New York magazine has become significantly more interesting recently. Kurt Andersen, who way back when used to write for Spy, has a fascinating piece on American celebrity culture. It's not too different in Spain, except that some of our celebs over here are very low-grade, your Raquel Mosqueras and the like.

Check out this list of average IQs by nation. Spain scores 96, slightly below average. This leads to a point that might be controversial: Since the difference between the German 107 and the Serbian 89 is statistically significant, can we generalize from here? I suppose not, because there must be plenty of Serbs with 107 IQs and Germans with 89s. America's not ranked, by the way; I imagine there's so much variety, and there are so many people, that the average would come out 100.

Here's another piece from the Times of London, a book review of a biography of Eva Braun. Anyone interested in Hitler's sex life ought to look at this one.

I love Keith Windschuttle, the combative Australian historian. A&L Daily links to this article on why Australia's heritage isn't any more racist than anybody else's. They also link to this one in the New Yorker on the difference between absolute and relative poverty.

Paleocon John Derbyshire has an article in the National Review on why civilians need to question the military. Solid common sense.

This is Amartya Sen in Slate on why the "clash of civilizations" is too simple a model, as everyone has more than one identity. Actually, the article is not especially insightful, but what the hell.