[quote=“lupillus”]
Other differences…both Caucasian men and women tend to have broader shoulders.[/quote] Although genetics plays a part, I’m pretty convinced a lot of that also has to do with what you did in puberty. I know guys, including myself, and girls who have pretty broad shoulders compared to their parents and “Chinese” generally. Why? because of sports. I did crew, swimming etc. My ex-gf competed nationally in swimming. She has a body like Amanda Beard. So, yea, if you spent your childhood in buxiban, doing indoor non-physical things (and I’m glad I was able to get a healthy mix), it should be no surprise that your body is going to be less developed. and fyi, I was the smallest kid in my class in Asia before I emigrated to Canada, so I was considered small even among Asians. (and along with sports, diet I’m sure.) and China is a big place. if you go north, the peeps up there can get pretty big and tall (regionally).
An entire race engaged in self-loathing. How bizarre. I remember last year some idiot was posting about his beautiful, newborn baby girl. She didn’t have the “double eyelid” that his wife had been expecting, so the moron said something to the effect of, “Well, surgery is certainly an option on the table!” And of course Asian parents really will have surgery done on their babies to make their eyes look more Caucasian or their tongues “shaped” to speak English. Sheer, utter insanity.[/quote]
Err yeah… the surgery option was meant as in if she wanted it when she was grown up. Thanks for reaffirming why I don’t use this forum.
Tiger teeth? I thought they were called snaggle teeth. A lot of my students have really crazy broken teeth. I think it’s a country/poor/aboriginal thing. The absolutely worst teeth I have ever seen in my life were those of my HNST at Hess, who was Australian. Her front teeth were literally at all sorts of unnatural angles. I had great difficulty looking at her when speaking with her. More than anything, I just couldn’t understand how someone from a developed nation could have teeth like that. She went to a private school, for fuck’s sake, so it’s not like her parents couldn’t have afforded dental work.
People can indeed have their growth stunted by poor nutrition, but a decent diet and enough sleep is not going to stunt the growth of the average person, buxiban or not. Likewise, swimming does not give someone bigger bone structure any more than all sorts of exercises will make a woman with a very Western pear shaped body look like a 40kg Taiwanese girl, even if she does such exercises habitually from a very young age. Remember Lemarckism and giraffes? You have things round the wrong way. People compete nationally in swimming because they have good genetics and develop to their full potential. They don’t compete nationally in swimming and then change their genetics as a result. The children of two people who were national swimming competitors would, if they inherited their parents’ genes for bigger bone structure, develop to be big also, even if they weren’t active in sports. Of course, they could be bigger if they trained a lot, but once they stopped training, those gains would disappear.
[quote=“GuyInTaiwan”]
People can indeed have their growth stunted by poor nutrition, but a decent diet and enough sleep is not going to stunt the growth of the average person, buxiban or not. Likewise, swimming does not give someone bigger bone structure.[/quote]
I don’t think he’s saying it actually gives someone a bigger bone structure, but I can attest that exercise will broaden your shoulders. I started surfing at 24 and within a year my shoulders could barely fit into my old shirts. I wouldn’t have thought it was possible for shoulders to change so much at that age but they have.
Anyways yeah, shirt shopping here sucks for me- shirts designed for skinny Asian shoulders just don’t work.
Not to mention the fact that in America I’m size small and here I’m M or L 
Hey TD, cool topic
bet ya didnt think it would get this long, eh?
Just chkd the wife’s nose, yep, squishy
Kids are sleeping, but I’m curious, with all the mixed marriages here, has anyone chkd their kids noses? Will do so tomorrow, but till then, I’m curious.
btw, TD, see pm back to you
UJ
[quote=“UncleJamie”]Just chkd the wife’s nose, yep, squishy
Kids are sleeping, but I’m curious, with all the mixed marriages here, has anyone chkd their kids noses? Will do so tomorrow, but till then, I’m curious.[/quote]
Checked the wife - squishy.
Checked me - Not squishy.
Checked the boy - Not squishy (Must be the French Huguenot genes 
)
[quote=“bismarck”][quote=“Petrichor”]Wow, that girl has an amazing face. Really striking.
If you ever want to change your avatar again you should put this on. (I have to say I’m relieved you took the last one off, which was disturbing and yet compelling at the same time.)[/quote]
Which one was that? I forget…[/quote]
It was the .gif with the 60’s lady errrrrrrrmmmmm.
Just checked my nose. Definitely not squishy. Ow!
(Commenting on another post) I read an interesting article in New Scientist about the nearsighted Asian phenomenon. Some researchers investigated this because it’s a fairly recent and growing incidence, suggesting a non-genetic component. The results seemed to suggest that it wasn’t to do with lots of close eye work, such as reading, writing, watching TV etc. but the comparative lack of time spent outdoors, as if there was an age at which it was important for good eye development for the eye to experience viewing longer distances.
[quote=“NonTocareLeTete”][quote=“GuyInTaiwan”]
People can indeed have their growth stunted by poor nutrition, but a decent diet and enough sleep is not going to stunt the growth of the average person, buxiban or not. Likewise, swimming does not give someone bigger bone structure.[/quote]
I don’t think he’s saying it actually gives someone a bigger bone structure, but I can attest that exercise will broaden your shoulders. I started surfing at 24 and within a year my shoulders could barely fit into my old shirts. I wouldn’t have thought it was possible for shoulders to change so much at that age but they have.
Anyways yeah, shirt shopping here sucks for me- shirts designed for skinny Asian shoulders just don’t work.
Not to mention the fact that in America I’m size small and here I’m M or L [/quote]
That’s probably muscle mass, and it doesn’t have to be a massive amount to make your shirts tighter. You will lose muscle mass if you don’t keep exercising though. I’ve seen this phenomenon myself recently. For a few months, I was working out really hard and put on a lot of upper body muscle to the point where my shirts were getting tight. I’ve been run down of late and haven’t been exercising other than walking and I’ve noticed my shirts getting looser.
Tiger teeth refers specifically to the phenom wherein one or both canines grow from a second axis outside the other teeth, so they stick out very noticeably, as you can see in Lup’s pic. Generally, they are perfectly formed and healthy, just growing in a weird way.
And, FWIW, both the Japanesers and Taiwanese folks used to, at least, consider them most attractive and sought after.
Don’t know if they still do or not.
Additionally, they have been known to provide an added, erm…dimensionality to certain, erm…oral endeavours…
That’s what I heard, anyways…
[quote=“UncleJamie”]Hey TD, cool topic
bet ya didnt think it would get this long, eh?
Just chkd the wife’s nose, yep, squishy
Kids are sleeping, but I’m curious, with all the mixed marriages here, has anyone chkd their kids noses? Will do so tomorrow, but till then, I’m curious.
btw, TD, see pm back to you
UJ[/quote]
Haha, no, I didn’t think it would get this long!!! Squishy noses are cool though, right? XD I went to KTV the other night and showed off the nose difference to all my Taiwanese friends… one girl went ‘OOOOOH’ and spent about an hour trying to squish my nose 'cause it was just ‘so cool that it doesn’t squish!!!’ (this was awesome because I, in turn, got to squish hers 
). There was a mixed blood friend there and he had the squishy nose too
UncleJamie, you’re teasing me with the PM! It’s not there la!
People can indeed have their growth stunted by poor nutrition, but a decent diet and enough sleep is not going to stunt the growth of the average person, buxiban or not. Likewise, swimming does not give someone bigger bone structure any more than all sorts of exercises will make a woman with a very Western pear shaped body look like a 40kg Taiwanese girl, even if she does such exercises habitually from a very young age. Remember Lemarckism and giraffes? You have things round the wrong way. People compete nationally in swimming because they have good genetics and develop to their full potential. They don’t compete nationally in swimming and then change their genetics as a result. The children of two people who were national swimming competitors would, if they inherited their parents’ genes for bigger bone structure, develop to be big also, even if they weren’t active in sports. Of course, they could be bigger if they trained a lot, but once they stopped training, those gains would disappear.[/quote]
As noted above, that’s not quite what I’m saying. I understand the basics of Darwin’s theory and Lemarc. But I’m talking about something else: genetics, as I said, only plays one part.
Doing sports in childhood and puberty DOES in my experience enhance one’s growth. I didn’t say lack thereof "stunted, but lack thereof won’t provide the stimulation (like a kid might stay at his “baseline” growth instead of his upper potential if he exercised or as you noted, if given poor diet, his lower potential.) Like I said, I was one of the smallest kids, with a small frame. I only got broad shoulders because of crew. Likewise, my ex-gf has broad shoulders from training. This is a result of environmental conditions (e.g. reaction to stimulation, stress of body, etc.). I would think if you took triplets, and had each one do a sport that stressed different things (e.g. a fast-twitch sprinter and a strength lifter (and have one as control, doing little or no physical activity), you would get 3 adults with very different physicality, all the while sharing the same genes.
Jack Burton: Well, that might be a possibility. You would have to set up a fairly broad study with a decent sample size using twins or triplets, as you said. The East Germans, Russians and Chinese would be the ones to look at for that kind of thing. It’s hard to tease out whether you were simply a later developed than your peers, or whether crew actually did give you broader shoulders (taking muscle mass into account).
Does anyone have any further information on this? Urodacus, I’m thinking of you.
I don’t know of any research on that particular phenomenon, but there’s a lot of research going on at the moment into epigenetics which might support such a hypothesis. They’ve found that environmental influences can affect development, and that these effects are not only passed on to the first generation but also the second generation of offspring. So Lamarck wasn’t completely out of his tree.
Plus, I don’t know any women who studied dance who have big boobs. 
[quote=“Petrichor”]I don’t know of any research on that particular phenomenon, but there’s a lot of research going on at the moment into epigenetics which might support such a hypothesis. They’ve found that environmental influences can affect development, and that these effects are not only passed on to the first generation but also the second generation of offspring. So Lamarck wasn’t completely out of his tree.
Plus, I don’t know any women who studied dance who have big boobs. [/quote]
I think it’s pretty clear that improvements in nutrition help a mother to produce bigger healthier babbies that become bigger kids then adults. So it’s not all DNA. Exercise might affect sperm production in men, and blood flow to the uterus in women, as well as improving the immune system, so I think it’s not a stretch to say that it could infuence size of descendants.
Yeah, but again, it’s survivorship bias, right?
Well, obviously DNA is also involved.
Interesting stuff, epigenetics. It always seemed to me that evolution couldn’t explain everything because a lot of changes seem to take place too fast to be explained solely by survival of the fittest.
Interesting stuff, epigenetics. It always seemed to me that evolution couldn’t explain everything because a lot of changes seem to take place too fast to be explained solely by survival of the fittest.[/quote]
I agree. I haven’t studied biology beyond an anthro class and an introductory course, but I think it would be interesting to look into something like “DNA contamination”.
They squat that way because they can. We Westerners have the wrong weight distribution (too much in the butt) so we fall over backwards if we try it.
I don’t claim to be any expert (just a New Scientist reader, really) but I think the pioneering study in epigenetics was that done on the offspring of Dutch women who experienced starvation during WWII. They predictably had smaller babies, but the epigenetic phenomenon was that those children also had smaller babies, regardless of their own nutrition levels throughout their lives. So it’s interesting, isn’t it? Does it make evolutionary sense that the grandchildren of starved women should also be small? I suppose so.
However a later study on rats showed that rats who were deprived of maternal comfort not only grew up to be bad mothers, but also that if their offspring were given to normal rats to raise, they still bore the effects of their parent’s upbringing. I’m not convinced I’ve put that clearly. There’s a good article here:
http://www.technologyreview.com/biomedicine/22061/page1/.
Basically the DNA doesn’t alter, but the way the genes are expressed does, and this is heritable. It doesn’t turn the theory of evolution on its head, because the basic mechanism of that still applies, but there are also factors other than selection that mould the development of species. Of course, survival of the fittest doesn’t and never has meant survival of the most physically prime specimens, but those best suited to their environment.