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From: cramer@kontron.UUCP (Clayton Cramer)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.misc,sci.bio
Subject: Re: Stupidity about intelligence (or genetics)
Message-ID: <1651@kontron.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 22-Jun-87 15:25:49 EDT
Article-I.D.: kontron.1651
Posted: Mon Jun 22 15:25:49 1987
Date-Received: Wed, 24-Jun-87 06:42:25 EDT
References: <126@snark.UUCP> <3728@sunybcs.UUCP>
Organization: Kontron Electronics, Mt. View, CA
Lines: 47
Xref: mnetor talk.politics.misc:3198 sci.bio:466

> In article <126@snark.UUCP> eric@snark.UUCP (Eric S. Raymond) writes:
> .					I *am* a fascinated collector of Damned
> .Things -- facts that the sciences (for which I have enormous respect)
> .cannot acknowledge for political or social reasons. Biology is full of them.
> .
> When you present such a collection, you have to know a whole lot to defend it.
> I have great respect for those who collect, and present, and can defend.
> 
> .Here's another one (). Do you know that matings between Kalahari
> .Bushmen and non-Bushmen are generally infertile?
> .
> Most matings between humans are infertile.  It's because human females
> don't go into heat, so when they mate they're mostly just fooling.

Everyone knows that; I doubt that's what the original poster meant.

I was so surprised by this claim, however, that I went home and dug
through the Encyclopedia Britannica to see if there was any mention of
this infertility.  I found nothing.  I did find something really
amazing.

The Bushmen and Hottentots are closely related -- together they form
the Capoid race.  A study of Hottentots (Bushmen not yet studied) found
24% had more, and 23% had fewer, than 46 chromosomes.  That's a total
of 47% have a non-standard number of chromosomes.  Can anyone see why
there might be a fertility problem?

>             Alin Sangeap              SUNY Buffalo Computer Science
> CSNET:      alin@Buffalo.CSNET        BITNET:     alin@sunybcs.Bitnet
> UUCP:       {bbncca,decvax,dual,rocksvax,watmath,sbcs}!sunybcs!alin
> NSA:        please decode all secret cryptography ciphers; best of wishes, A.

My first reaction to the claim above about Damned Facts was, "Come on.
This sounds like a conspiracy."  But after reading the Britannica
article, I'm a little amazed that the presentation of biology, genetics,
and chromosomal abnormalities in high school biology doesn't mention
a little "detail" like the Hottentot peculiarity.

We learned that humans have 46 chromosomes.  We learned about chromosomal
abnormalities like Down's Syndrome, and Klinefelter's males.  But we
didn't learn about a population where HALF of the study group were not
46 chromosomes.

I'm beginning to wonder how much high school science classes are tailored 
for political reasons.

Clayton E. Cramer