Taboo

It has always seemed strange to me that in our endless discussions about education so little stress is laid on the pleasure of becoming an educated person, the enormous interest it adds to life. To be able to be caught up into the world of thought -- that is to be educated. --Edith Hamilton, educator and writer


Mom is in West Virginia herding cats. This is a tough project.
I have hours and hours of application forms.

The Steelers made a fascinating trade. Miami will pay most of the salary but looks to be putting the team to sleep for two years to get a franchise quarterback. Maybe the kid from Clemson? It looks as if they will get a good pick with the Steeler's draft choice. So much for my plan to play for the draft choice.

Of course, fraudulent scholars have always existed, but it seems to me — not that I’ve conducted a study of the matter — that clear dishonesty by leading scholars no longer elicits widespread condemnation and no longer discredits the guilty parties to the extent that it used to. The Nancy MacLean affair is clear-cut. Thomas Piketty’s work is either blatantly dishonest or spectacularly incompetent. And many other examples might be adduced. Ideology, it seems, has overwhelmed scholars in the humanities and social sciences to an unprecedented degree....Scholars should be seeking the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, however much they appreciate that this objective can never be attained fully. They are obliged to strive. If they clearly are not trying, indeed, are twisting and turning in the ideological wind above all, real scholars should drum them out of their professions as unworthy of recognition by genuine scholars.--Higgs

This Kavanaugh article in the NYT is pushing the envelope. Along with the slavery article it makes the NYT look like they are pamphleteering.

Beginning early on the morning of September 17, 1862, Confederate and Union troops in the Civil War clashed near Maryland’s Antietam Creek in the bloodiest single day in American military history.

                                     Taboo

Taboo, a book by Entine, focused on why different genetic population groups tend to do well in certain athletic endeavors and not in others. This is a hard sell nowadays. Racial distinctions are seen as "constructs." Arbitrary. Where people like Carlton Coon saw constellations in people's anatomy, we now don't. And it's a hard dichotomy for a culture with so much respect for identity.

Entine asks, Does evolution proscribe body types and physiology in identifiable populations? The short answer is “yes”. While there is a great deal of overlap on average (the fat center of the distribution curve), clear differences show up on the tails, at the elite level. For example, speaking in very broad terms, whites, particularly of Eurasian ancestry, dominate elite strength-related sports, such as weight lifting, hammer throw, javelin, shot put, etc.

Because of certain physical and physiological characteristics common to all people of African ancestry, including lower natural body fat and longer limbs relative to their torsos, blacks dominate at the elite level of running. But East African and West Africans have different genotypes and phenotypes. Using the universal sport of running as a measuring stick, elite runners of West African ancestry dominate in sprinting; for example, they hold 494 of the top 500 100 meter times. Yet there are no elite distance runners of West African ancestry. East Africans are mediocre sprinters–no East African (or White or Asian for that matter) has ever broken 10 seconds in the 100 meters. Yet East Africans, particularly those who trace their ancestry to the mountainous Rift Valley, an evolutionary forge for distance runners, dominate endurance races.

Is this correlation without causation? Maybe.  Where this will go with genetics is anybody's guess because we are going to get a lot more specific with gene testing. But we know where it's going with Entine. His new book is on the genetic superiority of the Jews.
(a lot from an interview with Entine)