Blogwatch
I’m promoting Jean’s link to the Malcolm Gladwell New Yorker article. It is indeed really good: the significance of the Flynn effect for the meaning of IQ tests, how scores of ethnic groups like Italians have shifted over the years, why the higher Asian scores, and how studies of adoption and mixed race children actually point against a genetic model.
Pedestals and Auction Blocks: On Black and White Women. Via Mother Laura.
Father Jim Tucker of Dappled Things, my favorite blogging Catholic priest, is retiring from the blogosphere. I’ve appreciated his peaceable tone and his blogging about Catholic traditions; he’ll be missed.
Accelerated adaptive human evolution? Via Andrew Sullivan.
Disputed Mutability has a typically thoughtful summary of her impressions of the Love Won Out ex-gay conference in Indianapolis.
Harry of Crooked Timber on why children should by no means learn a foreign language in primary school.
What is he thinking?
A much better idea is to wait until the children are 14 or so. That way you can be sure that most will never actually learn the language in question, and be pretty sure that they will have an unpleasant time while not learning it. That’s what we try to do here in America….
Christy on Health insurance and my inner statistics geek.