And yet, life expectancy in China and Vietnam is lower than in the US. In Japan and South Korea it’s higher.

The article doesn’t prove that “race is a thing” in the sense that many if not most people – including you – use the term “race.” Race is a shorthand for a group that tends to have average levels of a group of traits that society has deemed classifiable. For example, the epicanthic fold in the eye is extremely common in Asian (traditionally Mongoloid race) people but not universal, and there are groups (Vietnamese, for example) within it who don’t often have it. In addition, there are white (“Caucasoid,” traditionally) groups such as Finns who exhibit a lot of it. So even though it’s generally considered a hallmark of a certain race, that’s only based on its average occurrence in the racial group.

Each group is made of a cluster of these traits that are found on average more often in that group, and the traits were chosen long ago and are more visually based and geographically based than anything else. A trait like resistance to disease is the same, and is probably based on geography. On average, Asians in a certain area were apparently, over time, exposed to certain diseases and therefore have more resistance to them. In similar fashion, sickle cell trait or thalassemia trait (which I have) are distributed around the world in a certain fashion, much greater in certain groups, and in the case of the traits conferring some protection against malaria.

None of that has anything to do with whether current or past racial classifications really represent distinct entities, or what other traits a member of a group might possess, and what it tells you about a certain individual member of a group.

https://electrek.co/2022/02/09/the-us-army-is-going-electric-and-wants-to-be-net-zero-by-2050/

All part of the service! 🙂

You don’t need to convince me that Race is a Thing 🙂

The article you link is interesting. I wonder though whether much of the relative immunity isn’t also more recent. Anyone who comes out here from the West to live will tend to get sicker than normal during the first one or two winters and springs as their bodies don’t have much immunity to the local viruses in circulation.

While Covid doesn’t seem to be much of a problem in East Asia, it’s certainly cut a swathe through the Slavs.

Still.. our mutual race obsessions aside (heh), there are likely lifestyle components. One thing notable here is just how sprightly and energetic and thin old people tend to be… You just don’t see the same number of shambling metabolic syndrome ravaged wrecks one sees all over the West. Sadly also don’t see too many children.

AesopSpouse and I were fortunate to see the play about 20 years ago, on a group tour that also included giving concerts in several churches in Germany, including where Bach was baptized (“concerts” only loosely speaking; we got permission to set up and sing during the normal open times, but there were no formal performances).

It’s well worth the visit.
Get masks from one of the places that recognize the cloth ones are useless for anything other than Covid Theater. We love ours. Unless you get up close and personal (within the 6 foot limit), an observer can’t really tell that they are totally porous and easy to breathe through.

https://www.getunmask.com/

Still, you might want a more traditional one close at hand if someone does object.
I want one with the marquee running lights, although maybe with a different slogan. “Honk honk” seems to be trending.
https://nypost.com/2022/01/31/trump-supporter-asked-to-remove-lets-go-brandon-mask-on-flight/

Good summary and analysis. I am curious about why you chose to review such an old book, good though it is.

I don’t remember when I last read the book, as one of our kids made off with my entire Heinlein collection a couple of years ago, but I first read it in the sixties, not long after publication (1955), along with all of his juvies. Trivia note: that was the same year as the publication of “Lord of the Flies,” which is rather surprising. I’m sure that was not intentional. We were shown the movie of LotF in high school, and, if we had been snowflakes back then, I would definitely have been traumatized by it.

The Heinlein books as a group do hold up well in terms of action, but seem a bit more preachy than kids are interested in now. However, judging from the response to Jordan Peterson, maybe the modern buckos aren’t averse to some common-sense moral suasion.

But JP’s lobsters seem to be more of a piece with Golding’s “Lord of the Flies” than RAH’s apparently more realistic vision.

“In 1965, there was a real incident in which a group of students (only boys) was stranded on an island for a prolonged period of time. The events that unfolded were closer to those in Tunnel in the Sky than to those in the Golding book. Although these students all knew each other prior to the stranding, which may have been a significant point.”

I read the linked article at the Guardian some time ago, and noted at the time one of the particulars that might have made a difference in the outcomes of the real life and the Golding book: the boys were all from a Christian boarding school (even if they did steal the boat for their adventure). The boys in Golding’s book may have been nominally Christian (I don’t remember), but I suspect that’s not the same ethical backgrounding the Tongans had.

https://catholicism.org/the-real-lord-of-the-flies-six-catholic-boarding-school-boys-from-tonga-marooned-on-an-island-for-15-months.html

From another story, interviewing one of them:
“We were very happy, but the first thing we did, we say a prayer, thank God for what he brought us to,” he said.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/13/the-real-lord-of-the-flies-mano-totau-survivor-story-shipwreck-tonga-boys-ata-island-peter-warner

FWIW, I never enjoyed Heinlein’s “adult” books other than “Stranger in a Strange Land” and “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.”

https://www.takimag.com/article/the-unicultural-edge/

“A formerly secret 2013 Pentagon report, The Strategic Consequences of Chinese Racism: A Strategic Asymmetry for the United States, argues “China is a racist superpower.” It makes for eye-opening reading on how both the Chinese people and the American deep state think.

This book-length paper, which was posted online as the result of Freedom of Information Act litigation and then discovered by Twitter user @s_decatur, is by an author whose name remains redacted. But we know for sure that it was commissioned by the legendary nonagenarian strategist Andrew Marshall.

This shadowy mandarin started his career as a machinist in Detroit during WWII, then joined the RAND Corporation in 1949 to do Dr. Strangelove-like nuclear war planning. Henry Kissinger brought him into the Nixon White House and in 1973 Defense Secretary James Schlesinger created the enigmatic Office of Net Assessment for Marshall to think deep thoughts like a terrestrial Hari Seldon about the future of superpower rivalries….
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(Lots of Zaphod redacted GloboHomo nonsense about Diversity being Your Strength and Steve Sailer’s droll commentary on these moronic assertions.)
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…As The Strategic Consequences of Chinese Racism makes plain, the great Chinese advantage over both the United States and Russia is that it’s less of an empire and more of a nation-state.

In summary, it’s not clear whether the wily Marshall intended this document more as a guide to how to exploit China’s faults or as a disguised warning of America’s increasing self-destructiveness.”