The puzzle of rising IQ scores

Nearly three decades ago, work by James R. Flynn revealed that average IQ scores in developed countries were rising at a stunning pace, of the order of 0.3 points per year or more. Later work showed similar explosive gains in developing countries and that the rise (now dubbed ‘the Flynn effect’) is still continuing. How did he find this? Recall that although IQ tests themselves have changed over time, each revision requires the IQ scores to be normed to always have an average value of 100. So does someone who scores 100 today have the same IQ of someone who scored 100 say fifty years ago, since they took different tests? Flynn found that if you give people today old IQ tests, their scores rose steadily the older the tests, suggesting that IQ tests have got harder over time. (James R. Flynn, Are We Getting Smarter?, 2012) [Read more…]

Film review: War on Whistleblowers

I just watched the latest work by guerilla filmmaker Robert Greenwald. He is developing a new form of journalism that makes documentaries on important issues that are timely because they are low-budget and filmed on a short schedule, and then sells them (or even gives them away free) directly to people, bypassing the usual channels of theaters or TV, and encourages them to arrange free screenings for others. He has produced and/or directed the following: [Read more…]

The Washington scandal machine

The Washington media talking heads had a wonderful week with the trifecta of scandals that suddenly engulfed the Obama administration. I paid just cursory attention to them, following my rule that the things that get the most attention from the chattering classes are the ones of least significance. The main consequence is to distract attention from major wrong doing that has bipartisan and elite approval, such as the continuing abuse of prisoners in Guantanamo, indefinite detention, the drone killing program, the egregious violations of civil rights, and the continuing swindling by the financial sector and the one-percenters. [Read more…]

The government’s role in a child’s education

In a previous post, I wrote about how in the US, the Supreme Court has ruled that although the government cannot force parents to send their children to public schools, the states can set reasonable standards that must be met by the educational system they do choose, whether it be private, parochial, or home school. The catch is what standards can be considered ‘reasonable’. It seems like in the US, the standards seem to be minimal, as can be seen in the fact that Hassidic schools spend seven out of the eight-hour school day on religious studies, which to me constitutes a form of abuse. [Read more…]

France legalizes same-sex marriage

Yesterday President Francois Hollande of France signed the same-sex marriage and same-sex adoption legislation into law making it the 14th country to do so, after the Constitutional Court rejected attempts by opponents to stop it. The court ruled, reasonably enough, that it “did not run contrary to any constitutional principles”, nor did it infringe upon “basic rights or liberties or national sovereignty”. [Read more…]

Intergroup variations in IQ

The Jason Richwine dissertation, like its predecessor The Bell Curve in 1994, argued that IQ scores are a good proxy for intelligence, that intelligence has a substantial hereditary component and is thus largely immutable to change by external measures, and that high IQ levels are significant predictors of economic and social success in life while low levels predict a life of crime, unemployment, and general failure. According to Richwine, American Hispanics have average IQs around 89 (the overall average is fixed to be 100) and thus Hispanic immigrants will be a drain on society. (See here and here for earlier posts on this.) [Read more…]

Stephen Colbert on the Heritage-Richwine affair

He provides a pretty good summary and commentary of the issue that I have been writing about (see here and here).

(This clip was aired on May 14, 2013. To get suggestions on how to view clips of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report outside the US, please see this earlier post.)

Memoir of a Guantanamo prisoner

SlahiMohamedou Ould Slahi is one of the Gunatanmo detainees condemned to indefinite detention. In 2005 he started writing his memoirs in English. His draft of 466 handwritten pages was completed a year later but the authorities suppressed it for six years. A redacted version has finally been published. Selected excerpts from the memoir can be here, prefaced by an introduction by Larry Siems who explains how Slahi ended up at Guantanamo. [Read more…]