“OCP, working for a kinder gentler humanity…” (Ad image of little kids running around a playground with puppies–under the protection of ED-209s…)

If you'd swap out the ED-209 [1] with whatever Cameron Philips [2] production run, I don't think you'd need much of a marketing campaign!

PurpleSlog,

You've certainly had recent effects from better diet (which also show up in better height) that improve the epigenome, etc. However, the “Flynn Effect” that shows massive improvement over the past few decades occurs when one of the measures of general intelligence decouple from the other — that is, this or that mental attribute is being exercised more often, with no fundamental improvement in general intelligence.

My guess is that modern farms probably have a lower pathogen load than cities, so rural areas should produce people of higher general intelligence (but lower education) than the cities.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ED-209
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cameron_Phillips

Haha! It must have slipped out of my mind, until my recent discussion with Robert Patterson [1,2] made me go back to this page…

[1] http://www.tdaxp.com/archive/2008/01/14/when-we-began.html
[2] http://smartpei.typepad.com/robert_patersons_weblog/2008/01/evolution—tak.html