Undead Astronauts

Some of you have probably heard about the Jason Richwine story where he lost his job at the Heritage Foundation for advocating selectivity in admitting new immigrants. The discriminating factor he advocated for was nominally high skills and education, but it was basically a code word for IQ. Once word of his doctoral thesis got out, he was fired and the foundation distanced itself from him because his thesis didn’t use code words and said that IQ differences were likely to persist for more than two to three generations.

I’ve read some of the criticism against his thesis and most of it rehashes old arguments about the validity of IQ or that race is only social construct. Nothing very interesting there except that some are now advocating a ban on research in the area of race and IQ because, well, what good can come of it? Obviously if something offends our sensibilities it must be immoral and we should stick our head in the sand.

Most people out there advocating against his thesis haven’t read it, so here it is, the paper itself. To date, I don’t know of anyone that has proven that the analysis in his thesis contains shoddy methodologies or incorrect math. People just don’t like his conclusions or the very fact that he wanted to investigate this topic in the first place. I can understand not wanting to believe that IQ differences between groups is persistent, but that doesn’t make it true. I’m only partway through myself, but I’m not the one calling for a ban on research.

Kinect-like technology has been advancing. Here we see a small demonstration of something called Leap. With Google’s glasses and Leap, we are seeing the actualization of Minority Report’s UI. It’s pretty amazing frankly.

Kiplinger’s has ratings for cities for every life stage. Mid-career professionals should head to DC, Durham, Huntsville, Anchorage and Fayetteville.

If you’ve been striking out in your love life, one way to fix that is to go out and murder/rape a bunch of people. James Holmes already has some twitter groupies, and past serial killers have gotten married behind bars. There’s an evolutionary reason for this, but you have to think that evolution is playing catch up here.

(Source: HS)

It’s spreading!

Police said the incident occurred near a bus station in Ouhai District at 2pm on Tuesday when a man surnamed Dong rushed onto the road and blocked the vehicle of a female driver surnamed Du, Wenzhou City News reported.

The man then climbed on the car’s hood and started hitting the windshield while Du screamed inside, police said.

Several minutes later, Du got out of the car to flee, but the man jumped on her and started gnawing on her face once they were on the ground, police said.

Passers-by said Du’s face was covered in blood. They said they tried to pull Dong off the woman, but he seemed so “crazy” that they couldn’t stop him.

Police stopped the man. Doctors at a nearby hospital said Du will need plastic surgery to repair the damage from the bites on her nose and lips.

(Source: Shanghaiist)

1. 90% of Asian schoolkids are nearsighted. That’s insane.

2. Some very original tutting to dubstep by two south Asians. I’m pretty sure I’ve never seen hair tutting before.

3. Narrative science improves. While previously relegated to sports tickers, advances may broaden the horizon of computer written news.

4. In 10 years, will our brains be wired for browsing?

The Japanese have created a new fashion accessory that reads your mind and reacts to your thoughts by twitching cat ears. The product successfully fulfills the wetdreams of otakus the world over.

(Source)