I soft-pedaled my views on heredity a bit in order to get people to consider my broader point that there is nothing per-se wrong with the quality of city teaching. I’m not a believer in “human biodiversity” like many on here, but I am open to it playing a role once the other options have been excluded (which I think we’ll know, one way or another, within the next two decades.)

Any lingering doubts I may have had about people who subscribed to the “Blank State” were completely dispelled by the arrival of my second child.

My conclusion was that the advocates of such, either never had children of their own, or if they did, were either not particularly involved in raising them, or some combination of being a wilfully dishonest ideologue, and which may or may not have included, neither being particularly observant nor intelligent themselves.

Supposedly my maternal grandfather gave everyone he met a nickname, and from then on only referred to them by his given nickname.

My son (3.5 yo) has recently started to express the same unusual trait, he will only refer to his light green duvet/comforter as “the pickle”, and has about 10 other nicknames for other items and people in his environment.

Has anyone else any experience with this??

Thanks. As always, very helpful and informative.

There’s a difference between going to a school which has some black kids, and a school which is seriously unsafe. My city has some of both, but actually some of the outlying first-ring suburban districts are more notorious for awful student conduct (like students beating up teachers) in this area.

http://www.examiner.com/science-news-in-birmingham/musical-taste-may-be-genetic

the short answer is that that paper is out of date. south asians are a recent hybrid between an old population (ASI) and an intrusive population from west eurasia (ANI). additionally, the austro-asiatic tribes of northeast india themselves are recent intrusive elements from southeast asia:

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/2010/10/sons-of-the-conquerers-the-story-of-india/

(of course, in relation to the few remaining ‘negritos’ of the malay peninsula most southeast asians themselves are relatively recent intruders from what is now southern china)

You need to wait some 20 years. It becomes much more obvious then. Particularly with N > 1.

“The results suggest that the Austro-Asiatic Khasi tribes of Northeast India represent a genetic continuity between the populations of South and Southeast Asia, thereby advocating that northeast India could have been a major corridor for the movement of populations from India to East/Southeast Asia.”

Which sparked my interest in many of the South Asian posts you’ve done (I’m Southeast Asian). So does this mean Southeast Asians are a continuum between South Asians and East Asians?

Both my wife and I were strange children, so I don’t see her desiring to conform by being stupid a major concern.

We do plan on enrolling in the local magnet system (which is essentially a 50/50 split between white and black). It doesn’t get much credit in the suburbs, but Pittsburgh breaks down the test scores of white and black students, and the white students in the magnet system score as well as the average student in the most expensive school districts in the suburbs. I assume most of the difference is because the parents who care enough to apply tend to be above-average in intelligence, and thus the peer group is one for which academic achievement is important.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2842210/

As an example, consider schools, where parents are supposed to be super-concerned about getting their child into a “good” one

the main issue you select for is peer group (good students make good schools; not teachers or $). if you don’t think that your child is impressionable than i think that opens up many possibilities. but as you say, a better grasp of reality produces better ‘cost vs. benefit’ calculations.