I have this weird notion that if Trump wins there will be a cultural shift and people will come up with new ways to have fun — like in the 70s and 80s. I don’t anticipate any big changes otherwise, but a renewed American groove would be nice (all right for fighting).

And that’s sort of my take on Steve’s take where Elton John is on rotation — that there’s a layer of unpredictable excitement percolating, and the wonks are obtuse.

That’s my neck of the woods, man.

First off, that’s not true. More important, they had no legal authority to touch him, much less arrest him. The city apparently agreed, considering the settlement.

As I’m sure you know, the actual cause of death from asphyxiation is often a cardiac event. Ask any doctor, if you don’t believe me. The officers had no legal authority to even touch this man. He was talking, and he had not committed a crime.

“He was a 500 lb man with a history of heart attacks…”

Were the officers unaware of this man’s size and the attendant health risks?

Garner was doing nothing illegal or provocative. Yet he was placed in a choke hold, and shortly after he said “I can’t breathe,” he died. In other words, he was choked to death. If you don’t believe your lying eyes, that’s not my problem.

Eric Garner’s death (I would call it a homicide) still strikes me as the most unambiguously inexcusable of the high-profile cases under discussion. He was talking, and then he was choked to death. I’m inclined to think Sailer has a point in noting that the NYC context may account for the relative lack of coverage in this case. It may even account for Erica Garner’s exclusion from the townhall event. Manhattan power brokers prefer their riots at a safe distance.

Obama has expressed support for the move, and it has the ring of an eleventh-hour legacy gambit. Anyway, it’s a long-odds prediction. If I turn out to be right, I’ll come back and gloat.

Lincoln is also on the five, which isn’t going anywhere.

Refrigeration devastated the ice industry. Natural gas devastated the whale oil industry. I don’t know the long-term consequences of a similar shift in meat supply, but neither does anyone else.

And I’m not saying the consequences would be entirely positive. I’m just throwing my prediction into the ring.

I have a 10-to-one bet with my wife that Obama will issue a directive to abolish the penny. I think that will happen within 20 years. It might not be a great idea, but I think it’s coming.

I think marketable high-quality in-vitro meat is going to happen faster than anyone expected (not many people are expecting it) and it will lead to a more pronounced moralization of animal welfare. 30 years.

A lovely tribute. Animals enrich our lives.

When I first read that entry on Harpending, I also thought it was suspiciously trollish. Probably nothing of the sort, but the notion of SPLC volunteers engaging in Straussian shenanigans is too much fun to let go.

Adderall is a pretty intense drug. I’ve never had a script, but I’ve tried it a few times and have always been amazed at the intensity of focus — and the productivity! — that follows. An interesting quirk is that it seems to dull (or rather alter) my sense of humor. My default funnybone is cerebral, odd, free-form, silly — but under a kidspeed spell, well, I tend toward something akin to “wit,” and puns that would never occur to my unaltered mind intrude unwanted. I don’t know what that means, but I find it personally fascinating, and I wonder if others have been similarly affected.

Har, har. (“short”)

Are there significant numbers of African Pygmy immigrants in Europe and/or the US? It would be interesting to know a bit about how they fare compared with other migrant populations. Occurs to me I’ve never seen this discussed. A bit of cursory Googling leads nowhere.

Can we rule out the possibility that looting of pharmacies introduced new supply of controlled substances into illicit markets, with an uptick in violence following for the usual turf-related reasons? That would account for the relative localism of a “Ferguson effect,” but I have no idea if there’s evidence either way.

Thanks for the correction regarding the foregrip.

Artistic license excuses the peripheral imagery (such as the blurry handgun with no trigger), but the focal point, where she’s holding the rifle by the grip at an impossible angle, is rendered in some detail and therefore betrays the artist’s careless ignorance. Guns aren’t made of Styrofoam! And I don’t know what to make of that bottom sight, or whatever it is. I suspect it was maybe supposed to be some kind of tripod. Same crap, in any case. That Comics Curmudgeon guy is always pointing out similar physical absurdities in Mary Worth panels — and the worst Mary Worth panels are better than this.

And I notice they’re buying whole milk. Silly heartland Americans. They don’t read no Science.

Good choices. I’m happy to see Dworkin in the mix. Reading her most ridiculed book Intercourse was an eye-opening experience for me; I was expecting a rabid and humorless polemic, but was soon disarmed. She’s actually a very clear, witty, and personable writer, and her views about sexual relations — and sex itself — are distinguishable from the caricature that persists.

Another one that stands out for me is Roger Shattuck’s Forbidden Knowledge: From Prometheus to Pornography (1994). Those who, like me, are strongly predisposed to defend free expression and free inquiry as terminal values would do well to engage with Shattuck’s wide-ranging and careful argument for a different intellectual tradition.

There are surely deeper HBD issues in play, but I do know that SSDI (“disability”) culture has been deeply entrenched in West Virginia for decades, particularly in the southern coal counties where work-related injuries have historically been common.

My hunch is that part of this is due to regional exploitation of qualification reforms (e.g., the “treating physician rule”) implemented under Reagan’s compromise legislation, but whatever set it off, pill mills and disability law offices have become a fixture of the southern West Virginia landscape. Family members help other family members “get on benefits” as a way of life. Painkillers are prescribed, abused, sold; and when the supply is cut by civic-minded reforms, Oxy addicts turn to low-grade heroin. Overdoses are now common.

There’s a lot more that could be noted about the inhabitants of this moribund, coal-dependent region (who are, I believe, the truest exemplars of Charles Murray’s thesis in Coming Apart), and I don’t doubt that much of their sad plight can be attributed to heritable traits, including time-preference and IQ. But when you live here, you observe a quitting culture rigged by history, abetted by policy, and picked by vultures. And no one cares.

Thanks for this follow-up link.

WHEN and HOW and WHY did this happen? Seriously. Does anyone know? It’s so bizarre.

If TNC’s son reacted the way he describes it, it’s because Pop primed him with the same inchoate monologues that end up in his essays. Which is sad.

TNC is a moderately talented writer, long out of his depth. His affectation of currently fashionable postmodernist lingo — all this business about “black bodies” — is clumsy and wince-inducing and detracts from whatever point he might striving for. He also makes mistakes. A lot of mistakes. Any other public intellectual would have been hung out long ago, but he gets a pass because he happens to be the next best thing to James Baldwin for the moment, even if the moment has passed. I think his inflated stature (not his fault) is going to catch up with him in time. Too much rope.

“Also, black lives matter incredibly much…”

Careful there, Steve. “Black lives” is passé. It’s “black BODIES” now. Know your shibboleths!

The most likely explanation is that that particular claim will turn out to be less than accurate. That’s the way it is with sensational stories, as we’ve seen time and again. Claims are made and repeated. Some of them are even true.

It’s a shtick, man. A touch of kayfabe for the smart set. Goes down easier than Moldbug, even if I can’t do the math.

One thing Steven Pinker changed my mind about is the probability of intelligent extraterrestrial life. I thought it was highly probable until I read his sobering (cold water) analysis in How the Mind Works — the part where he analogizes the evolutionary event of intelligent life to the environmentally contingent and obviously rare emergence of an elephant’s trunk. It’s such a simple and obvious point, but it made me very aware of the teleological bias — or raft of biases — that had previously led me to suspect that Higher Intelligence must be “out there.” Or whatever. I still think it’s possible that we — as self aware beings — are not alone in the cosmos, but I no longer think it’s necessarily probable. How likely is it that there are elephant-like critters on other distant planets, what with there trunks on utilitarian display? Consciousness shouldn’t be so different, and could easily be a one-off quirk. We’re just in love with the idea of us-as-ends is all.

You know what was genuinely funny back before we gave much thought to “funny”? Cartoons. Warner Brothers cartoons from the 40s and 50s are still hilarious. Old Popeye cartoons, too. And Tom & Jerry. Great stuff. Still makes me laugh.

This is a deceptively insightful moment by Patrice O’Neal, who had more than a few.

There’s an embarrassing feeling that comes when you read where you want to leave the book and talk to the writer. I always say that when that comes, whatever your ultimate verdict, you have to call it a good book. Because it caught you. Snared you. Made you want to make it personal. The best comics are like that, too. It feels like a conversation where there’s something at stake.

“…grabbing her head and using it to push open a shower door.”

(???)

I don’t know if it qualifies as (botched) esotericism, but I think that Dinesh D’Souza clearly knew what he was doing when, in “The End of Racism,” he lamely pretended to refute hereditarian arguments after presenting a curiously strong case for their empirical validity.

It’s a complicated subject, but most research suggests that suicidality (usually considered an undesirable trait) is positively correlated with IQ. It’s also curiously easy to overlook profoundly undesirable developments are that are *contingently* associated with high IQ. It takes very high-functioning brains, for example, to come up with technologies that can annihilate large populations. The practical capacity for mass genocide may not qualify as a “trait,” but sub specie aeternitatis, it seems like a pretty big downside for smarts.

Merry Christmas, Steve! I’ve been reading your stuff since way back (2001, I think) and I can say in all honesty that few writers have had such a profound influence on the way I see the world. Years ago I alerted a friend to your old blog and I’ll never forget her response: “He writes like he’s 20 and chewing gum.” That pretty much sums up your charm. Red pills as gummy candy.

The daycare SRA panic drew on the cultural factors Steve mentions and then some. Oprah’s role (bottom up?) shouldn’t be overlooked, but nor should (top-down?) fashions in psychotherapy that were packaged as “expert opinion” at the time. There’s almost certainly a continuum from MPS to recovered memory therapy to the SRA panic in full bloom, and it seems wrong to trace any of what came to pass to a particular rumor. Storms gather and pass.

Good comments by SPMoore8 above on the tricky etiology of the present rape culture scare.

I haven’t studied on the grand jury proceedings in the Garner case, but a number of people defending the outcome seem to focus on the question of whether the cop(s) *intended* to kill Garner. Unless there’s something quirky about the law of police misconduct or the grand jury system in NYC, I’m pretty sure the matter of intent would only be relevant with regard to charges of first and second degree murder (or such equivalent charges where mens rea is key). Wouldn’t a grand jury typically have to consider a raft of lessor offenses in which a person’s death occurs through negligence or procedural misconduct?

I’ve watched the video and it’s not even clear to me that Garner was being legally detained. I’m pretty sure verbal recalcitrance is legal in any case, though I wouldn’t even characterize Garner’s conduct as recalcitrant. He was just talking emphatically, and making pretty good case that he should be left alone. Yeah, I’m with the “informed” majority on this one. There should have been an indictment.

“I know a lot of people think everybody should just concentrate on a Just-the-Facts-Ma’am Sgt. Joe Friday attitude toward this story, but it’s also worth pointing out the literary techniques that made this article so unquestioned in the mass media from November 19 through November 30.”

I would say that it’s not merely “worth pointing out” but crucial to understanding how such stories are developed in the churn of culture.

For most people, truth is far less interesting than a culturally attuned subversion myth — and that’s what the Rolling Stone story, like the “rape culture” story that it served, is.

Notice the shibbolethic sleight of phrase by which “rape victim” has been traded for “rape survivor.” This is an indication — one of many — that the “rape culture” narrative has become a new seat of sacredness, guarded in turn by a “ring of motivated ignorance.”* I’m in favor of breaking the spell and getting at the truth of all things when possible, but I think it’s just as important to understand what we’re up against. Silliest thing I ever believed was that religion meant supernaturalism.

* Per Jonathan Haidt, and as elaborated by Sarah Perry, cf: https://theviewfromhellyes.wordpress.com/2014/11/27/sacredness-as-practiced-by-religious-entrepreneurs-rape-riots-and-economic-efficiency/).

And we are once again reminded of Janet Malcolm’s famous line: “Every journalist who is not too stupid or too full of himself to notice what is going on knows that what he does is morally indefensible.”

Erdely doesn’t seem too stupid to me. Was she too full of herself to consider that it might not be kind, exploiting the probable confabulations of a disturbed woman for the sake of a dramatic narrative?

This is a pretty good essay that captures some of the qualities that make Dworkin such an enduring figure, at least for those who can get past the caricature. As someone who has read most of her work, from her earliest prose-poetry to her sincerely pathetic account of being drugged and raped, I would add that Dworkin was simply a terrific writer. She was an exemplar of the classic style in her forays into literary criticism (her much maligned book, “Intercourse,” being a great example); she was a shrewd and clear polemicist (“Letters from a War Zone”); and she was a modern novelist of the first rank (“Mercy” is one of the most powerful novels I have ever read). Her critical essays often addressed the pretense of masculine conquest found in the works of writers like Henry Miller and Norman Mailer, but I think Dworkin actually saw herself in similar literary terms, and that she even saw herself on a similar mission (albeit from a martyr’s point of view) in blending life and art.

While I understand what Sailer is getting at, I disagree strongly with the characterization of Dworkin as “aspergery.” She was acutely empathic, and this, curiously, can lead to the same breaches of team-oriented decorum.

The element about the victim’s acquaintance from the anthropology discussion group reminds me of a trope that comes up in the “rape-revenge” sub-genre of slasher films, such as “Last House on the Left” and “I Spit on Your Grave.” The idea is that even the low-ranking “good guy” of the group (who might be dull-witted or simply softhearted) will give in to the evil momentum in response to male peer pressure. It’s sort of an “et tu” moment that suggests, along with the practical implausibilities in how the story is blocked, that a narrative is being concocted.

It’s important that this one be debunked roundly and loudly. It’s not a matter of muddled exaggeration, but of falsehood parading as journalism — with real consequences.

In the book “Cat Sense,” John Bradshaw speculates that where and when cats have been domesticated it is likely that selection was mediated by women and children. That’s probably true, but I don’t know that it has anything to do with the social “gendering” of cats versus dogs.

What I wonder about is whether human affection for cats is an adaptation stemming from their utility in controlling pestilence. Razib Khan may know the answer, and I look forward to reading more of his work on this topic.

I love cats, by the way. And dogs.

Bailey talks about this in The Man Who Would Be Queen, where he argues that the transsexuals in such cultures are generally distinguishable from autogynephilic types, being effeminate boys who are culturally groomed into transitioning early. That’s one reason why they’re prettier, and more genuinely feminine, than the IT geeks, athletes, and film directors who end up transitioning later in life out of an inverted attraction to women. In Western cultures hyper-feminine boys, rather than being routed into hormonal transformation, simply identify as gay.

I absolutely agree with this observation and I find it puzzling. Do out think this is a case of evolutionary mismatch? –That some food taboos in some past environments were adaptive and as a result modern minds are (mis)equipped with food taboo toggles that spring into action when faddish cues light up in the culture?

erica,

In your reply to my comment, you assert that I left out “the likelihood that this hypothetical germ does other damage.” Just wanted to note that my speculation was in reply to M’s scenario where such “other damage” is suggested as the primary basis for vaccination.

But this makes me wonder: How likely is it that exposure to the hypothetical germ might instead turn out be beneficial in some other respect? This possibility is at least implicit in Steve Sailer’s first “gay germ” article, where he talks about SCA and malaria.

M,

I sincerely hope you are right in your speculation about how this would go down, but there are a lot of necessary steps that might not fall in line, and I think you profoundly underestimate the political fallout that would follow the inevitable headlines no matter how the news is couched. Homosexuality isn’t like mental retardation or even deafness; it’s a culturally rooted and celebrated group identity that matters very much to a great many people for reasons personal and political. To understand what I am suggesting, imagine the same scenario you outline with the difference being that the doctor advises parents that the secondary effect of the recommended vaccine is that it will make their children far less receptive to religious belief (I know this is an outlandish hypothetical, but religiousity does have a biological component). Do you think this would remain a matter that takes place in the privacy of the doctor-patient relationship, or do you think it would explode in sensational headlines about doctors programming kids’ brains for atheism — and under Obamacare?! I think the latter scenario would predominate, and I think that’s more or less what we’ll see if pathogenic homosexuality is proven and treatable.

Against this we should keep in mind the cultural — and cross-cultural — backdrop characterized by overwhelming scientific illiteracy and profoundly differing cultural priors regarding the moral status of same-sex attraction. Some governments would mandate vaccination, and in some Western democracies the issue would be politicized with genocidal rhetoric attending the debate. There would be appeals for political asylum. There would be folk beliefs about the germ’s origin. A cultural paradigm built around dubious science would be shattered. People would take sides

Notwithstanding the best PR and the most optimal alignment of secondary facts, I can’t imagine this going well.

It would be the worst of politics, the stuff wars are made of. At least that’s what I fear and suspect, especially so if it turns out that gay people transmit the germ. And even if that isn’t the case, good luck educating the masses once the genie’s out. This is a genuinely dangerous idea.

Maybe it will also turn out that valuing truth is a pathogenic trait.

JayMan,The summary of the larger studies (from the registries) showing low concordance is impressive, but I wonder if they go far enough to distinguish “same sex attraction” from preferential homosexuality. Do concordance rates change when degrees are taken into account?

And what about the possibility that the genetic contribution is showing up less because it is in fact rapidly diminishing. Generational differences in the weight of concordance would test this.

What I want to rule out is the possibility that a genetic factor could have been introduced under certain conditions only to evaporate as moral and technological preconditions change.

“Wow. What state are your folks from?”

West Virginia. And my strong impression from conversations with oldsters is that this sentiment — the obliviousness — was fairly common until relatively recently. That Liberace movie touches on this.

“What kind of grandparents do you have?”

I’m recalling an actual conversation with my wife’s grandparents. (Mine were dead before I was born.) My mother said the same thing and she was shocked when the Village People were outed, as were countless unassuming Americans. The “sissies” and “fairies” that my father hated … usually had wives and kids.

“Wouldn’t it be better to have whatever advantage and not be gay?”

I would say that it shouldn’t matter if the dominant cultural environment enforced sufficient rates of reproduction. And it could have been a relatively recent turn, perhaps being part of the Mathusian break that Greg Clark talks about. That would fit with a surfeit of resources being sufficient to promote descendance.

And it’s my understanding that the <11% concordance figure is a subject of ongoing debate. I know there are studies that find significantly higher MZ concordance, including some that attempt to correct for the selection bias that confounded the high estimates that were initially reported decades ago. I know you're inclined to rule out a genetic factor, but I still wonder whether there could be a genetic predisposition that only becomes manifest under certain environmental conditions.

If it is pathogenic (and I certainly think there's a good chance it is), I think some of the social implications about which you express concern would be somewhat diminished if it turned out that some other highly valued traits are hatched in like manner. I'm thinking of an event where the (hypothetically proven) claim that "homosexuality is cause by germs" might be rejoined by saying, "yeah, well so is musical virtuosity … or _____." Is there speculation to this effect — that some relatively rare but socially valued traits might reduce to pathogenic etiology?

Thanks for the links. I can't sleep.

One thing I need to be convinced of is that preferential male homosexuality actually resulted in a fitness disadvantage in our recent past, given cultural pressures and the absence of birth control. Couldn’t it have been that gay men exhibited qualities that were attractive to women and that (absent culturally acceptable alternatives) they had children at the same (or higher) rates than straight men — perhaps initially in families with resources sufficient to ensure enough descendants to carry the trait forward? How would we even know?

The grandparents will tell you there were no gays when they went to school, but look through their old yearbooks and I bet you can spot the likely candidates. Of course, they will answer, those men are married with children and grandchildren.

What does Cochran mean when he says that sexually antagonistic selection is pretty much ruled out by GWAS surveys?

It would be useful to know the extent to which the later periods are weighted by approving references to Liebowitz and Margolis. 
 
Also, I notice that QWERTY mythology has yet to be addressed by Snopes, which is surprising since they routinely deflate popular economic fallacies. Perhaps it’s a sore spot with the editors.

TGGP, 
 
Forget Kung Fu and rent the original Death Race 2000.

Selfish reasons are easy. Selfless ones, not so much.

…and before him bush… 
 
Which Bush? When before? I wondered about precedent when I heard Obama’s inaugural speech reference to “non-believers.”

…at a sociological level the idea that wongba’s choices are individual and are of just as much value of someone who responsibly reproduces is problematic. 
 
Perhaps, but at a philosophical level the very idea of “responsible” reproduction is, to some of us, morally problematic. One may value the traditions of western civilization without presuming to speak for the child who never had a choice.  
 
Sociological suicide is a neat metaphor, but procreation absolutely guarantees suffering for those who are forced to life. Every time. I think this is bad, no matter who inherits the earth.

On the literary side, I recommend When A Crocodile Eats the Sun, by Peter Godwin — a book that has aroused surprisingly little interest in the Steve-o-sphere.

Sister Y recently posted some interesting GSS data on “Attitudes Toward Suicide.”

TGGP, 
 
By “disease model,” I was referring to diagnostic classification, not Cochran’s pathogenic theory. Moot point, since I see that geecee has signed off.

Perhaps it’s because this is a male-dominated forum, but as David B notes, the conflation of homosexuality with male homosexuality has been conspicuous throughout this thread. This seems very relevant to the question of SSM, since lesbians are more likely than gay men to marry (ss). It is also relevant to the question of pathology, since many of the stats cited in support of the view that homosexuality is a disease do not apply to female homosexuals.  
 
I would be interested in hearing what geecee has to say about lesbians. If “lesbians are not gay” (to paraphrase Steve Sailer), does the disease model fit at all? Many of the arguments against SSM seem strange when the debate is narrowed to consider only female-female marriage. Shouldn’t the normative questions be segregated for the sake of clarity?

Heterosexual, monogamous marriage has served Western Civilization pretty well over the last 2000 years, so a conservative would want to see damn good evidence that overturning it does not present a danger to society. 
 
Couldn’t the same have until recently been said of heterosexual, monogamous, and monoracial marriage? And if so, was there a similar imperative to compile “damn good evidence” that overturning anti-miscegenation statutes did not present a “danger to society” before taking the plunge? 
 
I think a purer conservative argument hinges on the proven — and traditional — utility of marriage and monogamous social structure, regardless of the beneficiaries. 
 
Regarding “fairness,” a clear distinction may be drawn between equalitarian fairness (fairness before the law, i.e “equal protection”) and an egalitarian-redistributivist concept of fairness. The former is a foundational principle of property rights and religious liberty. The latter paves the way to Maoist hell.

being a black president might force obama to be extra careful about who he appoints because of the perception that he’s a race man. 
 
I’d be very surprised if this weren’t the way it played out. And while Sailer’s occasionally petty commentary on Obama has been justifiably tailored to counter the negligent incuriosity of a predictably lazy punditocracy, the effect, for me anyway, has been to humanize the man in a way that the campaign narrative has not. Every black or mixed-race intellectual I’ve ever known has struggled with questions of racial identity, and Obama’s pronouncements on matters of “race and inheritance,” even when amplified by Sailer, reveal something of a genuine conflict and maturation – signs of decency, and growth.  
 
But then I always had soft spot for Sam Francis, so what do I know? I’m voting for Paul when the time comes. For the hell of it.

West Virginia’s primary is later in the game so I didn’t participate in the poll. I will say that while I usually vote libertarian, the more I’ve read of Steve Sailer’s running commentary on Obama, the more interesting and essentially decent he comes off. Two qualified cheers if he pulls it off.

I’m guessing JP Rushton might have something to say about this. Then there’s that unmetnionable miscreant, Ernst Zundel, who sat in a Canadian jail for years before being deported to a proper German prison.

I think Nicholson Baker’s novel, The Mezzanine, has a chance. And I wouldn’t bet against the paintings of Francis Bacon, or Andy Warhol. Seriously.

It’s the “twelve closest friends” problem discussed in the opening chapter of The Bell Curve. The educated classes simply cannot fathom that a sizable proportion of the population is tuned to a different cognitive frequency and that this has real-world implications. They can’t understand it, in part, because the cloisters they inhabit – courtesy of meritocratic stratification – make it easy to avoid commingling with the left half entirely. On those ocassions when intellectuals do catch a glimpse of stark reality, their reflexive hostility is such that IQ denialism becomes a seductive cover. Gottfredson’s sin is that she cares enough about people to try to understand them.

I agree that Rushton and Lynn’s credibility is ultimately of little importance, but my understanding was that Rushton’s original research on Sub-Saharan IQ has been largely based on data derived from Raven’s Progressive Matrices, a nonverbal test (which presumably would not require familiarity with tennis). No?

This makes sense until the first capital offense is committed, after which the existence of the death penalty might actually provide a stronger incentive for criminals to murder remaining witnesses/bystanders/potential informants to avoid being apprehended and thus executed. What’s left to lose?

This is a pretty insular community where grand order taboos can be tossed about as a matter of course. Has anyone considered that Watson may have been threatened?  
 
He’s an old man with little to lose. He could have issued a statement of clarification citing relevant literature in support of broadly recognized African IQ deficits. He could have stressed the policy implications, while making clear that such observations are necessarily general and should in no way be construed to undermine political equality. But the apology Watson issued, despite Jason Malloy’s careful reading, seems suspiciously contrite, and fraught with shame. 
 
Keep in mind it wasn’t long ago that threats and physical attacks were de rigueur for scientists who ventured into the wrong side of this controversy. I think Sailer has mentioned that he still receives threats from time to time.  
 
I’m not saying this is what happened. And I don’t have any evidence that it did. I just hate to think that in focusing on the finer points of scientific relevance, we might be overlooking an obvious – and ominous – possibility.

Jan,

The latest report from the Charleston Gazette lends support to your suspicion:

http://wvgazette.com/webtools/print/News/2007091122

If the MSM takes the bait – and they may not, given the retch factor alone – it will be interesting to see the “hate crime” narrative is cast. My revised hunch is that there may be a mite too much unseemly “otherness” in the sordid specter of crank-addled dysgenic hillfolk to suit any middle-class appetite for an easy morality play. Perhaps someone should tip off Al Sharpton, just to see what happens.

This is unfolding in my neck of the woods, by the way. If you want to keep up, The Charleston Gazette, the Charleston Daily Mail, and the Logan Banner will have the most up-to-date coverage.

Reading through the metric criteria, it still seems that avowed atheists could be misleadingly grouped with those who are a-religious or religiously disengaged. I would be more impressed if self-described “atheists” were shown to exhibit the imputed personality traits.

To amplify Michael Vassar’s comment, I think there could be a confounding problem in equating low religiosity with philosophical atheism. On a low to high spectrum of religious belief, it might be a mistake to group atheists — who are often obnoxiously passionate about their lack of belief — with those who simply care less. While the latter group (apatheists, for lack of a better term) might simply tend toward laziness in affairs religious and otherwise, I would like to know more about the comparative profile of those who are not merely low on the scale, but who explicitly disavow belief. 
 
Is this problem addressed in the cited literature?

I’m on Stan’s side on this one. One can fairly speculate as to how the news would be received if the imputed 1.8% reduction in HIV risk were attributed to infibulation or some other form of female genital surgery rather than dick mutilation (albeit consensual dick mutilation in this rare instance). I think it’s safe to assume that the issue would be cast in very different terms, with ethical caveats quite appropriately front and center.  
 
From a more empirical vantage, I have to wonder how much of the risk reduction might be attributable to the circumcised cohort engaging in less sex – or less risky sex – due to down time resulting from recovery or even due to reduced sex drive compounded by body image issues, etc. For all the disinterested clinical chatter, this is, in physical and psychological terms, a pretty radical intervention for adult men and singling out circumcision as the independent variable seems a mite hasty, especially given the unintended consequences that could ensue when the “hey, I’m circumcised, what’s the risk?” meme takes root. 
 
On a related note, I would be very interested in hearing GNXP contributors’ thoughts on Leonard Glick’s Marked in Your Flesh: Circumcision from Ancient Judea to Modern America, which, incidentally, does a pretty good job of summarizing potential problems with the extant literature purporting to show prophylactic benefits.

I think it may have been in No Two Alike where I read that people diagnosed with clinical depression tend to have a more accurate perception of their own intelligence.

In the Wired article, Dawkins is quoted as saying “The probability of God… while not zero, is vanishingly small,” which strikes me, perhaps wrongly, as an unjustified empirical concession. If the crux of the God question hinges on the rational failure of supernatural appeal (as Dawkins seems to suggest at times), isn’t the business of “proving” God rendered theoretically moot by the epistemological foundations of rationalism?  
 
I note that Steve Sailer is fond of pointing out that astro-physicists are more cautious about ultimate questions than life sciece types, which may or may not be true; but where knowledge is limited, it seems to me the only way to entertain the possibility of “God” to fill in the gaps is through the deliberate suspension of the rules of naturalistic/rational inquiry, in which sense the probablility of God, by epistemological default, has to be zero. No? The only way I know out of this trap would be to posit a theory of God that is somehow apprehensible through rational/empirical means, but at that point, doesn’t the explanandum lose it’s defining supernatural qualities and cease to be God?  
 
Forgive me if I’m missing some crucial distinction, but this has always struck me as a sort of inescapable conclusion. Is there some theoretical order of evidence (as Dawkins implicitly suggests) that could convince a commited naturalist otherwise? And if so, how could the (seeming) contradictions be reconciled?

…my main issue with him is that he does not allow what he knows to inform an acceptance of religion as a fact of the universe which we unbelievers had to grapple with.  
 
Yes. And I find this especially curious given Dawkins’ seminal role in popularizing memetics. Inasumuch as it can be understood as robust memeplex, religion would seem to present such a great opportunity for more disinterested study.

Machery and Barrett’s analysis of Buller’s treatment of the “Cinderella effect” is especially strong. Has Buller addressed the mortality data they cite?

I’m probably not a typical gnxp reader (I still have trouble with 8th grade algebra), but for what it’s worth, I’m looking forward to the following titles: 
 
1. Marked in Your Flesh: Circumcision form Ancient Judea to Modern America, by Leonard Glick 
 
2. Szasz Under Fire: The Psychiatric Abolistionist Faces His Critics, edited by Jeffrey Schaler 
 
3. Fair Women, Dark Men: The Forgotten Roots of Racial Prejudice, by Peter Frost 
 
4. The Murderer Next Door, by David Buss  
 
5. What Evolution Is, by Ernst Mayr 
 
Happy New Year, all.

I like “Politics and the Life Sciences”  
 
http://www.politicsandthelifesciences.org/