Phenotype Genotype

Gunter A Schultz asked:

So ... my question to you ... where would you fall on that scale? What do you think contributes most to the ultimate outcome of a person ... nature or nurture?

I've looked into some of the research behind environmentalism vs heritability and modern University Psychology syllabi still refer to the material of Bouchard and McGue (1981).

The reason I looked into this is because my daughter and her half sister are so different that it made me rethink the effect that genetics has on us, before that, I like you was very much more in favour of the environment playing the strongest role, probably from reading Heinlein's Stranger In a Strange Land - now however I am not so sure.

Anyway the results of the above authors are summed up in the following charts (starting at page 21)

http://ibgwww.colorado.edu/~carey/p4102dir/slidesdir/HGSS_Chapter21_BellCurve.ppt#21

In fact, for the purposes of our particular question here chart 25 is the most useful I think:

http://ibgwww.colorado.edu/~carey/p4102dir/slidesdir/HGSS_Chapter21_BellCurve.ppt#25

The decimal fractions indicate likeness. So if a numerical column has a "1.00" in it, then two candidates (taking the questionnaire-test) would be said to be the same person.. Identical twins raised together are said to be 86% "self" and identical twins raised apart are 72% self. They give a great example of two identical twins separated at birth, one raised in a trailer becomes an alcoholic depressive, the other one raised by loving parents in a rich family with everything going for her -- yes you guessed it -- ends up an alcoholic depressive. For me these data points are interesting but it's these coupled with the observation of my own eyes of my two that leads me to guess that we are roughly speaking 70% dominated by our genes and 30% by our environment.

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I love your moon bomb idea and the letter that you received from The US Govt ! What a wonderful piece of memorabilia to keep (what did the first response from them say? I wonder what else you will find as you digitize your past :-)

Do you know that the Earth and Moon revolve around a common point called the Earth-Moon Barycentre (EMB)? It's the centre of mass of the Earth-Moon system (imagine the Earth and Moon on opposite ends of a see-saw, the barycentre is the place on the see-saw where the fulcrum is placed so that the see-saw has zero rotation about the fulcrum). The EMB is within the body of the Earth, about 1700km below the surface, 1700km coincidentally being the radius of the moon :-)

I wonder if a 1m width cable of carbon nanotubes could do the job? Maybe, now I will need to investigate the tensile strength of carbon nanotubes!

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I told my daughter about "lies to children" and what it meant (ie. not the "lies" she thought of - but "simplifications") and she asked me to just tell her everything how I believe it to be without simplifying things for her. I said ok and to ask me any question, she asked "Where does pee come from?" (kids!) I told her the full version and after about 30 seconds mulling she said, "OK, you can keep telling me lies-to-children". Priceless!

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Today we returned to Legoland !