Holy Cow, Seriously?

Apparently an "evolutionary psychologist" at the London School of Economics posted an article at the Psychology Today website called...wait for it..."Why Are Black Women Less Physically Attractive than Other Women." Not surprisingly, this has raised a little bit of backlash.

Even the title is...bizarre. Satoshi Kanazawa's article flourishes a lot of graphs and goes over his results from some sort of survey that purports to measure attractiveness "objectively and subjectively." The "objective" standards appear to be a rather architectural approach to facial design; I've read claims that wider-spaced eyes and other factors can make someone look younger, but attractiveness itself seems to me a much harder thing to quantify. To begin with, who is devising the parameters of attractiveness? When he categorically states that that "women on average are more attractive than men" does he mean they're more attractive to men? To men and women? Are there people of color in his samples?

And then you get a paragraph like this:

What accounts for the markedly lower average level of physical attractiveness among black women? Black women are on average much heavier than nonblack women....However, this is not the reason black women are less physically attractive than nonblack women. Black women have lower average level of physical attractiveness net of BMI. Nor can the race difference in intelligence (and the positive association of intelligence with physical attractiveness) account for the race difference in physical attractiveness among women.

Am I reading this right? Is he seriously saying that a woman of African descent is not only less attractive, she's dumber? Oh, man, the pile of contumely that is coming down on Kanazawa's head...it's almost too easy.

Poor Pup

Emily has been gimpy now for a couple of months--we figured she'd pulled something, and almost a month ago we saw her usual vet, who wasn't sure exactly what the problem was, but thought that a couple of weeks of rest, anti-inflammatories, and Glucosamine would rule out a strain. Three weeks on minimal exercise has her antsy to the point of boinging, so I called and made an appointment with the practice's "knee man."

Saw the nice orthopedic vet today. Damned dog has an ACL injury--she's torn about 50-60% of the ligament, and the ligament, she do not grow back. We can 1) do nothing, which means eventually she'll tear the ligament straight through and the wear on her bones and the meniscus will be really painful, or 2) we can get her surgery, then help her through 6-8 weeks of crate-bound recuperation, after which she will be pretty much good as new, if not better.

She's only five. There's a lot of tug-of-war left in the ol' dog yet. Surgery for the dog? A lot of dough. Emily able to leap again? Priceless, dammit