CapitalistImperialistPig

Pinker starts his chapter on children with the so-called three laws of behavioral genetics: The First Law: All human behavioral traits are heritable. The Second Law: The effect of being raised in the same family is smaller than the effect of the genes. The Third Law: A substantial portion of the variation in complex human behavioral traits is not accounted for by the effects of genes or families. The laws are about what make us what Pinker, Steven. The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature (p. 373). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. The pillar of the Second Law is the evidence showing that siblings reared in the same family are at most only slightly more similar than siblings raised apart. He concludes from this that parenting choices have very small effects on children's development. It seems to me that he is leaving out a very crucial aspect of the unique environment of a child reared with a sibling. There is only so much social/emotional ecospace in a ...

I was having dinner with some of my contemporaries - that is to say a bunch of other old geezers and geezerettes - not so long ago, and the conversation turned to the manifold intellectual deficiencies of today's students. It started with the film prof complaining that his students didn't know who Gregory Peck or understand the old Hollywood studio system. What little I understand of the "old Hollywood Studio system" was probably embedded Sunset Boulevard - the Lloyd Webber version - but I didn't want to dwell on that. Others complained that most students couldn't write a decent essay - true dat - and so on. I couldn't resist stirring the pot, so I had to ask how many of us knew who Ke\$ha was? I also wondered how our insights compared with the fact that IQs seem to keep rising, and the fact that the current generation is not only a lot smarter than us, but is even a lot smarter than we were before we became senile. I've never been one of the popu...

Amy Chua has got to be the most successful self-promoter since Glenn Beck emerged from the ass-cheeks of Zeus - or wherever it was he came from. It's somewhat interesting to wonder how she managed to push so many people's buttons. I think she manages to play on common fears - the fear of every parent that they aren't doing right by their kids and the fear that China is surpassing and threatening the US, for example. She also manages to make herself at once threatening and unlikeable - she's judgemental, anti-American, racist, hypercompetitive, and impossibly full of herself. Janet Maslin of the NYT weighs in: “There are all these new books out there portraying Asian mothers as scheming, callous, overdriven people indifferent to their kids’ true interests,” Amy Chua writes. She ought to know, because hers is the big one: “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother,” a diabolically well-packaged, highly readable screed ostensibly about the art of obsessive parenting. In truth, Ms...