Taller People are Smarter

From Greg Mankiw's Blog, via Asymmetrical Information:

A new paper by Princeton University economists Anne Case and Christina Paxson says taller people earn more because they are smarter. The abstract:

It has long been recognized that taller adults hold jobs of higher status and, on average, earn more than other workers. A large number of hypotheses have been put forward to explain the association between height and earnings. In developed countries, researchers have emphasized factors such as self esteem, social dominance, and discrimination. In this paper, we offer a simpler explanation: On average, taller people earn more because they are smarter. As early as age 3 — before schooling has had a chance to play a role — and throughout childhood, taller children perform significantly better on cognitive tests. The correlation between height in childhood and adulthood is approximately 0.7 for both men and women, so that tall children are much more likely to become tall adults. As adults, taller individuals are more likely to select into higher paying occupations that require more advanced verbal and numerical skills and greater intelligence, for which they earn handsome returns. Using four data sets from the US and the UK, we find that the height premium in adult earnings can be explained by childhood scores on cognitive tests. Furthermore, we show that taller adults select into occupations that have higher cognitive skill requirements and lower physical skill demands.

I knew it!

The 25 Most Important Questions in the History of the Universe.

Which, unfortunately, does not include "what is the plural of 'doofus?'" A question we desperately need answered around here.

Still, Read it. My (and Mitchell's) favorites:

11. Why Do Most Snooze Buttons Only Give You Nine More Minutes of Sleep?

19. Human Meat Isn’t Appetizing, But is It Healthy?

and...

7. Can a Pregnant Woman Drive in the Carpool Lane?

Expectant mothers, start your engines! In 1987, a pregnant California woman was ticketed for driving "by herself" in the carpool lane. Sure, the citation was only for $52, but she sued anyway, contending that her 5-month-old fetus constituted a second person.

Lo and behold, the jury agreed with her, despite the prosecution’s argument that women could then just stuff pillows up their dresses to drive "carpool" on California’s freeways.

ADDENDUM - What fool cop gave her that ticket? I mean, come on, she makes that argument to you, and you still write her up?

Maybe she was bitchy about it.

You know it wasn't an older male cop. Nobody who's had direct contact with a pregnant woman would risk writing that ticket. And it wasn't a woman, unless it was a feminist woman. A hard core feminist might have written the ticket just to get back at the driver for legitimizing the oppressive patriarchy like that.

But my money's on a young guy. Somebody right out of cop school, early 20s.

I've come to a decision (blatant unilateralist that I am).

The word "internet" shall no longer be capitalized.

I mean, what are we? Germans?

That is all.

Blog.

Just because it's been a while.

Re: Life and Morality

This is one thing Grandpa John and I agree on: religious faith doesn't play a part in my position on embryonic stem cell research. I became pro-life before I became a Christian.

The one point I most want to leave this debate with is: there's no way to have an objective standard, when it comes to deciding which life is actually life and worth protecting, vs. which isn't and thus can be discarded, experimented upon, etc.

Caveat: I understand some people don't believe human embryos are human beings, and thus don't deserve the same protections. But that brings me back to my question: how do you know?

In the comments to the previous post, Jesusisjustallrightwithme says we should continue experimenting on embryos. His cutoff point is brain development - a being can't be aware of itself until it has a brain.

If we establish that as the standard, someone else will point out that, even after the brain begins to develop, the embryo (fetus, baby) is still not self-aware. So we should move the standard back even further.

On the other hand, Scott asked me why my standard doesn't include individual sperm. On a practical level, that's ridiculous. Millions of sperm are wasted in each and every effort to fertilize an egg (how's that for a euphemism?). Most eggs are also wasted. That's just how nature (or, as JIJARWM would surely say, God) made us. Plus, you try telling a woman she has to try to have a baby with every single egg.

And anyway, a single sperm or egg isn't its own individual person (yes, it's got your DNA, but so does every drop of your blood). An embryo is, with its own DNA.

Still, Scott reinforces my point. where is the line, and why is it drawn there? Unless and until we have conclusive, objective proof that a 3-hour-old embryo is not a human life, we have to treat it as such.

One more thing: what's our record on comments? We had 13 on that post. And with that, I go on vacation.

Life and morality

As an atheist, I have always wrestled with the problem of when a human life begins. I have concluded that it begins when the fertilized embryo attaches to the uterus. Until that time the embryo has the “potential” for life, but will never develop into a human being!

My morality is derived from the millions of years that social animals have been evolving. Baboons know its wrong to kill other baboons, chickens know that it is wrong to kill other chickens. Every society, be it human, ape, or chicken, follows social rules in order for their species to function as a social species. No mythological intervention is necessary!

Ye Olde Grandpa John's

Lance posted an article concerning an editorial on George Bush's veto of the federal funding for embryonic stem cell research. Interesting comments followed.

In these types of discussions religious faith plays a large role on one side of the argumentation. The detractors try to discount these arguments as superstitious and ignorant rantings of rubes. I want to know the foundations of the non-Christian 'rationalist' that inform his belief that there is any real value to human life at all and why it is wrong or immoral to murder another.

JesusIsJustAlrightWithMe gives it a stab:

"Why is murder wrong absent god? Human well-being, in this life, increases in a world without murder. It's a bit of instinct, a bit of game theory. It's economics and physics and math. It's feelings and thoughts that come from our brains that maybe we don't quite understand entirely yet. It is the same things that led the inventors of all of the world's religions to place such tenets into their mythologies."

To which I responded:

"Instinct is debatable, game theory, math, and physics make your sentence longer, and feelings/thoughts must be of the warm and fuzzy variety to add credence to your assertion. Not all are warm and fuzzy.

Naked economics (not the warm and fuzzy kind) more than likely would support murder. The aged, infirm or injured, contrary or criminal, and otherwise weaker members of our society are heavy economic drains on human society. Evolutionary nature culls them, both to strengthen the present herd and to insure future generations are only possessing the superior genes.

Hobbling the advance of human society by heavily draining finances, technology, manpower and skills, and valuable time decreases the well-being of others.

That loud sucking sound you hear? It's economics swirling down the drain.

However, since man was created in the image of God, he has implanted within him these moral motions, these 'instincts' "that maybe we don't quite understand entirely yet." Since man also is of a fallen nature, he has perverted this image into one exhibiting all varieties of incongruities."

I wanted to keep this discussion going, so I moved it onto a main post. This type of discussion was rife in the early days of this blog, "The good old days."

Too good not to share

I find this hilarious and I think it'll get more play over here. The graphics are from a videagame called World of Warcraft; looks like players have quite a bit of control over their characters' movements.




[Found while surfing blogs and can't remember where.]

Steve, you ignorant bigot!

I didn't say it. My hometown newspaper - the Baraboo News Republic - did.

On Saturday, they published an opinion piece (not online, but reproduced here) - an arrogant, ignorant opinion piece - on President Bush's veto of additional funding for embryonic stem cell research.

Over the past few months, on several issues, I've defended the BNR from accusations of liberal bias. Will I, anymore? Not so sure.

Here's my column, posted today, on the subject.

And now, a fisking.

Bush throws the baby out with the bathwater
Baraboo News Republic Editorial (July 29, 2006)

While George W. Bush has made some missteps in his presidency, last week may have been his biggest when he used his first presidential veto to block funding for stem cell research.

They mean “additional federal funding for embryonic stem cell research.” I wonder why they don’t say that?

The bill, which Bush vetoed July 19, would have given more federal dollars to stem cell research, which supporters say could lead to cures for everything from diabetes to multiple sclerosis to Alzheimer’s.

Ah, honesty. Before 2001, no federal dollars were spent on embryonic stem cell research. Bush agreed to fund existing stem cell lines in 2001 as a compromise: no further embryos would be destroyed on the taxpayers’ dime, but existing research, for which the embryos had already been destroyed, would be funded.

Embryonic stem cells are cells that can theoretically be formed into any tissue of the body. Scientists hope they can learn to control them and cause them to form in ways that would replace damaged or dysfunctional tissues.

More honesty. “Theoretically.” “Scientists hope.” Where was this in the first paragraph?

Opponents of embryonic stem cell research object to the destruction of embryonic cells and say research on adult stem cells is more advanced and more deserving of funding.

If you’re looking for the BNR’s reasons for disagreeing, you’re going to be disappointed. They don’t explain why opponents are wrong.

A healthy majority of senators – 63 of 100 – voted in favor of the legislation after the House approved it, also by an ample majority. When a bipartisan majority can agree on something, it’s a good indication that the country thinks it’s a good idea too.

According to the Associated Press, polls show as much as 70 percent public support for embryonic stem cell research.

Large majorities think abortion should only be legal in the most extreme cases, too. And that the Taxpayer Bill of Rights should be law in Wisconsin. Referendums to define marriage as one man and one woman pass, in most cases, with over 70% of the vote. Can we expect the BNR to opine in favor of those majorities, too?

Sadly, both the house and senate votes were just shy of the two-thirds majority needed to override a presidential veto. Even conservative Republicans like Sen. Orrin Hatch and California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger were appalled by Bush’s veto.

Excuse me? Arnold Schwarzenegger – conservative? Do the BNR’s editors even know what a conservative is?

The president obviously has a fundamental misunderstanding of science.

No, he doesn’t. He understands that destroying human beings – even embryonic ones – for scientific research is ethically disturbing, at best. Like putting Grandma to sleep so we can take her organs. She isn’t going to live much longer, anyway, and look at the lives she’ll save!

He’s supported study only on those stem cell lines created before Aug. 9, 2001, when he gave a speech on stem cell research.

That’s funny – Governor Doyle pointed out that exact same thing.

The bill would have allowed federal funding for study on excess embryonic cells from fertility clinics, which would be discarded anyway.

Not necessarily.

Stem cell banks like the one at the University of Wisconsin-Madison are now looking to send their stem cell lines out to other countries; Bush’s veto has the potential to actually throw American scientific progress in reverse.

Because there are absolutely no other avenues for American science to grow, other than this one. That’s crap. This isn’t even the only avenue being explored for treating the diseases most often cited as beneficiaries of embryonic stem cell research.

We wonder why the president has apparently ignored the most pragmatic and promising science in favor of arbitrary deadlines and sentimentality.

“…the most pragmatic and promising science?” From what liberal talking points did that sentence come? Please show me the documentation to support that, particularly when adult stem cells have already produced results.

Bush has clearly allowed himself to be swayed by the extreme right, who value religion over science.

Those damned Christians with their “morality” again. How we do hate them!

He’s tried to draw a black and white distinction of “innocent human life” in an area that is very gray at best.

The BNR is drawing their own “black and white” distinctions here, are they not?

If Bush really wants to protect life, why not sign a bill that could prolong it?

Require medical experimentation on all comatose patients who have little to no chance of recovery. Or…double funding for research using adult stem cells, and those harvested from umbilical cords.

Apparently he and the other extreme conservatives would rather see potential cures tossed in the trash – literally.

Yes, we whose consciences oblige us to pause when considering the destruction of a human life are the extreme ones.