undead astronauts

AoR writes about the commonly perceived advantage east asians have in visio-spatial (math) iq. i’m not going to spend much time on that b/c i haven’t seen much evidence to the contrary, and at least they do alright in competition. but something that isn’t especially clear to me is the evidence on a lag on verbal scores.

as AoR cited, 97 asian-american verbal iq is a number i’ve seen bandied about in the bell curve, and richard lynn’s comparisons of different national verbal scores show asians with a lower verbal. exactly how the tests were done however is something i still don’t know. the lower verbal score for asian-americans might, in part, be due to a slower start in english b/c their parents spoke an asian language at home. a friend of mine took an iq test at his school’s urging after arriving in the states from taiwan as a young teenager. he did well on the visio-spatial part of the test, but horrible on the verbal. he said that he barely understood half the english questions at the time b/c he had only recently arrived.  by the end of high school, he was in AP english and graduated salutatorian in his class (an ABC grabbed 1st).

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before going to korea, i had no idea what a juicy bar or juicy girl was. but now after experiencing them personally, i understand that they’re just a form of hostess club. a form that’s probably less classy than a hostess club in general, but that probably depends on where exactly u go. (more…)

A simplistic test, only 10 questions, and some of the possible responses are very very close to each other. In spite of that, I managed to retain my normal centrist position, slightly leaning conservative-statist.

http://www.nolanchart.com/survey.php

satoshi kanazawa came out w/ a study last week that finds liberals, atheists, and male sexual exclusivity are linked to IQ. kanazawa is an evo psych guy and has some pretty kooky ideas, but his kookiness in this case only extends to how he thinks this came about and not the numbers indicating who has higher IQ.

frankly, i don’t understand the stated evo psych reasoning which says that these views would have hurt our ancestors in the past but now serve to “move the species forward” and are “evolutionarily novel.” well wtf does that mean? just b/c something is new, it’s mostly smarter ppl that will do it? eh, i suppose so, but not a strong argument. so i’m skipping over that. the important thing here is the numbers.

Very liberal IQ (socially, not economically) = 106
Very conservative IQ = 95

Not at all religious IQ = 103
Very religious IQ = 97

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i scored a 68. the defining characteristic of millennials is their heavy usage of technology. see where u fit in this pew research test.

What the hell is going on over here? Snow is making ppl crazy. Rumors of 10 ppl being taken to the hospital from the UAH shooting. this is the 2nd school shooting in two weeks. the first one happened at a middle school.

Update: 3 dead. Shooter was a faculty member who may have been denied tenure this morning. Victims all faculty.

filial chinese are posting wanted ads for rental boyfriends to take home to mom and dad. flarezz, u should look into this.

Her criteria for eligible bachelors were fairly demanding. They should be educated, employed, well-behaved and between 170 and 180 centimeters, or 5 feet 7 inches to 5 feet 9 inches, tall. Glasses — a sign of erudition to her father — a plus. One other thing: “Don’t be too skinny.”

The successful applicant would earn 5,000 renminbi, or $735, for the 10-day home stay during the Lunar New Year holiday, also known here as Spring Festival. Lest candidates get the wrong idea, the woman also wrote: “We will not sleep together.”

i’m sure u could negotiate that last stipulation.

i’ve only recently discovered how many interesting topics these polling companies touch on. here’s a new one from pew.

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from reuters:

LONDON (Reuters) – Intelligence comes second only to smoking as a predictor of heart disease, scientists said on Wednesday, suggesting public health campaigns may need to be designed for people with lower IQs if they are to work.

Research by Britain’s Medical Research Council (MRC) found that lower intelligence quotient (IQ) scores were associated with higher rates of heart disease and death, and were more important indicators than any other risk factors except smoking.

the less intelligent u are, the less likely u are to understand that eating healthy and working out help u live longer. but being sickly also probably lowers ur IQ. there’s also the factor of future time orientation. ppl w/ lower IQ tend to have lower future time orientation and so even if u understand the risk factors, u don’t have the willpower to defer gratification.

i thought this line was the best however:

“Public health campaigns should focus on early life factors that have been shown to influence IQ levels and tackle social inequalities,” she said in a comment on the study.

“At the same time, the public health messages for known risk factors such as diet may need to be simplified.”

hahaha! ouch… b/c obviously it doesn’t already make enough sense that unhealthy eating and not working out lead to health problems.

more results from gallup. asians are more moderate and liberal than most americans. they are also less religous, but that mostly just goes along w/ being more liberal. we can’t tell from this information what age groups and generation the respondents are from unfortunately, but overall asians are definitely more lefty than righty.

link was first seen at 8asians.

DNA testing is mandated by the state for several genetic diseases. what may not be well-known is that some states keep ur kid’s DNA information indefinitely and may even share that information along with the baby’s name. Here are state-by-state differences on DNA data retention.

Surprise surprise.

according to gallup. saw this first at inductivist.

i hate to sound like rush limbaugh, but there is certainly a part of me that is callous to the suffering going on in haiti. haiti has been a basketcase for it’s entire history after independence, except for the times it has been occupied/controlled by outside powers. it’s people eat dirt cookies on a regular basis.

if our purpose is to take over the country, we’d be supporting people like this:

“The Haitian government has been here for a while, and they give us nothing. The United States should take over the country,” said Andrelita Laguerre, shepherding four children and a grandchild at the camp. “Most of my friends expect the United States to take over. I wish!” [bold emphasis is mine]

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http://www.zonaeuropa.com/201001c.brief.htm#019

a study has come out that asked college freshmen how many AP courses they took in high school. this is not a measure of iq. it is only a measure of how hard a student is willing to push himself in high school. obviously asians answered that they took more AP courses than other groups. this is in spite of the fact that more white and hispanic kids went to schools that offered AP courses. from previous studies u might then expect the following group order: asians, whites, hispanics, blacks. but in fact it doesn’t go that way.

hispanics actually take more AP courses than whites. looking further into the numbers, u see that a higher percentage of hispanics go to schools where AP classes are offered. but even so, the numbers show that hispanic kids are willing to work harder in the classroom.

unfortunately even though they take the class at higher rates, their rate of scoring 3’s or above is lower than whites. so while it may be that they work harder than whites, hispanics aren’t seeing all the fruits that might be expected from that hard work.

hat tip to 8asians for the story link.