Brahmam Okate - Sooryagayathri & Rahul Vellal

This composition is by Annamacharya.

Harivarasanam - Sooryagayathri & Kuldeep M Pai

A Kerala favorite:

More indications that g is a myth

One indication that Spearman's g (upon which IQ is based) is an artifact of positive correlations among various intelligence test measures than a real thing is that there are subpopulations among which these measures do not correlate in the same way as among the general public.

An example is here: (note, my interpretation of their findings):

Psychol Sci. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2015 Jan 8.

Published in final edited form as:

Psychol Sci. 2007 Aug; 18(8): 657–662.

doi:  10.1111/j.1467-9280.2007.01954.x

PMCID: PMC4287210

NIHMSID: NIHMS653064

The Level and Nature of Autistic Intelligence

Michelle Dawson,¹ Isabelle Soulières,^1,2 Morton Ann Gernsbacher,³ and Laurent Mottron^1,2

To quote:

For example, no autistic child scored in the “high intelligence” range on the WISC-III, whereas a third of the autistic children scored at or above the 90th percentile on the Raven’s Matrices. Only a minority of the autistic children scored in the “average intelligence” range or higher on the WISC-III, whereas the majority scored at or above the 50th percentile on the Raven’s Matrices. Whereas a third of the autistic children would be called “low functioning” (i.e., in the range of mental retardation) according to the WISC-III, only 5% would be so judged according to the Raven’s Matrices.

In striking contrast to the autistic children, the nonautistic control children did not show a significant difference between their Raven’s Matrices scores and their WISC-III Full Scale, Verbal Scale, or Performance Scale scores .

So, if there was a real thing X corresponding to Spearman's g that represented the intelligence of a human brain, then the general positive correlation in the general population between WISC and Raven's Matrices is not measuring this thing X.  But it is these kinds of positive correlations among the various tests' results that is supposed to be measuring this real thing that is approximated by Spearman's g.

Sri Ramachandra Kripalu - Sooryagayathri

Hanuman Chalisa - Sooryagayathri

g - a Statistical Myth

A nice essay from 2007.

One of the best parts: "How to make 2766 independent abilities look like one g factor".

WaPo: The drug industry’s triumph over the DEA

If the WaPo is correct, then Congress, Senate, President, all were doing what?

For years, some drug distributors were fined for repeatedly ignoring warnings from the DEA to shut down suspicious sales of hundreds of millions of pills, while they racked up billions of dollars in sales.

The new law {passed April 2016} makes it virtually impossible for the DEA to freeze suspicious narcotic shipments from the companies, according to internal agency and Justice Department documents and an independent assessment by the DEA’s chief administrative law judge in a soon-to-be-published law review article. That powerful tool had allowed the agency to immediately prevent drugs from reaching the street.

.....

Besides the sponsors and co-sponsors of the bill, few lawmakers knew the true impact the law would have. It sailed through Congress and was passed by unanimous consent, a parliamentary procedure reserved for bills considered to be noncontroversial. The White House was equally unaware of the bill’s import when President Barack Obama signed it into law, according to interviews with former senior administration officials.

Top officials at the White House and the Justice Department have declined to discuss how the bill came to pass.

Michael Botticelli, who led the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy at the time, said neither Justice nor the DEA objected to the bill, removing a major obstacle to the president’s approval.

“We deferred to DEA, as is common practice,” he said.

The bill also was reviewed by the White House Office of Management and Budget.

“Neither the DEA nor the Justice Department informed OMB about the policy change in the bill,” a former senior OMB official with knowledge of the issue said recently.
,,,

With a few words, the new law changed four decades of DEA practice. Previously, the DEA could freeze drug shipments that posed an “imminent danger” to the community, giving the agency broad authority. Now, the DEA must demonstrate that a company’s actions represent “a substantial likelihood of an immediate threat,” a much higher bar.

Soccer and Genetics

I'm keenly waiting to hear the genetics explanation for why the US doesn't do well in world soccer tournaments for men.  Till then, there is stuff like this.

Book memo: Die Trying

My retreat from current affairs continues.

Lee Child, Die Trying, a Jack Reacher novel, 1998.

A woman is kidnapped off a street in Chicago, and Jack Reacher is kidnapped along with her.  Reacher has to rescue himself and her from the kidnappers, or "Die Trying".