A few links
I’m putting off my own writing till tomorrow, since I want to be sure I’m on time for my flu shot today. (Yes, I’m late getting it. I was on vacation on flu shot day at work, and then there was this fire, and I sort of got distracted.)
Bacteria Can Cheat on Their Mates.
Are white people more likely to support the death penalty if they think it kills mostly black people? Sadly, the answer seems to be yes. (I may have more to say about this one tomorrow.)
Student Facebook, MySpace Use Predicted By Race, Ethnicity, Education. Maybe on the Internet no one knows you’re a dog, but you’re still much more likely to be on Xanga rather than Facebook if you’re Asian-American.
Our Bodies, Our Selves interviews Hillary Clinton about her health care plan. Via Ann Bartow at Feminist Law Professors.
Stephen Metcalf, at Slate, weighs in on Saletan’s race and IQ series.
Saletan places faith in an in-depth task force report from the American Psychological Association, titled “Intelligence: Knowns and Unknowns,” dating from 1996…. The APA made its conclusions absolutely clear: There is some inconclusive evidence that culture factors account for the IQ gap between blacks and whites, and there is “even less empirical support for a genetic explanation.”
Furthermore, the APA task force lays out—finally!—the real heart of the conflict. To understand what is really being fought over when we fight over the IQ gap between blacks and whites, its authors explain, you must think through an analogy. Imagine two wheat fields. Now imagine two genetically identical sets of seeds. (The analogy was first made famous by the Harvard evolutionary biologist and geneticist Richard Lewontin.) Now imagine each field is planted with these two identical seed stocks. Field No. 1 is given the best possible inputs: sunshine intensity, rain, soil nitrates, etc. Field No. 2 is given much less of all of the above. Within each field, inputs are kept uniform. Inevitably, the first field grows a healthier supply of grain than the second. But here is the rub: Within each field, the variation in outcomes is entirely hereditary. Between the two fields, the variation in outcomes in entirely environmental.
The APA task force reduces the question of the IQ test score gap to a single set of questions. As they list them:
Are the environmental and cultural situations of American Blacks and Whites also substantially and consistently different—different enough to make this a good analogy? If so, the within-group heritability of IQ scores is irrelevant to the issue. Or are those situations similar enough to suggest that the analogy is inappropriate, and that one can plausibly generalize from within-group heritabilities? Thus the issue ultimately comes down to personal judgment: How different are the relevant life experiences of Whites and Blacks in the United States today?
…
… In a moment of controversy, the temptation to proclaim yourself an avatar of truth, and your opponent a faith-based inquisitor, is natural enough. But Darwin is Darwin thanks to generations of independent corroboration…. Conversely, when one’s angry reaction to an idea is being adduced as evidence in its favor, one should ask: What does my anger have to do with the truth-content of your idea? If you told me there was a genetic basis to Jewish avarice, I would be angry. So what? What does my anger have to do with your crappy research?
Sudan has released the teacher with the teddy bear named Muhammed. Drima, The Sudanese Thinker, comments.
While watching this video of the Sudanese minister of foreign affairs speaking about the pardon (yeah, as if she did something wrong), he made an interesting comment which caught my ears.
He was basically saying that they expect to be treated back in the same manner in regards to Muslim Sudanese citizens all over the world locked up unfairly without trial. It’s a hint to Sami al-Hajj and other Sudanese locked up in Guantanamo. Clever.
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Stuff I’ve been forgetting to get around to linking: In the wake of the California fires some weeks ago, the Librarian’s Index to the Internet had a lot of fire related links. Here are some of them.
Fire Information Engine Toolkit
Web Resources for California Fires
Plus: Computer Security Day (already happened last week, but you can still check out the site).