Goyishe Kop

Lubos has a new post up about some new articles on racial differences in IQ. Following the links into the weeds I found Rushton and Jensen's extensive list of IQ correlated (and anti-correlated) traits. Perhaps unsurprisingly, brain size, caution, and economic success are all correlated with IQ. Anti-correlated, say Rushton and Jensen, are rate of physical development, self-concept, aggressiveness, and dick size. By choosing to post on the topic, Lumo (and I) are clearly making a statement about caution and aggressiveness - follow that where you may.

Steven Pinker has also weighed in on race and IQ. Smartest of all, it seems, are Ashkenazi Jews.
My grandparents were immigrants from Eastern Europe who owned a small necktie factory on the outskirts of Montreal. While visiting them one weekend, I found my grandfather on the factory floor, cutting shapes out of irregular stacks of cloth with a fabric saw. He explained that by carving up the remnants that were left over when the neckties had been cut out and stitching them together in places that didn't show, he could get a few extra ties out of each sheet of cloth. I asked him why he was doing this himself rather than leaving it to his employees. He shrugged, tapped his forehead, and said, "Goyishe kop," a term of condescension that literally means "gentile head."

He wasn't exactly serious, but he wasn't exactly not serious either. Jews have long had an ambivalent attitude toward their own intelligence, and toward their reputation for intelligence. There is an ethnic pride at the prevalence of Jews in occupations that reward brainpower. A droll e-mail called "New Words to Add to Your Jewish Vocabulary" includes "jewbiliation, N: pride in finding out that one's favorite celebrity is Jewish" and "meinstein, N: My son, the genius." ...

I have posted before about the University of Utah study that correlates high Ashkenazi IQ's with some double-edged recessive genetic mutations that both affect intellectual development and lead to devastating disease.

Senator (soon to be ex-Senator) Allen's Jewish ancestry is apparently Sephardic, not Ashkenazi.

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