October 11, 2009
Britain's Central Planning Death Panels
October 11, 2009
Free Market M.D.
October 11, 2009
Economies of Scale in Compliance
October 11, 2009
Balan's Challenge
October 10, 2009
The Pleasure of Telling Others What to Do
October 10, 2009
Gonick the Great - and How He Could Have Been Greater
October 9, 2009
More Scott Sumner
October 9, 2009
Not From The Onion
October 9, 2009
Thoughts on a Second Stimulus
It doesn't matter what the reason is, if your group is underrepresented, you deserve money.
In this case, I think a good target is athletes. They have a lot of money and very, very few are ______. The NBA would be the best place to start. I can't type anymore right now because the rage from reading that bigoted paper is making my hands shake.
Why is this the only possible answer?
"explained largely by the association between height and cognitive function: healthier, better nourished children are significantly more likely to reach both their height potential and their cognitive potential."
Consider that today's workplace puts a premium on communication skills. If taller men did better socially growing up (and there really is evidence that taller men are more desirous) and are more developed in the communication abilities, could that possibly account for it?
Personally, I am only 5'6 and I'm perfectly healthy. My parents just happen to be short. Both have graduate degrees from Ivy League universities, so you would be hard pressed to say their cognitive abilities suffered because of their height.
I believe Judith Harris, in one of her books, discusses the question, and claims that the correlation (for males) is with height during adolescence. Her conjecture is that the association is via self-confidence.
I used to believe compensating differences occurred naturally. For example, those born with superior physical attributes, it seemed, generally lacked the same intellectual capacity of those born without. That belief has been shattered, a belief that the vertically challenged can no longer take refuge in. Further proof that life is unfair is provided in this study, which claims that curvaceous women are brighter and give birth to brainier kids (a sort of “Belle” Curve, if you will). Signaling of this type is made possible, however, by means of plastic surgery.
Sadly, medical science has yet to find a cure for the first type of shortcoming. I’m afraid Randy Newman was right, short people got no reason to live…
I've always found short people to be smarter (anecdotal).