Pigmentation is associated with behavior — darker types being more aggressive and more sexual. In a frequency dependent scenario, some fraction of Poles will pursue a more domesticated strategy (and have light hair), while others will be more wild (and have dark hair).
I see this assertion bandied about a bit, and I’m biased in favor of it because it conforms somewhat to my own anecdotal experiences, but what study or studies is it based on?
Also, is it just within-group variation that correlates with agression and sexuality, or is the correlation evident between groups as well? And please, don’t anyone reply with data showing that white Americans are more “domesticated” than people of African descent here in the United States. It’s not that those social statistics (e.g. marriage rates, incarceration rates, STD rates, etc…) aren’t valid, or that I think it’s impossible that they may reflect real underlying biologcal differences. It’s just that I want data from more than two population groups!

With artists, the single biggest variable is age of death. For example, two of Galenson’s young bucks are Vermeer, who died at 43, and and Van Gogh, who died at 37.

Plath, another of his “young bucks,” died at 30.

If he wanted to make this point he would have done well to substitute Emily Dickinson for Sylvia Plath. They both peaked in productivity at 30, but Dickinson went on to live for a few more decades afterwards, still writing, but producing nothing like what she did in her most productive 2 to 3 years.

I’ve never heard of Idang Alibi before, but that was a difficult article to read, and I’m neither black nor p.c. I can’t imagine how difficult it was for him to write.

I think Africa’s only hope is genetic engineering. What a blessing that would be!

“And yes, as one of those crazy liberals, I do value the diversity my children are exposed to in having friends from many cultures and religions as well as the excellent (and prestigious) education they are receiving.”

That’s fine for you and yours, Polly. But I think a lot of the desire people have to sneer at white liberals stems from the fact that your values are not our values, yet you have no compunctions about forcing them on us. This breeds anger.

I grew up in a racially diverse, upper-class neighborhood in New Jersey. My neighbors were Iranian on one side, and an Indian-Pakistani family on the other. Next door to them was a Russian Jewish family.

In retrospect, I can’t remember learning anything from my Jewish or Muslim friends that I couldn’t have learned from a white gentile. Right now, I am working at a majority (85%) black organization in Baltimore. I like my job, but again, I can’t think of anything I have learned from any of my black co-workers that I couldn’t have learned from a white person.

I think your use of the word prestigious to describe your children’s education is telling. Liberals like (carefully controlled) diversity because it is a mark of prestige to expose their children to it, not because it has any practical benefits. The problem is other people don’t really care about that. They just want their kids to be safe and they want to raise them in a country whose culture they recognize as their own. That’s difficult to do when your country is being transformed by millions of third-world immigrants with far higher crime rates than the native, middle class whites whose neighborhoods they are moving into.

“As an example, consider religion. Many people want to proselytize their kids into their own religion, but they’d be appalled at a national establishment of religion.”

I’m going to second the comment of the person who pointed out that liberals want to establish multiculturalism as some official national ideology, as is evidence in their suport for massive third world immigration.

There was never a national consensus in favor of massive third world immigration and the racial diversification of America. Both were pushed on the people of this country by the political and cultural elites. Why is it ok for liberals to indoctrinate other people’s children into their ideology of multiculturalism, but not ok for Catholics to indoctrinate other people’s children into Catholicism?

“You have an ugly side and it shows when you discuss poor Gladwell and, curiously enough, homosexuals.”

Steve’s a homophobe? I’m curious, as I’ve probably read everything he’s written about gays (human biodiversity as it relates to homosexuality being an interest of mine) and I never got that impression. Got any quotes?

My own observation is that nerdy women read much more “fantasy” than they do sci-fi. Probably because it’s got more magic and romance and fewer spaceships.