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It would require far more than that. To have a real discussion we would need to devote significant amount of time to delve into the history of the various countries and identify what happened. Considering that typically Africa is mostly only discussed in school as a product of colonialism, we all have a very limited and most likely skewed view on it. Take Botswana, for example. It is a country with some of the largest sustained economic growth (in the world) since its independence. Its GDP per capita is roughly that of Montenegro, and higher than Serbia (or China). One could speculate that it is because of the diamond mines (with all the issue that it may carry). However, other countries also have resources and had more troubles. Another thing of note is that it has very low corruption rates. Its Corruption Perception Index is just slightly lower than Portugal and Poland, but higher than Spain, Czech Republic or South Korea, for example. So clearly it is in a different place than what OP had probably in mind. But to answer the question of "why" one would really need to take a scholarly approach and dig deep into its history, the development of current policies (which apparently are very effective in stamping out corruption) and the reasons why it sustained good governance. It could be quite simply having the right people t the right place in the right position, or something else entirely. It could be that it was mostly a protectorate instead of a colony and had more self-governance than other nations. And so on and so forth. What I am saying is that generally we know to little about Africa to be able to make meaningful assertions, which can easily drift into simplified explanations sometimes ending in rather unfortunate (and racist) conclusions. Bottom line is I need to find a good book about African history and buy me some time to read it.

Yes, babies follow the laws of thermodynamics but due to the second one there will be some loss. Gases only add if you e.g. weight the full lung. However, humans are unable to fix nitrogen and it is merely gas exchange.

I disagree. This is racial supremacy and a high mark of racism, but I believe that the beginnings are found elsewhere. At the core of racism is stripping way individualism and replacing it with racial stereotypes that are assumed to be inherent (i.e. non-changeable) for that particular group. As a consequence, the individual will get judged by what is assumed to be a property of his/her race. For example, assuming that there are differences in testosterone levels (disregarding whether true or not), is in itself not racist. However, if we start extrapolating it will get iffy. What is often assumed based on the hormonal levels is that black folks are therefore inherently more physical. And while potentially formulated somewhat neutral, it already leads to a further set of assumptions, including, they could be more dangerous, or less intellectual etc. Another example is for example differences in incarceration. The statistic itself is of course not racist. But the assumption that the data proves that certain groups are inherently more criminal because of there ethnicity is. I believe that these types of stereotyping and assumptions pertain more to everyday experience of disparity than the out and out racial superiority claims. Unfortunately we do not have a good nomenclature to my knowledge) to distinguish these subtle differences (like racism in the second degree?) which make people judge racist actions on the somewhat rare overt form and thereby often overlooking or dismissing the more common subtle forms.

Protein digestion is not really due to hydrolysis by HCl. It mostly just denatures proteins to some degree. More importantly are the actions of proteases starting with pepsin, which is active in the acidic environment and continues throughout the passage of the gut (secreted by the pancreas) with proteases that work at higher pH.

I would say that that OP has assumptions that are drawn from (largely) the same pool that racists are drawing from. However, without further evidence it is quite possible that is entirely based on ignorance, leading to baseless speculations rather than ideology-driven. Of course, the issue of stereotype vs individual assessment is a huge issue for any group (not necessarily restricted to racial stereotypes, of course) which is the consequence of even further extrapolation of potentially small effects. I think the high level answer in these situations should be that the assumptions are too simplified and as such do not make a lot of sense. To some degree aspects, especially blatantly false ones, can be discussed fairly easily. However, it is often difficult to convey the limited conclusions that can be drawn from population studies and in many case experts that have devoted decades of their life into this matter still struggle to provide explanations. As such it does not surprise me if people balance silly theories on top of weak assumptions. After all, the board is full of those. What is correct to point out, however, is the path that those speculations could lead into, which may include the (intentionally or not) validation of racist talking points.

I still don't understand. Are talking about a hypothetical here? I.e. assuming that all groups are searched at the same frequency and then arrested? First of all, if you then say that the comparison to national data is flawed then you have the issue that over larger data sets local fluctuations will level out. The other issue is that you will have to look more fine grained into e.g. Oakland, as it is not clear whether there is the search rate corresponds to ethic distribution. However, looking at data e.g. New York it is apparently not the case. In fact, a quick search turns up a number of studies that show that it is in fact not the case. For example not only are African Americans more often stopped, they are also four times more likely to be searched than white people although the searches do not result in more recovery. So quite frankly I do not know where you are going with your argument. Edit: several crossposts

Not sure whether that was alluding to my post, but I'd like to clarify that I am not saying OP is racist (or the follow-up for that matter), but that the argument of testosterone has been popularized in racist contexts which is why it has become so prevalent. I.e. it is one of the stories where in common discourse its assumed validity far outstrips the actual evidence. After all, the only conclusion one would have to draw is that we should be all exclusively governed by women (which is an argument that is very rarely made).

I am not quite clear in what you are trying to say. The statistic shows the cities with the largest diversities in the US. The vast majority will not be like this. As such I am unclear what conclusions you try to draw. The other, more relevant issue is that minorities tend to get suspected and searched far more often than white people (ca. 80% were black or Hispanic). This imbalance obviously will lead to more arrests among those minorities. This is especially damning as over the years there has been no significant difference between Hispanics, white and black people (see Data from the National Survey on Drug use and Health). And that is what (I think) Delta is alluding to. Minorities are disproportionately punished for basically the same offence. I.e. higher arrest and incarceration rates (and also higher punishment for the the arrest).

Just saw that, wouldn't be the weirdest thing.

One thing to remember, colonialism was not nation building. Investments weren't made to modernize or benefit the population. Rather they were for the benefit of the ruling class and to facilitate wealth transfer to the colonizing powers.

The history of many African states has been tumultuous, but there are two things to remember, first is that many suffered various degrees of colonization and had a much shorter time frame of modern reorganization. Second, because of their history many countries are lacking in social cohesion, as the nations were created externally rather by some internal mechanisms. That being said, as a whole catastrophic poverty has been decreasing on average, and there signs of increasing prosperity. However, a big challenge is a large gap between rural and urbanized areas, for example. There are many more aspects to consider, but one really need someone with scholarly knowledge of at least one of the African countries. After all, we are talking about the second largest continent as it was a somewhat homogenous region. As such almost certainly any speculation will be superficial and most likely completely wrong.

In common usage variables are italicized to distinguish them from regular abbreviations.

Theoretical that oversight should come from congress (unless I am mistaken). Which does not seem to work out so well. I have not heard anything regarding Spicer (other that he fumbled). There are a couple of senators that have expressed concern, including McCain, but other than that there was not much (yet).

Actually, after looking a bit deeper into the index data, it seems that there are marked differences and OP may be slightly off (though not factually incorrect). If looking exclusively at money donations, and looking at participation (i.e. percentage of people that donate money), the US is not even in the top 10. Highest percentages were Myanmar (92%) Thailand (87%), Malta (78%), UK (75%) Netherlands (75%), but NZ and Australia are also close (73%) with Canada being at 67%. Where the US was higher is in the participation in helping a stranger (in the top with Iraq, Liberia, Namibia and Jamaica). So there is a little bit of difference, at least between the US and UK in the form of help rendered.

A big problem with this is that has been long a talking point for people of the racist persuasion. The basic idea was to depict black men more animal-like, physically strong, but stupid and aggressive (and obviously a threat to white women). One problem is that testosterone level fluctuate even in individuals during the day, but also in response to stressors and physical activity. In order to find biologically meaningful differences one would either adjust for all potential covariates (which is close to impossible) or have a huge unbiased population pool. Typically the studies that showed differences were limited in size, and in the age grouo 18-30. Which often means college students, as they are conveniently used in many studies (and are willing to be tested for donuts and ramen). However, this pool, especially in older studies is incredibly biased as, among other things, there is a disproportionate amount of college athletes. Most studies I have read did not account for these sorts of biases. A number of newer studies that provide testosterone level but did not set out to specifically look at racial differences often did not find such an effect (especially in studies from outside the US) or found a faster decline in testosterone in black men past 30 (which in your model would make them more reasonable than white . There is also a glaring lack in studies among Africans, which is bit funny as many people extend that bit of information from African Americans to the whole of Africa. The reasoning behind it is somewhat disconcerting, especially as we know that there we will find the largest genetic diversity in humans. Even if there was a difference, it would actually more sense to argue that non-black have reduced testosterone. After all, if there is a biological basis (which is by no means clear), it is more likely that those occurred after a sub-population moved out of Africa. But rather tellingly, the reverse is often seen by some people as the deviation from the norm...

There are code of conducts, but with sufficient incentives people break it (regardless of being corporate or not). But even if they do follow it, there is no good reason to immediately accept the conclusions of individual studies. Passing peer-review is the low bar. The real test for studies in general is independent validation.

Agreed. There is the occasional issue when faith intersects with work. But luckily those cases are rare (and usually do not publish significant papers).

That is not surprising, is it? The good news is that is a rule to indicate sources of funding and affiliations (as well as conflict of interest) in publication. The issue is if the authors hide those links.

Well, in yet another twist Trump fired the FBI director Comey.

It depends really. With age and familiarity the effort to conduct a task can be more efficient than some untrained person. However, it seems to be generally true that in older people the cost of disengaging from a task is higher than in younger people. So there is added cost for multi-tasking. On the other hand, it also often means that younger people could be easier distracted from a particular task. In the end, the type of task(s) would define who would be more efficient in executing them.

There is not a whole lot of difference. The key point is how much attention you have to spend on a process. If you are extremely familiar to certain movements, you can physically move without paying much attention. So from this view point, it does now matter much whether a given task is physical or mental in nature.

The mechanisms are not only closely related, but the processes are not functionally disconnected. One exception being listening and speaking. You will notice that if you e.g. give a speech, you will have trouble understanding someone talking to you, especially if they discuss more complex subjects. Likewise, if you are unfamiliar with a language, translating it will become non-automatic and after listening you have to switch to a more active translation process. This is quite easily tested in recall tasks where you try to recall things said to you while actively listening or while talking yourself. If you monitor yourself you will see that the more actively you are listening (which correlates with how well you will recall what is said to you), the more your speech pattern will change (typically slowing down, getting a bit rambly, repetitions etc.). Yeah this is one of the reasons why I do have some problems with disciplines like evolutionary psychology. Too often they are heavy on narratives but too light on testable hypotheses. Depending on the tasks one can often find men or women performing similarly. In certain tasks, especially time-sensitive ones, it was found that women had the tendency to be more organized and if they were, they tended to perform better. But this is less indicative of a biological role but rather a gender-bias in how people approach certain tasks.

In that case, I wonder why Myanmar, country that has been poverty stricken for so long (or maybe because of it?) is topping the ranks.

There is quite a body of research of multitasking and related phenomena, but roughly speaking, people do not think or do a lot of things simultaneously. It is indeed a switching of tasks, and the switch itself incurs costs. There are some surprising findings why certain tasks become more difficult to switch to or away from, but roughly speaking, if there is a task/thought that you are more familiar with, they can take up more time to switch away from it. Also it depends on the difficulty of the task and whether you are actually paying attention to it, of course. In either case, switching frequently usually takes longer to fulfill tasks and is more error prone, due to the inherent cost of the switch itself.

The dark ages are a common misconception in which science and scholarly developments were on hold just waiting for the Renaissance. There were economically and social challenges following the decline the of the (Western). In the Western empire kingdoms established themselves with significant social restructuring. And it is true to some degree that access in that area to sources of information became more limited and there were not that many Latin translations of Greek sources so scholarly learning became more concentrated. But that does not mean that it vanished somehow. It is, for example a myth that in the middle ages scholars believed the earth to be flat. Moreover, the Eastern empire persisted, which continued to contribute to science and who were crucial in dissemination the Greek classics to the Muslim world.