I think both you and your friend might be missing an opportunity to learn something about how intelligence is measured..or miss-measured...or most likely, misinterpreted.

Imagine what IQ tests would be like if you had to "dance out" your answers in a complex rhythm, or if IQ were measured by how complex a social network you could handle. I think that the kind of intelligence that the designers of IQ tests have selected place those sorts of intelligences rather low in the hierarchy of kinds of intelligences, but they are the kind of inherited intelligences that have been selected for in Africa with it's dense interconnectedness with tribal and cultural requirements not present in the relatively sparse and isolated cultures that typified europe for most of its past...and of course there is the kind of inborn bias that is ridiculous to deny in which the designers of the test place their kinds of intelligence to be of more significance, naturally.

If your friend is as intelligent and as honest as you suspect he is, why not examine the historical and "scientific" aspects of intelligence yourself and you might find that the standard sociological model is based on theory that is being eroded and exposed for the wishful biased thinking that pervades so much theoretical claptrap disguised as social science...as it always has been..and will continue to be so until we achieve some kind of conscilliance with the hard sciences. I'd recommend beginning with Stephen Pinker's book "The Blank Slate".

But don't be too hard on your friend. Observe his actions not his ideas and beware of the models proposed by soft scientists when it comes to measuring human behavior on any level.

But let me ask you this...do you think Ashkenazi Jews and the Japanese are more intelligent than europeans? I'll bet you sorta do...and yet you feel no sense of iniquety? We know that the reason Africans have every reason to fear the notion that they have lower intelligence as measured by european standards is because of the history of colonialism and slavery. That is the fear, not the fear of being identified as less intelligent.

Unless we nurture a realistic and objectively defensible position on intelligence we are destined to fumble around fearing that we might hurt someones feelings while our children receive as truth some pretty sketchy ideas under the guise that it's OK to be wrong if it's politically correct. That is very distateful to me...how about you?

It's probably true that tigers don't belong in zoos. Certainly not in zoos as designed by victorian designers, but they are in zoos and function in this crazy world as potential repositories of our often "taken for granted" genetic legacy...no, not just human but the ecosystem from which we emerged. So, tigers don't belong in zoos and I don't belong in front of a computer but here we are.

As for Tatiana's reason's to be in a foul mood; how do you know that? I suspect that Tatiana may have thanked her lucky stars every day she was alive in that zoo since at no time did she ever wonder where her next meal would come from, spend a moment of fear wondering if another tiger would eat her or her cubs alive.

Please take time to erase the human bias before projecting the feelings of oneself into animals. Without that ability the decisions we make about animals will in all likelihood continue to harm rather than help.

Chicken scratch compared to the multi-trillion dollar expenses of oil wars and environmental assault over the last decade or so...I'd love to serve the saudis and the bush crime families a crude sandwich and make 'em eat it.

I always look forward to reading Miss Paglia's perpective on the political and cultural scene but I really had a hard time getting through this one which I found to be more gaseous than what I normally expect. I "get" the idea that she doesn't like the Clintons. I don't care for them much myself for a variety of reasons, some of which correlate nicely with Ms. P's and some unique to my own viewpoints, but how can we integrate her current spate of conceptual flatulence regarding Hillary? Oh blame it on the Bossa Nova as well as the harsh coal mining environment of the Pennsylvania coal fields. I guess that's why eveyone else has it so easy because the coal miners are some kind of magnet for un-enlightened behavior and are able to subvert the standard process of human socialization. If this were coming out of some mealey mouthed sex-negative sociologist with a superficial understanding of how humans actually behave, I'd have understood it, but coming from Ms.Paglia I am confused...though not as confused as I was when Ms Paglia so famously came out and shared with the world at large that she had seen a true presidential figure in real life and his name was....Mitt Romney. That big phoney kennedy-esque haircut sits so ludicrously ontop of his statement regarding his religion...ha ha! I suppose the rubes will fall for it not noticing that in telling us how deeply he believes in the load o' crap that goes for theology in the scriptural farce as delivered by space aliens to Joseph Smith while taking a break from plagarizing Edgar Allen Poe's early attempts at the new literary phenomenon of science fiction and taking advantage of the rampant ergotism which fuelled the burning grounds of 1820's upper New York State, but he's all offended if we ask what that means. How dare we question a religious belief! I'm sure he's including satanism in the protected class of voodoo believers who have captured the weak and fragmented minds that are the result of our education systems adherence to the Standard Sociological Model...save us!

Well, if we get the government we deserve, it looks like we're gonna get it with both barrels this election.