(Note that fecundity declines with higher IQ. [E.g. http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/762/1102/1600/chartiqbirth.1.jpg ] So human IQ is not limited by "the best evolution can do" and thus by chance mutations, but rather is, like height and other quantitative attributes, where it is due to a balance of evolutionary pressures.)

Why are either one of them focusing on mutations as if that's the route of evolutionary response to quantitative pressures?

Any quantitative attribute like IQ or height or emotional stability or whatever is the aggregate result of many (often hundreds of) genes, permutations of which already exist in our population gene pool in varying quantities. Individuals get these roughly at random and so fall on a bell curve. The mean of that bell curve (which is what people are concerned with when talking about population drift) can be highly responsive (big drift in a small number of generations) to environmental pressures with no mutations whatsoever just via reproductive enhancement of individuals who happen to fall to the preferred side of the bellcurve, thus increasing the relative proportion of pro- or anti- attribute genes. Mutation-based evolution is glacial by comparison. (I think maybe they like to focus on mutations because they're easier to track historically than population-wide shifts in proportions of existing variations... But that doesn't make them more relevant...)

Mr. Brin lived in the Soviet Union until he was nearly 6 years old, and he said the experience of living under a totalitarian system that censored political speech influenced his thinking — and Google’s policy.

"Political speech" didn't directly influence him aged six, but the country, culture and attitude a lack of it created apparently did. Moreover, nothing in his comment claims he understood it was influencing him at the time... but it's perfectly reasonable that as a grown man with a clearer understanding of both politics and civil liberties, he would think back to his childhood experiences, combine that with what he now knows of the political situation at the time, and come to conclusions regarding the reasons for his childhood experiences.

I still prefer this: http://sifter.org/~simon/journal/20081009.html (if I don't say so myself...)

Your comment and reply further in the thread are spot-on and brilliant. Thank you.

Thoughts on this?

I kinda knew about this, but I'm still not clear on something: How can I use this trick when another party *originates* an SMS to me? This technique catches their replies to an SMS I start via IM, but doesn't help if someone sends me an SMS in the first place. Anyone know a trick for that?

I'm of two minds on this whole issue...carte blanche for the Conservatives will take us down a Republican party path that the US has followed and I don't want that; on the other hand I'm tired of the apologist, relativist Liberal party policies where they put politics ahead of good government.

I'm not an expert on Canadian politics (just the UK and USA takes up more than enough of my time), but I was under the impression that you were not in Iraq, not in Afghanistan, hadn't suffered a serious terrorist attack in years, and haven't had much trouble from al Qaeda ever since they first rose to prominence after 9/11.

You're also retiring your over-the-top anti-terror legislation in favour of more sensible, well-thought-out laws, and seem well on track to putting the entire present world problems behind you.

Given even the UK is in Iraq and Afghanistan, has suffered al Qaeda-linked terrorist incidents and has a prime minister who right at this very moment is trying to do to us what the Republicans did the the USA, and the USA is more fucked militarily, politically, economically, strategically and in terms of international reputation than it's been in a long time, how isn't it better in Canada?