Old News is New News

1916 — Standardized Genomes and Careers

2007-10-07T23:39:00.000-07:00

Here's in article in the vein of S's on Eugenics written by a psychiatrist Dr. Allan McLane Hamilton (I was curious as to whether any IQ tests were developed by him but didn't find any references). He has a long editorial on how the new knowledge gained from the study of eugentics should be used to sort boys into colleges and careers (he says nothing of young girls of course). He even proposes a system where an unbiased board is formed and children from the ages of 6-16 present themselves once a year to exhibit their development and talents. The board at the end of the age of 16 would then provide a report to parents or guardians of the boy to help sort the child into a career that he is capable at.

The doctor's editorial highlights the rigidity of the scientific and medical perspective on heredity during this historical period. It plays into much of the racial stereotypes of the period and marks a boom in IQ test development. The standardized exams of today are very much a remnant of this mode of thought, however, now they are viewed as exams to prove one's merit and not one's genetic make-up necessarily. Even so, I feel a problem still persists where people do not acknowledge the remarkable plasticity of the brain to learn new knowledge and skills. The sifting of students itself dissuades them of reaching their numerous potentials. The information gleaned from knowledge-based exams should be used to identify weaknesses and customize a person's education. Students should have the resources to pursue whatever their interests suggest, not that dictated by an exam or administrator.

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1914 — Dance Dance Revolution

2007-10-05T14:24:00.000-07:00

I appreciate that the medical profession felt obligated to diagnose and classify social trends as ailments. This strange article describes the new epidemic of the "tango-foot" dance and quotes from a medical study on the topic:

"So far as the present dancing mania has been transmitted from individual to individual, and is continually spreading, we are justified in designating it as a psychic epidemic."

The doctor then goes on to describe the sore foot many dancers of the tango-foot experience. He then warns of historic epidemics of dancers being trampled or kicked to death. The explanation of the break-out in the dancing "mania" is of course described in Freudian terms:

"Puritan prudery and Anglo-Saxon hypocrisy have for centuries acted the part of the ostrich and refused to acknowledge the existence of the sexual impulse."

However, we must give it up to the doctor for having a liberal outlook on the new dancing trend. He views the new dances as beneficial to society, even a treatment for social anxiety disorder.

"I know of two timid and shut-in persons who were completely changed by the new dances. They no longer fear to meet persons of the opposite sex and are thinking seriously of matrimony."

If the Pfizers and Astrazencas of today existed back then, prescriptions for Tango-Relief would have had a successful market. Well, as backwards as everything reads. There's an underlying ring of truth in the ol' doctor's perspective. Dancing does the body and soul good.

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1871 — A Little Story of Married Life

2007-10-05T12:32:00.000-07:00

Looks like overblown weddings that send people into the poorhouse are not just a phenomenon limited to our generation. Here is the tale of a young woman who gets married and soon afterwards her poor dad is slapped with a bill for:

"A variety of silk and other dresses, petticoats, jackets, mantles, vails, headdresses, embroideries, trimmings, laces and an immense variety of other things...There was also certain mysterious devices called "dress protectors" to be used on going to India. All these things the enterprising young lady had ordered through an extensive personal correspondence with the London mantua maker and without the trifling formality of a consultation with her parents..."

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1902 — The First Seedless Oranges

2007-10-04T23:58:00.000-07:00

After a lull in finding interesting articles from yester-year I decided to type in my hometown of Tustin, Orange County, California, wondering what a first utterance of my hometown in the New York Times might be: oranges, sure.

"On Jan 22, 1878, two of the new oranges were cut open and critically tasted by a little company of orange growers at Riverside. A new star of first magnitude rose that day in the horticultural firmament."

However I didn't anticipate learning the name of the man who brought oranges to Orange County, Luther C. Tibbets, nor did I realize that the seedless Navel Orange was the source of the southern Californian Orange-rush and that while people came in droves, and made fortunes, Tibbets himself died penniless.

"Mr. Tibbets reasoned that the first trees came from the Government at Washington, and that therefore they belonged to the public."

Luther C. Tibbets: Orange County's first liberal.

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1913 — The Stewards of Human Evolution

2007-10-04T12:52:00.000-07:00

Dr. Davenport, the head Eugenics "researcher" at Cold Springs Harbor makes the case for guiding human evolution and dispells myths that "there is anything freakish about eugenics."

In fact, he jovially insists that "we scientists don't do any experiments in eugenics, the human race does plenty of that!"

The scariest part though, is how the New York Times buys into it and makes him seem...well, normal.

Some fun quotes:

The idea that there is anything freakish about eugenics is quite mistaken. We not only do not perform experiments, but we don't try to establish any scientific system of mating by which someone shall say "now A must marry B and breed certain kinds of children. That idea, as I say is all wrong. The eugenist is simply a sane, sensible well balanced person who works, sanely for the betterment of the race.

The eugenics movement is not attempting to "banish love"... The eugenics idea has never gone further, Mrs Davenport declared emphatically, "than to urge that the human bloodlines be relieved of the worst things, that these worst lines be cut off as much as possible."

Another blank [on the registration form] is concerned with special traits or peculiarities of any sort, a fourth with the inheritance of a tendency toward tuberculosis, and still another with the presence in the "family tree" of cleft palate or hare lip. Thousands of such records are already filed and indexed in the offices at Cold Spring Harbor...."It is hoped that it will in time come to be generally regarded as a social duty to record and deposit in the vaults of the Eugenics Record Office data concerning the hereditary traits of one's family..."

"In our country we have nearly pure races in certain islands off the coast of Maine and in certain long-settled valleys with a highly inbred population, characterized in come cases by alcoholism, indolence and strong sexuality and in other cases by exceptional good manners and effectiveness."

Just as we have strains of scholars, of miltary men, of lazy sots so too we have strains of paupers or sex offenders, of feeble minded or other sorts; strains with epilepsy, strains with strong tendencies toward larceny, assault, lying, running away, strains with a lack of resistance to tuberculosis, to cancer, to excessive nervous stress...

We are told that the number of the socially inadequate is rapidly increasing and it is probably true. And the cause is not far to seek. Modern philanthropy and medicine have cooperated not only to keep alive the personas who show the undesirable traits of the non-social strains but to facilitate their reproduction...Dr. Davenport and the eugenists of course favor the segregation and in many cases the sterilization of the feeble-minded and "socially inadequate" We have in Illinois, New Jersey and several other states -although not in New York- sterilization laws by which a board of scientific judges may compel the asexualization of persons whom they find unfit to bear sane or healthy children...But it is a fairly well-known fact that such laws are not fully enforced...

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1851 — Ladies First

2007-10-04T12:32:00.000-07:00

Some lady named Mrs. E. Oakes Smith gave a lecture entitled "Manhood" on Nov 1, 1851. In it she rambles onto numerous tangents littered with references to Milton and Cromwell, but leaves her readers with some essential wisdom at the end:

"Hitherto women have knocked too softly at the door of reform to be heard, like the boy who was sent to call a physician and was afraid he should awake him...

Still, if one woman should feel irresistibly drawn to the plow or the anvil, man should accept her considerately, as woman accepts the man who sells ribbons, bonnets and laces."

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1851 — A Look at the Institution of Slavery

2007-10-04T09:15:00.000-07:00

Just another example of the NY Times liberal bias. The writer spends a considerable amount of time describing the arguments against slavery. However, he acknowledges how radical abolitionist come across for their vehement views. The paper still manages to not ruffle too many feathers by directly taking a stance on the issue of slavery.

Status quo, oh woe.

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1852 — An Ex-Mormon Speaks Out

2007-10-02T11:13:00.000-07:00

The word gets out about the Mormon cult from a former Mormon. Polygamy, my word, someone should put those apostles on trial.

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1852 — Willliam Walker

2007-10-02T10:25:00.000-07:00

One of my true American Heroes is William Walker, the filibusterer. With his slogan "5 or none" he was committed to making Mexico and Central America part of the U.S. Here's an article reporting and condemning his action to take over Baja California with a band of 45 fellas from San Francisco. Oh, Walker you're just getting started.

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1852 — Desultory Notes on Japan

2007-10-01T23:50:00.000-07:00

The article is jam-packed with great quotes, mostly centered around a Western mind-boggle on Japan's isolationism. At one comment, I thought to myself, well, umm... shit, if that's your attitude, United States, I think anyone would choose to be isolated.

"Japan is a semi-barbarous empire, exhibiting the curious spectacle to mankind of a nation which, in its whole history, has neither retrograded or advanced, and we of the United States being convinced that a manifest destiny bids us 'conquer its prejudices,' propose to knock open a passage-way with ball, bullet, and bomb, to let in revelation, and a few annual cargos of cotton cloth."

It's happy to see our rootin' tootin' guns a'blazin' attitute has stayed true to the mark for 155 years.

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2006 — A Star is Made

2007-10-01T21:10:00.000-07:00

This article gave me an excited moment of I-told-you-so, unfortunately no one was around to tell. My November birthday always screwed me when it came to age-limited sports (versus academic enrollment limits) where I was playing with kids a year (or two) behind me in school — which was really self-affirming.
This article talks about how kids in sports who are born earlier in the year have an advantage of (physical) maturity over children who are born closer to the end of the year, and because sport is all about winning a coach is going to choose the older child over the younger more often than not.

I had the added bonus of being left-handed.

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1909 — Prohibition Editorial

2007-10-01T20:38:00.001-07:00

I imagine editorials like this made a significant impact on people's opinion and rational decision making. Who could have foreseen the black market and crime that grew out of prohibition?

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