jimmyosterberg

I just talked to my mom (she works weird hours and our schedules clash, so updates have been pretty few). My grandfather's surgery successfully removed all of the cancer, but he's been having some complications (nausea and such). He's still in ICU and will probably be kept under close observation for quite some time. My niece is doing significantly better--luckily my brother's job provides decent benefits, because that kid is on every drug under the sun. (She has really severe allergies, amongst other problems.) She's even been prescribed valium suppositories in case she has another seizure.

Thank you for asking about them. That just reminds me that I need to go back and respond to comments instead of updating my journal (yet again), but it's easier to be escapist than show sincerity and gratitude every now and again.

You should post your research (or at least a synopsis) here when you're finished. I'd certainly be interested in reading it.

Yah...it is all interesting stuff. My ex is getting her psychology degree, and when we were together I was always helping her by being a guinea pig. I took about a dozen different IQ tests, of varying formats, from her professors and always scored between 130 and 160. The large spread is what always led me to skepticism (since, as you alluded to, the standard ranges are between 70 and 140...so a 30 point spread seemed pretty significant.)

One thing I remember reading is the Intelligence Quotient was, originally, meant literally...as the ratio between what you DO know scholastically to what you SHOULD know scholastically (at a specified age)...so as a basis for determining academic scale, that makes a lot of sense.

In the last decade, though, so many new tests have popped up attempting to scale different aspects of intelligence, and I think thats where things get cloudy, as intelligence is so difficult to define in the abstract :-) Plus, brain research is showing that different aspects of intelligence is dramatically subdivided into lobes (I.E. the language center of the brain has been subdivided into very specific sections including written language understanding, heard language understanding, spelling, word usage, ETC.)

As for genetics, I have heard of the comparative analysis you are referring to. It is interesting as it is not just done between human to human, but human against other genomes...looking for heavily conserved genes between species (I.E. the hemoglobin genes are nearly identical between humans, apes, and mice.)

The reason I mentioned it was that I have heard some of these white supremacist geneticists trying to make arguments about the inferiority of other races based on genetics...which cannot legitimately be done.

Although there are diseases more prevalent in different human races (I.E. sickle cell anemia is more prevalent in those of African or Caribbean descent)...they seem to be pretty evenly spread about, meaning ALL the races have their own little prevalence of genetic defects that followed them down the division.

Since the complete mapping of a number of genomes, it has become apparent that genome size has no bearing on organism complexity. I.E (boy, I sure do use I.E. a lot)...um...for example (thats better)...

Fugu pufferfish = 3100+/- genes
Drosophila Melanogaster (fly) = 13,379 genes
Human = 20,000-25,000 genes
Tetraodon nigroviridis (another pufferfish) = 27,918 genes
Arabidopsis thaliana (flower) = 28,000+/- genes
Rice = 37,544 genes

These are actual genes and do not include the large segments of garbage nucleotides found in nearly all species (although the Fugu pufferfish and most bacteria have almost none...indicating something naturally selected for a very compact genome.)

So, there really are no legitimate comparisons that can be made based on genetics to the superiority, or inferiority, of one race to another based on genetics.

Besides...white supremacists suck :-)

You know evertime I see one of your posts I can never see your profile pic. So I decided to look around and figure out why that was and I noticed that the picture you upload was invalid somehow.

Did you do this on pupose? I like it either way but I was very intrigued.

You're damn right it is. Kathleen Turner's performance is incredible.

One of my friends saw Turner in a pre-Broadway Boston engagement of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? last year--she said that Turner was perfect as Martha, too.

And thank you for the comment about my grandfather.