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Agencies buying hotel rooms for surge of Mexican illegal immigrants and some others are released (Aug 12, 2013)
Posted By American News Online
Reported by Fox News.Com August 12, 2013
EXCLUSIVE: A sudden influx of illegal immigrants from Mexico requesting asylum is overwhelming immigration agents in San Diego, forcing agencies to rent hotel rooms for some undocumented families and release others to cities around the U.S.
Documents obtained exclusively by Fox News show Immigration and Customs Enforcement has been paying for hotel rooms for dozens of recently arrived families to relieve overcrowding inside the San Ysidro and Otay Mesa, Calif., processing centers. Some ICE employees are working overtime and others have been asked to volunteer to work weekend shifts. "Duties include intake, placements, transports and release of family groups and unaccompanied minors," according to a memo obtained by Fox News.
The surge has raised suspicions about what is driving the influx, amid claims that illegal immigrants have learned they can attempt to get asylum by using a few key words -- namely, by claiming they have a "credible fear" of drug cartels.
"This clearly has to have been orchestrated by somebody," said former U.S. Attorney for Southern California Peter Nunez. "It's beyond belief that dozens or hundreds or thousands of people would simultaneously decide that they should go to the U.S. and make this claim."
Sources say one day last week, 200 border-crossers came through the Otay Mesa Port of Entry claiming asylum while and as many as 550 overflowed inside the processing center there and in nearby San Ysidro.
"People were sleeping on floors – they had nowhere to put them," said one source, a long-time border agent and supervisor. "This shouldn't be happening. Unless there is an immediate and well-publicized policy change, this situation will become another debacle."
At a hotel near San Diego -- which Fox News agreed not to identify for security reasons -- ICE vans arrived several times over the weekend with immigrant families. They were escorted to the second floor by two armed, uniformed agents. Two border agents secured the entrance and side door.
Documents obtained by Fox News show that recently on a single day, dozens of illegal immigrants were being transferred to an area hotel where rooms cost $99 a night. Others were released to addresses in Texas, Florida and even Brooklyn, N.Y.
ICE sources say the addresses are almost always bogus. When they don't show up for court, they are removed by an immigration judge in absentia.
Most of the immigrants came from Mexico, but others listed their native country as Haiti, Romania, Guatemala and Iraq. Some were over age 50, others were under a year old. Thirty were transported to a hotel. Seventy were released around the country.
Fox News spoke to four agencies responsible for the San Diego situation last week. All deferred to the Department of Homeland Security press office in Washington, D.C., which issued this statement:
"Credible fear determinations are dictated by long standing statute, not an issuance of discretion. The USCIS officer must find that a 'significant possibility' exists that the individual may be found eligible for asylum or withholding or removal.
"If the credible fear threshold is met, the individual is placed into removal proceedings in Immigration Court. The final decision on asylum eligibility rests with an immigration judge."
It is during this time – during removal proceedings – when illegal immigrants are released. Many don't show up, as 91 percent of asylum claims from Mexico are denied.
Asylum claims from Mexico are highly unusual and critics say this is an orchestrated sham – it's not about getting asylum, they say, but about overwhelming the system and getting a free pass into the U.S. and a court date for which no one will show up.
"Hundreds of thousands of people have never returned and the list of people for whom warrants are outstanding is phenomenal," said Nunez. "We have a long history of people absconding from immigration hearings of one sort of another, they just blend back into the community."
ICE sources say an estimated 600,000 to 800,000 illegal immigrants a year do not show up for their court date and disappear into the U.S.
The number of asylum claims is on the rise, almost tripling the last four years. Most come from Chinese, Egyptian and Ethiopian immigrants. Fewer than 200 a year come from Mexico, let alone 200 in a day. However, by claiming they have a "credible fear of persecution" if returned to Mexico, the immigrant is entitled to a series of interviews, hearings, proceedings and appeals that can drag on for years.
The initial evaluation usually is done in the border processing center by an asylum officer employed by USCIS.
Officials stress that meeting the "credible fear" standard is not a tentative asylum approval. It's simply a step in the process.
An immigration spokesman said last week: "The legal threshold for 'credible fear' is broad and low to ensure individuals who may face a 'significant possibility' of persecution ... have the opportunity to have their case heard before an immigration judge."
Last week, an asylum officer heard the claims of the "Dream 9," nine Mexican nationals brought to the U.S. as children. Even though seven of the nine lived, worked and went to school in Mexico without incident, they were granted asylum. Most thought they would be deported.
"The orders from Washington are to simply turn these people loose," said Ira Mehlman, a spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform. "All you have to say is you qualify for the Dream Act and/or you intend to apply, and they're instructed by their higher-ups to simply turn these people loose, to set them free and let them pursue any path they want."
There are 57 immigration courts and 231 immigration judges. Immigration courts handle 280,000 proceedings each year -- an average of 1,243 per year per judge, or four decisions per day.
Asylum can be granted if the applicant has suffered past persecution or has a "well-founded fear of persecution" on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a social group, or political opinion in their native country.
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China is Losing the New Cold War


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Reuters — China's first mind-controlled car has been developed by researchers in the north-east port city of Tianjin.
Chinese researchers have developed what they say is the country's first car that uses nothing but brain power to drive.
The research team from Nankai University, in the north-eastern Chinese port city of Tianjin, has spent two years bringing the mind-controlled vehicle to reality.
By wearing brain signal-reading equipment a driver can control the car to go forward, backwards, come to a stop, and both lock and unlock the vehicle, all without moving their hands or feet.
Researcher Zhang Zhao told Reuters the equipment comprises 16 sensors that capture EEG (electroencephalogram) signals from the driver's brain. They developed a computer program that selects the relevant signals and translates them, enabling control of the car.
"The tester's EEG signals are picked up by this (brain signal-reading) equipment and transmitted wirelessly to the computer. The computer processes the signals to categorize and recognize people's intention, then translates them into control command to the car. The core of the whole flow is to process the EEG signals, which is done on the computer," said Zhang.
Associate Professor Duan Feng, from the university's College of Computer and Control Engineering, led the project. He emphasized that the technology is aimed at better serving human beings, and that it might soon be possible to combine brain controlled technology and driverless cars, such as the Google Self Driving Car (SDC).
"Driverless cars' further development can bring more benefits to us, since we can better realize functions relating to brain controlling with the help of the driverless cars' platform," said Duan. "In the end, cars, whether driverless or not, and machines are serving for people. Under such circumstances, people's intentions must be recognized. In our project, it makes the cars better serve human beings."
Duan said worries about potential road accidents caused by the driver being distracted while their brain was in control of his team's car were unfounded, because concentration was needed only when changing the vehicle's moving status, i.e. changing lanes or turning. Whether such an application would be enough to persuade drivers to get behind the wheel and control a car with their mind is far from certain, though.
The researchers say their initial idea was inspired by helping disabled people who are physically unable to steer cars.
"There are two starting points of this project. The first one is to provide a driving method without using hands or feet for the disabled who are unable to move freely; and secondly, to provide healthy people with a new and more intellectualized driving mode," Zhang said.
At present the vehicle, in collaboration with Chinese car manufacturer Great Wall Motor, can only drive in a straight direction, and there are no plans to put it into production.
VentureBeat's mission is to be a digital town square for technical decision-makers to gain knowledge about transformative enterprise technology and transact. Discover our Briefings.

subset: commoncrawl


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Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies (1997)
Pulitzer Prize (Nonfiction)
History followed different courses for different
peoples because of differences among peoples'
No development of the 20th Century was more unfortunate than the politicization of practically everything. Possibly the worst aspect of this catastrophe is the degree to which science has been corrupted. Robert Bork and Tom Wolfe have written eloquently about the consequences of the politicization of the Law (see Orrin's review) and the Arts (see Orrin's review) respectively, but these are essentially human constructs, so some corruption is inevitable and probably natural. But Science lays claim to a special status as a wholly impartial, rational and incorruptible system, independent of human influence, revealing certain immutable "truths' about the world around us. Since its right to this mantle has gone largely unchallenged, except by a few intrepid philosophers like Karl Popper and those who are easily dismissed as religious fanatics, the modern tendency of scientists to use scientific theories to prove that their own political views are "correct" is especially troubling. Environmentalists and population doomsayers have been doing this for so long and have made so many inaccurate predictions that we are mostly wise to their shenanigans. But there are other, more respected, folks who do much the same thing. One example that comes to mind is Stephen Jay Gould's book, The Mismeasure of Man (see Orrin's review), which even made the Modern Library Top 100 Non-Fiction Books of the 20th Century, wherein he essentially argues that since the validity of phrenology has been disproved, there is no scientific basis for believing there to be any differences between the human races. Similarly, this book by Jared Diamond, which even won the Pulitzer Prize, uses scientific sleight of hand to argue that differences in the respective levels of development between human societies are purely a function of environment. The book is fascinating, entertaining and eminently readable, but it is also either maddeningly obtuse or an exercise in utter intellectual dishonesty, for Diamond's argument is ultimately little more than a house of cards and the bottom card is especially weak.
Diamond, who is an evolutionary biologist at UCLA, has done extensive field work in New Guinea. A native friend named Yali once asked him:
Why is it that you white people developed so much
cargo and brought it to New Guinea, but we
This book attempts to answer Yali's question. But it seeks to answer it in a very specific and seemingly underhanded way, by trying to completely discount biological, intellectual and cultural differences and relying instead on environmental happenstance as the sole cause of this disparity. In one of the strangest moments in the book, Diamond seems to recognize that different ethnic groupings might have genuinely differing intellectual capacities. In fact, he argues that a native of New Guinea must be more intelligent than a contemporary western European because while we sit around watching TV and eating fast food, they are out trying to figure out how to put dinner on the table (or grass mat or whatever). Let's ignore, for the moment, the question of who's smarter. The bizarre thing, given the context of the rest of the book, is that after arguing here that there are such differences, Diamond never even acknowledges the possibility that such differences had any influence on the subsequent development of human societies.
Instead, he argues that societies developed almost exclusively according to their geographical setting and the ease of domestication of the flora and fauna located nearby. At the end of the last Ice Age, some 11,000 or 13,000 years ago, virtually all human societies were at a similar hunter-gatherer stage of development, but from that point on they diverge drastically. It is Diamond's contention that the Fertile Crescent in mesopotamia was endowed with a package of grains and animals which were especially easy to domesticate, along with an ideal climate for doing so. Once humans can grow or raise their own food they settle down and form communities. These are gradually aggregated into nation-states with population densities that allow for divisions of labor and an elite class of intellectuals and so on. These nations eventually became expansionist and began to encounter and conquer the less organized societies. Living in close proximity to animals and grains, the developed societies were exposed to devastating diseases. Their members acquired some level of resistance to such diseases, but when they came into contact with the undeveloped peoples, who had never been exposed to these germs, the diseases were particularly lethal. And as the developed nations continued to progress they became more and more advanced until they had technologies like steam power and guns which gave them a prohibitive advantage in their encounters with the undeveloped world. Thus, the ultimate differences in levels of development between societies are very real, and they allowed the "developed" nations to dominate the "undeveloped", but in Diamond's view the reasons for this all trace their way back to the fact that wheat and cows sprang full blown from Hera's head and dropped into our laps ready to be planted or milked.
Given A, no doubt B and C and D follow nicely. So let's look at this initial point most carefully--what of the idea that certain grains and animals were just sitting there waiting to be used by man? Diamond does a great job of demonstrating that most of the animals and foodstuffs that we have ever domesticated occurred in abundance in only those places where domestication occurred. But wait, that's kind of circular isn't it? At one point, when he's talking about human domestication of dogs, he marvels at the mechanics that allowed us to eventually breed the dachshund after starting with the wolf. But then when he examines why horses were domesticated but zebras were not, he simply avows that it was because zebras are bad tempered. Hello? Are we to believe that the ancient ancestor of the modern horse was essentially tame before we ever put a halter around it's neck? And is it really the case that we couldn't breed zebras for a few generations and get them to the point where they are more manageable? Ditto the cow vs. the buffalo. Diamond makes a huge production out of the fact that while a large variety of large herd animals occur in the Fertile Crescent and the rest of Eurasia, very few such animals occur in places like Australia and the Americas. But what of the buffalo? Shouldn't the fact that there were so few animals to choose from have given the Native Americans even more impetus to domesticate bison? Suppose they are trickier than the Ur-cows that we tamed, shouldn't that superior intellect that Diamond maintains results from more challenging life circumstances have enabled them to tame a more difficult beast? We don't know Diamond's answers to such questions because he necessarily ignores them.
In a letter to The New York Review of Books, refuting some points made in their review of his book, Diamond states that:
Historians' failure to explain history's broadest
pattern leaves us with a huge moral gap. In the
Okay, suppose that we grant him that most of us assume racial differences help explain the differing levels of development in different human societies. Suppose we further grant that this supposition is unfounded and pernicious, that it is racist and not simply racialist--racism implies that the more successful culture is superior in some abstract sense, while racialism would merely notice a racial component to the relative success levels of these cultures. Does any of this justify using parlor tricks and shoddy reasoning to try and replace the arguably racist assumptions with totally dubious environmental ones? I suppose you could argue that it is better in societal terms to have our faulty understanding rest on the dicey assumptions which are least hurtful to other people, but this is not science, it is social engineering. We should not grant it the same implicit level of authenticity which we typically allow to scientific theory.
The book is truly fascinating and Diamond's grasp of 13,000 years of human history is really impressive. But his argument is finally just so silly that you have to question either his motives or his own understanding of the material he presents. I'll assume that his motives, though perhaps noble, lead him to propound a dubious scientific theory in order to undermine racially based theories that may or may not be equally weak. This is a book to be read and enjoyed, but with a skeptical eye.
Grade: (C+)
The Ends of the World as We Know Them: The Unites States is seemingly at the height of its power, but how long will our ascendancy last? (Jared Diamond, 1/01/05, NY Times)
When it comes to historical collapses, five groups of interacting factors have been especially important: the damage that people have inflicted on their environment; climate change; enemies; changes in friendly trading partners; and the society's political, economic and social responses to these shifts. That's not to say that all five causes play a role in every case. Instead, think of this as a useful checklist of factors that should be examined, but whose relative importance varies from case to case.
-ESSAY: The Erosion of Civilization: The Fertile Crescent's fall holds a message for today's troubled spots. (Jared Diamond, June 15, 2003, LA Times)
-ESSAY: Muskets and Nukes: the Patterns of Proliferation (Jared Diamond, March 16, 2003, LA Times)
-ESSAY: WHY DO SOME SOCIETIES MAKE DISASTROUS DECISIONS? (JARED DIAMOND, April 28, 2003, Edge)
Book-related and General Links:
-CV: CURRICULUM VITAE: Jared M. Diamond (UCLA)
-PROFILE: The Man Who Knows Too Much: Pulitzer Prize-winning human mulitprocesor Jared Diamond has a lot on his mind (Catherine Seipp, UCLA Magazine)
-INTERVIEW : ERNST MAYR: WHAT EVOLUTION IS [10.31.01] Introduction by Jared Diamond (The Edge)
-SPEECH: Faculty Research Lecture: Why Did Human History Unfold Differently on Different Continents for the Last 13,000 Years? (Jared Diamond, UCLA)
-ESSAY: The Landscape of Destiny: To understand who's on top in the modern world, you have to look back to the last Ice Age and the inherent environmental advantages the conquerors had over history's less fortunate. (Jared Diamond, UCLA Magazine)
-ESSAY: Easter's End (Jared Diamond, Discover)
-ESSAY : Archaeology: Talk of cannibalism (JARED M. DIAMOND, Nature)
-ESSAY ARCHIVE: to find more Essays by Diamond use the Article Archive to search for articles published in Discover Magazine
-ESSAY: SEXUAL SELECTION AND THE ORIGIN OF HUMAN RACES (Jared Diamond)
-INTERVIEW : (Randall Rothenberg, Strategy & Business)
-REVIEW: Jared Diamond: The Golden Phonebook, NY Review of Books
Genes, Peoples, and Languages by Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza
-REVIEW: Jared Diamond: Outcasts of the Islands, NY Review of Books
The Island of the Colorblind by Oliver Sacks
-REVIEW: Jared Diamond: The Roots of Radicalism, NY Review of Books
Born to Rebel: Birth Order, Family Dynamics, and Creative Lives by Frank J. Sulloway
-REVIEW: Jared Diamond: Portrait of the Biologist as a Young Man, NY Review of Books
Naturalist by Edward O. Wilson
-INTERVIEW: "GUNS, GERMS & STEEL" (April 17, 1998, The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer Transcript)
-INTERVIEW: (Family Haven)
-DISCUSSION: The Animals that Conquered the World
-AWARDS: PROF. DIAMOND WINS PULIZER BOOK PRIZE (Wendy Soderburg/UCLA Today Staff)
-AWARDS: Lannan Foundation Literary Award
-Edge 3rd Culture: Jared Diamond
-ESSAY: Laying a foundation for human history (Bill Gates, MicroSoft)
-REVIEW: William H. McNeill: History Upside Down, NY Review of Books
Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by Jared Diamond
-RESPONSE: Jared Diamond: 'GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL', NY Review of Books
-REVIEW: of GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL The Fates of Human Societies. By Jared Diamond (James Shreeve, NY Times Book Review)
-REVIEW: of Guns, Germs and Steel Secrets of Success (Joel Mokyr, Reason)
-REVIEW: of Guns, Germs and Steel (Laurence Hurst, New Scientist)
-REVIEW: of Guns, Germs and Steel (Jonathan Cape, THE ECONOMIST REVIEW)
-REVIEW: The Clash of Continents (Steve Sailer, National Review)
-REVIEW : Is Geography Destiny? : "'Why is it that you white people developed so much cargo and brought it to New Guinea, but we black people had little cargo of our own?' Jared Diamond begins his ambitious Guns, Germs, and Steel with this query from Yali, a New Guinean politician and acquaintance..." (Donald A. Yerxa, Christianity Today)
-REVIEW: of Guns, Germs and Steel (European Sociobiological Society Newsletter Reviewed by J. Philippe Rushton, Department of Psychology, University of Western Ontario)
-REVIEW: of Guns, Germs and Steel (Michael Levin is in the Department of Philosophy of the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, American Renaissance)
-REVIEW: Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel (J. Bradford DeLong, http://www.j-bradford-delong.net)
-REVIEW: of Guns, Germs and Steel (EH.NET by Joel Mokyr, Departments of Economics and History, Northwestern University)
-REVIEW: of Guns, Germs and Steel (Danny Yee)
-REVIEW: of Guns, Germs and Steel (Mr. Hutchings, Sir William Dunn School of Pathology, University of Oxford, Kathmandu Post)
-REVIEW: Steve Jones: Go Milk a Fruit Bat!, NY Review of Books
Why Is Sex Fun? The Evolution of Human Sexuality by Jared Diamond
-REVIEW: of THE THIRD CHIMPANZEE The Evolution and Future of the Human Animal. By Jared Diamond (Frans B. M. de Waal, NY Times Book Review)
I have not read "Guns, Germs and Steel" but I have watched Jared Diamond on film and listened to him explaining his theory.
As I listened, I thought of the same questions as the author of this review. So, Africans failed to domesticate zebras because they kick a lot? And wild horses don't? The American and African buffalo are mean animals, whereas those of Eurasia stem from a docile predecessor who enjoyed the company of humans? Diamond does not understand (or pretends he does not understand) the first thing about domestication. It is not about identifying docile species. It is about identifying docile individuals within a species and having them mate in order to enhance their docility. This was proven in experiments with polar foxes in Russia. By the way, in that film, Diamond admits that lions and tigers were not domesticated not because they are so ferocious, but because they are useless. Talk about a scholar who never contradicts himself!
I sent Jared Diamond links to websites which feature stories and show pictures of Europeans riding zebras, and even ostriches, and asked him to comment. Naturally, he did not answer.
The most interesting thing, however, is that by the definition of those who refuse to accept the existence of genetic differences at the group level, Diamond is a self-avowed racist and a staunch supporter of J. P. Rushton, and R. Lynn. Not only has he stated that the New Guineans are probably more intelligent than Europeans for genetic reasons, but he has also published an article in Nature (1986, vol. 320, pp. 488-499), entitled "Variation in human testis size". If you had read that article without knowing the name of the author, you would have betted that it is by Rushton. In that article, Diamond concedes that East Asians have smaller testes than Danes, and that East Asians have the lowest twinning rates, followed by Europeans, then by Africans (which is the backbone of Rushton's theory). The only difference between him and Rushton is that Diamond says there is no evidence that these traits predict copulation frequency. However, he does concur with Rushton, that African (Yoruba) women have higher sex-hormone levels (at least at the time of ovulation) than Japanese women, and says that these differences may contribute to the geographic distribution of the incidence of breast cancer. And this is how Diamond ends his article: "...variation in human sex organs and function warrants serious study." So, Diamond supports Rushton's work! Surely, me must think that variation in human cranial capacity and correlations with IQ also warrant serious research! Who knows, it might turn out that New Guineans have larger brains than Europeans. That would explain their superior intelligence very convincingly. Everybody would be happy: Diamond, Rushton, Jensen, and Lynn!
- misho
- Mar-22-2007, 10:04
I just happened to run across this review while googling, and I happen to agree with it. In fact, I would have been far more scathing in my review of it. While I generally agree with Mr. Diamond's thesis, his attempt to create a sort of environmental determinism in which things like random hapenstance and cultural/social decisions play absolutely no role in shaping society ultimately left me guffawing at his poltically correct silliness. I found it a shame that a man of Mr. Diamond's obvious intelligence couldn't address the subject dispassionately, because he really is making some important points.
In any event, I am primarily commenting because the other poster's first instinct was to shoot down your argument completely by means of an ad hominem attack. He says:
"Obviously the critical reviewer of Guns, Germs, and Steel has not carefully read this book."
To which he follows, "It is not a simple read. I had to read it twice to fully understand some of the points that he made. For instance, Dr. Diamond did not assert that the New Guinean people are more intelligent than the Western Europeans."
Now this is simply false, as the following passage makes abundently clear:
"My perspective on this controversy comes from 33 years of working with New Guineans in their own intact societies. From the very beginning of my work with New Guineans, they impressed me as being on the average more intelligent, more alert, more expressive, and more interested in things and people around them than the average European or American is. At some tasks that one might reasonably suppose to reflect aspects of brain function, such as the ability to form a mental map of unfamiliar surroundings, they appear considerably more adept than Westerners. Of course, New Guineans tend to perform poorly at tasks that Westerners have been trained to perform since childhood and that New Guineans have not. Hence when unschooled New Guineans from remote villages visit towns, they look stupid to Westerners. Conversely, I am constantly aware of how stupid I look to New Guineans when I'm with them in the jungle, displaying my incompetence at simple tasks (such as following a jungle trail or erecting a shelter) at which New Guineans have been trained since childhood and I have not.
It's easy to recognize two reasons why my impression that New Guineans are smarter than Westerners may be correct. First, Europeans have for thousands of years been living in densely populated societies with central governments, police, and judiciaries. In those societies, infectious epidemic diseases of dense populations (such as smallpox) were historically the major cause of death, while murders were relatively uncommon and a state of war was the exception rather than the rule. Most Europeans who escaped fatal infections also escaped other potential causes of death and proceeded to pass on their genes. Today, most live-born Western infants survive fatal infections as well and reproduce themselves, regardless of their intelligence and the genes they bear. In contrast, New Guineans have been living in societies where human numbers were too low for epidemic diseases of dense populations to evolve. Instead, traditional New Guineans suffered high mortality from murder, chronic tribal warfare, accidents, and problems in procuring food.
Intelligent people are likelier than less intelligent ones to escape those causes of high mortality in traditional New Guinea societies. However, the differential mortality from epidemic diseases in traditional European societies had little to do with intelligence, and instead involved genetic resistance dependent on details of body chemistry. For example, people with blood group B or O have a greater resistance to smallpox than do people with blood group A. That is, natural selection promoting genes for intelligence has probably been far more ruthless in New Guinea than in more densely populated, politically complex societies, where natural selection for body chemistry was instead more potent.
Besides this genetic reason, there is also a second reason why New Guineans may have come to be smarter than Westerners. Modern European and American children spend much of their time being passively entertained by television, radio, and movies. In the average American household, the TV set is on for seven hours per day. In contrast, traditional New Guinea children have virtually no such opportunities for passive entertainment and instead spend almost all of their waking hours actively doing something, such as talking or playing with other children or adults. Almost all studies of child development emphasize the role of childhood stimulation and activity in promoting mental development, and stress the irreversible mental stunting associated with reduced childhood stimulation. This effect surely contributes a non-genetic component to the superior average mental function displayed by New Guineans.
That is, in mental ability New Guineans are probably genetically superior to Westerners, and they surely are superior in escaping the devastating developmental disadvantages under which most children in industrialized societies now grow up. Certainly, there is no hint at all of any intellectual dissadvantage of New Guineans that could serve to answer Yali's question.
The same two genetic and childhood developmental factors are likely to distinguish not only New Guineans from Westerners, but also hunter-gatherers and other members of technologically primitive societies from members of technologically advanced societies in general. Thus, the usual racist assumption has to be turned on its head. Why is it that Europeans, despite their likely genetic disadvantage and (in modern times) their undoubted developmental disadvantage, ended up with much more of the cargo? Why did New Guineans wind up technologically primitive, despite what I believe to be their superior intelligence?"
In short, while it might be easier to defend that Mr. Diamond was only saying that it was impossible to see any intellectual differences between the peoples of the world, that is not in fact what he said. He said that in his travels he'd been convinced that he could see intellectual differences in people. Paraphrasing the above only slightly, he in fact says that it is his opinion that Europeans are geneticly inferior to other peoples of the world, having reached their current genetic makeup as a result of evolutionary pressures that selected against intelligence rather than for it. That is of course a much less defensible position, but it is in fact what he said. What I find completely courious, is that if he had said the opposite, that he could recognize differences in intelligence and in his opinion European and Euroasian peoples were probably more intelligent than other people as the result of evolutionairy pressures which selected in favor of intelligence - which he could have just as easily done using the same spurious and shallow reasoning as the above passage has - that his 'scholarship' would have been rejected out of hand and with much passionate chorus of disapproval and disgust. Instead, we see people leaping to his defense to the point of twisting his words and calling people poor readers if in fact they point out that he said exactly what he clearly said.
And then there is, "This fundamental lapse of understanding the book eliminates the need to address any other issues brought up in the review." Ah yes, if debate becomes difficult then you can just dismiss your opponent entirely on the grounds of his lack of understanding. Why not simply say that everyone that disagrees with you is stupid and be done with it, rather than hiding behind a veneer of graciousness while all the while calling into question your opponent's intelligence rather than actually trying to defend your thesis.
"It's an excellent book and I higly recommend it to anyone that is sincerely interested in why humans with identical genetic makeup..."
As a person working in genetics, I can tell you that the claim that humans have identical genetic makeup is fundementally untrue. I have databases of human genetic information to prove it. The claim that different human cultures are because of supposed genetic inferiority incapable of producing genius is likewise easily disprovable, but holding one absolute or the other as an unquestionable moral certainty is not science. Science does not presuppose the answer and then look for the facts to fit it while ignoring those facts that don't. Diamond's book provides valuable insight, but it falls well short of a full answer.
- celebrim
- Jun-03-2005, 23:54
I wouldn't be at all surprised if you start to understand the book after your third read.
- oj
- May-20-2005, 10:43
Obviously the critical reviewer of Guns, Germs, and Steel has not carefully read this book. It is not a simple read. I had to read it twice to fully understand some of the points that he made.
For instance, Dr. Diamond did not assert that the New Guinean people are more intelligent than the Western Europeans. His point was that he did not see any intellectual differences among people anywhere in the world (as a group rather than on an individual basis). He said one could argue that New Guinean people are more intelligent than Western Europeans by observing lifestyle just like you could make the arguement that Western Europeans are more intelligent than New Guineans. The arguments end up being an arbitrary matter of what evidence you choose to use to make your determination, in this case the ability of the New Guineans to survive in terrible and challenging conditions or the possessions or cargo of the Western Europeans.
This fundamental lapse of understanding the book eliminates the need to address any other issues brought up in the review. It is an example how a complex subject is hard to comprehend, so the reader simply identifies something that stood out as shocking and wrote an untrue and inflammatory statement about an intelligent and inquisitive man. Sounds like the sufferings of all scientists.
It's an excellent book and I higly recommend it to anyone that is sincerely interested in why humans with identical genetic makeup, would develop societies as such different rates.
- Darrell Kinsley
- May-20-2005, 10:07
Copyright 1998-2015 Orrin Judd


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Rapid Fire Feb. 29, 2012: Foreign Entanglements
- The US Air Force is setting aside its Afghanistan Light Air Support contract to Sierra Nevada before the litigation initiated by Hawker Beechcraft even completes its course: "Since the acquisition is still in litigation, I can only say that the Air Force Senior Acquisition Executive, David Van Buren, is not satisfied with the quality of the documentation supporting the award decision." Obviously Hawker Beechcraft supports that decision while Embraer is scratching their head, while Air Force Chief of Staff General Norton Schwartz is fuming. In the end it's one more contentious foreign procurement from the USAF. But the big bucks for trade dispute lawyers are in the Boeing vs. Airbus row. "You are subsidized. No, YOU are subsidized."
- More on ITAR/DDTC's handling of brokering and freight forwarders: weblog posts from Customs Law, Export Law.
- Things to know about recently-published DFARS Contractor Business Systems rules.
Categories: Budgets, Contracts - Awards, Fighters & Attack, Legal, Lockheed Martin, USA


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2 x 1.0m (Pair) QED SILVER ANNIVERSARY-XT Audio Speaker Cables Terminated- 8x Standard (4mm) QED AIRLOC Plastic Standard Banana Plugs on Both ends,or Qed Airloc Plastic ABS 6-8mm Standard SPADE Connectors on Request.
*****AIRLOC HIGH PERFORMANCE TERMINATION + extra QED pin section with PREMIUM gold plating*****
The Silver Anniversary-XT cable listed is a Pair length of Speakers.
Factory Terminated with 8x-QED AIRLOC Plastic Standard banana plugs (or spade Connectors on request).
AIRLOC a solder-free, airtight perfect fusion between the two metals of cable and plug. This 'cold weld' method allows the cable and plug to offer the optimum signal transfer and therefore, better sound quality. It also reduces contact resistance and ensures perfect long-term performance.
The Silver Anniversary-XT Bi-Wire Link (Speaker Jumpers Cables) also available.
• Silver Anniversary XT has been specifically designed as the natural replacement for the multi-award winning Silver Anniversary speaker cable.
• Designed with performance in mind, the Silver Anniversary XT speaker cable boasts all of the characteristics associated with Silver Anniversary but with the added enhancement of the Aircore technology found in the prestigious X-Tube series.
• X-TUBE forms the conductor in the shape of a tube with an inner aircore. This has the same effect as using multiple insulated conductors and ensures that high frequencies are transmitted cleanly, with the added benefit of ease of termination.
• This unique tubular conductor geometry also provides lower flux density within the conductors, which gives improved transparency to the sound.
Also Available:
• Termination speaker cables with NEW QED SUPERIOR AIRLOC METAL FORTE High Performance 4mm Plugs or spade connectors
• The QED Bi-Wire Link (Speaker Jumpers Cables)
• The QED Analogue Interconnects
• The QED other Speaker Cables
*100% High quality*
*fully tested*
*guarantee of quality*
*I send all item/s within 1-2 days*
If you would like a different combination of Qed spade connectors and banana plugs, or different cable lengths, please ask. Please have a look at our other items, Any questions please contact with me.Thanks for looking.


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Tuesday, April 14, 2009
Don't Blink
26 comments:
What a beautiful post. I so enjoyed looking at your photos. Thanks for sharing. :)ReplyDelete
She is so cute and very photogenic! Happy B'day A!!!!ReplyDelete
- AnonymousApril 14, 2009 at 6:23 PM
Very nice! Happy Birthday!!! That was a great post! I totally agree...where does the time go?!ReplyDelete
Happy Birthday Sweet Annika!ReplyDelete
Call me when you become a teenager and need to vent about your crazy momma ;-)
She's beautiful. Those first 6 years move so quickly, don't they? My boy has just turned six, and my heart still hurts.ReplyDelete
That first pic is lovely. :)
- AnonymousApril 14, 2009 at 8:00 PM
Happy Birthday, little one!! The pictures are absolutely adorable!!ReplyDelete
Happy Birthday! She is so beautiful and loved all the photos. I feel like time is hurling past way too fast as well. I'll blink and my guys will be 6 before I know it. Can you make them all stop growing for a while? Just a little while so we can enjoy it.ReplyDelete
I have one in college. I've tried!! They won't stop!!ReplyDelete
what a sweet post! they do grow WAY too fast! I loved all the pictures! (and don't tell my nieces, but I may agree with you about the cutest witch thing) ;)ReplyDelete
I LOVE this post! Annika is just adorable! The time definitely flies cause I can't believe I have a 10 year old!!!!! She was just Annika's age the other day......ReplyDelete
Happy Birthday Annika! She is beautiful and she has such pretty eyes! I can't wait to have a baby of my own, but I know it will fly by so fast! Just wanted to say hi from SITS!ReplyDelete
someday, she's going to be quite impressed with the fact you posted neekid pics of her online.ReplyDelete
All those pictures of her under 2 years old reminds me of when you came to visit and i was so IN LOVE with annie, i didnt want to give her up! She was an adorable baby but i think she just keeps getting cuter! somehow...if that is EVEN possible!ReplyDelete
You two are doing a wonderful job as parents! Just be careful, she could end up one of those top models one day, youre so right about her somehow knowing how to look like a model, somehow having the right expression and angle to her.
- AnonymousApril 14, 2009 at 11:17 PM
Happy Birthday!! She is absolutely adorable!!ReplyDelete
AHHHHH yeah don't remind me, I always tell Aria she is my baby and she says no I am not. I am not a baby! Yes those young years are precisous and I will say a little prayer that she stops growing;-) Happy Birthday Annika! Hope you have a great day celebrating this special day.ReplyDelete
- AnonymousApril 15, 2009 at 7:25 AM
She's so beautiful! Happy birthday, Annika!ReplyDelete
Happy Birthday to that beautiful baby girl of yours. They do grow up way too fast!!ReplyDelete
Swinging by from SITS to spread some bloggy love. You were before me in Roll Call today. Off to snoop around a bit more. Have a great day.
Such sweet, sweet photos! And ditto...they grow up in a BLINK of an eye!ReplyDelete
Happy Birthday Annika! You Rock!ReplyDelete
Yeah, its so sad how fast the time goes. Oh, I miss my kids being little! I wish I could go back and do it all again! Well, maybe not ALL of it again... no, definitely not ALL.
Keep enjoying every precious minute!
Beautiful pictures. Happy Birthday to your "baby". They DO grow way too quickly.ReplyDelete
Happy Birthday, A! They grow up SO fast - my little baby turned 18 on Monday! What?????ReplyDelete
You have beautiful girls. So sweet. My girls are 16, 14, and 11. They really do grow up way to fast.ReplyDelete
Sounds like she has tons of personality and spunk. Happy Birthday to your gorgeous girl! : )ReplyDelete
Hi Jill... Belated Happy Birthday to your gorgeous lil Miss.....ReplyDelete
Its been awhile since I last visited and I enjoy reading your posts that I missed.... Have a lovely day.....
Unfortunately, it dosn't get any easier. My baby just turned 15. Sorry, those aren't really words of encouragement...ReplyDelete
Happy Birthday!
BTW - I 8 Tagged you (see my blog) Sorry I couldn't resist.
What a sweet birthday tribute! I tell my Journey and Faith to stop growing all the time! I don't know what I will do when they reach 6 or even 16 for that matter...ReplyDelete
BTW, your cinnamon rolls looked very yummy! And I would like to hire you to be in charge of the treat bag/thank you note department next time I have a party ;-)
Hope things are going well!
P.S. I started writing for the blog for UV Skinz (http://blog.uvskinz.com) I would love for you to do a review of their swim shirts. Let me know if you are interested! email@example.com