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Jew Update
My colleague Mark "Leon" Goldberg claims to be acquainted with two non-nearsighted Jewish men. And Phoebe herself asserts that her eyesight is fine. Be that as it may, the proportion of non-myopic Jews clearly seems to be quite small. Does anyone out there in blog-land know whether or not the Israeli military requires its pilots to have non-corrected vision? Do Sephardic Jews see better than we Ashkenazim?
August 3, 2005 | Permalink
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Matt Yglesias asks whether Sephardic Jews are as likely to be nearsighted as Ashkenazim. Answer: Yes. [(N=1)=me] It's all starting to make sense: Banning Israeli web surfers - A number of internet storage sites have begun banning Israeli surfers from [Read More]
Tracked on Aug 4, 2005 9:03:55 PM
Comments
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=iq+myopia&btnG=Google+Search
Posted by: YuHu | Aug 3, 2005 3:39:37 PM
Just to add, I'm 100% Ashkenazi.
Posted by: Phoebe | Aug 3, 2005 4:09:06 PM
I'm an Ashkenazi guy. I used to test at 20/15, and that was my weak eye. My good eye could spot a gay amoeba at 100 paces. Then, alas, I turned 40. I'm sure that my eyesight is as good as it ever was, but my arms have grown too short.
Posted by: Joe S. | Aug 3, 2005 4:54:06 PM
I expected someone who knew what the fuck he was talking about would have posted about this before, but the Israeli Air Force does indeed require perfect eyesight for its pilots. Two sources
http://www.fuchsmizrachi.org/military.htm
"Not everyone who wants to can serve in the Air Force. It is considered a great honor. You have to be very smart, have great eyesight and be very brave"
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg18424705.700
"The Israeli ornithologist Yossi Leshem is no ordinary twitcher. . .
Q: Were you always a bird man?
A: When I was a child, my mother often took me hiking on Mount Carmel. She always said she couldn't tell a bird from a donkey, but the walks made me a nature-lover. Since I was very young, I have dreamed of flying like the birds I saw soaring over that mountain. I wanted to become a pilot in the Israeli air force. But I had bad eyesight and needed glasses, so ..."
Posted by: roublen vesseau | Aug 3, 2005 6:53:22 PM
"Does anyone out there in blog-land know whether or not the Israeli military requires its pilots to have non-corrected vision? Do Sephardic Jews see better than we Ashkenazim?"
I, as American guy of norwegian and german descent, am so utterly unqualified to respond to this query that I nonetheless feel compelled to say that service in the air force of any country worth its salt requires standard to above average eyesight. So do the green berets and special forces, I think. My cousin tried to get around the eyesight reguirement by getting lasic eye surgery, but it didn't work out. Good luck Matt. If you've got 20/20, you might have a chance.
Posted by: fnook | Aug 3, 2005 9:11:36 PM
I thought the U.S. Navy and Airforce were allowing LASIK-corrected vision people to fly. no?
Posted by: Goldberg | Aug 3, 2005 10:49:39 PM
I thought the U.S. Navy and Airforce were allowing LASIK-corrected vision people to fly. no?
And, as a Goldberg, I can tell you my uncorrected vision ain't great (my dad is near blind, my mom, not so bad, but she was born Catholic). I'm 20/15 post-LASIK, though.
Posted by: Goldberg | Aug 3, 2005 10:50:28 PM
Perhaps you're right. The incident with my cousin took place 10-15 years ago before we developed reliable laser technology? Whatever. Lie on the forms, give it run. The Air Force will make a man out of you...
Posted by: fnook | Aug 3, 2005 11:12:19 PM
I'm from a family of Ashkenazi Jews. My dad was nearsighted as a kid but his vision improved as he got older. He's never really needed glasses, though he'll probably need to get them in a few years when he gets his driver's license renewed. My mom and I are both nearsighted. My brother is 20/20, but he barely counts as Jewish.
(I'm sure all this anecdotal evidence is exactly what you wanted.)
Posted by: Toadmonster | Aug 4, 2005 12:32:55 AM
The Israeli Army rates you on a scale of 1-100. If you're circumsized, there's one point there. So pretty much everyone starts at 99. Break a bone? Over 10. From my understanding, corrected vision is also 10. To be a fighter pilot you have to be over a 90. So I guess your answer is yes: as long as the person is uncircumsized and otherwise perfect.
Posted by: Taylor | Aug 4, 2005 9:29:47 AM
I'm surprisd you're Ashkenazi with a name like Yglesias, tbh. I'm ashkenaz and nearsighted, but I'm pretty sure that's from 17 years of computer use in 19 years of life, and low refresh rates. Both my parents, ashkenazic jews, are farsighted and need reading glasses.
My vision just gets worse every year. I didn't have glasses when I was 15, now my left eye is a -1.75 and my right eye is a -2.
--adam
Posted by: adam j. sontag | Aug 4, 2005 10:21:08 AM
I thought the U.S. Navy and Airforce were allowing LASIK-corrected vision people to fly. no?
Really? Things may have changed in the past few years, and certainly the military is needing to find ways to let and keep more people in, but when I was in college a ROTC friend of mine got kicked out of the military altogether for having LASIK (He really wanted to go into the military and didn't find out it was a problem until after the fact.)
If you're circumsized, there's one point there.
Maybe I'm just dim, but why would the Israeli army take off a point for being circumcized? That seems utterly bizarre to me.
****
I'm a total shiksa, but I've worn glasses since I was 6 years old, and everyone in my immediate family and every adult I've ever met in my extended family (who is actually related to me biologically, not just by marriage) has corrected vision of some kind, so I'm not really sure you can claim myopia as some kind of ethnic patrimony, Matt.
Posted by: flippantangel | Aug 4, 2005 12:30:33 PM
Chinese and Japanese men also wear glasses a lot. But not women. Interesting. The same pattern has been observed among Jewish people, both Ashkenazi and Sephardic. I understand the Human Genome Project has found an X-linked "frames" gene, which, especially when linked to a "lens" gene, can lead to massively parellel lens-wearing. The well-known "contacts" gene on the same chromosome is, of course, dominant, and tends to drown out expression of both "frames" and "lens" in women who, with their two X chromosomes, have two chances rather than one of inheriting a copy.
Posted by: quixote | Aug 4, 2005 12:34:54 PM
My good eye could spot a gay amoeba at 100 paces.
I found this to be a mindbending statement.
If you're circumsized, there's one point there. So pretty much everyone starts at 99. Break a bone? Over 10. From my understanding, corrected vision is also 10. To be a fighter pilot you have to be over a 90. So I guess your answer is yes: as long as the person is uncircumsized and otherwise perfect.
WTH?! I mean, yeah, a couple weeks ago they decided being circumcised helps with STDs,but other than that----you'd think the Israeli army of all people would not have something against that????
Posted by: Saheli | Aug 4, 2005 3:17:15 PM
Yeah, wait a minute. Being circumcised is good for you. WTF * 2!!!?
Posted by: Saheli | Aug 4, 2005 3:18:00 PM
Posting *completely* off topic, only because TAPPED doesn't have comments - please forgive (glasses-wearing Ashkenazi) me, I'm terribly sorry, but . . . : Matt wrote over there, in reference to Bush's recent ID mention:
" There is, moreoever, no reason to think it's especially crucial for the average citizen to have an accurate grasp of state-of-the-art biological theory. Most people don't understand quantum mechanics, general relativity, or any number of other scientific and technical topics and life goes on just fine."
Interesting argument *for* ignorance - don't hear that a lot, yet - but I'm not sure this is quite right. State-of-the-art bio, no - you don't get that in high school *at all*, and that's what the argument is about . . .but basic, fundamental bio theory?
Maybe. Let's see.
You get sick, go to the doctor, and are prescribed a course of antibiotics. After taking them for a while, you feel better. There's still two weeks of antibiotic taking to go. Do you stop or keep taking them? Why?
You're a farmer who is planting GE corn from Monsanto, nifty stuff that produces it's own pesticide (Bt). The labels on the bags say you should set aside a certain amount of land to grow non-Bt corn - a move that will cut into your profit. Do you plant it all in Bt corn or follow the instructions? Why?
Various other points: I've heard a lot of conservatives express disquiet, annoyance, or outright disgust at the speech . . .
ID is an organized movement, descended from scientific creationism, that shows every indication of pushing and pushing until it suceeds. To see what ID is about, go here or here (wikipedia)
It *is* essential, I would argue that people learn about the scientific method and critical thinking in general (see Iraq War, etc.). Putting religiously-loaded pseudoscience in science class would weaken schools' ability (even such as it is) to do that.
Imagine all this with evolution and ID replaced with heliocentrism and geocentrism. How would you react?
Posted by: Dan S. | Aug 4, 2005 9:23:07 PM
And where are we going to get people for 21st century jobs involving stuff like the evolution of avian flu, and etc?
Oh, right . . . import them. right.
Posted by: Dan S. | Aug 4, 2005 9:30:43 PM
Nonono, Taylor said the Israeli Army takes points of if you're "circumSIZED*. Not "circumcised", which would not make sense, especially for half of its soldiers. "Circumsized," I would imagine, is like "plus-sized," but different.
Posted by: Mr Ripley | Aug 5, 2005 4:34:23 AM
to Dan S. commenting about the Tapped article. I haven't read the article, but your comments are spot on. That can't be said enough.
Coming at it from the other side (in a sense) as a person who taught college bio forever (it felt like forever): there's ignorance of another kind at work. I always wanted the first semester of basic bio to start off with real issues--Monsanto's Roundup-ready beans, cloning, antibiotic resistance, etc., etc. It seems that way people might actually take an interest and see why they're learning this stuff. But no-o-o. As a grad student or temp for much of the time, I just did what I was told, and that was to spend months droning on about the structure of DNA, and pH, and osmotic pressure. All absolutely vital topics that meant nothing to anybody in the class. (Needless to say, I did my best to practice some guerrilla teaching.)
So my point is that the teaching of biology needs to meet halfway with the immense need for learning it.
Posted by: quixote | Aug 5, 2005 2:01:38 PM
". . . the teaching of biology needs to meet halfway with the immense need for learning it."
I like that!
Posted by: Dan S. | Aug 5, 2005 10:41:45 PM
I'm 100% Ashkenazi and I have 20/20 eyesight. My 57 year old father has excellent vision, as do my two siblings.
Matt, this is the stupidist thing you've ever posted.
Posted by: Itiail | Aug 6, 2005 6:37:36 PM
It's an old story that the Israeli army "takes off a point for circumcision" because they adopted a British army 100-point scale in use during the '40s. The claim is that soldiers of the Jewish Brigade (a British Army unit that fought in Italy, many of whose members joined the new Israeli army in 1948) had been evaluated on that scale. Supposedly it was easier to transfer the scale over for comparison purposes (making it a 99-point scale) rather than recalibrate it. I don't know if that was ever really true and if it was, whether it's still the case today.
Posted by: JR | Aug 6, 2005 8:37:06 PM
I'm with Itiail on this.
Posted by: Phoebe | Aug 7, 2005 12:43:58 AM
I asked some people doing the national service and was inevitably given two answers. The first one was that they won't even touch you if you had surgery. The second one was that they will, but you will have to prove that you are truly a super-vision Jew to a medical commission inclined to rule otherwise.
Posted by: nonnka | Aug 8, 2005 4:11:04 AM
"pretty much everyone starts at 99" - uh, you *do* remember that Israeli women as well as men are required to serve, right? I'd say pretty much *half* would then start at 99...
Posted by: Jade | Aug 9, 2005 12:23:06 AM
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