I am not sure if this has already been said (I didn't have time to read all the comments) but it seems odd to say this 'would normally take millions of years to play out'. What this shows is that such adaptive changes do not in fact need millions of years to play out. This is just normal, run-of-the-mill, natural selection in action, with a small initial gene pool and probably very strong selection pressure. It doesn't always take millions of years for changes of this magnitude to happen. Indeed, there are already many other known examples of rapid adaptation of a similar kind; no doubt someone has already linked to some of these above.

Regas, almost everybody (close to 100% of right handers, and about 95% of left-handers) has language mainly lateralized in the left hemisphere. No one really knows exactly why: there are some (weak) anatomical differences between the hemispheres, and also some neuronal differences that may be part of the explanation. We know they aren't the whole explanation because language can (and routinely does) switch hemispheres in infants who suffer major left-hemisphere brain damage. Some language functions (especially have to do with holding two meanings in mind: as in understanding sarcasm, irony, humour) are usually right-lateralized. Drawing isn't lateralized. It is not true that your second (or Nth; N => 2] language switches hemispheres; there is lots of evidence showing that all languages are left-lateralized and rely on roughly, although not exactly, the same tissue. It is possible to lose one language and not another following brain damage like stroke.

IAN_MXYZ is right: a very similar finding to this one was published in Science several years ago, showing that the probability of diagnosing dyslexia was related to the complexity of the orthography-to-phonology mapping in a language (bad for English speakers; good for Italians):

Science 16 March 2001:
Vol. 291. no. 5511, pp. 2165 - 2167
Dyslexia: Cultural Diversity and Biological Unity

E. Paulesu, J.-F. Démonet, F. Fazio, E. McCrory, V. Chanoine, N. Brunswick, S. F. Cappa, G. Cossu, M. Habib, C. D. Frith, U. Frith

The recognition of dyslexia as a neurodevelopmental disorder has been hampered by the belief that it is not a specific diagnostic entity because it has variable and culture-specific manifestations. In line with this belief, we found that Italian dyslexics, using a shallow orthography which facilitates reading, performed better on reading tasks than did English and French dyslexics. However, all dyslexics were equally impaired relative to their controls on reading and phonological tasks. Positron emission tomography scans during explicit and implicit reading showed the same reduced activity in a region of the left hemisphere in dyslexics from all three countries, with the maximum peak in the middle temporal gyrus and additional peaks in the inferior and superior temporal gyri and middle occipital gyrus. We conclude that there is a universal neurocognitive basis for dyslexia and that differences in reading performance among dyslexics of different countries are due to different orthographies.

Another brilliant move by our sad national airline. Sigh. Check out www.IHateAirCanada.ca

I had one of these too, and loved it.

I had a friend who was a dealer when I was an undergraduate. He did a good business selling hash from Montreal to customers living in the Canadian North, where drugs commanded a much higher price. He used to ship all his hash up north after pressing it flat and inserting it into album covers (discarding the records). He told me customers liked it because they could easily justify having records shipped up to them.

"in what looked like a political payoff to a government whose help America desperately needs on difficult problems, the department dropped China from its list of 10 worst violators."

Another classic case of Bushian truthiness: it doesn't matter what China actually _does_ do; all that matters is what George Bush _says_ they do.

I'm finding BoingBoing a little depressing today. You?

The most bizarre examples I have seen are in my local liquor store, where the answer to the 'skill testing' questions of liquor company competitions is always conveniently taped to the top of the box where you have to put the ballot. I guess the skill involved is recognizing that number to be the solution.