I don’t read the Huffington Post that often, but I did notice this article, and it irritated me. Aside from the obvious political agenda (minimizing the connection between heredity and IQ is always popular!), it seems very misleading to make a blanket assertion that heritability can vary between 0.00 and 1.00. My blue eyes were 100% determined by my genes, and short of gouging my eyes out at birth nothing in the environment was going to change that. I’m sure there are plenty of other traits like this, as well as traits where heritability can be pushed down from 1.00, but never anywhere close to 0.00.

There has for a long time been a suspicion that Australoids had erectus admixture. How long? I remember reading many years ago -- maybe even 30 or 40 -- that if paleontologists weren't careful about the criteria they used to define Homo Erectus, their definitions would sometimes end up including the Australian Aborigines. (Well, the Abos certainly do have a different look to them, don't they?)

Given that we are all looking at your sample spectrum on an RGB screen, is it really possible for anyone to see anything beyond the usual set of trichromat colors? Don't you need an actual physical fourth color for that -- something like an RGBU screen? Also, I remember reading in some science magazine that the vertebrates we evolved from did originally have 4 opsins, that mammals lost two of them (probably because they were nocternal), and that primates gained back one. However fish, birds, and reptiles never lost the original 4, so tetrachromatic color vision is common in those groups. (This is just from memory -- I couldn't find the article).

kjmtchl: when I was very young I learned that there were three primary colors, and I wondered "why three? Why not some other number?". Much later I learned it was because we have three types of color receptors in our eyes, so that three different frequencies of light is all it takes to stimulate all possible responses. In contrast our ears can distinguish thousands of frequencies, which is why a speaker that could only produce three frequencies would be totally useless. An RGB screen may be able to generate what appears to our eyes to be thousands of distinct shades, but each of those shades is actually just some combination of the same three color frequencies (R, G, & B). You can make chords on a piano with four tones that you simply cannot reproduce using three, and in the same fashion you can make tetrachromatic colors with four distinct frequencies of light that cannot be reproduced with three frequencies. For this reason I'm pretty sure that a true representation of tetrachromatic colors on a computer screen would require four distinct colors (RGBU being only one possibility).

What no one seems to want to point out is that, while these studies do suggest a strong genetic component to homosexuality, they also argue for an equally strong environmental component -- about 50/50 actually. If you are trying to think of homosexuality as entirely genetic, how do you explain that in so many cases where one twin was gay the other was straight? I don't believe many people consciously choose to be gay (although I think a few actually do), but I do believe that many gay people might have ended up straight if it had not been for some influence early in life -- perhaps an improper encounter, or perhaps they just saw something that intrigued them and turned them in a certain direction. (Children are allowed to see so little, but they are very interested, so what little they do see can have a big impact). Whatever the actual mechanics, a 50 percent environmental influence is certainly big enough to worry about!!!

Non-shared experiences can make me differ from my twin but shared ones cannot make us more similar? I don't see the problem here. If you have a monozygotic twin then your genes would be identical. If you also had all the same experiences (including pre-natal) then you would be completely identical people. No problem so far? Now suppose your genes are still identical, but some of your experiences are not identical. The result is that you are no longer identical people. And it is your non-shared experiences that have made you different! Your remaining shared experiences are still there in the mix, but the answer to the question "why are we different?" is the non-shared experiences. To me this looks like a perfectly good answer to the question.

Off topic, but that set of papers in Current Biology (open access!) looks extremely interesting! For example, the paper on Europe seems to argue against the idea -- which has been coming up a lot recently -- that the original hunter/gatherer population of Europe was mostly replaced by Neolithic farmers from the Middle East. I don't really have the time or the background to read all the papers carefully, so I'm looking forward to hearing from those who do.

So are we going to find out the "various reasons" at some point?

One must also remember that the article mentioned that "poor ethnic-minority youngsters tend to be better-educated than whites in the same social group," and thus was only concerned with the GCSE scores of poor white students, whereas the ranking above included all white students, including those from the upper and middle classes.

I find the above statement very believable: most non-white people in Britain are recent immigrants, and thus automatically selected for people with ambition, for themselves and their children. In my own country, I know that not only does the act of immigration self-selecting, but the government of Canada also has such high requirements for immigration that most immigrants are more highly educated than the average Canadian.

I would be interested in knowing more about ethnicity, class and academic achievement in Britain, Canada or the US, if anyone has links to share.

I do not really understand claims that "white" ideals are taking over the world. Very few beauties are pictured with such very European features as ill-defined, even bulbous noses (much more common than straight) or heavily lidded, downturned eyes. Instead, all around I see beauties with high cheekbones, and eyes that are tilted up, whether almond shaped or not, features much more common among those of African or Asian descent. (I have to say that West Africans have the most beautiful eyes I have ever seen, almond-shaped, upturned, large and luminous).

In fact, those I have seen who most match the suposedly white Western standards of beauty are those who are of a mixed heritage - perhaps a wisdom in that? In mixing we come out with the best. :)

PS - The historian in me must caution one little detail of duende's otherwise very interesting essay: When looking at a work of art, such as the Meiji print, conventions of art may not reflect the actual standards of (living) beauty. It helps to corroborate with other evidence (if you are lucky, someone writes "What people find beautiful is...")

There has been much said on this thread about feminism, feminists, femininity and masculinity that I think may be confused by different definitions. The word feminism can be used to describe a formal theoretical system, (one I am aware of, though not versed in), yet it can also be used to simply describe the belief that women are as capable and as valuable as men and that they should not be treated unfairly based on the fact that they have ovaries. One can completely agree with the latter (perhaps essential?) belief, while having strong arguments with the theoretical system, or other ideas that are often all bundled under the rubric of feminism.

That said, I am most intrigued by what has been written here about courtship and marriage. A few centuries ago, there was an image often used concerning marriage that I've always found very beautiful: the description of a wife as a "helpmeet," or a helpmate. It meant more than simply the function of a housewife, though the woman's role was often the more than full time and back-breaking job of keeping a house functioning at a time when you not only baked your own bread, but also brewed your own beer. But there was also the sense that a wife was a life partner, and that each half of the couple was very important to the functioning of the family and household.

The biggest change is that now we can think of the husband as just as much a partner and helpmeet to his wife, and that the specific functions they have in a family should be not directed entirely by their biological sex but also by their personal inclinations. Does biological sex matter? Of course it does. No matter how much a man loves his children, it is still the mother whose breasts leak. But should it stop a woman from having a career? No. I think the main purpose of the women's rights movement (the current mainstream, if not the fringes) is not to try to turn women into men (unless they want to be, in which case power to them), but to allow women to be mothers, and also do what they like with their lives. The biggest problem now is that women have won the rights to have careers, but parents, both and female, need to win the rights to be parents. We all need more time off, more freedom from work to be with our families.

On the subject of dating habits, I can only speak from my experience as a young (and somewhat "career-oriented") woman. But I think that there is a lot of worrying about relationships, and relations between men and women that is unnecessary. I pay for my half of dates, because otherwise I feel guilty (my mother raised me to be financially independent, nothing to do with ideas of patriarchy), but I am clear, upfront and friendly about it. I gladly walk through when a man opens a door for me, and open the next (they always seem to come in pairs) for him. I would never get offended, and my dating habits just reflect my feelings that relationships should be reciprocal. But if ther
More....

Just a brief note for any who are interested:

The nature of marriage from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries is currently under debate among historians. A few decades ago, some historians made the argument that the family over this period became much more affectionate than they had been before. But subsequent research has since argued that if you study it closely, you can see that affection and love in families was just as strong. They may not have created a whole Valentine's Day-esque culture around romantic love, but there is evidence that it was a primary part of marriage choices (of course restricted, as they are today, by financial concerns, etc).

In terms of the Montaigne diary evidence, one must ask what the purpose of the diary was. Ralph Josselin was a clergyman who kept a diary in the seventeenth century, primarily for the pupose of recording God's "providences" to him rather than recording everyday life. Thus his wife apppears mainly when she is giving birth to their children, and he is giving thanks that she and the child are safe. But this does not mean that they didn't have affectionate breakfast together every morning, just that he chose not to write about it. I have not read Montaigne, but it may be that the fact that his wife does not appear in his soul searching reflects a happy, uneventful marriage, rather than any lack of love.

If they don't want to have kids, they have a serious defect in their genetic makeup, and they can only harm the human race's survival in the long term.

Actually, that isn't quite fair - it is either a defect, in which case it is self-regulating, or it is an extremely "deep" genetic population-pressure release valve (i.e. hormonal stress in the mother caused by large numbers of people result in kidophobia or homosexual preferences in the offspring, which prevents further propogation).

I suspect that a good percentage of the black populace will respond to competitive pressure, and, of course, the job market will continue to grow. At least I hope so. The social stratification inherent in your proposal is staggering.