Undead Astronauts

Here’s Steve Hsu’s pitch to Google employees to submit their DNA for sequencing to find high IQ genes. You too can submit your DNA for free sequencing if you can prove your IQ is in the neighborhood of +3SD.

A NYTimes article asks whether ugly people should get legal protections for the lifetime of harm it does on average to their wages ($230k less than attractive people). He then goes on to make a case for such protection as a case of disability (he’s an economist that studies Freakonomics types of situations).

I wonder the same about people of shorter stature and dumb people. Some studies have shown that 1 inch in height will add $786 per year. A person at 6′ will earn roughly $230k more over a lifetime than someone that’s 5’6″ (assuming working age is 22-65). Dumb people also suffer. An additional point of IQ will lead to average earnings of an additional $346 per year. A person with an IQ of 85 will earn $300k less than a person of 105 IQ over a lifetime. 85 happens to be the average IQ of black Americans, and 105 is the Asian average.

One problem I see with compensating ugliness is that it will temp some borderline ugly people to go full on ugly. That’s just bad news. No one wants to look at more ugly people. What happens if you hit the trifecta of disabledness… being short, dumb and ugly? Their mere existence pains all those around them, themselves included. Surely they deserve compensation for the fact that they were born even if plain jane ugly people don’t, no?

For those that don’t remember, Elliot (Harry Shum) got his shoes busted in last season’s finale. This is the episode where they fix his shoes I think.

WSJ has an article covering Barcraft, or bars that have a special Starcraft viewing night every so often. The trend has caught on at bars across the US partly for the novelty I’m sure, but partly because it’s just more fun watching these tourneys with friends. The Street Fighter community has regularly held “Bar Fights” around California since SF4 came out where they actually gather to compete over beers, but I don’t know of gatherings just to watch streamed events.

I’m not surprised this happened, but I am a little surprised that it took SC2 before it took off. Why not a shooter like Q3, Halo, or CoD? Q3 might be slightly too fast paced for the non-initiated to enjoy viewing, but Halo and CoD certainly move at a viewable pace. Why not a fighting game like SF4? Even if you don’t understand the mechanics, high level matches are compelling. For the life of me, I don’t understand why professional gaming organizations don’t include SF4 as a pro-gaming staple. Its fans are so thirsty for action they have to organize and broadcast all the events themselves, and there are weekly tournaments going on everywhere around the country. Surely some of the pro-circuit gaming organizations could inject some bling and polish to the shoestring budget operations that have operated up til now.

Regardless of the reasons, it’s nice that SC2 pros are getting recognition in mainstream areas. If I had a choice of sports programs to watch at a bar, there’s no question SC2 would rank above baseball, hockey, golf, NASCAR and soccer. Sometimes it would rank above pro football, basketball and tennis. It would not rank above college football however… there must be limits after all. The average age of gamers is in the 30s and they have money to spend. Bar owners ignore this at their own peril.

Edit: Woops, I gave Munny the link to episode 2 to post last week thinking it was episode 3. Anyways, here’s episode 3 now that I’ve figured out how to embed without being able to see the video. – Pzed

Danger Girl is an American comic book series created by J. Scott Campbell and Andy Hartnell.  I’ve been a fan of Campbell’s art. Based on the casting(Milla Jovovich, Kate Beckinsale, and Sofia Vergara), it probably won’t matter too much how the movie goes, just as long as it has the key visual components. A good movie would be a bonus though.

US News has put out a ranking of the top 100 public high schools in the US for 2011. Conveniently they let you see the schools with high Asian American percentages. 4 of the top 5, and 6 of the top 10 schools have high Asian American attendance (>20%). 40 schools with a high Asian population are on the list. Only 2 are ranked 90 or lower. Well no surprise there. Tim at 8asians also points out that 10 of those 100 schools are in San Francisco. I counted at least 21 in NYC metro area. Not all of those schools are Asian dominated of course, but a significant fraction of them are.

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