February 17, 2012

More "Daily Mail" Awesomeness

From the World's Leading On-Line Newspaper:
Did Yale University plan to create an intellectually superior race of children to repopulate Britain after World War Two? 
Yale University only offered children of Oxford and Cambridge university staff an evacuation to the U.S. 
One evacuee has raised questions about the experience asking did they want 'to save the gene pool?' 
Yale's president James Angell was 'a fanatic eugenicist in the worst meaning of that word' 
By JILL REILLY 
Yale University has been accused of trying to create a super race of British children during War World Two, it emerged today.

The Daily Mail takes this kind of thing personally. If this nefarious eugenicist plot had succeeded, how many readers would the Daily Mail have left these days? How many footballers' wives would there be to feature in its pages?

By the way, Wikipedia doesn't say anything about Yale President Angell, a psychologist of the John Dewey school, being a eugenicist or not, but it does say this:
James Rowland Angell was born on May 8, 1869, in Burlington, Vermont. He was born into one of the stellar academic families in American history. His father, was the president of the University of Vermont. He was the youngest of three children, with an older brother and sister. When Angell was two years old, his family moved to Ann Arbor so that his father could take up the presidency of the University of Michigan. His maternal grandfather, Alexis Caswell, was a professor of Mathematics and Astronomy at, and later president of, Brown University. He was also a charter member of the National Academy of Sciences. His brother Alexis Caswell Angell became a professor of law of Michigan, and later a federal judge. His sister's husband, Andrew C. McLaughlin, was head of the history department at Michigan. His cousin, Frank Angell, founded psychology laboratories at Cornell and Stanford Universities.

Granted, he had retired as president of Yale two years before WWII broke out, but still, with a family background like that, I think we must judge James Angell Guilty! of at least having eugenicist suspicions. And once you admit that crime, well, the whole breeding a race of superchildren thing pretty much follows automatically.

I think the Daily Mail should get together with New York Times and conduct the Neo-Nuremberg Trials of all the arch-criminal eugenicists who didn't get tried at Nuremberg: you know, Francis Galton, Karl Pearson, Ronald Fisher, J.M. Keynes, Winston Churchill, George Bernard Shaw, H.G. Wells, the Webbs, Teddy Roosevelt, Alexander Graham Bell, Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., Harold Laski, Hans Muller, Margaret Sanger, Gifford Pinchot, William Shockley, Louis Terman, William D. Hamilton, and, Mr. Big himself, Charles Darwin. Dig 'em up and give 'em the hanging they deserve.

31 comments:

No Name said...

The 'Daily Mail' is entertaining and sorta stupid, while most US papers are merely stupid.

Matt said...

The Mail on Sunday is great. There are a few light stories and the in-depth stuff dwarfs that in any US tabloid-style paper.

If I'm at a newspaper shop, I buy that and the Telegraph. It's money well spent.

Yan Shen said...

Let's be fair here. The white nationalist crowd would be absolutely decimated if we ever implemented a rigorous eugenics program.

Nanonymous said...

OT: AP has a news article "Denied jobs, blacks in Iowa test new bias theory".

The gist: 6,000-strong class action law suit over subsconscious discrimination by the state. Wow.

rightsaidfred said...

...give 'em the hanging they deserve.

Yes, one cannot be too stern when enforcing the proper behavior.

dogzma said...

What's cute is how superstition can never be completely eradicated from the human mind. People truly believe you can create humans who excel in all areas of endeavor and that these charming, graceful, athletic geniuses must necessarily lack empathy.

I've reached the conclusion that this belief in X men gives elites an unearned advantage unless they are the ones propagating such memes.

Onward with the struggle!

Anonymous said...

Just watched RISE OF PLANET OF THE APES. Dumbest movie since AVATAR. My head hurts. But one priceless moment was when the black guy, on the verge of dying, called a scarred chimp, 'you dirty monkey'.

Anonymous said...

1. The Mail is reporting a fair bit of stuff that doesn't get covered in America.

2. Pretty sure as fast as they can dig up the old special breeders, the Mormons will be baptising them.

goatweed

Anonymous said...

I only wish....

Hunsdon said...

Yan Shen said: Let's be fair here. The white nationalist crowd would be absolutely decimated if we ever implemented a rigorous eugenics program.

Hunsdon replied: What was that line Princess Leia used, when she first encountered the Grand Moff Tarkin?

Say what you will about a white nationalist eugenics program, we probably wouldn't abort all the girls.

Anonymous said...

The hanging is already more or less routinely administered, in print anyway.

Gene Roddenberry said...

I can see Steve the Jesus Freak being the judge of these eugenicists.

Kylie said...

"Let's be fair here. The white nationalist crowd would be absolutely decimated if we ever implemented a rigorous eugenics program."

Yes, we can look to Zimbabwe to see the benefits of decimating the white nationalist crowd. That's worked out well for the black majority, hasn't it?

Mr. Anon said...

Off topic, but fitting in with a recurrent isteve theme "take me to your Hitler", what is sure to be one this year's most talked-about movies - Iron Sky:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xeIu1FiTTyI&feature=related

Anonymous said...

"...accused of trying to create a super race of British children..."

Oh the horror! The horror! Imagine that. A race of intelligent and productive people. We just can't have that!

Because we all know Britain is so much better off with a pile of chavs and yobs.

Anonymous said...

What is so terrible about the basic concept of eugenics anyways? Consider the following simple hypothetical example. Two groups of one million couples. Group A has an average I.Q. of 135. Group B has an average I.Q. of 85. Imagine in my hypothetical example, tomorrow you could have one of these groups reproduce themselves. Which would be better? Now assume you MUST CHOOSE, and the only information you have about the two groups is their I.Q.'s. So which would you choose? That one million babies be born to parents with 135 I.Q.'s or 85 I.Q.'s?

Geoff Matthews said...

Goatweed,

Already done.

jack strocchi said...

You forgot Weismann, Spearman, Haldane and Sewall-Wright. And you could certainly throw Crick & Watson in as fellow-travellers, although Watson has, of course, already been "Watsoned".

FWIW I don't agree with state enforced sterilization, still less extermination. But its hard to call eugenics "pseudo-science" with a pedigree like that.

Geoff Matthews said...

So basically, the founding fathers of modern statistical thought were eugenicists?

Steve Sailer said...

"So basically, the founding fathers of modern statistical thought were eugenicists?"

Not to mention genetics.

Black Sea said...

The Daily Mail arts coverage is indeed awesome, with articles like this.


And sports coverage like this.

BTW, The online readership of the Daily Mail has eclipsed that of the NY Times. There may be hope yet. Of course, the NY Times now has a semi-permeable paywall.

Anonymous said...

Personally, I can't stand the Daily Mail.
It's almost like a cariacature of all that's rotten with England's petit bourgeious 'curtain twitching' suburban, anally-retentive, uptight, Penelope Keith-esque, 'Terry and June', snobby middle class.
True to form it is sex obsessed (in a silly girly sort of way), but outwardly sex-hating (any real and actual manifestation of people having sex is covered in glorious detail but condemned loudly).

No offence to Penelope Keith whom is a fine actress and no doubt nothing like her characters.

Anonymous said...

Excessively high average group IQ isn't adaptive or it would have happened. History has shown a 100+ average is all you need as long as you maintain it and nurture the high IQ outliers who'll invent the new stuff. As far as IQ is concerned eugenics is only neccessary to prevent the 100+ average declining imo.

Apart from that i think the main focus of eugenics should be physical health.

Marlowe said...

I believe H. G. Wells harboured doubts concerning the ultimate consequences of eugenics especially prominent in his earlier, more famous works such as The Time Machine (Eloi & Morlocks) and The Island of Dr. Moreau wherein the attempt to raise up the animals by scientific means fails.

ben tillman said...

Let's be fair here. The white nationalist crowd would be absolutely decimated if we ever implemented a rigorous eugenics program.

"To decimate" means "to remove a tenth", so you're saying that 90% of the "white nationalist" crowd would pass eugenic muster.

That's quite a compliment.

Anonymous said...

"What is so terrible about the basic concept of eugenics anyways?"

Well of course everyone knows it's not terrible but you just can't say it. Just like everyone knows that best way to eliminate endemic poverty in some countries would be to reduce the populations. Can't say that either.

europeasant said...

"Group A has an average I.Q. of 135. Group B has an average I.Q. of 85."

And who's going to take out the garbage? There's a reason for low IQ people! That theme has been explored in "Brave new World".

Educrat said...

Oh the horror! The horror! Imagine that. A race of intelligent and productive people. We just can't have that!

Because we all know Britain is so much better off with a pile of chavs and yobs.

Don't you see it? These chavs and yobs are so well-adjusted mentally, and have such excellent social skills, and socialize together so well, and integrate so well with people of colour. They are the ultimate in well-rounded human beings.

Would you rather have a Britain populated by anti-social elitist nerds with their noses stuck in the books?

Anonymous said...

Reply to Europeasant:

"There is a reason for low I.Q. people! That theme has been explored in BRAVE NEW WORLD.

Yeah sure. Its also been explored in IDIOCRACY too!

Anonymous said...

Add Gunnar Myrdal to your list -- the father of Swedish eugenics policy.

Anonymous said...

The distractions of the Femail column on the right side and the sheer triviality of its content is something that they could do without, while improving the quality manifold.