"I mean, who doesn't want Free pie and chips? There's pie, and there's chips. For Free."
Posted on 03/27/2006 3:53:04 PM PST by Neville72
BRITAIN and France have experienced long periods of conflict and rivalry but now victory in one area can be claimed: Britons are more intelligent than the French. A new European league of IQ scores has ranked the British in eighth place, well above the French, who were 19th. According to Richard Lynn of the University of Ulster, Britons have an average IQ of 100. The French scored 94. But it is not all good news. Top of the table were the Germans, with an IQ of 107. The British were also beaten by the Netherlands, Poland, Sweden, Italy, Austria and Switzerland.
Professor Lynn, who caused controversy last year by claiming that men were more intelligent than women by about five IQ points on average, said that populations in the colder, more challenging environments of Northern Europe had developed larger brains than those in warmer climates further south. The average brain size in Northern and Central Europe is 1,320cc and in southeast Europe it is 1,312cc. “The early human beings in northerly areas had to survive during cold winters when there were no plant foods and they were forced to hunt big game,” he said. “The main environmental influence on IQ is diet, and people in southeast Europe would have had less of the proteins, minerals and vitamins provided by meat which are essential for brain development.”
He added that differences in intelligence across Britain could be attributed to bright people moving to London over hundreds of years. Adults in England and Wales have an IQ of 100.5, higher than Ireland and Scotland, both with 97. People living in London and the South East average 102. “Once in the capital they have settled and reared children, and these children have inherited their high intelligence and transmitted it to further generations.”
The pattern is repeated in other countries, Professor Lynn claimed. In France, IQ scores in Paris were much higher than those in rural areas.
Professor Lynn has spent three decades analysing thousands of test results to scrutinise the role of evolution in IQ. He has published his findings in a new book. Britons excel in another area of Professor Lynn’s research. He found that university students had, at 109, the second-highest undergraduate IQs in the world, beaten only by their US counterparts on 110.
Professor Lynn ascribes the differences between British and French intelligence levels to the results of military conflict. He described it as “a hitherto unrecognised law of history” that “the side with the higher IQ normally wins, unless they are hugely outnumbered, as Germany was after 1942”.
A “normal” IQ ranges from 85 to 115 but exceptionally gifted people have scores starting at 145.
Another neat comparison would be to stack up percentage of population living in urban areas with IQ.
In other words, city folks are smarter than country bumpkins.
I see Turkey near the bottom. Is there an IQ survey of muslim countries?
As I keep telling my kids, "Attitude is everything."
Looking at this list, I'm convinced that China will eat all their lunches due to its work ethic and open-mindedness to others' ideas (to a fault).
By comparison, Europe's greatest flaws are its pridefulness and sloth.
Or more likely, vice versa.
The Geico Gekko is smarter than the French. And he neither speaks French, nor has forgotten he used to speak German.
A sentiment with which I concur.
"I mean, who doesn't want Free pie and chips? There's pie, and there's chips. For Free."
Who was Alexander Bellski?
I'm willing to bet that Scotland is the brainiest of all of the UK countries, though I could be wrong.
I'm hiding this article from my Besserwisser (know-it-all) German wife. I'd never hear the end of it.
I have never seen a putative IQ score for slickWillie. When test scores have come out for brightboys like Kerry and Gore, they tend to have been rather embarrassing for the pundits of conventional wisdom. Clinton would not score well on standard subtests of intelligence which would include judgment, attention span, general information, immediate memory, probably math, and conversion of digital information to arbitrary novel symbols. He was very good at social perception and emotional intuitiveness, reading and manipulating people, which is why the media whores still love him. But lets face it, in 8 years he came up with not one new or creative idea, and accomplished nothing. Whoever coined the cliche "Talk's cheap" had some one very much like Billyboy in mind. He ended up sputtering in his SOTU about uniforms for schoolchildren.
Intelligence without wisdom is practically/usually a vice.
Yes, or at least a dangerous weapon.
"Ich bin ein Bigbrainer"
Okay I'll bite - who?
He was the first telephone pole. ;-)
Ooops,
That should'a been Alexander GRAHAM Bellski.
Ha ha, I got it anyway!!
I would've been willing to bet that the Scots were smartest too.
Unfortunately, being a pea-brained Frenchman, I was unable to comprehend that the article actually answered that question, and the answer was that the English are smartest, and the Welsh and Scots drag down the British average. It's actually right there in the text, but a stupid Frenchman has to read everything three times to perhaps understand it.
The Poles, mostly, and that's about it.
Because I wear an 8 3/8 ball cap...special made.
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