Years ago, working at Hughes Aerospace, I had a set of dealy-boppers, which I would don when talking on the phone to someone I thought an idiot but had to be polite to. I would nod a lot as I listened to the other guy speak.
I need a new set, so it’s time for you to contribute, if you can. If I get 20 more requests, I’ll have some more T-shirts made up. If that happens, all of my archaic readers – Denisovan, Hobbit, Neanderthal, whatever – will get one free.
You can suggest blog topics, fat lot of good that’s likely to do you. Paypal still works. Checks do too, and they might, possibly, become retroactively tax-exempt. No guarantees on that – email me for details.
If you have exotic donations in mind, like Bitcoin, goolie chits, or Rai stones, email me at gcochran9@comcast.net. I could probably set up Google Wallet if anyone is interested, and other suggestions along those lines are welcome.
I am considering an audio version of the book, with a number of pungent additions, in addition to a possible second edition. Is there interest in an audio book?
West Hunter 
if you talk fast. your interview at new books in history was superb & worth many repeat listens. ideas within it could be expanded & updated. your kindle book of blog posts had more interesting ideas per page than, well, other books (especially if select reader comments were included). the more random ideas, the better. please, a kindle book of your & HH’s critiques of, well, about anything: archeology, anthropology, evolutionary psych, how brain research over-environmentalizes – e.g., front page of DANA.org May 2014 pub “Brain in the News” – “people with more education recover better from brain injury,” & “mentally demanding jobs linked to slower cognitive decline” – both articles are complete BS for neglecting occam’s razor – they can’t say “smarter people recover from brain injury better, & smarter people (who have cognitively demanding jobs) stay smart longer?” …doesn’t the ridiculously PC interpretation of research make you mad? you & HH could do a great job being the siskel & ebert of science. that’s entertainment – & people pay for that stuff. (or hell, critique Game of Thrones:)
I’ll help you when I can. Your blog is excellent and worth supporting. I link to great lectures appropriate to your thread by people like John Hawks, David Anthony, or Steve Hsu and I notice that maybe 6000 people have listened to what i consider the best thoughts by our best minds. Meanwhile the biggest idiots on the planet doing things like lighting their balls on fire have a thousand for even ten thousand fold more views. I conclude there is no money or popularity in being very smart. I think you need to make an alias and tell the most outrageous nonsense you can think of. I notice the only requirement for the “experts” on the discovery channel is crazy hair. So you can don a Einstein type wig and strange glasses so that nobody recognizes you. You need a new name of course, knowing you it will have some obscure reference. Just my worthless to cents.
Greg,
What do the T-shirts look like again? Do you have an image somewhere?
Here.
Looks good, I’ll take one XL… anyone else joining me?
I bought a medium last time, but I would be willing to buy a large this time were it available.
Are they made of recycled sustainable organic bamboo fibre?
Hell no. Plutonium and human skin.
Asbestos to make them fireproof and tritium so they glow in the dark and you are on to a winner. If you do a second edition book with pungency layered on I will buy a few copies for friends, as I do with all my favourite supressed authors.
Blog topic: http://www.nature.com/naturejobs/science/articles/10.1038/nj7504-303a
” In simple terms, the GRE is a better indicator of sex and skin colour than of ability and ultimate success. “
I think it is telling that they do not spend a sentence substantiating their claims.
Geoffrey Miller put it best:
“So, the more accurate the tests are as indexes of general intelligence, the more biased they look across groups, and the more flack ETS gets from political activists. On the other hand, the more equal the test outcomes are across groups, the less accurate the tests are as indexes of general intelligence, the less well they predict university performance, and the more flack ETS gets from universities trying to select the best students. ETS may be doing the best it can, given the hypocrisies, taboos, and legal constraints of the American cognitive meritocracy. However, it may be useful for outsiders to understand its role in higher education not just as a gate keeper but as a flack absorber. ETS throws itself on the hand grenade of the IQ test controversy to protect its platoon mates (elite universities) from the shrapnel.”
Yep, it’s not like they’re gonna let some test score get in the way of their soft quota system. From the most recent issue of Intelligence (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160289614000774):
“The Graduate Record Examination (GRE) is a cognitive abilities test that predicts success in graduate training. […] However, some critics describe the GRE as a gatekeeper that limits equitable access across groups to higher education. […] First, we found that the gap between men’s and women’s GRE quantitative reasoning scores has changed little since the 1980s, although female representation in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) graduate programs has increased substantially. Second, ethnic gaps on the GRE persist, especially in quantitative reasoning, although representation of historically disadvantaged ethnic groups in graduate programs has increased. Enrollment gaps have narrowed despite ethnic and gender GRE gaps persisting, so it appears that continued use of the GRE for admissions decisions has not blocked efforts toward equalizing representation in higher education.”
Yes, another book, please, and yes, an audio book is a great idea.
Your book 10,000 year explosion could really use a sequel. One area you didn’t sufficiently explore is the relationship between IQ and agriculture.
I estimate that agriculture boosted genetic IQ by 13 points but the malnutrition of agriculture lowered IQ by 20 points:
But how much IQ was needed to think up agriculture in the first place?
I doubt that thinking up agriculture was all that challenging, but running the con to get other people to take it up probably took some smarts.
I don’t think that agriculture required higher IQ, but rather, much more perseverance.
Why do you think it required higher IQ? Did group hunting require higher IQ? Chimps seem to be able to engage in it.
I suspect that what was required was much more in the way of planning skills as agriculture moved further and further away from the Equator.
It takes IQ to figure out how plants reproduce and apply that knowledge to your advantage. I’m not saying actually practicing agriculture takes smarts but discovering it in the first place requires insight into how the natural world works. Whoever first discovered it was like the Darwin of the prehistoric age.
lol. How do I get me one of those entries?
Unfortunately I don’t have the wherewithal to engage in naked bribery; however, I’m (still) curious as to any thoughts you may have on liquid fluoride thorium breeder reactors. Are they the 100 mpg carburetor buried by incumbent interests that Kirk Sorensen claims, or does the gamma radiation make them just another case of internet quackery?
Coinbase has seemed like a pretty straightforward way to accept Bitcoins but have dollars deposited in your bank accounts in a very aboveboard manner.
Most of the big banks will now accept transfers from other accounts within the bank at 0% fees rather than Paypal’s 2.9% fee. I set up a separate business checking account so that I don’t have to give out my main checking account’s number.
Hackers prefer Stripe, so it must be preferable to paypal.
Paypal confiscated money donated to the Swedish site “avpixlat.info”*, as it was claimed they were breaking paypals policies about racist content. Their various editorial writers seem to be a colorful bunch and their homepage seems legit (if not very biased against immigration), so I would avoid paypal for free speech/libertarian reasons.
*Name means something like de-pixellated, which refers to the Swedish custom of pixellating and changing the color of criminals in newspapers (yes, the very same awkward correlations between ethnicity and crime exists in the Michael Moore-ish paradise of Sweden).
Extra Large please!