Undead Astronauts

Straight from Nick Wade in the journal of note the NYT – East Asians have thicker hair, smaller breasts and characteristically identified teeth that is different from other races.

Researchers tested this by inserting a known Asian gene mutation into mice and seeing if the mice developed different physical characteristics. The mice indeed grew thicker hair and had less breast tissue. Teeth are so different in mice that no conclusions could be drawn.

The method they used to test these changes can be applied to 400 other sites in the human genome. One might wonder what other traits they could test for… inclination to violence? intelligence? other personality traits? There is now a vast untapped trove of testable hypotheses for researchers to mine.

What’s also interesting is the age of this mutation. I didn’t have the impression that Asians as a group had already differentiated themselves from other races 35k years prior. I had for some reason thought that differentiation didn’t happen until much later, say 25k-20k years earlier. I thought that it was only in the past 10k years that much of what we see in today’s groups appeared and gave rise to our modern day stereotypes. If differentiation happened much earlier, any attempt to “homogenize” race (either by gov’t policy or by breeding between races) so that it really becomes meaningless has over 30k years of evolution to overcome instead of 10k. Egalitarianism is DOA.

An online community site recently posted this picture which is a compilation of the faces of top celebrities within Korea (left), China (center) and Japan (right). The face of the Korean female is strikingly similar to that of Kim Tae Hee with her large eyes and refined features. The Korean female’s skin is also the lightest in the set. The Chinese female looks reminiscent of a younger, hotter Michelle Yeoh with her chiseled features. Strangely, I can’t think of any current top Chinese actress that resembles that compilation. Neither Fan nor Li Bing Bing. Not Chrissy Chau, Zhang Ziyi, or Liu Yifei. I wonder what actresses were used in the compilation. I don’t know Japanese actresses well, so I can’t think of a caparison, but the Japanese female has features that are more cute than beautiful or sexy because of the baby fat cheeks.

As for the men, the Korean male looks very much like the lead actor in a typical Korean tv drama, or in other words “pretty.” Not entirely surprising I suppose. The Chinese male looks rather more earnest than the Korean and Japanese males. It almost reminds me of a propaganda picture. The closest actor I can think of is Nicholas Tse. I don’t know many Japanese actors, but the Japanese male is noticeably more masculine with the darkest complexion in the set and the only male with a hint of facial hair.

(First seen here)

One of the overriding goals of educational reformists is to erase “the gap”. It refers to the difference in academic achievement (among other things) between whites and blacks. Despite decades of effort, the gap stubbornly refuses to disappear. Intensely focused (and very expensive) effort can temporarily erase the gap, but the effect on academic achievement disappears after 3 years of the end of those efforts.

What educational researchers are recognizing however is that there isn’t just one gap anymore. The traditional gap remains of course, but the gap they are beginning to take notice of is the gap between Asians and every other group at advanced levels. Most of these educational studies only concern themselves with the low end of the spectrum. Policy makers are traditionally concerned with bringing those in dire academic straits out into proficient territory. But a new report by the Center on Educational Policy actually takes advanced levels into account. What they find is that in general, every group is trending in a positive direction in both reading and math. But Asians in areas like Maryland and Virginia are out-trending other groups at the advanced level.

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asianweek looked at the 2009 NAEP (National Assessment of Education Progress) results and they confirm a recent trend in academic testing. asian seniors again outscored all other groups in NAEP math as they have historically, but also for the first time in english. asians topping english scores in NAEP follows similar outcomes with the SAT and ACT.

all races made gains from the last assessment in 2005. whites, blacks and hispanics all did 4-5 pts better. asians blew them out doing 12 pts better than in 2005. whatever failings the american education system has, it’s still doing better than it has in the past. when compared to scores in the 80s and 90s, last year’s scores are much much better for all groups.

the asian penchant for academic success hasn’t gone unnoticed by the majority. recently there have been a number of articles describing the new white flight, and now the wall street journal has one too. it covers familiar ground where some white parents don’t feel comfortable leaving their kids to compete with asians. in fact, some asian parents feel the same way. their concern is that schools with asian majorities do not reflect the real world simply b/c asians only comprise a small percentage of the US population. personally, i think it would’ve been great to see more asians at my alma mater. still, i’m not sure i’d be thrilled at competing against them either. hah!

more white flight… from asians and self-segregation by both groups. whites can’t/don’t want to compete against asians in the more academically oriented colleges in canada, so they go to party schools. asians don’t want to drink all the time, so they avoid white schools.

Canadian institutions operate as pure meritocracies when it comes to admissions, and admirably so. Privately, however, many in the education community worry that universities risk becoming too skewed one way, changing campus life—a debate that’s been more or less out in the open in the U.S. for years but remains muted here.

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The division is perhaps most extreme at Waterloo, where students have dubbed the MC and DC buildings—the Mathematics & Computer Building and the William G. Davis Computer Research Centre, respectively—“mainland China” and “downtown China,” and where some students told Maclean’s they can go for days without speaking English. Writes one Waterloo mathematics graduate on an online forum: “I once had a tutorial session for the whole class where the TA got frustrated with speaking English and started giving the answer in Mandarin. A lot of the class understood his answer.”

i find that hilarious. i’m not really in favor of hard-ass asian parents, but if they get asians to pretty much take over an entire university, i can’t say i’m really against it either. this article was originally posted to a canadian news site, but was taken down after heated comments erupted.

(via aam).

i make it a point to catch (good) tv shows which have asians as regulars. this is definitely a conscious decisions as the opportunity cost is time away from playing ssf4 or sc2. i do continue to watch house and sometimes smallville, but that’s only b/c those series used to have asians as regulars/leads. since lost and flashforward ended last season, i thought i’d be reduced to watching the aforementioned shows, glee and caprica. but hollywood has definitely surprised me this season. there are asians everywhere on tv this fall.

here’s an overview of the shows i know about and i’ll update as necessary:

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Skybird X has previously said that asian discrimination in education (universities and even high schools!) is less important today than it was in the past b/c many asians simply gave the finger to big business after college and founded their own companies. the data somewhat vindicates this view. cb insights is a business intel company that has just released a survey on venture capital companies. included in the questions posed to these companies was what was the racial makeup of the teams getting funded. the results are as follows

race | population % in US | recipient of capital

white | 77% | 87%

black | 11% | 1%

asian | 4% | 12%

additionally, the survey found that teams comprising completely of asians were the ones that received the largest amount of capital. the reason given for such low black representation is that were hardly ever black entrepreneurs who pitched ideas to begin with. 92% were male, harvard grads edged out stanford grads in number, and surprisingly, mba’s outnumbered master of science degrees.