Word: inborn
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...reference to racial differences—is very telling. For over forty years, scholars in many disciplines have studied the factors underpinning sex differences. Studies have repeatedly shown the predominance of social processes while chipping away at the theory that men’s and women’s inborn traits determine their place in society. Instead of encouraging new research, the Summers’ “innate differences” utterance demonstrated his complete ignorance of the research that has already been done...
...promotions; other people, just to look hot. And there are plenty of other ways that we augment nature, medically, technologically and financially. The elderly can extend their sex lives beyond what God and their grandchildren imagined. Kids take expensive prep courses to ace tests that are supposed to measure inborn aptitude. Short but healthy children are given human growth hormone for their self-esteem. Adults take Ritalin to sharpen their senses. Pop singers have their vocals, ahem, "sweetened" with additional recorded tracks. Yet no one is threatening legislation against Ashlee Simpson...
...promotions; other people, just to look hot. And there are plenty of other ways that we augment nature, medically, technologically and financially. The elderly can extend their sex lives beyond what God and their grandchildren imagined. Kids take expensive prep courses to ace tests that are supposed to measure inborn aptitude. Short but healthy children are given human growth hormone for their self-esteem. Adults take Ritalin to sharpen their senses. Pop singers have their vocals, ahem, "sweetened" with additional recorded tracks. Yet no one is threatening legislation against Ashlee Simpson...
...tests try to probe innate abilities, and if achievement tests rate classroom learning, aptitude tests assay something in between--developed abilities. Developed abilities are those nurtured through schoolwork, reading, doing crosswords, soaking up the arts, debating politics, whatever. These aren't inborn traits but honed competencies. Whereas early psychometricians, many of them racist, propagated what Lemann calls the dipstick theory--the idea that a test score is like a mark on a dipstick showing the raw amount of intelligence in your mental oil tank--the field outgrew that simplistic notion at least a generation ago. "I don't think anyone...
...infuriating to watch. Something just seems awry with the universe when a scene like the one at Red Rolfe Field unfolds, when Lentz, blessed with the rarest degree of inborn ability, who at one point in his career was mentioned in the same breath as some of Major League Baseball’s brightest young stars, is made an object of ridicule by a gang of barely sober, snot-nosed schoolboys who don’t have half his brain or his maturity. It’s more than a little awkward to see the story of a figure...