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Beautiful people don't just get all the breaks, scientists say they're likely smarter than most people, too. A study in England conducted by researchers at the London School of Economics found that attractive men and women generally have higher IQs. "Physical attractiveness is significantly positively associated with general intelligence," said LSE lead researcher Satoshi Kanazawa, in the latest issue of the journal, Intelligence. The study indicated attractive men have IQs that are 13.6 points above the average, while beautiful women are 11.4 points higher than average.

America's children rate embarrassingly low again on the latest round of scholastic tests from the OECD. The Program for International Student Assessment, which is released every three years, tests 15-year-old students in reading, math and science. Basically, America earned a "C." We tied the OECD average rating of 496. Teenagers in East Asia and Europe scored significantly higher. There's one caveat to these scores. Some countries test a irregularly narrow sample of kids. Like China -- which we're not counting in our ranking because its sample of 5,100 Shanghai teenagers scored ridiculously high.

Don't know what day it is? Look at a calender. Don't call 911It appears residents in Broward County have their definitions for "nonsense" and "emergency" mixed up. According to the Broward Sheriff's Office call center, nearly half the 911 calls they receive are for things not quite a life or death situation - unless you consider a fast food order an emergency. To paraphrase the immortal words of Flavor Flav, 911 callers are a joke in this town. "My toilet's overflowing, what do I do? That's my personal favorite," BSO Sheriff Al Lamberti said. While it's a stretch, a busted...

Here's How The Various Racial Groups Stack Up In Terms Of Income Joe Weisenthal Sep. 16, 2010, 1:05 PM From the Census bureau:Image: Census

Obama says he ignored Beck rally He seemed intent on casting himself as above the political fray, saying he had more important work to do than to engage in the back and forth of the political “silly season.” For example, Obama said he did not watch any of Fox News Channel host Glenn Beck’s “Restoring Honor” rally Saturday on the National Mall. “It’s not surprising that somebody like a Mr. Beck is able to stir up a certain portion of the country. That's been true throughout our history,” he said. But “I’m making decisions that are not necessarily good for...

In psychology’s latest assault on American conservatives, evolutionary psychologist Satoshi Kanazawa has determined that “very liberal” people possess nearly a 12 point IQ advantage over those who identify as “very conservative.” Not only is the hard left more intelligent than the hard right, but they are smarter than everyone else, as well – mainstream conservative, middle-of-the-road, and even mainstream liberal. In a blog posting at the Psychology Today website, Kanazawa baldly asserted that, “...apart from a few areas in life (such as business) where countervailing circumstances may prevail, liberals control all institutions. They control the institutions because liberals are on...

Global differences in intelligence is a sensitive topic, long fraught with controversy and still tinged by the disgraceful taint of pseudosciences such as craniometry that strove to prove the white “race” as the most clever of them all. But recent data, perplexingly, has indeed shown cognitive ability to be higher in some countries than in others. What’s more, IQ scores have risen as nations develop—a phenomenon known as the “Flynn effect.” Many causes have been proposed for both the intelligence gap and the Flynn effect, including education, income, and even nonagricultural labor. Now, a new study from researchers at the...

Many of the wonderful-sounding ideas that have been tried as government policies have failed disastrously. Because so few people bother to study history, often the same ideas and policies have been tried again, either in another country or in the same country at a later time — and with the same disastrous results. One of the ideas that has proved to be almost impervious to evidence is the idea that wise and far-sighted people need to take control, and plan economic and social policies so that there will be a rational and just order, rather than chaos resulting from things...

People in developing countries have lower IQs because their bodies divert energy from brainpower to fighting disease, researchers claimed today. In hot nations blighted by deadly infections, the priority is survival and populations have evolved to develop stronger immune systems rather than intelligence, according to the controversial theory. Some critics warned the study could become an excuse for racism if it was used to suggest that people in the Third World are not as intelligent as those in cooler, richer climes. Others pointed out that the ancient Persians, Greeks and Romans lived in hot climates and still boasted extraordinary civilisations....

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The city will search for a new admissions test for its gifted and talented public school programs, a Department of Education official said on Monday, in part to address concerns that some families were “gaming” the test through extensive preparation. The official, Marc Sternberg, the new deputy chancellor for portfolio planning, said the change could occur for the 2012-13 year. The city has one more year in its current testing contract. Mr. Sternberg announced the move at a City Council hearing on education, after extensive questioning from council members about why the city’s gifted programs were not as racially and...

Immigrants are making Germany 'dumber', according to a board member of the country's central bank. Thilo Sarrazin claimed the 'limited education' of immigrants - coupled with their high birth rate - meant Germans 'are becoming dumber in a simple way'. He said: 'There's a difference in the reproduction of population groups with varying intelligence.' It is not the first time the 65-year-old member of the Bundesbank has caused controversy since he joined last year. In October he described Muslim children as 'underclass' citizens. 'I don't have to accept someone who lives off a state they reject, doesn't properly take care...

In 1970, nine percent of California's population was comprised of immigrants; by 2008 it was 27 percent. A new report from the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) finds that as a result of immigration, California now has the least-educated labor force of any state. Historically, California was not a state with a disproportionately large unskilled population, like Appalachia or parts of the South. However, immigration has transformed the state. Absent a change in immigration policy, other parts of the country may be transformed in a similar fashion. The report, "A State Transformed: Immigration and the New California," can be found...

Front-page headline in my New York Post this morning: 2 + 2 = 5 NY passes students who get wrong answers on tests The accompanying story describes a further dumbing-down of state math tests for kids in grades 3 to 8. Half marks are given for fragments of work; also for wrong answers arrived at via correct methods: “A kid who answers that a 2-foot-long skateboard is 48 inches long gets half-credit for adding 24 and 24 instead of the correct 12 plus 12 . . . ” For us New York parents the only surprise here is that any...

The Question No. That is to say, Yes. But not really. Actually, what we have here is an badly phrased question: just what do we mean when we ask “Are men smarter than women”? We’re asking this again, because (via HotAir) The Daily Mail has asked. And, even though that paper is, as many readers have insisted, England’s equivalent of the New York Post, an article by retired professor Richard Lynn has, as they say in journalism, stirred up controversy. Judging by the comments garnered at the paper and at HotAir, most do not understand the question, or purposely—or willfully—misunderstand...

Dr. Kanazawa, In your recent PT blog post, Why Liberals Are More Intelligent Than Conservatives, you explained why liberals tend to control institutions such as academia and the media: "[Liberals] control the institutions because liberals are on average more intelligent than conservatives and thus they are more likely to attain the highest status in any area of (evolutionarily novel) modern life." You asserted that liberals have higher IQs, are more generous, and are essentially more evolved than conservatives. In response, I'd like to defend the unfortunate, knuckle-dragging schlubs by deconstructing your logic. Unlike most of your previous work (your book...

"Political, religious and sexual behaviors may be reflections of intelligence, a new study finds." So began an article published at CNN.com Friday guaranteed to anger conservatives from coast to coast. The piece continued, "Evolutionary psychologist Satoshi Kanazawa at the the London School of Economics and Political Science correlated data on these behaviors with IQ from a large national U.S. sample and found that, on average, people who identified as liberal and atheist had higher IQs." Folks are warned about proceeding further, for the content might be really offensive to some (h/tips to NB readers Stan and Chesley):

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Political, religious and sexual behaviors may be reflections of intelligence, a new study finds. Evolutionary psychologist Satoshi Kanazawa at the the London School of Economics and Political Science correlated data on these behaviors with IQ from a large national U.S. sample and found that, on average, people who identified as liberal and atheist had higher IQs. This applied also to sexual exclusivity in men, but not in women. The findings will be published in the March 2010 issue of Social Psychology Quarterly. The IQ differences, while statistically significant, are not stunning -- on the order of 6 to 11 points...

Political, religious and sexual behaviors may be reflections of intelligence, a new study finds. Evolutionary psychologist Satoshi Kanazawa at the the London School of Economics and Political Science correlated data on these behaviors with IQ from a large national U.S. sample and found that, on average, people who identified as liberal and atheist had higher IQs. This applied also to sexual exclusivity in men, but not in women. The findings will be published in the March 2010 issue of Social Psychology Quarterly. The IQ differences, while statistically significant, are not stunning -- on the order of 6 to 11 points...