Current project: A dairy farm that is becoming a medium size yoghurt manufacturer. The raw yoghurt is sold to a second factory that makes fruit yoghurts and markets them. The old farmer sits on the doorsteps sipping tea while the factory is managed by the farmer's daughter. She was busy with an Italian technician that was installing newly imported equipment.
Saturday, August 14, 2010
Yoghurt Factory
Current project: A dairy farm that is becoming a medium size yoghurt manufacturer. The raw yoghurt is sold to a second factory that makes fruit yoghurts and markets them. The old farmer sits on the doorsteps sipping tea while the factory is managed by the farmer's daughter. She was busy with an Italian technician that was installing newly imported equipment.
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29 comments:
Did the Italian technician manage to seduce the farmer's daughter?
I thought that's what J meant by the daughter's being "busy" with the installation of "newly imported equipment".
Anon.
I thought that's what J meant by the daughter's being "busy" with the installation of "newly imported equipment".
Excellent news then.
Ashkenazim are descended from Roman and Greek proselytes and we expect reproducing with Italians benefits our genetic interests!
More installation of Italian equipment, please?
Actually, I think there is more than a little genetic overlap.
Anon.
I find farmer's daughter jokes to be sexist and outdated. Do you know any good ones?
K
She was busy installing the new equipment with the Italian technician. Italians rule the machinery market in Europe and they provide service in Israel. In food factories they are very similar to us, we can use their equipment. Only very specialized machinery comes from Germany. BTW, the farmer's daughter is 40 y.o. extremely good looking woman of Iraki (Kurdish) - Jewish - origin.
"Miscegenation", the mixing of tribes and races, is bad - in theory. In actual practice it is less than terrible.
True, at one time the Portuguese ruled half the world by getting their menfolk going with the local women.
Miscegenation is like any other plant or animal breeding activity - it is neither inherently good nor bad in itself but depends on what strains you cross and what traits are therefore emphasized or suppressed. You could argue that, for example, in Mexico the introduction of European genes to the Aztec/Mayan native population was an overall improvement. In the US, much of the black leadership class is made up of mulattos. At worst, you end up with someone who combines the higher intelligence of whites with the low morality of the underclass from which they emerge - see Malcom X for example. But I find it hard to see how breeding white females with Africans results in any net benefit - Obama is about the best you get from such a combination and he is not that impressive - usually the results are even worse.
The problem is that human cross-breeding experiments are not done in any kind of organized way where a conscious attempt is made to select for desirable traits on both side, but rather randomly. Also when a plant breeder does crosses, he may cross 10,000 seedlings and discard 9,999 of them. Humans don't have this luxury - we have to keep the "experimental" results, good or bad.
Ashkenazi Jews pose an interesting question. On the one hand, like purebred dogs, we are so inbred (all Ashkenazis are more or less each others cousins) that we suffer from genetic diseases - Tay-Sachs, etc. and a little less inbreeding would give us some "hybrid vigor". On the other hand we have special traits (intelligence, first and foremost) that are of value to the world and I think it would be a shame to dilute those to the point of disappearance through interbreeding. Bloodhounds (for example) could probably benefit from interbreeding too - less hip problems or whatever, but then they wouldn't be bloodhounds anymore with their special (smelling) ability.
If you look at Jewish super-geniuses, they are usually the result of a cross between 2 Jewish middle to upper class parents. If Ash. Jews average say 115, then these parents are probably somewhat higher, say 130. Once in a while a 130 x 130 cross will produce a 160 or above. If you take a 130 and cross him or her with say an IQ 85 African, the chances that you will get a mulatto Einstein are almost nil. The isolated ghettos of E. Europe produced a unique opportunity for interbreeding and the special traits that result (as I said before we don't usually intentionally breed humans for traits the way we do dogs - in fact we find that repugnant) but I fear that unintentional experiment is almost over and the special Ashkenazi breed will dissolve back into the general population.
K
Once in a while a 130 x 130 cross will produce a 160 or above. If you take a 130 and cross him or her with say an IQ 85 African, the chances that you will get a mulatto Einstein are almost nil. The isolated ghettos of E. Europe produced a unique opportunity for interbreeding and the special traits that result (as I said before we don't usually intentionally breed humans for traits the way we do dogs - in fact we find that repugnant) but I fear that unintentional experiment is almost over and the special Ashkenazi breed will dissolve back into the general population.
Yet cross-breeding 130 Anglo-Saxon egg with 130 Jew sperm generates powerful hybrid intelligence:
www.unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com
Let's see what the Mezvinsky-Clinton offspring turn out to be. In Germany there were some prominent mischlings before their experiment ended, but they were not quite Einstein caliber.
My brother-in-law and his wife are just a pair - so far (and the kids are still teens) the girl is very bright and talented (though more musically than academically) and the boy is not promising in the brains dept.
Actually I know a few cases where white Jewish women had offspring with blacks, The father inevitably takes off (black men are not big on sticking around to raise offspring - you'd think that white girls would notice this but I guess they are "distracted" by other black attributes) and the offspring gets raised in a middle class white environment ala Obama. This is probably good for a few extra IQ points (IQ is not 100% genetic, only mostly genetic) and combined with "affirmative action" such offspring seems to do reasonably well, if not Einstein material.
K
1. BTW, the farmer's daughter is 40 y.o. extremely good looking woman of Iraki (Kurdish) - Jewish - origin.
Considering the daughter's age, can I assume she is childless? Or did she manage to have at least one child?
2. K, I don't know if you read the paper, but Cocrhran and Herpendings paper on Ashkenazi intelligence but if you haven't you really should.
In Germany there were some prominent mischlings before their experiment ended, but they were not quite Einstein caliber.
Mishling experiment in Europe was terminated before long term results could be analyzed.
How many Jewish nobel prize winner have gentile European parent?
Bohr, for one.
Anon.
K,
Gregory Cochran and Henry Harpending say Ashkenazim have normal homozygosity and thus are not inbred at all.
Thus they maintain that the Tay-Sachs, torsion dystonia, and other disease alleles substantially increase intelligence (only in heterozygous persons, for most of them) and were positively selected because Ashkenazim were debarred from a number of employments, above all farming and landlording farmland, and were highly concentrated in lending, also because Christians were not permitted to engage in so-called "usury" for a long time.
This hypothesis regarding the Ashkenazi disease alleles existed before these authors wrote but they have strengthened it. They say Jewish intelligence is not remarked on in Greek or Roman literature. The hypothesis appears to be very strong.
High intelligence in torsion dystonia has been noted in the medical literature, I believe before this hypothesis ever appeared. Naturally, PC mavens aren't going to fund anyone to test this hypothesis any time soon.
Any person could test it themselves without any budget if they could get a truly random sample of Ashkenazim typed for these alleles, that yields a high response rate, and obtain SAT scores. But that is not so easy to do.
Regarding the normal homozygosity of the Ashkenazim, I'm not equipped to argue with Cochran et al. but I was under the impression that the Ashkenazim went thru one or more population bottlenecks, where the founding group was quite small. It may be that though small this group was already genetically diverse from earlier periods where the original Middle Eastern group was mixed with Greek and Roman converts so that when Jews entered a later period where they were socially and genetically isolated from the larger population they already had enough material to work with within their own pool, so that the genetic diseases were not the result of inbreeding per se but as a byproduct of selective pressures toward intelligence.
K
I'm also guessing, BTW, that during period in which the Ashkenazim made their quantum leap in intelligence that this occurred within a relatively small group - even at the height of restrictions on Jews, not all Jews (probably not even a large %) were involved in or equipped to do high finance. My understanding is that the Ashkenazim experienced a population explosion starting around the 17th century and went from being 10% of the worlds Jews to 90% by the eve of the Holocaust. It may be that once the higher intelligence was achieved in the small seed group, that created a differential advantage (both vis a vis the general population and vs. the less intelligent Jews, so that their genes did not get passed on to later generation to the same degree) that enabled a high birth and survival rate which lead to the later Ashkenazi population explosion once these genes were widespread enough to become more or less predominant in the Ashkenazi population.
K
umm, just so you know, a "quantum leap" is not much of a leap at all.
K, you can read the 40 page paper put together by the Cochran and Harpending here. If I remember correctly the paper argues against population bottlenecks among the Dark Ages Ashkenazim.
K,
I think you are right, that there was work in the past suggesting bottlenecks. I think that Cochran believes this work has been superseded by better work showing no bottleneck / inbreeding / excess homozygosity.
I should have mentioned that for clarity's sake.
Cochran believes that just about all of the disease alleles oddly-abundant in Ashkenazim fall into one or two biological pathways, which would be a puzzling coincidence if they had not been positively selected for similar ultimate functions. I think at least four of them result in increased synthesis of sphingolipids, and this is harmful homozygously but harmless (and possibly IQ-increasing) in heterozygotes.
Wikipedia says that in addition to torsion dystonia being known to increase IQ, some of the other alleles, and/or their corresponding diseases, are known for causing an increased amount of neural synapses.
There is just something about this explanation for Ashkenazim IQ that seems too glib.
I can't quite put my finger on it.
Mainly because my hand is in spasm.
Anon.
I agree that there is an element of "just so" story to it. Also the idea of Jews being employed exclusively as money lenders does not fit with my understanding of the reality of E. European life. I dunno, maybe there was a very early period where this was a primary occupation, but in the E. Europe I'm familiar with, although the Jews were not peasant farmers, that' true, they were all sorts of minor tradesmen - tailors, shoemakers, butchers, bakers, fisherman, millers, booksellers, dairymen, horse traders, blacksmiths, etc. and moneylending, while it existed, was not the main occupation. There were probably 1000 tailors for every Rothschild.
K
Also porters, teamsters, water carriers, etc. - these are not exactly intellectually demanding professions - they demand a strong back more than a strong mind. Many of the Jews of E. Europe were more or less illiterate except for a few years of cheder - able to read enough Hebrew to daven and that's about it. The original custom of the Aliyah was that the person called up would say the blessing and then read from the Torah himself but so many people didn't know how that they would say the blessing and Amen and then a professional reader would do the reading for them.
K
K
I see you are abandoning the rather idealized image you had of the Galut. One interesting description of a real schtetl is in Chaim Weizmann's autobiography (Trial and Error) where he says that the schtetl is unimaginable in its isolation and misery. Jews were, as you said, small tradesmen, living on the margins of a subsistence farming society. According to American Immigration records, up to 15% of Jewish immigrants couldn't read or write, although the figure is suspicious as they may have known to read but only in Hebrew. On the other hand, Sepharadi females were in my youth left ignorant.
The bit about selection for skin on the basis of Vitamin D, but not hair, is interesting.
But the way I understand it, this selection pressure will only have been able to work when people wore far fewer clothes, and before they domesticated cattle.
So I am not sure here if this is consistent with the time scale that would be relevant to the Jewish migration into Europe. I favor inter-breeding as the preferred explanation, the selection for white skin as an anti-rachitic phenomenon more likely having taken place amongst Europeans many thousands of years prior.
By the way, skin color is very finely tuned to optimize the conflicting demands of Vit D synthesis (promoted by sun) vs preservation of folic acid levels (destroyed in the blood by ambient sunlight).
Anon.
Where have I had an idealized view of the galut? I took my understanding of shtetl life directly from my parents, who lived it, and not from Fiddler on the Roof. My father spoke of visiting the homes of the Jewish poor in winter. They had no money for fuel and would sit bundled up with all their rags. The walls were so cold that the humidity of their breath would condense on them and glaze the walls with ice. So my view is far from romantic or idealized.
On the other hand, the popular views of pre-war anti-Semitism are I think exaggerated. Although the religions remained separate as far as marriage went, in everyday life there was plenty of interaction, most of it pleasant and mutually beneficial. It was not pogroms all the time.
K
BTW, you piqued my curiosity enough for me to pull up Dr. Weizmann's book, which is available on line and to read the early chapter where he recalls shtetl life (of which by the way he may not be the most reliable reporter - his family left the shtetl for Pinsk when he was 11). I would say that he recalls it as somewhat a mixed bag, neither an unrelieved hell nor a paradise. Nowhere could I find him describing it as a place of unimaginable misery, though he describes communications in that part of the world in that time as being primitive and sporadic. And yet not isolated - the currents of the time, Zionism and Socialism and Enlightenment and whatever all made their way to the shtetls if not with the lightning speed of today (but on the grand scale of things, what difference did it make if they read the proceedings of the World Zionist Congress two weeks later instead of that very instant?) That would not have been true and I think Dr. Weizmann was an honest man who called them as he saw them. His later descriptions of Herzl show him as a inspirational figure but not without flaws.
So I think that your recollection of Weizmann's words are themselves colored by your own feelings toward the shtetl.
To me, what has been lost the most with the loss of the shetl was an organic Yiddishkeit, where your shared Jewishness was an assumed part of your identity and of those around you that was taken as a given, even to a great degree than in Israel today - people were Yidn to the essence of their core, and the paradoxical result was that they wore the mantle of Jewishness lightly.
K
Anon, I think I know the flaw in C&H theory. In the paper the authors mention that the rate of intermarriage was only one-in-twenty and then go on to dismiss this intermarriage as not having any real effect on the evolution of Ashkenazi intelligence. I submit that these intermarrying gentiles were mostly high IQ females, which would make sense since in Dark Ages Europe would have lived wretched lives surrounded by illiterate morons. I've dealt with a few of these girls who have been caught out of where they belong in the modern world due to personal circumstances and even now their lives often suck.
The marriage of Trump's daughter to a Jew and the marriage of Chelsea Clinton both partly reinforce my point.
I think what you are missing is the incredible change in mores which now permits social interaction and even marriage between Jews and Gentiles in a way that was unthinkable even 100 years ago, no less 500. I happen to be reading Weizmann's book and this is what he says, poetically, regarding the interaction between Jews and Christians - "We were strangers to each other's ways of thought, to each other's dreams, religions, festivals and even languages." Think of the Canadian "two solitudes" on steroids. For a Jew in the Middle Ages to "steal" the daughter of a Christian would have been grounds for a pogrom. Imagine a place with a social structure like a Taliban village and I think that's about the level of subtle thinking and worldly sophistication about matters of romance that you would find.
K
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