There plenty of Goyim with beards for you to compare with Ben.

Re: Albert Einstein, the way he looked when he was a professor of theorectical physics at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zürich, 1912 - 1914 (age 35 or so) is reproduced. There is the dark, curly hair and something about his eyes which doesn't look particularly Aryan. I believe a small minority of German Jews escaped detection during Hitler's purge. Oddly, some of the Litvaks appear more Aryan looking.

In those pictures of him, he looked more German in his younger days, before his hair turned white and so unruly. It looked like he actually knew what a comb was for in his younger days.

And I think Mr. Bernanke has had a beard since his college days. You'll probably have to dig up his high school yearbook picture to see him without one.

Off the topic, and you're gonna think I'm a nut for asking this question: does it strike you that guys with beards--to the extent they are political--are almost all right-wingers these days? 180 degrees from 40 years ago, when having a beard was considered Bohemian. Didn't Haldeman, Ehrichman, and Liddy all grow beards?

I remember George Carlin in the 1970s saying that beards were considered un-American back then. "Lenin had a beard," George would say in a ponderous and menacing tone. But "Gabby Hayes had whiskers!" Forty years ago, beards were associated with the hippies: that was about the time that all of the Beatles, except for John Lennon, grew a beard. [Think of the cover of the "Let It Be" album.]

In the second half of the 19th century, starting with Lincoln, almost all of the U.S. Presidents had full beards. Ulysses Grant, Benjamin Harrison, Rutherford Hayes...and they were all Republicans. That trend seemed to end with William McKinley.

I don't think a fellow with a beard could be elected President today. Just the Zeitgeist, or something.

Would you make an exception to your observation for guys who have goatees instead of full beards? Don't they tend to be more liberal?

I have a goatee.

I don't think I'm a right-winger.

I think that, for many of the German Jews, the presence of peyas makes their beards look different. I also think they tended toward a rounded beard while other Germans seemed to favor a square beard. I'm not to be held to account for these impressions though as I have never paid that close attention to beards.

I always think of guys with really big beards as having a shotgun behind the door, ready to drive off the federal agents. I don't associate them with liberal causes, if that counts for anything.

I had a beard during the 70s, but it was more out of laziness and non-conformity than to make a statement. I shaved it off when I entered the workforce, but retained a moustache (since gone once it turned white). Hirsute faces look older than glabrous, no doubt. I associate beards nowadays with libertarian-Republican advisors/pundits like Grover Norquist and Ed Rollins. But I agree that we'll probably never see a bearded president in our lifetimes.

Main point I wanted to make was that fashions change, and that I no longer associate beards with Marxists and Bohemians. Carlin is out of date.

I also bought shares in Suntech.

Technically the company is actually Australian rather than Chinese. I first heard of them a few years ago and wish I had bought my stocks sooner.

It seems there was a Chinese Australian (citizen) doing PV research at one of the Universities in Australia (I forget which one). He was interested in commercializing his research, but the university was not. So he went to China and started his company which was apparently worth Billions within its first couple years of operation.

I heard they are expanding their business outside of basic PV manufacturing and are planning on getting into solar power plants (China market). I figure that ought to really help out their stock price. Additionally they are obviously continuing their research. I figure that even if they are not the first to patent a new efficiency technique they would certainly follow very shortly.

Smarts are inside only about 2% of people.

You guys wrote about Jews and Asians being smarter.

Well, in my high school, it was about 85% Jewish. There were a lot of average kids. A lot were smart. I myself won most of the prizes.

At university, we had a lot of Jews too. It was a top school. In science classes almost all the kids were Jewish.

It's hard to say why. I've always been puzzled by it.

There are a lot of hypotheses.

Are the Jews really descended from Biblical Jews? I think so.

Look at ancient Egypt. Amazing! Jews probably came from genetic stock rooted around there.

As for their appearance, I have excellent Jewdar. The only group that gives me trouble are SOME Italians. Probably there was a big admixture between Jews and Romans, similar to today's admixture with Caucasian Americans.Then the Sicilians are largely Semites from North African roots and invaded by Hannibal, whom some sources claim to have been Jewish.

On another count, I suspect a lot of the admixture is because Jews tend to be non-violent, and many Christians seek that in a mate. I remember a former shiksa date who became one of the world's top ten movie stars: she married a few Jews and told me that one of her pursuers was a verrrry bigtime star whom she feared physically. Note: violent people are rarely intelligent. He is intelligent but verrry weird and wound up with girlfriends that look kind-of "tough."

On the Khazar story, I have my doubts. I see genuine Semitic features among the vast majority of Jews. My own father looked EXACTLY like some Palestinians I've seen in photos; altho in old-age he looked like a cross between LBJ and the Polish Pope. My mother always had a strong Asiatic look that puzzled me until I saw the exact same visage-type on a Saudi prince.

As to why so many Jews look like the people in whose country they reside, the rates of intermarriage have been low, but wars always brought in armies who raped. Then there IS an effect of geography on appearance. Maybe it's soil or water or background radiation or cultural sexual-traits-preferences. As in steatopygia or flat-nose preferences. Or perhaps lust for some traits common among local neighbors, such as large breasts or thinness or paleness or calf-musculature.

So go figure. However, smart people ARE smart, and Jews are generally descended from Biblical Jews. And there WERE the Ten Lost Tribes. Didja know that the Pashtuns and Taliban probably are from one or two Lost Tribes?

This issue is perplexing. It doesn't matter if one says it's NOT genetic.

It includes education and conditioning, as LeRoy would accentuate. It includes soil, water, sexual trait preferences, or FOOD (which you forgot to mention). Geography and climate play a part. History also factors into a people's development. This can include both historical events and the devolopment of the arts and sciences. What LeRoy said did NOT much matter was blood, or inheritance (genetics), and I'd agree that cultural environment is a bigger factor.

I decided to do a bit more investigation on the alleged Khazar/Jewish link, and, to my mild surprise, the latest DNA/genetic evidence supports Sovereign's claims that the great majority of the Jewish people in the world today have very definite Middle Eastern ancestry (and not Turkic/Central Asian ancestry). The Wikipedia article on the Khazars is a veritable gold mine of information that should be of great interest to anyone interested in the history of Eurasia, and I am only posting a portion of it here:

DNA Evidence

Modern DNA studies on the Y chromosome of Jews worldwide have also discredited the Khazar origin theory for the vast majority of Jews, including the Ashkenazi.

A study published by the National Academy of Sciences found that "The results support the hypothesis that the paternal gene pools of Jewish communities from Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East descended from a common Middle Eastern ancestral population, and suggest that most Jewish communities have remained relatively isolated from neighboring non-Jewish communities during and after the Diaspora." [2]. Researchers express surprise at the remarkable genetic uniformity they found among modern Jews, no matter where the diaspora has become dispersed around the world. Contradicting the "mongrel" theory, DNA demonstrated substantially less inter-marriage among Jews over the last 3000 years than found in other populations.

"The results accord with Jewish history and tradition and refute theories like those holding that Jewish communities consist mostly of converts from other faiths, or that they are descended from the Khazars, a medieval Turkish tribe that adopted Judaism." [3] [43]

Morever, "The analysis provides genetic witness that these communities have, to a remarkable extent, retained their biological identity separate from their host populations, evidence of relatively little intermarriage or conversion into Judaism over the centuries." Id. And another finding, paradoxical but unsurprising, is that by the yardstick of the Y chromosome, the world's Jewish communities are closely related to Syrians and Palestinians[44], suggesting that all are descended from a common ancestral population that inhabited the Middle East some four thousand years ago. Id.

This study found that "The extremely close affinity of Jewish and non-Jewish Middle Eastern populations observed ... supports the hypothesis of a common Middle Eastern origin.",[45] as does the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) of at least 40% of the current Ashkenazi population.[19] So although Khazars could possibly have been absorbed into the modern Jewish population as we know it today, it is unlikely that they formed a large percentage of the ancestors of modern Jews.[46]

DNA analysis further determined that modern Jews of the priesthood tribe -- or "Cohanim" -- share a common ancestor in Israel dating back about 3000 years, 1700 years older than the Khazar conversion to Judaism. This result is consistent for all Jewish populations around the world.[45] [4]

"Using a combination of molecular genetics and mathematical analysis, the scientists arrived at an estimated date for the most recent common ancestor of contemporary Cohanim. According to this analysis, the common ancestor lived between the Exodus (approx. 1000 B.C.E) and the destruction of the first Temple (586 B.C.E.), consistent with the biblical account. Similar results were obtained based on analysis of either Sephardi or Ashkenzi communities, confirming the ancestral link of the two communities which had been separated for more than 500 years." [47] [5] "To date the original high priest, the research team used a formula based on a commonly accepted mutation rate. This formula yieded some 106 generations for both Ashkenazi and Sephardi Jews, or between 2,650 and 3,180 years, depending on whether a generation is counted as 25 or 30 years."

[edit] Other claims of descent

Others have claimed Khazar origins for such groups as the Karaim, Krymchaks, Mountain Jews, and Georgian Jews. There is little evidence to support any of these theories, although it is possible that some Khazar descendants found their way into these communities. Non-Jewish groups who claim at least partial descent from the Khazars include the Kumyks and Crimean Tatars; as with the above-mentioned Jewish groups, these claims are subject to a great deal of controversy and debate.

'... the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) of at least 40% of the current Ashkenazi population."

By a common definition in the Jewish community, more than half the Ashkenazi population apparently aren't Jewish. Well, it's just one of the many definitions that have been offered.

I have purchased "Deep Ancestry", which addresses this Y-chromosome tracking issue, but have not yet read it. I tend to buy too many books and get way behind on my reading. I am currently reading Kevin Phillips' "American Theocracy", which has been quite interesting. I recently finished Malcomb Gladwell's "Tipping Point" but, like his "Blink", which I read a few months ago, he is better at collecting and recounting various anecdotes than he is at fitting them to his hypotheses. I don't think I would recommend either book.

I also haven't read the Wikipedia article yet. Is there any discussion of the prevalence of the "Jewish" Y-Chromosome in the rest of the world's population? Having the "control group" test negative is important to making much of the positive correlation.

There seem to be two key papers on the genetic analysis of Jewish ancestry, both of which you can easily access from my preceding post. If you click on the footnote numbered (2), you will be led to the key paper on the Y-chromosome studies, which was published in 2000 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, which is titled "Jewish and Middle Eastern non-Jewish Populations Share a Common Pool of Y-Chromosome Biallelic Haplotypes" (by a whole bunch of credited authors, as is common with these genome analysis papers). The paper mentions a common Mediterranean type of Y-chromosome, which is evidently shared by almost all Jews and large numbers of other people around the Mediterranean basin. (Judging from my cursory reading of the two papers, it appears that most Ashkenazi Jews are descended from the Roman Jews...and not from the Khazars.)

The other paper is the key paper on mitochondrial DNA analysis of the Jewish diaspora. It was published in the American Journal of Human Genetics in 2006, and is titled "The Matrilineal Ancestry of Ashkenazi Jewry: Portrait of a Recent Founder Event". (Again, by a whole host of authors.) You can get to it by clicking on the footnote numbered (19) in my previous post.

Both these papers looked very interesting to me, so I printed both of them out in order to read them more carefully. Not surprising, given my deep interests in both human genetics and Eurasian history.

It does appear that the population of Ethiopian Jews has been separated from the rest of the Jewish population from some time; but again, that is based on a first, very cursory reading of the two papers.

Well. That may explain why he's dead. Or maybe it's the other way around.

At any rate, I found Carlin to be a very funny social observer. He is most famous for his 'Seven Words You Can't Say On Television' thing, but I liked some of his more pungent social comments much better. Such as:

One of every three Americans suffers from some form of mental illness. Think of two of your best friends. If they're OK, it must be you!

The reason Santa Claus is so jolly is because he knows where all the bad girls live.

After Carlin's death I spent the good part of a week watching his acts on Youtube. I found his to be two parts incisive social commentator to one part vulgarian. Regrettably, virtually all stand up comics resort to the 'seven words' and simulate masturbation and fucking a bit too often for my taste. Richard Pryor, for example, uses just as many profanities, but lacks Carlin's social insights for the most part. The recent crop of standup comics just doesn't do it for me. Even Carlin didn't aim his guns at our social, and particularly political, ills until the 1990s when he was in his late 50s. And by this time he could already be classified as a mysoginist who hated everyone. That's a well-worn shtick of comics: offend everybody. It too got tiresome after a while.

The later incisive Carlin appeared to me more a social critic along the lines of Jonathan Swift than a comedian who tells jokes. Nevertheless, he's all we had for this material, and now there is no one. I can understand people's laudatory feelings toward him.