Congrats

Elevated Testosterone Kills Brain Cells: 
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/medicalnews.php?newsid=52813

Off topic but I thought this may be of some interest to you: 
 
Dr. J. P. Rushton is supposed to be on CNN's Paula Zahn Now at 8PM (EST) Tuesday according to a posting on the yahoo group evol-psych.

If the problem was present with the battery inserted, then i would recommend doing a power cycle - taking battery out, holding power button for 20 seconds. 
 
Check the manufacturer's site for your model and any known issues - could be a fix and perhaps a bios update (definitely update bios if yours is out of date). Also....sometimes there are class action suits for faulty MB's etc...possible to get laptop replaced/fixed if Out of Warranty (outside chance but possible). 
 
If you're under warranty try their support number - although batteries/power adapters etc usually only have a 1 year warranty.

congrats Razib!!! 
 
Glad to see the evil one is posting again.

I've been wondering about this issue myself. 
 
Dr. Stanley Coren from UBC had done some research on IQ in regards to Sleep Deprivation (CTRL F->Sleep Deprivation): 
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/talks/8.30/helthrpt/hstories/hr300996.htm 
 
A few more regarding Sleep Deprivation:  
http://www.health24.com/news/Sleep/1-1249,31092.asp 
 
http://www.gazette.uwo.ca/1997/September/18/News8.htm 
 
I've been meaning to email Dr. Coren for the actual studies quantifying the drops in IQ because i can't find them on the net but haven't gotten around to emailing him – perhaps I’ll have to buy his book.  
 
http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/503105_4 
(Neurocognitive Consequences of Sleep Deprivation Jeffrey S. Durmer, M.D., Ph.D.; David F. Dinges, Ph.D. ) 
 
Some links for alcohol intake and it's effects on learning and memory: 
http://alcoholism.about.com/od/dementia/a/blacer050614.htm 
 
www.niaaa.nih.gov/publications/aa63/aa63.pdf 
 
And i think they administered IQ tests before and after giving the participants alcohol in this study: 
http://www.ssc.uwo.ca/psychology/faculty/hoakenpdfs/Hoaken%20&%20Pihl,%202000%20-%20pdf.pdf 
 
http://www.rsoa.org/lectures/06/06.pdf 
 
Boxing and Brain damage: 
http://ajs.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/21/1/97 
 
http://www.physsportsmed.com/issues/1996/05_96/jordan.htm 
 
The last study indicates that boxing does not affect IQ but that memory, attention span etc. are.

"Any indication that it affects happiness?" 
 
Not in the elderly according to this study: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/4684563.stm

thanks

Nothing to do with T&A but is Michael Atiyah's father a Sephardic Jew or Christian or Muslim?

"can you please explain to me how the Jewish IQ, which was below US national avg in the 1920s became far above the national average in a couple of generations??"

do u have references regarding Jews having lower IQ's during the 1920's?

"I don't buy into the Flynn Effect being real."

I don't know what to make of the Flynn Effect, but it is real - the data supports it's existence and Crystallized G is not increasing as much as Fluid G (as shown on the general knowlege sections and Crystallized portions of the tests as well as the period of SAT decline which is a good measure of Crystallized G).

A good analogy presented by Jensen that mirrors the Flynn Effect phenomenon is the increase in height that has paralleled the increase in intelligence. Nobody questions that height is increasing, even though the gene pool of humans hasn't changed much in the last hundred years.

I believe Jensen states that a combination of better nutrition, heterosis, the inability of the extreme bottom end of the Intelligence bell curve to reproduce, a reduction (on average) worldwide of inbreeding have had positive effects on both intelligence and height.

These effects would be enough to mask the general dysgenic trend as it relates to individuals that lie to the left of the bell curve in intelligence reproducing at a greater rate than those who lie to the right hand side of the curve.

"Much of this art (all of it?) was made by the Iraqi people. They can create more. They're just paintings and relics and stuff.....They are part of what make civilization "worth defending", but we can always make more." and "This is because I think art/pottery/etc. is nice but replaceable"

Iraq way back when, was a center, if not the center, of civiliation. That's what makes these relics so valuable and in my opinion irreplaceable.

"in the end, paintings and art are just ancilliaries."

I think art being subordinate to science (perosnally, i'm with you on that godless)is a subjective view. I think that appreciation of art may be hard wired - maybe i'm wrong. I'm not an artsy guy, but some art just pleases me. The same with some mucic. I can live without it - but life would be so much more dull without it.

I have not yet read Pinker's The Blank Slate, but if i'm not mistaken, i believe he points out that appreciation of certain types of art may be partly hard wired - maybe i'm talking out of my ass cause i haven't read the book.

I think i'm with godless when he states:

"Furthermore, I admit that I would get a lot more worked up if we were talking about (say) the destruction of scientific knowledge."

I personally value scientific knowlege more than art, but i value Iraq's ancient art more than the current population of Iraq and any art they reproduce nontheless. I kind of doubt that the looters of art are gonna be the ones "creating more" of this art.

"Perhaps this is a function of my politics...I have far less sympathy for the Palestinians than I do for the Iraqis, not least because the former were dancing in the streets on 9/11 while the latter welcomed our soldiers as liberators."

Yeah - I had a sick feeling in my stomach when I seen that dancing shit - and i was "somewhat" sympathetic to their cause prior to 9/11. The rage i feel after seeing the looters of those precious artefacts enrages me in the same vein - but by orders of magnitude less - of course. I know many liberal friends of mine who were more supportive of Palestine than I, state "what the fuck is wrong with those people" when they saw that dancing shit after 9/11.

I remember a few months after 9/11 - CBC News or some other TV news broadcast indicated that some, if not all of the clips of Palestinians dancing in the streets were not taken after 9/11 - but for something that happened much earlier. I don't know if it was true or not - i have my doubts. Anyone know what i'm talking about? Was there any truth to that?

"More importantly, the people of Baghdad are probably a hell of a lot better off with no museum/no Saddam than the previous state of unlooted museum/Saddam present."

Call me cold, but, the contents of the Iraq museum are more important to me than the Iraqi people or their freedom - i couldn't care less about them.

"But alpha - you forget that many of the things in that museum were *created* by the Iraqi people."

The Iraqi people of a 1000 AD - 5000 BC made those things. Call me a skeptic, but I doubt the art of that era is going to replaced any time soon by the current population with their current level of intellectual capital - i'm hope i'm wrong.

Over the summer, i went to the Royal Ontario Museum to see some of the Qin Dynasty relics and other relics and art from ancient china and I was blown away. I've seen the Terra Cotta armies on TV and i'm blown away. Ancient Greek art is amazing, not just because of it's aesthetic appeal - but because they were the first to "invent" that type of art. I think the same applies to Iraqi art. Can't really explain why, i'm not an artsy guy, but most modern art doesn't do it for me.