Yeah, we need a genetic test for intelligence, because you just can't tell. I mean, is Bill Gates really that smart? Can't we just get a blood sample from him to confirm it? And that dumbass missing half his teeth on the Jerry Springer show might not be as dumb as he looks or acts. He could be as smart as Einstein and dream up the solution to the unification theory that Einstein spent 40 years researching. But we'll never know without some idiotic genetic test.

and it's driving me a little bit batty

didn't take much, eh?

I had to go and read that bit about blinking - and now I'm noticing every time I blink. Grrr.

"Someone can prick my finger and find out I'm a genius."

And if someone fingers your prick, what do they learn?

(Never mind - I don't want to know ...)

Damn your eyes!

The genetics of intelligence is going to have to be handled very carefully. I want the truth to be known, whatever it is, and in the short run, that may require keeping some knowledge back or keeping the implications unexplored. If the distribution of different alleles of genes affecting intelligence varies across races, I want to have that information. But it may have to be concealed or obscured until the evidence is abundantly confirmed and widely acknowledged by neuroscientists.

Makes your brain turn off huh? I guess that explains why women who bat their eyes at men are so stupid...;-)

Goddammit, Ace, couldn't you find a version of this story that didn't require registration?

It's unnerving to me how they are supposedly finding all of this genetic basis for most of the things that we're pretty sure are heavily influenced by environment. Things like religion, sexual "orientation," and now intelligence.

As I look at that in juxtaposition with the expansion of "bioethics," I become more than just unnerved. It's positively bone-chilling to me.

You Klonopin newbies. Sheesh.

Here's what you do: Take the phone off the hook. Go get your pills. Count out 20 of them. That's right, 20. Don't worry, I've done this and it works.

Now, go get the Valu-rite from the top of the icebox. That's it. Bugger the ice, too. You're going to slam this--ice gets in the way and cracks your teeth.

Okay, all set? Now, dump the pills in about 10 oz. of Valu-rite, stir twice and pound it down.

Get some duct tape, cut a piece about 20 inches long and wrap it around your head, covering your mouth. See? The damned blinking's stopped, hasn't it?

The eye-blinking thing reminds me of a golf joke (althought it would probably work in other areas). If you really want to screw up a golfer, ask him just before the start of a round if he inhales or exhales on his backswing.

Sounds like some more geneticists want some grant money. Seems like everything is found to be genetic these days. And some of these discoveries, if they are true, seem like they could be put to some pretty bad uses. But of course, if any of these discoveries cast a negative light on a protected minority group, you will never hear about it again.

I've been told by blacks that they are superior to whites in athletics. And that this is because they come from a continent where natural selection made them that way. To which I always reply that if it is true that physical traits are genetic, then mental traits are genetic too. If one believes that physical prowess can be passed on in genetically in groups, one must accept that mental traits, including IQ, can be passed on too.

They don't like that.

That bugeyed runaway bride must be a f'ing genius if blinking is a measurement.

I too have doubt about that blinking thing. For a century, movies have been possible by "persistence of vision": it takes roughly one-sixteenth of a second for the brain to stop processing visual input - at least eighty times longer than a blink.

That's why early movies were shot at sixteen frames per second. Later that standard was changed to tweny for smoother appearance, which is why old films shown with newer projectors seem to run in fast motion.