You can tell a REAL man if he's got a big... nose.

National Geographic reports on a study of proboscis monkeys:

"Male proboscis monkeys with large noses tend to be bulkier than their small-nosed kin. They also sport bigger testes, up to 1.2 inches wide—upping their chances of fathering a female’s offspring by producing more sperm, crowding out less fertile males if they’re vying for the same female."

This study found that higher levels of umbilical cord testosterone predicted adult nose size in humans. Size matters -- nose size, that is. 

Genes for crime are correlated with genes for having lots of babies

Wow (from BioRxiv):

Prior evolutionary theory provided reason to suspect that measures of development and reproduction would be correlated with antisocial behaviors in human and non-human species. Behavioral genetics has revealed that most quantitative traits are heritable, suggesting that these phenotypic correlations may share genetic etiologies. We use GWAS data to estimate the genetic correlations between various measures of reproductive development (N= 52,776 - 318,863) and antisocial behavior (N= 31,968). Our genetic correlation analyses demonstrate that alleles associated with higher reproductive output (number of children ever born, rg=0.50, p=.0065) were positively correlated with alleles associated with antisocial behavior, whereas alleles associated with more delayed reproductive onset (age of first birth, rg=-.64, p=.0008) were negatively associated with alleles linked to antisocial behavior. Ultimately, these findings coalesce with evolutionary theories suggesting that increased antisocial behaviors may partly represent a faster life history approach, which may be significantly calibrated by genes.

Okay, long sentences with no conjugal visits.

Gays demanded marriage, not because they were dying to be married, but to make a point

The General Social Survey (GSS) has collected enough data to begin to give us a sense about the degree to which homosexuals have embraced marriage since the opportunity has opened up. Here are marital status trends for gay men by decade:

The red line represents married people. The percent of gay men who are married in this decade is only slightly higher than previous decades. (I assume that married gays from earlier decades were either married to a woman or called their relationship with a man "marriage."). The next graph is lesbians:

Lesbian marriage has decreased (red line). Again, I'm sure lesbians were married to men in previous decades or called their same-sex relationships "marriage," but their move away from heterosexual marriage has not been replaced by lesbian marriage.

Maybe we need more time to see the trends more clearly, but what we GSS data suggest is that homosexuals did not fight gay marriage because they were dying for participation in the practice, but because they wanted the law to reflect the view that homosexuality is as good as heterosexuality. They were just making a point.

Meta-analysis: Do nuts make you fat?

Nuts are supposed to be good for you (I recently posted on a meta-analysis that found that walnuts lower total and bad cholesterol and triglycerides), but they are high in calories. Do they make you fat and bushy like a well-fed squirrel?

A new meta-analysis of thirteen randomized clinical studies (741 people) looked at the issue. It found that nut consumption did not affect body mass index (BMI), weight, percent body fat, or waist circumference. So if you like this kind of food and think it's beneficial, go nuts. 

People are abandoning white status, almost as if it were a handicap

What are the trends in identifying oneself as white? Using GSS data, I made some charts:

Here are trends for all respondents. The percent saying they are white has dropped from almost 90% in the 70s to slightly more than 50% in this decade.

Next, let's look at trends by country of origin or ethnicity.

The chart above is for those who say their ethnicity is American Indian. The percent indicating their race is white fell from 77% in the 70s to 60% now. This next chart is for people saying they are of Mexican ancestry. 

For this group, you see a huge 1970s-2000s drop from nearly 100% white to one-third. The trend then reversed over the next decade.  Next, Asian Indians:

There is a 1970s-2000s drop from 40% to 10%. Notice how the percent saying they're "black" also fell. One clear trend with these group is more people embracing the "other race" category.  Here are Arabs: 

We see a pattern similar to Mex-Ams: a 70s to 00s drop, then a reversal. Next, Puerto Ricans:

Typical pattern: Big drop 70s-90s, then a plateau. People from Spain: 

Even these folks are now more likely to say they are not white. And other Spanish:

Same kind of pattern. Now, it's certainly the case that some recent immigrants have been genetically less white than older immigrants, and some people are marrying within race (rather than marrying whites and having mixed kids) now that they have larger concentrations in the country, but these trends also suggest that there has been a move away from white identification that has flattened (or even reversed) in the last few years. 

The movement away from claiming white status is inconsistent with the notion that whiteness carries with it all sorts of benefits; rather, it suggests that a white status is disadvantageous. 

How many homosexuals are there, really?

I ran across this study that estimates the sexual orientations of American adults.  Contrary to what some people claim, the overwhelming majority of men and women are straight (or mostly straight). The author sees a continuum where I see a huge category with other little categories, especially for men.

Whether measured in terms of identity, attraction, or behavior, only 1 or 2% of women are lesbian, and 2 or 3% of men are gay. Bisexuality among women is a little more common -- about 5% -- but only around 2% for men. And from what I've seen of other data, bisexuals tend to be hypersexual, so their attractions seem less mysterious from an evolutionary point of view.

Long story short, when these people are called a sexual minority, minority is right.

People run from whiteness

How often do Americans who have some white ancestry choose to say they are white--and nothing else--in order to take advantage of supposed "white privilege." Evidently next to nobody.

This new study analyzed the genetic ancestry of more than 100k Northern Californians. They also asked participants to self-identify their race/ethnicity. Six possible ancestries were identified. There are a lot of mixed-race people California: About 17% had ancestries from multiple continents.

The group that self-identified as white had almost no ancestry from anywhere other than Europe: .3% from Africa, .4% from East Asia, .9% Native American, 0.0% Pacific Islander, and 4.0% South Asian.

People who identified as some other single race were very often mixed. For example, 91% of blacks have some European ancestry; for Native Americans and Latinos both, it's 99.9%. For Pacific Islanders, it's 57.6%.

Why didn't any of these mixed people claim to be white? Certainly there had to be some who could pass.

The simple answer is that people have no desire to be white, even if they can legitimately identify as such.

People are running away from white, not toward it. And since when do people run from privilege?

Want Americans to identify as Americans? Being white helps

The US will function more effectively if its inhabitants define themselves as one people, as Americans.

The General Social Survey asked 1,450 participants: "When you think of social and political issues, do you think of yourself mainly as a member of a particular ethnic, racial, or nationality group or do you think of yourself mainly as just an American?"

Here are the percentages by race of immigrants who responded, "Just an American."

Percent of immigrants who say they are just Americans

Whites  76.8

Blacks  36.4

Other Non-Whites  57.1

Even when all people compared are born in other countries, whites are more than twice as likely as blacks to say their identity is American. While not as severe as blacks, a majority of other non-whites also do not feel they are simply American. 

What happens when people are born here?

Percent of people born in US who say they are just Americans

Whites  96.0

Blacks  68.3

Other non-whites  74.2

Being born here makes almost all whites define themselves as Americans, and while native-born non-whites feel more American than non-white immigrants, there is still a large segment that has ethnic loyalties. 

It looks like the "melting pot" idea works best for whites. White immigrants moved here and sooner or later melted into Americans. This doesn't seem to be working so well for non-whites. Many black families have been here for centuries, and Natives have been her for millennia, but the melt for them is still far from complete. 

A similar dynamic seems to be happening to recent non-white immigrants. Some melting happens, but not like it has been for whites. 

Is this difference due to the fact that immigrants were expected to assimilate when most whites emigrated? And now that most immigrants are non-white, US elites encourage people to hold on to their ethnic identity? Maybe, but recent white immigrants don't seem follow the liberal desire for them to hold on to their roots.

Maybe non-whites are simply more clannish than whites. 

Liberals would say it's due to discrimination, but 95% of Americans of Irish descent identify as American only, and they weren't received with a big wet kiss. America has gotten more and more welcoming, yet it's the New Immigrants who are more reluctant to let the ethnic loyalties go.       

Whatever the case, Americans are on a course to be less and less on the same page about where to take the country. And that's putting it nicely.    

Senator McCain might be saying it's not so bad to be black

US Senator John McCain is near the end. Last year he was struck with an aggressive brain tumor, a glioblastoma, that carries with it a strong likelihood of not surviving for very long. 

As a documented in a recent post, whites face more than twice the risk of developing a glioblastoma (as well as other types of brain cancer) compared to all minority groups, and the risk for men is significantly higher than for women. 

Nature does not seem to be cooperating with the liberal claim that minorities and women always get the short end of the stick due to "white supremacy." 

The theory much more consistent with the data is that evolution has produced group differences which sometimes advantage one group, sometimes another. Social conditions might magnify biological differences, but differences are rooted in genes. 

After bouts of skin cancer and now this awful, deadly brain cancer, Senator McCain might be saying it's not so bad to be black.

To people thinking about moving to America: Shouldn't you worry about your kids ending up in prison?

Research universally shows that the offspring of immigrants are much more criminal than their parents. If I were contemplating a move to the United States and had kids, I might think twice.

America ranks number one in the world in locking up criminals. The incarceration rate is 655 inmates per 100,000 population. Even though rates have dropped a bit in recent years, on any given day, roughly 2 million adults are either in jail or prison.

Compare our imprisonment rate with that of the countries that send the most immigrants to the US each year:

Imprisonment rate for top 10 immigration countries (ranked in terms of numbers of immigrants) 

1. Mexico  165
2. India  33
3. China  118
4. Philippines  172
5. El Salvador  610
6. Vietnam  122
7. Cuba  510
8. Dominican Republic  244
9. South Korea  109
10. Guatemala  136

Only El Salvador and Cuba are even in the same universe with the US. How often do we see immigrant kids join a gang and end up with a long stretch in prison? The chances of this are much higher than back home.

Of course, the risk of becoming a criminal is much higher for some groups than others, but how many parents worry that if they move to the United States, their child could end up in prison?  I moved specifically to lower the risk of my kids getting into drugs (few white kids end up in gangs).

The bigger income you will earn in America comes with an increased risk that a child's life will be ruined by prison. Even when he gets out, he may never get a decent job for the rest of his life. Parents need to think about this.  

What to tell people if they don't believe IQ is genetic

This is what you tell them: Research shows that the correlation of IQ test scores between two identical twins (100% the same genes) raised apart is just as strong as the correlation between the IQ score of the test you just took and the score of the test you took previously. The twins are as similar as you are with yourself.

Meta-analysis: Fruits, not vegetables, lower triglycerides

Don't make the mistake of assuming this is a health blog when you see two health posts in a row.  I do have the goal of reporting the results of new, interesting meta-analyses. If you focus on one study, you can find whatever results you'd like, but dozens of studies, especially large, random clinical trials? That's more convincing. Facebook should give me a fantastic reputation score. No Fake News here.

This new meta-analysis is not great, but its five cross-sectional and two intervention studies are worth mentioning. Both types of studies find that greater intake of vegetables does not lower triglycerides--the major form of fat stored by the body, which my doctor keeps telling me is way high in my blood. (Turns out, I have a bad gene.)

On the other hand, the more servings of fruit you eat per day, the lower your triglycerides. Two trials is not nearly enough, but, still, the results are interesting.

The authors do not have much of an explanation of how fruit helps, but they do describe an animal trial that found that high fruit fiber intake lowered triglyceride levels in the following order: pomegranate > apple > strawberry > guava > papaya > mandarin and orange.

Does it matter how much carbs you eat?

This new meta-analysis (more than 430,000 participants) addresses the question, Does it matter whether you eat a lot of carbs?

The researchers found a U-shaped curve: people were most likely to die if their diets were carb-heavy, or if they ate mostly fats and proteins. The subjects with the lowest odds of dying ate 50-55% of their calories in carb form.

The source of the macronutrients also matters. Mortality goes up if you eat fewer carbs but more of the fats and proteins come from animals; the risk falls as the fats/proteins are plant-based.

So, the story here is pretty conventional: carbs are good at moderate levels, while more fats and proteins ought to come from plants.

Typical of even medical research, the authors do not stress the possibility that people with genes that make you live to a ripe old age also eat more plant-based food. We know from research that high conscientiousness, which is highly influenced by genes, is associated with a long life. Good genes might: 1) motivate you to closely follow medical advice, and 2) extend your life. What you eat might not make any difference.

If that possibility sounds depressing because you can't switch out your bad genes, well I ain't here to make you feel good.  

UPDATE: I should let you know that my diet ranges from minimal carbs to low carbs depending on my level of discipline (lots of carbs makes me feel lousy, and I put on weight), so I have no bias in favor of the results of this study.

Pointing out this obvious difference makes me a sexist

Here is a table based on Li, Kung, and Hines (2017). Look at how there is almost no overlap between the masculine/feminine activities of 4 year old boys and girls.

But pointing that out makes me a sexist. 

Bishop Morlino: Almost all Church sexual abuse is homosexual

A Wisconsin bishop on the latest Catholic child abuse scandal:

The bishop was particularly candid in his assessment of the cause of [sexual abuse] problems: “In the specific situations at hand, we are talking about deviant sexual — almost exclusively homosexual — acts by clerics. We’re also talking about homosexual propositions and abuses against seminarians and young priests by powerful priests, bishops, and cardinals.

Experiment: Emphasizing multiculturalism convinces people that race is real and biological

A study of Rutgers undergraduates revealed an interesting dynamic. To promote equality, many psychologists claim that teaching people multiculturalism -- emphasizing ethnic differences -- is more effective than focusing on color-blind messages. In this study, students exposed to multicultural rather than color-blind information were more likely to report "essentialist" opinions; that racial differences are real, biological, and unchanging.

This makes sense. If we emphasize that racial groups are different in important ways, it's not surprising when people assume the differences are natural. It takes a lot of mental gymnastics to develop the view that differences are somehow real and a big deal, but are nothing more than social constructions. Evolution had produced a brain that assumes that what you see is what you get. And it's basically correct.

So if this study is valid, multiculturalism is ironically helping those of us who want to convince the public that group differences are partly biological. Liberals, I thank you.  

Libertarians do not have high IQs

I used General Social Survey data in an attempt to identify libertarians (sample size is around 1,000).  If respondents answered yes to "Wealthy people pay way too much taxes" and "Marijuana should be legalized," I categorized them as a libertarian.

Next, based on a vocabulary quiz, I calculated IQ for people born in the US (tests may be biased against those for whom English is a second language). I set the mean at 97. (It's typically set at 100 for a white sample, but the US is over 30% non-white).

The data indicated that, according to my measure, 14% of Americans are libertarians. The mean IQ for this group is 96.2. The mean for everyone else is 96.3. For some reason, the people who asked and answered these two questions were a little lower than the 97 average. The takeaway, however, is that there is no evidence here that libertarians are smarter than others.  I'm sure many of these people don't have a developed libertarian ideology: they simple want people to be able to do what they want, and they don't like high taxes even for wealthy people. I bet that ideological libertarians would have a higher than average IQ.

Liberals are the ULTIMATE scapegoaters

Liberals like to explain Trump like this: He has succeeded by blaming white people's problems on non-whites.

In other words, the President is a big-time scapegoater. Like Hitler blaming Jews for Germany's troubles, Trump supposedly appeals to our basest instincts.

Let's side aside the fact that Trump has consistently criticized NON-AMERICANS, not non-whites. Cheating, lying sons of bitches that liberals are, they always turn everything into an opportunity to call us (subhuman) racists.

But the truth is that Leftists are the supreme scapegoaters of ALL TIME. They set the example going back more than 200 years.

Like the Nazi who sees a Jew behind every social problem, liberals claim that EVERY injustice is the fault of rich people. All paths lead to the FAT CATS. They are evil incarnate.

And if the Left gets the opportunity, they will holocaust anyone who even seems well-off. My wife's Ukrainian great grandfather was sent to Siberia because he owned two horses and had six kids. Naturally he was a filthy rich, evil kulak.

Nazi hatred for Jews has got nothing on Leftist hatred of successful people.

We can go to Nietzsche to get an explanation of their psychology. He calls it ressentiment. Capitalism has kicked socialist ass for two centuries, so the losers transform their sense of inferiority into hatred of their betters. And so they wound their enemy with lies. If they get power, they imprison and murder them.

And because so many of us are tempted by this hatred of the rich, we have let them get away with their malignant scapegoating.

Of course, the Left's latest move has been to replace the wealthy with whites as the demonic source of all suffering. But that's another post.

Men have bigger brains than women, and the gap is HUGE!

This meta-analysis synthesized the results of 126 studies that used various measures to compare the brains of males and females. The results are amazing. Males not only have larger brains than females, on average: the difference is huge! Depending on how the brain is measured, the difference is between 1 and more than 3 standard deviations. The average guy has a brain that is more than 50 milliliters larger than the average female.

Male and female brain volumes are different in almost 30 areas of the brain. And it's not just size: male grey matter is denser in 7 areas.

The most important region for the difference is the limbic system, which is an emotional center. The big male advantage is on the left side of the limbic. Females are larger in the language areas of the right hemisphere.

I was surprised to read that sex differences were not located in areas of the brain in charge of spatial tasks since men have an advantage here, nor did the researchers find a difference in the corpus callosum, the region that connects the two sides of the brain. Women are said to have better integrated hemispheres, but this region does not appear to be larger in females.

The authors did not go into sex differences in behavior that might stem from brain differences, although they did mention the language difference. Women might get their advantage over men in verbal fluency from larger language areas in the brain.

The large limbic system in men suggests males and females will differ emotionally. Perhaps the larger, more dense limbic system enables greater integration with the frontal lobes which are in charge of rational thought. Men might be better at disengaging the feeling-thinking connection, giving them an advantage at a detached, systematizing style of thinking. Women are much better than men at empathizing--a more personal, less abstract style of thinking. These differences produce many men who are good at, say, engineering, and many women who have excellent interpersonal skills.

The brain differences emerge in young children, although there aren't enough studies to show this definitively. So how boys and girls are brought up probably has little to do with the gender gap. Vive la difference!

Blacks are becoming white

When African slaves were first brought to America, they were of course 100% sub-Saharan African. Fast forward to the present day, and gene studies estimate the blacks are, on average, about 20% white.

Black-white interbreeding is common today, and since any mixed raced kids are considered black, white genes flow into the black population today, and they will continue to flow. For how long, I don't know.

If it lasts for hundreds of years, blacks could actually become more than 50% white. They'll be more white than black. This seems to already be the case with Hispanics (more white than American Indian, on average).

Those people who claim that racial mixing will solve the race problem are probably wrong. Many of the most radical blacks or Hispanics are half white or more. Malcolm X, no white lover he, had a lot of white ancestry. Of course, this is the case for Obama, too.

If past trends continue, blacks and whites will be closer and closer genetically, but the conflict will continue.

Which race hates whites the most?

Sarah Jeong's anti-white tweets raise a question: Which race hates whites the most? 

The American General Social Survey (GSS) asked 15,822 people, "In general, how closely do you feel to whites? Answers ranged on a 9-point scale from "not close at all" (which received a score of 1) to "very close" (scored as a 9). Let's assume that people who answer 1 to 3 do not like whites. 

People were also asked which country their family originally came from. Here are the percentages who do not like whites by ethnic group:

Percent not liking whites

Black  11.7

Mexican  9.3

Asian Indian  8.7

All non-whites  8.0

Puerto Rican  7.6

Chinese  7.3

Arab  6.1

American Indian  2.8

Japanese  2.1

Whites  2.0

Filipinos  0.0

The GSS does not identify Koreans--Ms. Jeong's ethnic group--but Asians differ. Chinese American have the most haters, while Filipinos like whites better than whites like themselves. Japanese Americans also have a low percentage. 

While blacks and Mex-Ams have the most haters of any racial groups, racism isn't limited to poor minorities. Asian Indians are right behind these two groups. 

American Indians have low numbers, but many of these folks are whites like Elizabeth Warren who like to cling to some supposed Indian ancestry. If we limit Indians to those who also say they are non-white, the number goes up to 6.9%.

Overall, I see these numbers as encouraging. Even among blacks, the vast majority do not dislike whites as a race of people.

UPDATE: I neglected to include Jews. Of the 272 Jewish Americans who were asked the question, 2.2% answered 1 through 3--not much different than other whites. 

Meta-analysis: More cops, less crime

The American Left seems to believe that police don't reduce crime, they commit it.

This meta-analysis of 12 qualifying studies reports that increasing the number of sworn officers in a police force indeed reduces crime.

The impact differs depending on the type of crime. Most crime is done no one is looking, so police patrol might not be so relevant for crimes like rape.

Police presence seems most effective for car theft or assaults. Since cars are often stolen while parked in a public place, more patrolling might make a difference.

Assaults also happen frequently in public places like bars. The typical scenario is when one young drinking guy insults another young drinking guy, and mutual combat begins. Lots of cops around might make people think twice about starting a public brawl.

Keep in mind that the study found the impact of police force size to be fairly small. It helps, but not that much.

Meta-analysis of 58 studies: "Oppressed" Hispanics live longer than White Americans

This meta-analysis of 58 studies documented the "Hispanic Paradox": Latinos are generally healthier and live longer than whites and blacks. To be specific, their rate of dying is 18% lower than that of other Americans.

This kind of finding keeps sociologists up at night because racism by whites is supposed to destroy brown lives, and yet Hispanics outlive whites, and what do people care about more than being alive?

The obvious candidate explanation is that genes are the reason Hispanics live so long, and the authors do manage to write two or three words about the possibility.

Sociologists are also very troubled to find that women live so much longer than men since male oppression, they tell us, absolutely crushes the female soul. And right on time, feminists dream up a million reasons why the sex difference is NOT biological. God forbid we actually develop explanations that fit the data. 

The study also reports that Asians live even longer than Hispanics. But how can any minority overcome the Evil White Man? Not only are Asians non-white, many are non-Christian. And many are immigrants. And we all know Trump's Deplorables--the power structure of this country (ha!)--despise anyone who is not white, Christian, and American.

So, again, how is it possible that Asian Americans are so healthy? How is it that they are so much more educated than the White Devil, and make so much more money than him? Maybe because liberals are 100% delusional, and genes explain these patterns.