Kimbo hype: a case study in negrophilia

An addendum to the previous post. Indra writes: In personal experience, I have also noticed that these negrophiles have no athletic history. White athletes, especially from combat-related sports like wrestling or football, quickly realize that you cannot judge a book by its cover, and that blacks with visually impressive muscularity are often NOT that powerful or effective in competition.

The Kimbo Slice story offers a particularly glaring example of this phenomenon.

In terms of external appearance, Kimbo Slice is undoubtedly in the 99th percentile of scary-looking negritude. Using Guy White logic it's obvious he's the greatest fighter of all time. With no hint of irony, (middle-aged, Jewish nerd) Mencius Moldbug describes Kimbo as "built to win".

Unfortunately for the logic of Guy White and Mencius Moldbug, the Kimbo hype train had already been repeatedly derailed by the time Mencius hopped aboard (continue reading).

Reply to an inconsequential post by Guy White

Featuring an extended rant on negrophilia as inter-ethnic and intra-white status competition. Read on, if you care (continue reading).

Stereotype of Swedish women as promiscuous

More fun with Swedish girls: Functions of a German heterostereotype. SM SCHRÖDER, M DALE Ethnologia Scandinavica 27, 122-137, Royal Gustav Adolf Academy, 1997.

While dealing specifically with the function of the stereotype as held by Germans of a particular era, this paper touches on some issues relevant to this thread. The PDF no longer seems to be available online, so I'm posting the text below (continue reading).

Carleton S. Coon on the endocrine system and racial differences in temperament

In the final chapter of his final book (the posthumously published Racial Adaptations), Carleton Coon discusses possible hormonal substrates of racial differences in behavior. I find Coon's proposals more interesting (and more empirically-grounded) than those of individuals inspired by Rushton to attribute all racial differences to supposed neatly-ordered differences in testosterone. Coon:
[Testosterone] is an element in aggressiveness, territoriality, and hoarding. Blended with adrenaline and smoothed over with cool judgment, it has marked the history of the Caucasoids in many parts of the world.
More excerpts within (continue reading).

Open thread

Post whatever you want. [Links, comments, suggestions, etc.]

Global Genetic History of Homo sapiens

A special review issue of Current Biology, featuring a number of free articles:
  • Archaeogenetics — Towards a ‘New Synthesis’? Colin Renfrew
  • The Evolution of Human Genetic and Phenotypic Variation in Africa Michael C. Campbell, Sarah A. Tishkoff
  • The Archaeogenetics of Europe Pedro Soares, Alessandro Achilli, Ornella Semino, William Davies, Vincent Macaulay, Hans-Jürgen Bandelt, Antonio Torroni, Martin B. Richards
  • The Human Genetic History of South Asia Partha P. Majumder
  • The Human Genetic History of East Asia: Weaving a Complex Tapestry Mark Stoneking, Frederick Delfin
  • The Human Genetic History of Oceania: Near and Remote Views of Dispersal Manfred Kayser
  • The Human Genetic History of the Americas: The Final Frontier Dennis H. O'Rourke, Jennifer A. Raff
  • The Genetics of Human Adaptation: Hard Sweeps, Soft Sweeps, and Polygenic Adaptation Jonathan K. Pritchard, Joseph K. Pickrell, Graham Coop

David Brooks and "libido for the ugly"

During my life, I've managed to avoid reading more than perhaps a couple thousand of the words David Brooks has published. However, I've recently been reminded (by a column by Brooks, which I also haven't read, save for excerpts in a post by Steve Sailer) of some of them -- a few paragraphs from Bobos in Paradise I once stumbled across on Google Books:
The [New York Times wedding] section was also, predictably, WASPier. About half the couples who were featured in the late fifties were married in an Episcopal ceremony. Today fewer than one in five of the marriages in the Times page are Episcopalian, while around 40 percent are Jewish [. . .] it's pretty clear the trends of the last 40 years have been bad for the Episcopalians and good for the Jews. [. . .]

The section from the late fifties evokes an entire milieu that was then so powerful and is now so dated: the network of men's clubs, country clubs, white-shoe law firms, oak-paneled Wall Street firms, and WASP patriarchs. Everybody has his or her own mental images of the old Protestant Establishment [. . .] The WASPs didn't have total control of the country or anything like it, but they did have the hypnotic magic of prestige. As Richard Rovere wrote in a famous 1962 essay entitled "The American Establishment," "It has very nearly unchallenged power in deciding what is and what is not respectable opinion in this country." [. . .]

Meanwhile, every affluent town in America had its own establishment that aped the manners and attitudes of the national one. There were local clubs where town fathers gathered to exchange ethnic jokes and dine on lamb chops [. . .] The WASP aesthetic sense was generally lamentable--Mencken said Protestant elites had a "libido for the ugly"--and their conversation, by all accounts, did not sparkle with wit and intelligence. [. . .]

Though this elite was nowhere near as restrictive as earlier elites--World War II had exerted its leveling influence--the 1950 establishment was still based on casual anti-Semitism, racism, sexism and a thousand other silent barriers that blocked entry for those without the correct pedigree.
I found the text I've bolded quite ironic, considering that his NYT photo features Brooks -- in a pink shirt and tortoiseshell glasses -- attempting to ape the 1950s northeastern "WASP" aesthetic, with some unique additions of his own -- including garish tie and gap-toothed leer. More importantly, here's what Mencken actually said:
On certain levels of the American race, indeed, there seems to be a positive libido for the ugly, as on other and less Christian levels there is a libido for the beautiful. It is impossible to put down the wallpaper that defaces the average American home of the lower middle class to mere inadvertence, or to the obscene humor of the manufacturers. Such ghastly designs, it must be obvious, give a genuine delight to a certain type of mind.
This passage comes from a 1927 essay in which Mencken mewls about how ugly he finds "the coal and steel towns of Westmoreland county". It's hard to see how Brooks could have mistaken Mencken as commenting on the tastes of "Protestant elites". (Mencken notes "the valley is full of foreigners" -- although he ultimately blames America for its lack of aesthetics.) Brooks evidently consciously misappropriated Mencken's line to add some weight to his anti-WASP sniping.

Why certain S. Euros obsess about supposed rampant miscegenation by N. Euro women

I think the reasons are obvious.

(1) They desire Northern European women, either because they believe they are more attractive or to raise their status.

(2) They realize they face competition for the minority of exogamous Northern European women from every other non-Northern European group on the planet, and don't like their odds. (Guy White: "I never went to Sweden as a single man, but I doubt it would be easier for me to pick up women there than in Alabama, Italy or New Zealand.")

(3) They believe deprecating Northern European women (and/or Northern European men) improves their chances -- or at least makes them feel better about their lack of success -- with Northern European women.
My information is based upon a three-­and-a-half-year study of the Italian slum district of "Cornerville" in "Eastern City." [. . .] In the social- and ethnic-group cate­gory, the most desirable woman for non-marital sex relations is the girl of old American-stock background, preferably blonde, who has a higher status than the corner boy. Once I was walking through the aristocratic section of Eastern City with a corner boy when we passed a tall and stately blonde, fashionably dressed, and very attractive. My companion breathed deeply as he said: "The old Puritan stock! .... The real McCoy! Wouldn't I like to give her a belt."

The attraction of the native stock is not confined to the lower-class Italian. Mario Martini was born in Cornerville, but as he became successful in business he moved out to a fashionable suburb. He married an Italian girl and raised a family, sending his children to private school. He had many business relations and some social relations with upper-class Yankees. He made a practice of hir­ing only girls of native background for his secretarial work, and on some of his business trips he would take one of these girls along-for sexual as well as secretarial purposes. One of Martini's former secretaries, who told me this story, was a girl of rather plain features, which em­phasizes the prestige of the native back-ground even for a man who was as suc­cessful as Mario Martini.

[WF Whyte. A slum sex code. American Journal of Sociology, 1943]
Compare:
One of the manifestations of this jealousy of the fair skin of the Nordics is shown in those numerous cases where members of the colored races, or even dark-skinned members of the Nordic regard the possession of a blonde woman as an assertion and proof of race equality. This has been true historically since the earliest times. It is more than ever in evidence at the present day.

[Madison Grant. The Conquest of a Continent; or, The expansion of races in America. New York, Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1933. p. 15.]
See also Philip Roth, Eldrige Cleaver, etc.

North-South IQ differences in Italy

Via Mangan's, a paper from Richard Lynn entitled "In Italy, north–south differences in IQ predict differences in income, education, infant mortality, stature, and literacy":
Regional differences in IQ are presented for 12 regions of Italy showing that IQs are highest in the north and lowest in the south. Regional IQs obtained in 2006 are highly correlated with average incomes at r=0.937, and with stature, infant mortality, literacy and education. The lower IQ in southern Italy may be attributable to genetic admixture with populations from the Near East and North Africa.
Lynn calculates average IQs ranging from 89 in Sicily to 103 in Friuli-Venezia.

Y-DNA haplogroup of King Tutankhamun

Also R1b. At least that's what a GENEALOGY-DNA-L poster has inferred based on Y-STR results visible in this video.

Composite sculptures of 1890s American college students

From one of Hooton's books. The caption reads: 'Dr. Dudley A. Sargent's composite figures of college students of the "gay nineties." Made from average measurements. The present generation of American students is considerably taller and more slender.'
I forget which book this is from. Probably Up From the Apes, in which case "present generation" refers to the 1940s.

George Gilder: descendant of New England Puritans?

RE: goofy post by Kevin MacDonald.

I'll give the conclusion in advance: Gilder appears to have as much Southern ancestry as New England ancestry, and most of his ancestors hailed from the Mid-Atlantic states. Here are his great-grandparents:

8. Richard Watson Gilder (b. 1844, New Jersey): Son of a Methodist clergyman. New Jersey and Delaware ancestry. Talks about his ancestors (including one with "Huguenot blood") here, failing to mention any New England Puritans.

9. Sarah Helena de Kay (b. 1846, New York): New York ancestry (including Dutch and apparently Scotch-Irish).

10. Louis Comfort Tiffany (b. 1848, New York): Finally someone of New England ancestry. But he lived in New York and was, I believe, an Episcopalian.

11. Louise Wakeman Knox (b. 1851, New Jersey): Daughter of a Presbyterian and Dutch Reformed clergyman; of apparent Scotch-Irish ancestry.

12. Reese Fell Alsop (b. 1837, Indiana): Episcopalian clergyman. Pennsylvania ancestry.

13. Mary Lee Spring (b. 1848, Pennsylvania): Father born in New York. Irish and Scotch-Irish Pennsylvania ancestry on mother's side.

14. Robert Williams Chapin (b. 1855, Massachusetts): Ancestry appears to be half New England, half Southern.

15. Adele Le Bourgeois (b. 1862, Louisiana): French name. Grew up on family's plantation.

I was unable to identify any Congregationalist or Unitarian among Gilder's recent ancestors. Gilder is himself an Episcopalian, and he founded the Discovery Institute with his Papist college roommate, who seems to have similar views on Israel. I find it rather hard to believe that internalized guilt passed down from the 1.5/8 of his ancestors who were of New England Puritan stock explains Gilder's philosemitism.

People with more New England ancestry than Gilder: Henry Adams, Brooks Adams, Henry Cabot Lodge, Charles Davenport, A. Lawrence Lowell, H.P. Lovecraft, Henry Fairfield Osborn, Madison Grant, Lothrop Stoddard, Carleton Putnam, etc.

Misc. links

Not even The New York Times is enthusiastic about "Faces of America": their reviewer calls it "a little wearisome"; says it contains "moments of pomposity".

PLoS ONE: Same-Sex Gaze Attraction Influences Mate-Choice Copying in Humans

HBD Books: The Fall of the English Language

Archaeology: Should We Clone Neanderthals?

Asatru Update: New Book Says Viking Raids Were Self-Defense

Anat Rec: Climate signatures in the morphological differentiation of worldwide modern human populations

Biol Lett: FORDISC is crap?

PLoS Genetics: Human and Non-Human Primate Genomes Share Hotspots of Positive Selection; Genetic Crossovers Are Predicted Accurately by the Computed Human Recombination Map

MBE: Haplotype structure and divergence at human and chimpanzee serotonin transporter and receptor genes; Principal Component Analysis under Population Genetic Models of Range Expansion and Admixture

PLoS Biology: Why We Conform

Ancient human genome sequence of an extinct Palaeo-Eskimo

In Nature: Editor's summary; pdf. "First ancient human sequenced":
Based on their analysis of the SNPs, the researchers were not only able to detect the ancient Saqqaq's geographical origins, but also determine many of his traits. They found that he was an inbred male, with A-positive blood, brown eyes, non-white skin, thick dark hair, and shovel-graded front teeth typical of Asian and Native American populations. [. . .] Willerslev said he's optimistic that other samples will provide the DNA fragments needed for similar sequencing efforts.

Y DNA haplogroup of Charles Darwin

The latest promotional fluff from the Genographic project:
The test revealed that Chris Darwin, and therefore his paternal great-great-grandfather, Charles Darwin, are from Haplogroup R1b, one of the most common European male lineages.
Still waiting for anything substantial to come out of this project.

Basic facts concerning Oliver Cromwell and the resettlement of Jews in England

(1) There were Marranos in England before Cromwell.
(2) The Puritan government failed to extend Jews the privileges they sought.
(3) Royalists were perfectly ready to ally with Jews where they thought they could benefit (and the converse, likewise).
(4) The Jewish population of England was negligible prior to the Restoration of Charles II, after which it markedly increased.

More below. (Continue reading.)

African mtDNA in the Iberian Northern plateau

Alvarez et al. Mitochondrial DNA patterns in the Iberian Northern plateau: Population dynamics and substructure of the Zamora province. American Journal of Physical Anthropology. Early View. Published Online: 1 Feb 2010. 10.1002/ar.20976
In the province of Zamora, if the total number of African lineages are taken into account (Hgs L1b, L2b, L3, M1, and U6a1a), the contribution represents 5.7% of the total Hg composition. [. . .] As regards sub-Saharan Hgs (L1b, L2b, and L3b), the high frequency found in the southern regions of Zamora, 18.2% in Sayago and 8.1% in Bajo Duero, is comparable to that described for the South of Portugal, but it does not have any parallels with any other analyzed areas in the Northern part of Iberia (Pereira et al., 2005).
More excerpts within. (Continue reading.)

Anthroeurope: a humble anthropological study of Europe

A potentially useful website dealing with European phenotypic variation. Here's the author's introduction.

More on black musical ability

A commenter writes: I think you're underestimating the African American ability with rhythm. Looking at their disparate impact in music, they must have some advantages. Good rhythm would be a huge one.

You're begging the question. The "disparate impact in music" of blacks is the usual evidence offered by those who claim blacks are especially talented in this area in the first place. (Continue reading.)