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Why is vocabulary shrinking?
Vocabulary decline in adult non-Hispanic White Americans (controlled for years of education completed)"Are Americans more intelligent than a few decades ago, or less intelligent?" So asks psychologist...
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Have we been selected for long-term thinking?
GDP per capita as a function of future orientation (Preis et al. 2012)To what degree do we value the short term over the long term? The answer varies not only from individual to individual but also...
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Differences in the genetic architecture of cognition?
Tableau III, Piet Mondrian (1872-1944). The polygenic score can provide a measure of innate cognitive ability in various human populations. However, it is less valid for African Americans, apparently...
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Is this the Gay Germ?
Poster for 1997 World AIDS Day (Wikicommons - Neil Curtis, Christian Michelides). Antiretroviral therapy has reduced infections in AIDS victims, but the decline hasn't been the same for all pathogens....
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Is this the Gay Germ? Part II
Courtyard with Lunatics, Francisco Goya (1746-1828). Why is HIV much more likely to cause cognitive impairment in the body of a gay man than in the body of an intravenous drug user? Has an unknown...
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I was really something
I was really something(2016), by Judith Carlin. A fungus may live in your brain for years while meddling only as much as necessary with your neurons. Beyond a certain age it gets less benefit and has...
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Behavioral manipulation: population differences in virulence
Helicobacter pylori(Wikicommons ā NIH). Some human populations have become resistant to this bacterium; others have not. Could the same be true for pathogens that manipulate human behavior?Humans are...
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Candida and autism
Shamanic ritual (Wikipedia - Idries Shah). There is a correlation between autism and antibodies for Candida albicans. Does a pathogenic strain of this yeast promote the development of autism? Cui...
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Weird people
Weird people. Northwest Europeans are more individualistic, less loyal to kin, and more trusting of strangers. (Wikicommons)Northwest Europeans are WEIRD ... as in Western, Educated, Industrialized,...
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Not what you think
Preparing for a test (Wikicommons - Excelz)Why do West African immigrants outperform native-born whites in UK schools? This is the question posed by Chanda Chisala using data from the GCSE, the General...
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The 2020s are here
Elderly Shanghai woman practicing tai-chi (Wikipedia ā Tom Thai)Two years ago I wrote about "The Crisis of the 2020s." I argued that this decade would see a worsening confrontation between two world...
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The costs of outbreeding: what do we know?
Charles Davenport, circa 1929 (Wikicommons)To produce healthy children, you should marry a third or fourth cousin. Farther out, the genetic costs of outbreeding begin to outweigh those of inbreeding....
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The costs of outbreeding: a few more points
Although the house mouse (Mus musculus) is a single species, fertility is reduced in crosses between geographic populations (Wikipedia - Bolid74)It's widely believed that mating between two species...
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A Pandora's box?
Chinese lung tissue seems to be receptive to coronaviruses, perhaps because frequent mild infections stimulate the immune system to protect against more serious pulmonary infections, like pneumonia and...
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Between Europe and America
Iceland had pre-Columbian contacts with North America. Did they lead to intermarriage? (Wikicommons)Did the Norse have sustained contacts with the indigenous peoples of the Americas, including...
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Coevolution with the plague
Houses being burned during an outbreak of pneumonic plague in China (Wikicommons). In China, large urban populations coevolved with deadly pulmonary infections, like tuberculosis, pneumonia, and...
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The ghosts of West Africa
Bushmen in the Kalahari (Wikicommons, Andy Maano). When recorded history began, in Sumer and Egypt, black Africans were absent from most of Africa, even from most of West Africa. The lands south of the...
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From here it's all downhill
Polish IQ scores for three subtests: Similarities, Vocabulary, and Arithmetic (Wikicommons - Pedros)Throughout the West the Flynn effect is coming to an end. More and more people are bumping up against...
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The myth of selective neutrality
Paleolithic tent (Wikicommons - Michal MaƱas). Did Europeans lose haplogroup U because they were replaced by farmers from the south? Or because they needed less energy for body heat? Blood group...
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Affective empathy: a double-edged sword
March in Brooklyn (?) (Wikicommons - Amanda Hirsch). Can we learn to feel another person's pain or joy? Twin studies indicate that affective empathy is 52-57% heritable. The rest includes prenatal and...
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