep their religious traditions alive in some form. Protestants and muslims, on the other hand, would say to the people: "you have to leave that superstitious crap completely!!! There are no saints and there is only one Book and one God".

"that's really not how conversion generally happened in pre-modern times. you didn't convince with arguments, your converted the ruler who by fiat converted the populace" 
 
Well, the structure of religion is not insignificant either. For instance, hinduism didn't spread in a similar way than islam or christianity did. You born to be a hindu, don't convert. 
 
Islam spred mostly to already civilized, christian/zarahustran lands. (In Egypt only a small fraction of christians still remain, for instance.) On the other hand, the majority in India were never converted. It appears that some religious factors are at work as well. (Also climate had an effect to the ethnic movements because most of arab migrasion was targeted into a relatively climatically similar area: North Africa, Bablylonia etc. Arabs didn't replace people in Anatolia or Persia.)

It is interesting that Finland and parts of the Baltics states stayed pagan for a loooong time... Even the pope got annoyed to Finns for turning their back on Christianity immediately the missionaries had gone. Christian states (Early Sweden and Novgorod) were strong enough, however, to finish the job with force and stabilizing Christian presence. 
 
I think Islam is suited quite well to convert Christians (and pagans as well). After all, it is a more recent religion and can explain Christianity out, whereas Christianity cannot do the same. I have had discussions with muslims and they had surprisingly convincing arguments. 
 
I think the biggest factor is the resources. People will convert, if the religion is coming from a more developed/powerful areas. Christian contries are rich and they have put a lot of effort to missionaries for a long time: the result is not surprising. On the other hand, >=1000 years ago when Europe and surroundings (Christian areas) were weak convertions were going mainly to the other direction (in Iberian peninsula, and later in the Balkans for instance), from Christianity to Islam. And before that whole Southern and Eastern Mediterranean converted to Islam relatively easily.

Well, in Europe preventing obesity is seen as relevant, not height. No one is talking about national height, I haven't heard a single time about it. I wonder if there is a cultural difference how people think of height and obesity and what is seen as bad. I think height does not influence for instance political carisma in Europe much at all (many/most South European top politicians are short), whereas even a relatively slight obesity most certainly will. I say this because I heard that usually the taller of US presidential candidates is selected. Finland had an overweight president a few years back (Ahtisaari) and he was made fun of all the time he was in power because of this. 
 
here is the former "fatso-president" 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Martti_Ahtisaari.jpg

Well, I was looking at wikipedia and there were also some lower estimates for height. 
 
"Americans are shrinking and falling behind Europeans" 
 
And why is this important? Are we going to compare penis sizes next? (It is interesting that apparently french penises are the largerst in Europe, did they undergo a stronger sexual selection at some point?) I understand the concern of dropping height in Argentina where is not very high in the beginning (so the food conditions must be quite poor already). But does it make ANY difference if national average height is 180 cm or 175 cm? In a trench war 180 cm is worse at least... On the other hand a population of average height of 175 cm will produce worse basketball players... :) 
 
I think it is rediculous to make this a social debate; I think the height of Bosnians is not about the diet but about their genes. Eating habits are usually cultural anyway so you cannot force people to eat certain foods.

PhillyGuy: I think your economic data is somewhat strange. Is this purchasing power GDP or what? Also your height measurements. Your mean heights are too high in some cases (you always took the highest estimate). 
 
Anyway, you have a cluster of Nordic contreys which have a relatively similar culture and economic system. They are pretty similar also genetically. You your datapoints are not really independent. 
 
I think you miss the point that economic prosperity in these high levels does not measure the consumed food that well. For instance, even in the USSR producing enough meat for the labourers was a high priority. Even if they were lacking prosperity, people had enough food generally. 
 
No one bothered to comment on measuring the real effects of height in different tasks... It is really strange no one has actually measured these things, or I have not heard about it.

If the "height" genes are so hard to find, perhaps there are some strange multiple mechanisms causing variation. For instance, has any study looked at the genetics of appetite, and the effect of appetite to height? I think a bad appetite is a VERY common phenomenon among kids and teenagers and perhaps it would explain some variation in height, not growth genes per se. 
 
I am still amazed how important obsession height appears to be in the US... Even in youtube people comment on the celeb's height (OMG she is only 5'2''!!!!). 
 
Has anyone made controlled studies about height and several traits: energy consumption, power, running speed, agility, battle ability... (all sorts of traits that might influence fitness)? Now everyone seems to believe that height is useful in most purposes (now I am not talking about possible sexual selection), but is there some proof about this? I heard that the Unokai (warriors who have killed an opponent) among Yanomamo are on average, average height. I also heard about a quite old ergonomics study about the most succesfull loggers/lumberjacks (or how do you call the guys who are running the trees down the rivers). Their working speed was correlated, not with body height or mass but with the circumference of their elbows and knees. This correlation was found probably because these circumferences were giving a rough image of total robustness of the body. (I bet there would be a lot of old ergonomics body measurement data and correlations between different tasks.) 
 
I discussed about this with a friend and he agreed that if we control for the size (that is, fat free body mass), taller people might even have a disadvantage in a battle. Perhaps height is an energy efficient way to exaggerate size - after all 6'7'' are quite rarely big and robust, they often tend to be skinny guys with longer legs. If you grow longer legs, you look bigger, but you won't consume that much more energy. If you would build muscle mass to look as big, this would be energetically very costly.

"Much of the "stupidity" of rednecks is in fact the stupidity of urban elites." 
 
Well, I don't know if you are using some strange sarcasm here but I think the people that are chasing, trapping or shooting endangered animals are idiots.

"Immu, don't you think it's a little silly how you've internalized the American coastal cultural elite's idea of stereotypical rednecks? I assume you've never visited South Dakota and never plan to." 
 
Well, we are discussing in a forum of coastal cultural elite (+some others). :) If we use the word 'redneck' it should refer to the intuition people have about the word... 
 
I have never been to South Dakota; it is not impossible that I will visit there if I would make a road trip in the future around that area. Most likely I would not fly just there as a tourist... I have some rough intuition about the state, though, because my very good friend spent an exchange year during high-scool. Since then he has been visiting his friends and 'family' there. 
 
I am not saying being a religious conservative is a bad thing; I know the people my friend stayed with were really warm and nice people. But still, in many respects, the stereotypes were fitting quite well... My friend's best friend there, for instance, married at the age of 19 or 20 with his first girlfriend. (And yes, we have that in Finland, but it is not very common at least...) 
 
I bet these stereotype examples of rednecks you gave (from Finland) where not your close friends...? 
 
I don't really understand this SMS 'scandal' at all, they where all adults, nothing illegal happened, he is not even married.

Levi: I know US is very big. 
 
On the other hand the distances for basic trips from Finland are not that small either. Using google maps (it is actually estimating the distance much too long because it's using land routes). 
 
Basic city trips: 
 
Helsinki-Barcelona: 3267 km 
Helsinki-Paris: 2358 km 
Helsinki-Rome: 3031 km 
Helsinki-London: 2373 km 
 
These are some basic destinations for city tourism and Inter-Railing which almost everyone visits sooner or later. Eastern Europe and Berlin are quite hip now as well. 
 
Note that beach trips to Greece, Turkey and especially Canary Islands are a bit longer. 
 
Inside Finland: 
Helsinki-Ivalo (destination in Lapland) 1117 km. 
 
I typed in 
South Dakota-New York: 2,524 km 
South Dakota-Miami: 3,280 km 
South Dakota-Los Angeles: 2,459 km 
 
So actually not that different.

"Besides, you're still qualifying, trying to argue that Finns really are cool." 
 
Well, I don't know what the options are here. Geek vs. redneck or 'cool' vs. redneck or 'cultural' vs. redneck. 
 
I am not arguing what Finns are, but what they aren't. If you call them traditional rednecks, it will be missleading. 
 
"You can differentiate yourself from desert rednecks by owning a boat, but it's not going to help you with Finnish or New Zealand rednecks." 
 
And this is exactly what I was doing. When you use the word 'redneck' people don't think about yachties. So: the word may not be the best to describe Finns. 
 
"So no, we do not score above South Dakota because of that." 
 
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.) There are a lot of young Finns who travel to Tibet, to Burma, to Papua or Bolivia. Maybe I am not representative, but most of my friends have been all around the world, including the Americas, East Asia, Africa, Siberia, Australia etc. If I ask from my friend who has same age collage educated friends in South Dakota about their travelling, he will probably answer that some of them have been to New York. None of them have been to Europe, for instance.

jaakkeli, your writing was interesting and probably partially true. 
 
However, I guess I have a slightly different definition of what constitutes as a redneck. I think many Finns are proud they are not trying to appear 'cultural' but still don't want to appear 'dumb'. You cannot compare them to religious rednecks of Bible Belt in the US. 
 
Does anyone know if there are any travel statistics: I have an impression that Finns travel a lot and almost everywhere you go (except Dagestan) there has always been someone from Finland. You cannot say the same from traditionally 'redneck' places (compare with travelling people from South Dakota, for instance). Even my parents' generation did a lot of interrailing etc. in the 70s so it is not completely new phenomenon either. 
 
One measurement which might be 'anti-redneck'-behaviour is sailing/yachting. In the 90s Finland was second (New Zeeland was first) in yachts/capita. Most of them are used in the nearby waters, but always some percentage will go to longer cruises. You will see as many Finnish boats (just roughly) in the Atlantic Ocean as boats from some much bigger European country, say Italy.

Sorry for my poor spelling again; 
 
"So: there are THAT many rednecks because not too many people live in the countryside." 
 
I was meaning "there are not that many rednecks". 
 
Of course what and how you drink is one good definition, but at least most Finnish "rednecks" can place even many African countries on the world map, whereas many supposedly 'cultured' wine-drinking French cannot even place Finland on the European map... :) I mean there are even people in France who don't know Finland is in Europe. 
 
For instance many/most of my friends in Helsinki (if you don't count the ones which have moved in from somewhere else) don't have a driver's licence and have never touched a gun (if you don't count military service). Is this geek or redneck...?

I just read the comments about Finnish rednecks. 
 
I think you have to count the 'scale', not only say there are rednecks outside bigger 'cities'. Finnish population has been concentrating to big centres for a long time now: over one fift of the population already live in the capital Helsinki area and almost 40 % if you count the real effect area of Helsinki. 
 
So: there are THAT many rednecks because not too many people live in the countryside. 
 
I have been living in German speaking countries and can say: Finnish people are NOT rednecks. It depends what you look at: if you think about culinary habits and consumtion of wine, then Finns are definately rednecks. If you, on the other hand ask general knowledge what people know about stuff in the world, history, etc, I think Finns will be quite high in that.

"Prior to his candidacy and election, he was one of the captains on Uutisvuoto, the weekly Finnish version of the popular news panel show "Have I Got News For You"" 
 
If I remember correctly, it is not only a "Finnish version"... The program FORMAT itself is Finnish... :)

Some MPs also noted that common vacation is the most dangerous time for a relationship. So there should be empirical evidence that the effects of this vacation would positive.