I sometimes make reference here to how godless Swedish public discourse is, particularly compared to the fundie-infested US situation. Here's a good longer piece about this issue by Jerker (it's not a funny name in Swedish, being simply a dialectal version of Eric) of Allotetraploid, also partly available in an English translation by Felicia of Life Before Death.
(No wonder God hates Sweden. We don't like him much either.)
[More blog entries about atheism, agnosticism, religion, politics; ateism, agnosticism, religion, politik.]
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Welcome everybody to the Carnival of the Godless, a bi-weekly collection of good blogging from a perspective unclouded by notions of friendly guys in the sky who provide pie when you die.
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My kids see a fair share of lukewarm religiosity with their grandma and teachers. At home, they're taught that there are basically two types of characters:
Real people who merit empathy and solidarity, such as themselves,
Fictional ones that you can make up stories about, such as Spiderman, the…
I notice you somehow 'forgot' to mention the widespread rape, murder, robbery, violence, lying and baby eating cannibalism that is a daily occurance throughout this Godless land.
Oh, that. We do that strictly in the name of the Lord, of course.
Too bad you're letting your country be taken over by a bunch of neanderthal muslims who make george bush look like richard dawkins. godless countries lose faith in themselves, their past, future, and people, which is probably why the conquest continues without a peep. You've nothing to defend anymore. Come, take our country. Multiculturalism and diversity are sweden's new faiths, and they will prove more lethal than any in human history.
http://fjordman.blogspot.com/2005/12/immigrant-rape-wave-in-sweden.html
http://gatesofvienna.blogspot.com/2006/05/new-york-times-and-sweden-dar…
http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/1671
I thought Swedes all used to be deadly dull Lutherans?
I'm american, but my wife is from Sweden. When she moved here 7 years ago, she was shocked at the blatant religiosity here. I always new it of course, but somehow she helped me become more aware of it. Going back to Sweden is like breathing fresh air. To get away from it all is truly a relaxing experience.
Sharon: We're all deadly dull, yes, and many people are still members of the Swedish Ex-State Protestant Church, but we're secularised. Really religious people here are seen as quaintly ethnic or slightly nuts. Not even the Christian Democrat politicians (a small party on the verge of dropping out of Parliament) dare refer to God in the media for fear of scaring off voters. "God says so" and "Jesus wants us to" are not accepted as arguments here.
Not that everybody's a skeptical rationalist here. The whole New Age miasma is really big among middle-class women. But dogmatic religion is pretty much out.
Kevin: Drop me a line next time you're gonna come over!
Hey everybody, look what I found in the spam comment bin, right above Sharon's comment! A religious xenophobe!
I'll make sure to inform my atheist Chinese wife that godless countries lose faith in themselves and that multiculturalism is a lethal threat. I mean, I think she has a right to know.
Religious xenophobe's are the best, they can be really stooopid.
Provided evidence:
Link 1:
Reported rape has increased.
Well, duh! Rape is severely underreported, and AFAIK this is suspected to be due to improvements in reporting. IIRC some studies, it is likely that the number of rapes declined. The validity of the statistic and its details is unclear, to say the least.
Link 2-3:
Sweden allow immigration respectively swedish right-wing parties are positive to multiculturalism. (And gender freedom - but somehow the article forgot to whine about that too.)
A democracy's got to do, what a democracy's got to do.
And best of all, religious xenophobes can be funny too:
Been there, done that:
A comment from the thread reminds us of how deadly dull we scandinavians have become (by way of commenter HP):
Yes, we will surely miss those good old days then muslims now wreak havoc with their practice of alcohol abstinence and fasting.
It's funny to see xenophobes pull out the old "they've come to take our jobs and our women" argument. You don't see that as much these days. In fact, immigrants start innumerable businesses, and about half of the immigrants themselves are female. So in fact, they've come to give us jobs and good-looking women. Of course they MUST BE KEPT OUT!
I read Bruce Bawer's While Europe Slept, and I wonder if Sweden has the same situation as the Netherlands in terms of muslim immigration.
I'm not crazy enough to take this as a racial issue, but I do think multiculturalism only works if there isn't a large and growing culture that is quite openly hostile, and sometimes violently so, to the more democratic ideals of other cultural groups.
I've been banned from lefty-liberal forums in Canada for saying such things, but I really don't think it's ignorant, bigoted or racist to say that Islam in it's most popular forms is not exactly friendly to women's rights, homosexuals rights, etcetera, all things that I happen to cherish...
Is that reasonable, or am I in denial?
"Partly" available? You mean because I didn't translate the comments? :P Or did I miss a part of Jerker's post?
Anyway: "So in fact, they've come to give us jobs and good-looking women." I have it on good authority that not only are Swedish women above average when it comes to beauty, our immigrants are beautiful as well. Which made me think, maybe Sweden is actually heaven?
Personally I don't think muslim immigration should be much of a problem if we just once and for all decide to protect children's right to freedom of religion and ban religious schools. Also we do have a steadily growing secularist movement which will fight tooth and claw to protect secularism. I am hoping people will realise secularism is the only way to get along in a world with so many religions at odds with each other!
Islam doesn't seem to pose any threat to Swedish democracy. Actually, the opposite seems to be the case. I have numerous Muslim neighbours whose children play with mine (one of them is drawing on our kitchen blackboard as I type this), and Islam seems to play the same role in their lives as Lutheran Christianity plays in the lives of native Swedish kids. A very subdued role. These people are rapidly abandoning traditional values for Swedish modernity. It's hardest on the men, who have the most to lose, but they have no ayatollas to turn to here. Sweden has no radical mosques producing suicide bombers, no Muslim ghettos.
In the 1950s and 60s, Italians and Yugoslavians immigrated to Sweden, largely to work in the auto industry. Several of my friends are children of such immigrants, and all they retain of grandma's culture is a surname and a Mediterranean complexion. Swedish culture seems to be quite an attractive option once you're here.
Felicia, I absolutely agree about confessional schools!
As for the beauties seen in the streets and public transports of Sweden, I am of course in utter awe. And a lot of it has to do with good public healthcare and an awareness of nutrition, which keeps people from obesity.
Ah, thanks, that's good to hear.
You shouldn't be surprised. Never underestimate the power of the attraction of Western culture -- or lack of culture if you prefer. If it doesn't work on the first generation, it will work on the second or at the very least on the third. I am surrounded by examples (in Austria and France).
That settles it. I'm moving to Sweden. How's the weather?
Do I need to speak Swedish? Or can I get by with hand signals and speaking English really loudly?
I´m really very happy to live in a country which is on the verge of totally skipping the insane relgious superstition that is still so dominant in many other countries. To refer to a God everytime you do something just to avoid your own responsibility in different matters is really very childish and cowardly.
Hope people in all countries in the future will be able to study reality as it is instead of referring to invented Gods, ghosts or goblins. First in doing so we can fulfill our goals and ambitions as true intelligent beeings.
Leni, The weather is, if nothing else, an endless source of conversation topics. We never really need to worry about uncomfortable silences.
As for learning to speak Swedish, it's not strictly necessary, but might avoid troubles such as ending up with powdered sugar when you were asking for flour (powdered sugar is called "florsocker" in Swedish).
If such a culture existed, I'm not sure anything would really "work", fortunately few Muslims are hostile to democratic ideals here in Canada (in my anecdotal experience). I have run across intolerant and xenophobic elements in Islam; and they are frankly scary, but I don't see how multiculturalism hinders effective opposition to them. (Much of the effective opposition comes from within the Muslim community). Now certainly it is possible to do damn-stupid things under the guise of multiculturalism, such recognizing shari'a tribunals, or funding (segregated) religious schools, but my response would be "don't do that then" rather than abandoning multiculturalism entirely.
Yes, seems xenophobes doesn't watch music videos much, which shows both in one package.
Immigration has always been essential here, in a poor (well, maybe not so much any more) and sparsely populated nation. So, let us start with the end of the ice age... :-P
Oh, and we had the Walloon smiths and miners, who helped Louis de Geer, "the father of Swedish industry", jumpstart swedish industry.
The swedish kitchen has undoubtedly benefited from immigrants. The earlier food culture was fine for hard work in winter cold - but not so good for the vascular system in a modern society.
My favorite mistake was a US student visiting, who claimed he had bought surströmming (fermented fish in can) and despite the..., um, odd smell proceeded to fry it. I dunno.
[Fermented food has little crossbinding structure left. He claimed he as a money challenged student was very disappointed when the fish rapidly shrunk to not leave any substantial remains to eat... But it was probably as well.]
Besides seeing less than helpful labeling on food and public places, english speakers will do fine.
One thing the modern wave of immigrants hopefully will fix is the remaining scarcity of really colorful expression here after the catholics and lutherans taught people to swear almost entirely with religious motifs.
That is the influence that lingers longest, I think. And I'm bored as hell by it.
yes torb, because as we all know walloon 'smiths and miners' are exactly equivalent to various Iraqi tribes, including devil-worshippers (yazidis, the latest stats show that upwards of 80% of iraqi asylum seekers are admitted), and somali warlords, most of whom go on welfare straight away, who sweden lets in. from richard lynns iq and the wealth of nations:
sweden - IQ 104
belgium (walloon) - IQ 100
Iraq - IQ 87
somalia - IQ in the 60's
Yes, I'm sure the muslim's will integrate juuuuuuuust fine, their culture, behavioral patterns and intelligence levels being so similar to sweden's. (and i thought the 'look at all the exotic restaurants' argument for immigration was all farced out at this stage, but apparently not.)
Andrew, please get a grip. Nobody believes in racially correlated IQ levels anymore. Assuming that the figures you quote are correct, I'd say the tested Somali probably weren't well-educated enough to understand the IQ test very well. Small wonder with the wars and general poverty of that area.
Sweden currently has a government minister born in the Kongo. She's short, really black, very pretty, and something of a conservative hardliner. Nothing wrong with her brains.
actually it's making a big return. lynns two majesterial books are only from the last five years. now we have greg clarks farewell to alms, reviewed favorably in many newspapers, in nyt and the london times, which argues that english people today are largely descended from the economic upper and middle classes of the past 600 years, and are probably genetically capitalist. this would tie in with other findings - the bbc recently highlighted a study which showed that english forehead size, highly correlated with iq (as the skull, a ponderous, expensive instrument, would only get bigger if there were a corresponding benefit), increased 20% over the past 650 years.
two years ago we had the publication of 'a natural history of ashkenazi intelligence', providing a darwinian explanation for the high iqs of ashkenazi jews, and studies going back to the beginning of the century showing that east asians are the most intelligent macro-ethnic group on the planet, with the largest skulls and the highest iqs, are being buttressed by bruce lahns work on recent selection for genes governing brain size. we already had evidence of east asian intelligence from the dynamite economies of hong kong and japan, now china is confirming it tenfold.
we're talking about means here, so anecdotes about black successes don't undermine the fact of low black average iqs. and the evidence from around the world, from black africa itself to inner city america and far-flung places like Haiti, confirm low black intelligence levels. belief that all races are the same beneath the surface is left-wing creationism, it's a religion, without any basis in fact. the idea that races seperated by 40000 years, who differ so markedly in appearance, wouldn't have differences in intelligence or other genes, despite having evolved in radically different environments, is hilarious. 10000 years ago europeans couldnt drink milk. now they can. natural selection is a rapid RAPID thing, and can be driven by cultural changes.
keep up the religious fight against the new generation of galileos if you must, but do you're fighting a losing battle.
http://www.lagriffedulion.f2s.com/sft.htm
http://www.lagriffedulion.f2s.com/sft2.htm
http://www.lagriffedulion.f2s.com/ashkenaz.htm
http://pinker.wjh.harvard.edu/articles/media/2006_06_17_thenewrepublic…
http://www.gnxp.com/blog/2006/02/world-of-difference-richard-lynn-maps…
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/07/science/07indu.html?ex=1187582400&en=…
And what about Ayaan Hirschi Ali as a wonderful example of Somali-intelligence...
Reading back I used a wrong expression, intelligence, as if she is a spy, whereas she is the total opposite but I am sure you all understood what I meant there...
I was going to go for the cheap shot here, but decided to look into immigration requirements for Sweden instead.
I wonder if summer school in Uppsala 25 years ago counts for any points...
Eeerr... Latter-day race biologists are our time's Galileos? Riiiight...
btw as an archaeologist you might be interested in the study showing increases in british forehead size.
----
"Researchers have found that the shape of the human skull has changed significantly over the past 650 years. Modern people possess less prominent features but higher foreheads than our medieval ancestors... The scientists said the differences between past and present skull shapes were "striking"... Dr Peter Rock, lead author of the study and director of orthodontistry at Birmingham University, told the BBC News website: "The astonishing finding is the increased cranial vault heights. "The increase is very considerable. For example, the vault height of the plague skulls were 80mm, and the modern ones were 95mm - that's in the order of 20% bigger, which is really rather a lot." He suggests that the increase in size may be due to an increase in mental capacity over the ages."
----
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4643312.stm
Nope. 650 years is way too short for any noticeable increase in "mental capacity". Besides, Beowulf and Beda were written in Britain without the benefit of this posited improvement.
About multiculturalism, I really just don't liek the idea of it being a policy. It's fine in the sense of people thinking it's a good idea to have Ukrainian dance halls and Oktoberfest and whatnot, but as a national policy, it seems to me it inevitably leads to silliness just such as the Shariah Tribubals in Canada, or German judges giving lenient sentences to Muslim men who murder/beat their wives.
I guess I get a different picture of mass immigration from Muslim states from some books I've read. Books that explicitly say that while much of Paris, Amsterdam and London seem to be just fine, there are sections of all of thses cities where there is essentially a country within a country, slums full of one cultural group.
I mean, there are sections of Paris where even the police do not enter, long after the riots that occured.
Ah yes, the first sign that you are dealing with a man of faith - they dismiss out of hand scientific studies which don't go along with their worldview, and respond with pathetic anecdotes. What's the difference between your response to this study and, let's say Harun Yahya attacking evolution - 'look this crab looks just like a crab from millions of years ago, ergo evolution doesn't happen!'
Greg Cochran etc showed in 'Natural History of Ashkenazi Intelligence' that the high IQ's of Ashkenazi jews emerged due to selection pressures only in the past one thousand years. You seem like a smart guy, do the math. Greg Clark has shown that the upper and middle classes in england were far more reproductively successful than the lower classes, an avg of five children to adulthood vs one or two. If you crunch the numbers this, maintained over 600 years, would result in most english people today being descended from the middle and upper classes. Assuming the upper and middle classes were more intelligent than the lower orders this would increase the mental capacity of the average briton.
As you are a race creationist, a man of faith who believes that groups seperated by 40000 years of evolutionary history magically evolved the exact same intelligence levels, no amount of evidence will convince you.
But again, as an archaelogist, you must have realized at this stage the startlingly different environments homo saipians evolved in. One of the reasons light skin is correlated with intelligence is because light skin is an indicator of how many of your ancestors faced selection pressures in the cognitively complex environments of northern europe and asia. Richard Lynn showed this in huge detail in 'Race Differences in Intelligence: An Evolutionary Analysis'. He showed that cold climates reqire much more brains to survive in than tropical and warm ones. In the latter food is plentiful throughout most of the year, there is little need for warm clothes or complex shelters or even fire, and he showed that africans had fewer complex tools than hunter gatherers in europe and asia. In europe and asia food was not plentiful, shelters were few and far between, and had to withstand the harsh weather, animals were big and rare, a bleak wasteland. Increased intelligence was required to survive in Europe and Northern Asia, and it probably evolved around as light skin was evolving.
Gordon, I take multiculturalism to mean "ethnic toleration". It's the most liberal one of several possible strategies when a culturally fairly homogeneous state recieves a great influx of people from other parts of the world. Ideally, you can live however you like in Sweden as long as you follow the laws of the land. Swedish officials, shopkeepers and employers are not allowed to discriminate against you because you have a bone through your nose and a warthog tattooed on your forehead. You are not allowed to circumcise your daughters (sons are for some reason still OK, though) or call for the extermination of your neighbour's ethnic group. The sorry examples you cite are certainly not in tune with Swedish law.
andrew, it sounds like you are stating an explanation for why Inuits (and say Kalahari bushmen) should be much more intelligent than Europeans.
Well, what does your Richard Lynn say about that? Are they?
Andrew, it sounds to me like you need a girlfriend. Preferably a sub-Saharan or Melanesian one, and a clutch of cute milk-chocolate kids!
Inuits are more intelligent than most hunter-gatherers in the world. But their small genetic pool didn't give as much room for mutations as did that of the larger caucasian populations.
As an aside it is possible that inbreeding between europeans/asians and neanderthals, if it occurred, increased IQ levels as well. Neanderthals had larger skulls than modern humans, and were possibly more intelligent. They were probably outdone by the human sexual division of labor (neanderthals were less efficient as both men and women hunted) and higher homo saipian birthrates rather than by being outsmarted.
http://blog.washingtonpost.com/onbalance/2006/12/neanderthal_women_unit…
Note - the small genetic pool of the inuit's would also explain why they have darker skin than caucasian's despite being more a more northerly people - less genetic wiggle-room in which light skin could be selected for.
Martin, my conspiracy theorist totally kicks your racial-IQ-fanatic's ass. ;)
Andrew, what I don't get is why any of this is important. Some people are more intelligent than other people. Believe me, there's a lot of idiots in Sweden too. So what? We should all have the same rights and be protected equally by law. If human rights don't apply equally to everyone, they're kinda pointless.
did i say anything about rights? no. i only pointed out that on the basis of iq data sweden is currently importing what will, with a fair degree of mathematical certainty, be a permanent underclass. some places, like australia, have decided to import large numbers of chinese, who are more intelligent than whites, so Australia is importing a permanent overclass. neither is good policy in the long run, but australia will only have a slightly resented overclass as most australians are middle class, on the other hand sweden will have a RESENTFUL and permanent underclass, which will undoubtedly turn violent at some point.
Headlines from swedish newspapers over the next twenty years:
'Somali children do much worse in Swedish schools than native Swedes, racism to blame, says government watchdog'
'Migrant teens six times more likely to be jail than native swedes, racism to blame, says government watchdog'
'Muslim families earn less than native swedes, less likely to be professionals, racism to blame, says government watchdog'
And on and on. This is Sweden's future, clueless headlines from clueless people who cannot fathom what is going on because they have not yet grasped those two little letters that explain so much of the modern world - IQ.
andrew,
The genetic groupings of humans don't actually correspond all that well to the races. (And which races are separated by 40000 years?) But that aside, it is quite possible that there is difference in allele frequencies significant for intelligence between the different races. But IQ is a piss-poor way of measuring this, and bigotry is a piss-poor response. You may scoff at the various factors that confound the measurement of innate intelligence via IQ, but they are very real problem for any such program.
My yes, anecdotal, experience is completely at odds with the assertion that Somali's innately have an "intelligence" around IQ 60. I volunteer as a tutor at a homework club dominated by Somali students. A couple of them a struggling; I would guess due to their history but I really don't know. But it turns out that the majority of the students don't actually need assistance, and a couple are quite bright. If they do not succeed in life (and I hope they do) it will not be for lack of innate intelligence. Even with the self-selected sample, this is not what one would expect if your claims about the innate intelligence of Somalis was true.
Nonsense. White skin is trivial to evolve - all you need to do is disable genes. It is dark skin that is hard to evolve if you don't have the right gene's squirrelled away in your gene pool. If I were looking to explain the Inuits' skin colour I would look at the ratio of folic acid to provitamin D in their diet, and at how much sunlight they actually have hitting their skin.
The Inuits are light enough anyway, probably a bad example. The Sami people of Finland are a better one. These hunter-gatherers have a largely fish based diet, ie a vitamin d intensive diet, so they wouldn't have faced the same selection pressures for light skin that more landlocked fish-vitamin-d-deprived caucasians would have had to face. Of course the other possible ickle explanation for the evolution of light skin - sexual selection, is probably beyond the pale for lefty scientists, implying as it does an innate and universal human preference for lighter skin.
I hear the dim screams already, now soft, now growing, now piercing on the wind, 'CONTRA HAERESES!!!'
Anyway, to return to the original post. Left-wing scientists frequently invoke their blank slate religion in order to ignore objective and intense research on intelligence, race and sex, that offend their political sensibilities. This creationism is worse than the farcical creationism of the religious right, because scientists don't listen to the religious right. Unfortunately scientists are forced to listen to the voices of the political left, as heretics like Art Jensen, Richard Lynn and Charles Murray are hounded and hounded. So which religion is worse for science? The Creationist religion of the right, or the blank slate religion of the left? I say the latter.
I personally have no problem with the belief in god, as I am respectful of the Christian civilization of the west, and how superior it is to all the other cultures of the world. I also recognize that when you throw out god, you throw all the cultural bathwater with it as well, the very stuff that held the west in the sublime awe of the whole world, until we threw it all away for comfort, atheism and that most effeminite construction of all - the welfare state.
Andrew, are you Stephen Colbert's kid brother? We were held in sublime awe until we went all effeminate? LOL
Oh, I don't know. I think the existance of America- land of the fat, white, conservative, religious, stupid, and criminal- should pretty much all but disprove Andrew's claims.
Even within America you can find consistent correlations between religiosity and quality of life. High religiosity correlates to low quality of life. Of course, it may not be causal but it still flies in the face of what Andrew is saying.
Last, the use of the description "effeminate" as an insult is deplorable andrew. Grow up.
The Inuits are light enough anyway, probably a bad example. The Sami people of Finland are a better one. These hunter-gatherers have a largely fish based diet...
Where are you getting this stuff? Have you ever seen a Sami person? Darker skin than the Inuit, my ass.
Of course the other possible ickle explanation for the evolution of light skin - sexual selection, is probably beyond the pale for lefty scientists, implying as it does an innate and universal human preference for lighter skin.
How does an adaptation originally restricted to a few northern areas imply an UNIVERSAL human preference for anything?
You don't hang around actual scientists much do you? They're very detail-oriented people. If you actually listen to scientists, you will hear them pointing out that Charles Murray et. al. haven't actually proved their claims. There are differences in IQ between the races in the United States, but this does not mean that these differences stem from genetic factors.
BTW, when it comes to cognitive requirements, it's hard to beat a large and complex civilization. Such as existed in the nile and rivers of south and west asia for millenia. Hunting-gathering is not a good basis for a complex social structure; the population density is necessarily low.
I have a theory of racial superiority being linked to sunny weather. Everybody really wants to live at the Equator. Weaker and more degenerate strains of humans have thus been driven farther from that area by the equatorial supermen. This means that Swedes (I live at N59 degrees) are among the puniest people on Earth, with only the Saami and Inuit being worse. Conversely, Danes and Germans are superior to Swedes as they have managed to stay closer to the Equator.
How true!
And, vainly, Swedes try to compensate somewhat for this deficiency by flying south for vacation in hordes. That is, the least puny of them manage to - I had to settle for taking a boat to Denmark for a little two-day excursion...
Yes, this is of course a dynamic equilibrium where people try to improve their geographic location all the time but end up graded like the contents of a centrifuge. I notice the Danes soon drove you back north.
"For example, the vault height of...older (my writing S.) skulls were 80mm, and the modern ones were 95mm - "
I guess it is because it has been more sexy with..., you know I prefer baldheaded men...and men that LOOKS intelligent, they might earn more money...
Eeeeh... I mean, I want to have intelligent children, of course...
One thing to be slightly careful about is the definition of the term 'multiculturalism'. While all of us live in a culture that has embraced aspects from, and is composed largely of, learning and invention from all around the world - medicine, engineering, food, clothing, music, technology, mathematics, literature etc. This, however, is often not what is meant by 'multiculturalism', which is meant to signify the idea that it is good to have essentially separate cultures living side by side in modern western societies. For instance having a fundamentalist religious community living side by side with a hippy commune within a European city (Or worse still, two fundamentalist groups that hate each other!). One can see reasons why this may cause friction (damn those tree huggers!). I tend to have a more modern leftist stance on the matter, that of being tolerant to most things apart from intolerance itself. This view, I hope, is beginning to supercede the old leftist stance of viewing all cultures as having equal value.
By the way, the IQ guy is talking nonsense about the genetics of the matter. The size of body parts (forehead etc) can easily be explained by the change in diet which resulted in modern people growing increasingly taller compared to our undernourished ancestors of just a few hundred years back.
Yay! Check out my profile pic and the About link in the header! I've been balding since age 22, I produce demonstrably intelligent children and I MAKE LOADS OF MO... Umm. I hardly make any money.
Mulder & Sculley's boss, Skinner, was a source of comfort to me in the mid-90s. I gather a lot of women found him a pretty sexy bald-pated guy. All tough & mean, just like me. Not.
MartinC, I agree. We want ethnical tolerance, not ghettoization and segregation. Multiculturalism is not Apartheid.
Hi Martin!
I was just joking. Racism is terrible because we all happens to come from the same foremother... or so...But in Sweden racism exists. You can find it among people who see themselves as modern educated understanding...germans or who came first...
I myself took a Genographic test to see were I come from...
Absolutely idiotic, because if someone finds out that this or that group belongs to a certain womans haplogroup, they might get the idea to start a new holocaust...
Intriguing! So, Soap-girl, what haplogroup did you end up in?
Well, seems to be som etruscian mountainwarrior in my mtDNA, at least my haplomothers brother if I chose any age.
Your mitocondrial ancestor maps to central Italy? Cool! So much for Saami racial purity! "We've been here forever"... (-;
Ive been thinking about getting that test done. You can order the kit online.
https://www3.nationalgeographic.com/genographic/participate.html
But my haplogroup is in minority among saami, only 4 %, and whats more it is very old, 39000 years old. I might be the last of the oldest inhabitants in Sápmi...The others might be newcomers compared to me...
Yeah! You should start a nationalistic movement to raise the consciousness of the Savonian people and drive those Saami late-comers and their reindeer into the sea!
Hahaa!! Yes, now we are there...
There are so many more relatives in the background. All the men married to my femaleline, they left half of their genetic material to their children, generation after generation. My cousins on my fathers side are of the majority haplotype. They were tested by a scientific team.
And the y-chromosome are also typical. I look like my fathers mother.
We are so much more than the haplogroup.
I mean that I got the X-chromosome from my father.
The haplogoup given is the genetic material from a tiny thing (the mitochondrium) the bodily cell swallowed loooong time ago. We humans have our own genetic material. The X-chromosome goes both to daughters and sons from from a mother, to the daugther only from her father. It is the Y-chromosome that goes from a man to his son. The X-chromosome the son has got comes always and only from his mother. And then all the other somatic chromosomes that are divided and regrouped...from both.
The really interesting genetic screens have yet to come on the market for these type of ancestry studies. The national geographic screening test that looks at either mitochondrial or Y chromosomal markers is missing out on all the autosomal markers - the really juicy stuff. In the near future we will be able to look at in the order of millions of genetic markers simultaneously, showing us all (even Andrew above!) that we are all an admixture of genes that has constantly been remixed with that of different ethnic sources over the years. The idea of 'races' having exclusive possession of 'good' or 'bad' genes is simply untenable.
"How does an adaptation originally restricted to a few northern areas imply an UNIVERSAL human preference for anything?"
There is strong evidence to suggest that males prefer lighter skinned women. In most countries in the world light skin is associated with attractiveness in females, and this is not because of western cultural norms as it was prevalent in Japanese and Chinese societies, where pure-white skin makeup was regularly used, in India, and even in Africa itself, where women have a lighter pigmentation than men. The theory goes - once dark skin became unnecessary as protection against the sun, sexual selection quickly took over and humans became lighter. 'Gentlemen prefer blondes' is a human universal.
http://www.isteve.com/IsLoveColorblind.htm
http://www.vdare.com/sailer/050612_blondes.htm
Andrew - no, it's hard to beat the northern european and particularly northern asian environments. east asians faced even tougher conditions than europeans, proven by their narrow eyes and flat faces, protection against the extreme winds and cold from siberia they faced during the fourth ice age. east asians have the highest visuospatial iqs in the world because of the world in which they evolved, which explains why they dominate areas such as engineering and mathematics that rely on the ability to manipulate three-dimensional objects in the brain. their verbal iq's, however, are lower than european's. i dont know why, but the ability to talk well was probably not that necessary during the fourth ice age.
martinc- overall, not relative brain size predicts iq.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/05/070518172103.htm
Andrew, you ARE joking, right?
Remember, this is Scienceblogs, there is a fair chance that real scientists might actually read your posts. You are spouting the sort of arguments that geneticists hate - a sort of superficial economics school version of evolutionary theory that you twist to fit in with whatever theory you already believe in.
Liking blondes is universal ?
In that case come that blonde hair is still so rare, relatively speaking ?
Does evolution of lighter skin color have nothing to do with the production of vitamin D through sunlight exposure ?
Don't you think the fact that dark skinned children living in northern latitudes seem to be more at risk of developing rickets due to less vitamin D production compared to lighter skinned children might be a selective pressure towards developing lighter skin?
Look at the sources he is citing: Steve Sailer and VDare. Those are just racist sites, plain and simple -- ignore him.
I can't resist answering this one point (for some strange reason, I guessed this would come up next):
There is strong evidence to suggest that males prefer lighter skinned women.
Where's the universal human preference, then - last time I looked, the entire human race was not made up of males?
Savon: Well, seems to be som etruscian mountainwarrior in my mtDNA, at least my haplomothers brother if I chose any age.
You might be interested in the latest buzz on the Etruscans: they came from the Near East.
Right Martin/PZ, windy just linked to gnxp, a blog which pretty much takes most of what I've pointed out as given, and, PZ, also has a link to Steve Sailer.
And martin if you'd read my earlier post you'd see that I said the sexual selection theory was a possible alternative to the vitamin d one, i didn't say it was definite, maybe it was a bit of both.
Right Martin/PZ, windy just linked to gnxp, a blog which pretty much takes most of what I've pointed out as given...
Whatever the differences in opinion between our esteemed sciencebloggers, saying that razib takes the above mentioned claims as given is a rather dumb way to put it. In contrast, you really do seem to take claims like Saami having dark skin as given.
forget about the goddam saami, jeez, why did i ever bother mentioning them... im talking about race differences in intelligence, behavior etc, which gnxp fully endorses and comments on, unlike other supposedly 'scientific' sites, which bow to the new religions of political correctness and the blank slate. if razib was a white guy, gnxp would probably have been banned from scienceblogs by now for 'racism'.
oh, and before some idiot tries to contradict the above, check out the 'essential gene expression library':
1. The Blank Slate
2. Race: The Reality of Human Differences
5. Taboo.
10. The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life.
13. The History and Geography of Human Genes
14. Intelligence, Race and Genetics.
http://www.gnxp.com/MT2/archives/001659.html?entry=1659
just out of interest for the future of the human race, world, politics etc, i happened on an interesting gnxp post near the one above explaining, using iq data, why china will soon rule the world and india, despite the predictions of clueless economists (who assume the average indian is as smart as the average chinese person), will never match china economically. iq iq iq, it explains the cosmos and can predict the future better than a fortune teller.
http://www.gnxp.com/MT2/archives/000828.html
But Andrew, if the other commenters here are idiots, then this must be because they are genetically predisposed for low intelligence, right? They can't help it! You'll just have to shoulder the White Man's Burden and bear with them.
sorry i should have pointed out that the avg chinese iq of 100, which will almost certainly rise to the east asian mean of 106 with better nutrition (happened in hong kong and even shanghai already) easily beats the avg indian iq of 81 - which hides great variance. as godless points out in the above gnxp post, most of indians entrepeneurship, inventions, nuclear technology and much else has been entirely done by the brahmin caste. without them india might resemble africa right now.
on the fascinating brahmins
http://www.gnxp.com/MT2/archives/000760.html
god, thanks windy (not being sarcastic), it's been a while since i really trawled through gnxp's archives, thanks for reminding me... it really is the best site on the internet, so much info most people ignore.
gnxp is a collective site with MANY authors (who have come and gone). there are a lot of different viewpoints, and we do push the envelope. but please be careful to not conflate one post as scripture for what "we believe."
I dunno, when it comes to excercising mathematical and engineering ability, actually doing mathematics and engineering would seem to be the way to go. Some of the societies found around the world's rivers have been doing that for many millennia. It is the effeminate farmers, not the manly hunters, that have always been where the center of intellectual life is to be found. And Europe is no exception; Europeans had already turned to farming by the time of the Roman conquest.
But Andrew, why should we listen to anything Razib writes?
Don't forget, he's a member of one of those low iq races you have kindly pointed out for us. Surely we would be better advised to get our information from one of the genetic elite with the perfect combination all the beneficial factors you have pointed out.
Could you point us towards any good websites run by chinese ashkenazi blondes?
MartinC, you aren't blond. How dare you even make your voice heard?
I, for one, welcome our new chinese ashkenazi blonde overlords.
Windy: You might be interested in the latest buzz on the Etruscans: they came from the Near East.
I went there to read. It is only speculations as usual.
But I can make a story too, how did I come to Etruscia? From Greece of course. I was that woman one of the greek warriors brought home after the Troyan war, Troy was in Lydia, or the country of greece people at that time. That guy was murdered by his wife and their son murdered his mother for vengeance. The son was punished by the erinnyans (I cannot spell it) Heard of that story?
The labyrinth is the key. In the coast of northern Sweden there are many labyrinths. There was earlier a goddess named Njärd, Njerd, Gerd, Nerthus etc who had these labyrinths. They were the way down to the lower, or to the underworld, the saami Saivo, for the shaman...
In Sweden labyrinths are caloled Troyeborg. The castles of Troy...
I went there to read. It is only speculations as usual.
No, actually the genetic link seems quite solid. There are no certainties that far in history of course, but it's not "only speculation". Or do you consider all historical genetics speculation?
Yes, there´s a lot of speculation. It seems as if people make "Timetravels". Thousand of years are compressed. And also quote sources as if they weren´t speculations, when they are... I can go on with my story: Tacitus chapter 3 wrote: "[2] ceterum et Ulixen (Ulyssees) quidam opinantur longo illo et fabuloso errore in hunc Oceanum delatum adisse Germaniae terras,..."
Thats how my haplogroup might have come to this northern, with Ulysses. Maybe there was a woman from the greek colony in Italy, or the from the etruscians, that came from Troy, onboard?
Savon, the interesting thing about that haplogroup study was the finding of several different haplogroups traceable to Asia Minor, all within that Tuscan village. That indicates that more than one unrelated female were the founders of that local lineage - strongly suggesting that a foreign colony or tribe had migrated to the area rather than it being caused by a single woman ending up there for unknowable reasons.
I saw it. But it was only 5% that were "from Troy"...the other 95% must come from other sources? I admit that I didn´t read it so well...
I know the greeks had (trading?)colonies in Italy.
Having only 5% left within the population as a whole at this point in time, 3000 years or so after the migration, is not such a big surprise. Remember that this is not a founder population within an uninhabited island with no other source of alleles. Its within a well connected area of Italy that has had plenty of migration within it since then. Like I said, its the fact that several geographically related haplogroups were located within the village that is the important point, not their overall percentage within the Tuscan region as a whole.
MartinC. Really I don´t understand the point...
As I understand, it can only be one female as a founder of one haplodynasti. I understood that 5% came from the "Troyan female", and the rest from the other. Wrong?
When I got knwledge of MY haplogroup, they counted up diverse mutations, and some of them couldn´t be at the same time. It is impossible to have TWO mothers. Of course I´ve heard that a mans mtDNA also can by some strange reason interfere with the female line. Otherwise the mans mtDNA is "dead end".
As I understand, it can only be one female as a founder of one haplodynasti
They are not counting the large mitochondrial clans (if you are talking about the "seven daughters of eve") here, but their much later grand-grand-grand...daughters. Each "haplodynasty" will have accumulated a bunch of variation since, and some of it is traceable in the same way.
So, we get several sub-"haplodynasties" that occur only in the Near East and in Tuscany. Several females must have gone over and since we expect many lineages to disappear over time (those that don't have girls), it's surprising that so many are left.
It's not the shared haplotypes, since all European populations share haplotypes, but 5% *independently* shared Near Eastern haplotypes, and the pattern of variation which requires lots of people migrating relatively recently. And not just people, but cows show the same pattern!
Do you mind revealing what your mtDNA haplogroup was, by the way?
ps: since we are now quite far from the original topic (although having a very interesting discussion on Etruscans), let's quote some more Tacitus:
Clearly, godlessness has a long history around these parts.
Fearlessness...
> Never underestimate the power of the
> attraction of Western culture -- or lack of culture
> if you prefer. If it doesn't work on the
> first generation, it will work on the second
> or at the very least on the third.
This worked quite well in my generation (I am 38). But judging from the situation we have in Germany, there had been a backlash. Visitors from Istambul usually are amused at best, frightened at worse when they see more turkish women wearing headscarves or even veils in Germany than they see back home in Turkey (most of our muslim immigrants are Turks).
When I grew up, kids just chose the subculture they liked, regardless of ethnic background. It was not unusual to see goths or skaters of turkish ethnicity. You don't see them anymore.
There might be several reasons for this. German goverment policy might be to blame, because for a long time the goverment just not accepted the fact of immigration. Thus we have people who are born in Germany (and who even have parents born in Germany) who are not even german citizens.
If the right simply refused to accept the idea of immigration, the left opted for the "apartheid" concept of multiculturalism critizised above by MartinC.
Another reason might be the development in the media and cultural industry, the rise of cable TV, satellite TV and the internet made it possible, for the first time, to have large scale access to turkish nationalist and islamist propaganda (sponsored by massive Saudi subsidies), and turkish language entertainment in general, thus diminishing the need to speak German. MTVs hip-hop videoclips, while entirely apolitical and areligeous, might have done their part to popularise a macho "gangster mentality" and a "culture of honour" as role models.
High unemployment and bleak economic prospects must also have strengthened nationalist and islamist tendencies, or at least the rise of a separatist "ghetto-culture".
Yet another reason might have been the rise of nationalism in central Europe since the end of the cold war in general, and the rise of anti-american, anti-western and anti-zionist sentiment after 9/11 in particular, although this holds probably true for most Germans, not only those of immigrant or islamic background.
> having a very interesting discussion on Etruscans)
Strangely, the genetic pattern doesn't fit the linguistic one; Luwian, Lydian and other anatolian languages are of indoeuropean origin, Etruscan is not. Greeks were present in both Asia Minor and Italy, of course, but in this case we would expect to find the shared haplotypes in areas that were heavily colonized by Greeks, like Apulia, Calabria or Sicily, rather than in Tuscany.
MartinR said "Everybody really wants to live at the Equator."
Really? I certainly don't! Have you ever been in the tropics in the wet season (summer)? Temperatures of 30C and more, humidity close to 100%, you sweat and instead of evaporating to cool you, it just trickles down your body. And that's just in Brisbane, 27 deg South, not strictly tropical!
Winter, on the other hand is rather pleasant. My Grandmother used to fly north each winter from Melbourne to stay with my aunt in Brisbane.
Eleanora, that's clearly an adaptation to the sad realities of non-superhuman existence. Making a virtue of necessity, as it were.
To live in Scandinavia, it is just an adventure every day.
To go out in the autumnrainstorms dressed in good apropriate clothing and meet the wind, have some coffe and sandwishes behind a big boulder, when the waves from the see hits the shores. Or winter skiing or going on tour on a snowscooter, or the summer, bathing in small warm lakes up in the mountains, and drink water from all kallkällor och bäckar..-(I lost the words...)
Martin: I notice that Andrew does not -- that I noticed -- mention another of his 'intellectual hero's' positions -- that men are inherently smarter than women. Or that Lynn is on the board of The Pioneer Fund and Mankind Quarterly.
Back to an earlier topic -- more interesting than racist ravings. I think you brought out the key fact as far as multi-culturalism. It IS an important and beneficial idea, as long as two things are kept in mind:
a) 'freedom of religion' and 'freedom of cultural expression' must be secondary to the criminal law:
b) the errors of people who try to enforce 'multiculturalism' without understanding it -- like some judges who excuse 'baby-beating' on the grounds that it is an inherent part of evangelical Christian culture -- oops, meant to say 'wife beating' on the grounds that it is an inherent part of Islamic culture -- not be held against the idea itself.
And one final question. Yes, Sweden is, for the most part. blissfully godless -- but apparently there are exceptions. Did you conver the evangelical protest against an artist for doing a 'gay Christ' exhibit?
The exhibition in question was Elisabeth Ohlson's 1998 photo show "Ecce Homo". I saw it myself and liked it a lot. It sparked quite some controversy, but the thing to note about it is really that it became a huge international hit, way beyond what Swedish artists can usually hope for.
Women are smarter than men. We are not so interested in warfare, we let men do it. Why be serious if we don´t have to, let others work with silly dull things...Jesus as a stupid woman, with high heel shoes and clothing that "shows all", it is really silly, but so is humanity, think about the greek mythology and the antilope dance...and Catal Huyuk and so on...back in the past forever. And forever.
Sweden is said to be a godless country. Isn´t that a clear sign of health that people become more and more suspicious to the notion of a hidden entity which is said to dictate everything, although the world is still such a mess? One can even notice that the world is just such a mess that one can expect if there were not such an entity.
Isn´t it a sign of health that people become more and more aware of the fact that it is up to us to fix this mess that we ourselves have put us and the world in?
Isn´t it a sign of health that people are lesser and lesser inclined to be ruled by religious superstition?
Isn´t it a sign of health that people are more and more inclined to accept science and scientific fact as a basis of their view of the world?
About muslims: Here in Sweden we have fought for about 100 years to decrease the influence of religion in our society. To some extent we have won that struggle. So maybe one can understand that some people are afraid of the muslims, or at least the muslim fundamentalists, because many of the thoughts and beliefs that they are bringing with them are exactly the same as we fought so hard to get rid of (eventhough it was called christianity in those day). It´s the same fear of sex, the same opression of women, the same superstitious belief in an entity who shall fix all things, the same intolerance, the same narrowmindedness and antiintellectualism.
So the fear of islam is not impossible to understand.
About race: There is ofcourse no evidence whatsoever that one race should be superior in any way over all others. The color of a persons skin has nothing to do with his or hers intelligence or other spiritual gifts. Those who says other is just biased by racist beliefs, and racism is just another very mean and evil kind of idiotic superstition.
10 questions for Greg Clark is up on gnxp. Greg is the academic who argues that genetic differences between races explain differences in economic outcomes between nations. Basically English people today are largely descended from the intelligent upper and middle classes of the past 650 years. The implications of this are of course that non-European immigrants to Britain, with the exception of East Asians and upper-caste Indians, will form a permanent underclass because they do not have these genetic advantages.
http://www.gnxp.com/blog/2007/08/10-questions-for-greg-clark.php
Hi Martin,
you are right about comments, so here is another one...Dr Lars Wilks, the swedish artist/painter, wrote a book two years ago "Hur man blir samtidskonstnär på tre dagar" (How to be a contempotrary artist in three days). This is a "divider" in art, a real "turnstone"..
And no he proved what Godless Sweden means,and I guess he must have read the comment here of lars Andersson.
Wilks made a Muhammed as a dog in a traficcarousel (rondellhund) It has been popular with those animals in the rondels for a time now. Then he went even further and made another animal, I don not want to mention it, what it is. And now the muslims in Sweden demonstrate. And what do we think, we think maybe of the freedom of art?
I laugh at it...How can the muslims let him provoke them to demonstrations, that is exactly what he wants...
Religion is NOT freedom, has never been. But everybody are allowed to think whatever they will.
this is a very old thread but i just want to add some clarity to this discussion..nice and simple just this...
acceptance and respect of differences - i can live very happily living my life the way i see fit, and my secret is " i speak with GOD, i believe in my GOD...he tells me to do good things and speak of good things ..i wont judge or hate you for your choices and i wont try and persuade you that my way is better than yours ...actions speak louder than words...these days i just keep my mouth shut and try and do my best "