Daily Archives: February 29, 2020

Andrew Sabisky, a UK government adviser, recently resigned over comments supporting eugenics. Around the same time, the evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins best known for his book The Selfish Gene provoked controversy when tweeting that, while eugenics is morally deplorable, it would work.

Eugenics can be described as the science and practice of improving the human race through the selection of good hereditary traits. Eugenics inevitably brings to mind the atrocities committed by the Nazis, who used eugenic ideology as the rationale for large-scale forced sterilisation, involuntary euthanasia and the Holocaust. Given this sinister history, its bound to be alarming when government officials endorse eugenic ideas.

The eugenics movement of the past has been thoroughly discredited on both moral and scientific grounds. But questions about the ethics of genetically improving humans remain relevant.

The emergence of new genetic technologies often prompts renewed debate. Can eugenic ideas about improving the human race be divorced from the evils of the past and pursued through benign means? Or is there something inherently morally problematic about the idea of genetically improving humans?

A new, morally responsible eugenics may well be defensible, and new genetic technologies must be assessed on their own terms. But we also need to consider the broader political context. If the betterment of individual traits were to be presented as a key strategy to improve human welfare, this would look very much like the individualisation of social problems that was such a central feature of the old eugenics.

The father of the eugenics movement was the English explorer and scientist Francis Galton (1822-1911). Influenced by his cousin Charles Darwins work The Origin of Species, Galton was interested in ideas about the heritability of different traits. He was particularly interested in the heritability of intelligence and how to increase societys diminished stock of talent and character. He also believed that social problems such as poverty, vagrancy and crime were ultimately caused by the inheritance of degenerate traits from parent to child.

Galton embarked on an ambitious research programme with the explicit goal to improve human stock through selective human breeding. In 1883 he named this research programme eugenics, meaning good in birth.

Galtons ideas quickly became influential and were widely embraced, first in Britain but subsequently in many other countries, including the US, Germany, Brazil and Scandinavia. At a time coloured by widespread concerns about the state of the nation, lack of social progress and the degeneration of the population, Galtons ideas inspired a popular movement for social reform through selective human reproduction.

The first half of the 20th century saw the enactment of a variety of eugenic policies. Positive eugenics focused on encouraging those of good stock to reproduce, such as through the fitter family contests put on across the US. Negative eugenics involved discouraging or preventing reproduction among those deemed unfit, such as the poor, criminals or the feeble-minded, predominantly by coercive means.

Eugenics is often equated with Nazi atrocities, but many other brutal acts were committed in its name, usually targeting disadvantaged and vulnerable groups, such as the poor, disabled and ill. As part of the negative eugenic effort, forced sterilisation was conducted on a large scale, not only in Nazi Germany but also in the Scandinavian countries (in Sweden, this practice continued until the 1970s) and in the US (where it was revealed that involuntary sterilisation of female prisoners occurred as late as 2010). The US combined eugenic ideology with ideas about racial hierarchy and applied eugenic thinking to immigration. This led to the passing of the 1924 Immigration Restriction Act in order to curb the entry of inferior ethnic groups.

After the second world war and the exposure of the Nazi regimes atrocities, eugenics fell out of favour. But worries about eugenics often resurface with the introduction of new genetic technologies that allow us to improve humans in some way, most notably gene editing, such as CRISPR-Cas9, and reproductive technologies, such as pre-implantation genetic diagnosis. Reproductive technologies mainly help prospective parents to have children free from genetically based disabilities and disorders, but as our knowledge of the human genome advances, the range of traits we may be able to select away or select for will probably increase, prompting fears of designer babies.

Such technologies are sometimes labelled eugenic by sceptics as a means to discredit them. Arguments then ensue about whether these technologies represent a form of old eugenics and are therefore unethical, or whether they represent a new, benign form of eugenics. Questions about the ethics of genetic technologies and the new eugenics are far from settled.

But even if our ethical analysis should deem such new genetic technologies permissible, it would be disingenuous to present these technological advances as solutions to complex problems such as poverty, unemployment, or poor physical or mental health. We should be wary of biological determinist narratives that blame various forms of disadvantage on individual traits, without acknowledging the importance of social and political factors. This kind of thinking is very much in line with the old eugenics.

We are right to be worried when government officials endorse eugenic ideas. It is reassuring that Sabiskys comments provoked such outrage and that he was forced to resign. But in some respects, in the current age of austerity policies, the individualisation of social problems is an all too familiar theme.

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The eugenics debate isn't over but we should be wary of people who claim it can fix social problems - The Conversation UK

In early January 2020, Dominic Cummings, the Prime Ministers chief Special Adviser, wrote a blog piece in which he advertised for advisers to work in No 10. One of the groupings was for weirdos and misfits. Andrew Sabisky was appointed. The media trawled through Sabiskys own blog for his thoughts, finding that hed said, for example:

There are excellent reasons to think the very real racial differences in intelligence are significantly even mostly genetic in origin

One way to get around the problems of unplanned pregnancies creating a permanent underclass would be to legally enforce universal uptake of long-term contraception at the onset of puberty.

Eugenics are about selecting for good things. Intelligence is largely inherited and it correlates with better incomes; physical health, income, lower mental illness. There is no downside to having IQ except short-sightedness.

The first of these three comments is an example of scientific racism, the second is an example of eugenics. The first comment is factually incorrect. Human eugenics is wholly discredited, both morally and scientifically. The third comment misunderstands what IQ is. Shortly after these and other, similar, comments became public knowledge, Sabisky resigned. What are the origins of such thinking?

Differences in skin pigmentation and facial structure have been obvious for millennia. The earliest form of racism seems to be anti-semitism. Jews have been stigmatised and persecuted from ancient times, even before Christianity when Jews could be held responsible for the death of Jesus. They lent money at interest, then called usury, when Christians were forbidden to do this, and were said to indulge in practices that sound more like black magic. The Jews were expelled from England in 1290, not returning until Cromwells time. They were expelled from Spain in 1492 when many found refuge in the tolerant Moslem Ottoman Empire.

More generally, the scientific study of race began during the Enlightenment, the Age of Reason. This was also the time of European colonisation and empire building, when the whites became more aware of other races. These classifiers were Western Europeans. The various human races were described in relation to skin colour, physiognomy (the science of judging peoples character from their facial appearance), and type of hair with an admixture of ignorance and prejudice. Linnaeus thought there were five types, Africans, Americans, Asians, Europeans and monsters. Johann Blumenbach described five races:

De Gobineau believed in three races, black, white and yellow. Blacks, he thought, were the strongest but incapable of intelligent thought; the yellows were physically and mentally mediocre, while whites (of course) were the best because they were capable of intelligent thought, could create beauty, and were the most beautiful. Overall, though, there was no settled agreement about the number of races. (Human facial beauty has subsequently been studied; most people prefer faces that are symmetrical. Faces with proportions in the Golden Ratio are considered beautiful. Early thinkers used Greek statues as a comparator; such statues are often the personification of beauty. And originally they were painted in bright colours to make them wear-resistant; they werent white.)

These classifications and other similar ones still find echoes today. I need hardly say that there is no biological, that is genetic, basis for such classifications, or for the attributes attached to them. The differences we can observe between different populations are a result of different cultures and environments. Race is a social construct.

Charles Darwin publishedOn the Origin of Species by means of Natural Selectionin 1859. His cousin, Francis Dalton, was intrigued and became convinced that all human characteristics and particularly intelligence were the result of inheritance.Thus, the ruling classes were the elite because of their genetic inheritance, and not because of wealth and privilege. Likewise, insanity and mental degeneracy were a result of genetic determinism. He collected data by measuring physical characteristics (anthropometrics), and mental abilities (psychometrics). He also made major developments in statistics, as did his successor Karl Pearson; it is for this that they are remembered today rather than their racism.

Convinced by such arguments, in the early 20thcentury, mental degenerates were rounded up in the UK, and kept in asylums. Programmes of forced, involuntary sterilisation were introduced in Sweden and in the US. In Germany, Nazi ideology encouraged extramarital breeding from racially pure and healthy parents to raise the birth rate of Aryans, a wholly specious race. Further, those whom the Nazis viewed as degenerate peoples, Jews, homosexuals, the Roma and others were not only segregated and sterilised, but murdered in what is now known as the Holocaust. Eugenics was (mostly) abandoned after World War II; eugenicists rebranded themselves as geneticists.

Its clear that artificial breeding works in plants, producing standardised, disease-resistant but heavy cropping varieties. In animals, selective breeding produces pedigree animals, ones that conform to what experts expect. But this comes at a cost; such animals are produced by inbreeding, and these animals are prone to hereditary defects. Inbreeding in humans is also associated with congenital diseases such as haemophilia.

Gregor Mendel, an Austrian monk, experimented with peas, and from this formulated his ideas of dominant and recessive genes. Although he published in the middle of the 19th century, his ideas werent widespread for half a century. Less well known is that he didnt use just any peas; he inbred peas, producing seven strains that bred pure for various characteristics; and it was from these that he experimented; his results would otherwise have been lost in the noise. No humans are purebred we are all mongrels.

Mongrels? A generation is conventionally taken to be 25 to 30 years, and the number of our ancestors doubles every generation. On this basis about 1000 years ago we have one trillion ancestors; this is clearly impossible, as the best estimate is that around 107 billion is the total number of people who have ever lived. Thegenetic isopoint is when the entire population are the ancestors of todays population. For Europe this was around 1400CE; for the world population, it was around 3400BCE. Every one of us is descended from all the global population then. There are genetic similarities within populations; but there are no sharp boundaries between populations, rather a gradual merging or blending of the two. And there are greater genetic differences within populations than between populations. Racial purity is an impossible fantasy. Sorry, Gaels and Planters; you arent pure and neither would you want to be because of recessive genetic disease.

Intelligence combines reason, problem-solving, abstract thought, learning capacity and the understanding of ideas. The first rigorous attempts at measuring and quantifying intelligence were by Binet just over a century ago, and was calculated by dividing the mental age by the chronological age, and multiplying by 100. This produced an intelligence quotient or IQ; the average for a population was 100. About two-thirds of people (one standard deviation) are in the range 85 115, and 95% (two standard deviations) lie between 70 and 130. Todays tests (attempt to) measure reason, mental processing speed, spatial awareness and knowledge.

IQ scores for populations have been found to be rising at about 3 points per decade; this is known as the Flynn effect. For example, the average IQ in Ireland was 85 in 1970 by comparison to the UK where it was 100; in Ireland today it is 100. This is far too short a time scale for a genetic effect. The generally accepted explanation relates to the environment including better nutrition and health, an increased standard of living and general socio-economic development. Does this accurately describe the changes in Ireland in the past half-century? Has Ireland gone from a poor, impoverished, even backward country to one which is wealthy, well educated and which has a vibrant economy?

While its difficult to assess accurately, todays best estimate is that genes account for 40% to 60% of a persons intelligence, with the environment, including nurture, accounting for the rest; crudely, about half nature and half nurture. Its clear that genetics does not account for all or even the great majority of intelligence. The short-sightedness associated with intelligence may be genetic, but its known that close study, such as reading, has a very significant effect. I was told that myopia is common in Jewish boys but not girls; only boys study the Talmud in exquisite detail.

Scientific racism is a pseudoscientific attempt to show that certain races, that is white races, are genetically superior to others. It uses comparisons of IQ in this venture. It does seem correct that peoples in sub-Saharan Africa have IQs 20 points less than those in the UK (taken as 100). Its also true that they are developing rather than developed countries. However, the highest IQ scores, again by comparison with the UK, are in Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea, Japan and China, where scores are in the range 105 108. There is a culture of study and learning in these countries. Characteristically, researchers in this field such as Richard Lynn, previously a Professor of Psychology at the Ulster University, are described as controversial.

Its surely clear that eugenics and scientific racism are thoroughly discredited, both morally and scientifically. The comments Mr Sabisky made are simply wrong in every detail; it is concerning that there does seem to be a recrudescence of such ideas today, and alarming to think that these ideas might be at the heart of government. Neither Dominic Cummings nor the Prime Ministers spokesman have distanced themselves from these comments.

Angela Saini and Adam Pearson presented a two-part documentary calledEugenics: Sciences Greatest Scandalon BBCTV last year. It is not available on iPlayer at present.

Angela Sainis bookSuperior: the Return of Race Science(2019) and Adam RutherfordsHow to Argue with a Racist(2020) are up to date accounts, and well worth reading.

There is a list of further reading here.

My thanks to SeaanUiNeill, Dr Madeleine Morris and Professor Sen Danaher for their comments.

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Eugenics and Scientific Racism - Slugger O'Toole

Updated March 01, 2020 09:30:40

There's more to time capsules than fond childhood memories of burying hand-written notes.

University of Iowa history expert Nick Yablon has traced the origins of time capsules back to the late 1870s, and uncovered a murky history.

He says they were used in the early promotion of eugenics the idea of improving the human race through "scientific breeding".

In his observations of the early 1900s, he says, the link to eugenics "comes up in almost every time capsule I found".

The conception of the modern time capsule seemed innocent enough.

The term was first officially coined by George E Pendray, a PR consultant for Westinghouse Electric Company, to describe the company's exhibit for the New York World's Fair in 1939.

"He was going to call it the 'time bomb'," Dr Yablon tells ABC RN's Late Night Live.

"But in 1939 that probably wouldn't have gone down too well."

The Westinghouse capsule is bequeathed to Earth's inhabitants in 6939AD, so it will be a long time before anyone knows what's inside.

But a plaque on the capsule lists some of its contents: 22,000 pages of microfilm, 15 minutes of newsreel, an alarm clock, bifocals and believe it or not carrots.

Like the Westinghouse effort, time capsules were often created by people of influence, who had the money and means to construct and commission them.

Many seemed to be more about commemorating an individuals' own achievements than sending a meaningful message to the future.

And museums were just a little bit miffed about them.

"The time capsule was definitely a kind of riposte to the museum," Dr Yablon says.

"Museums were seen as inadequate memorialisations of the present. They tended to be full of relics of other civilisations or they were collections that were massed haphazardly without any sense of how they illuminated the present.

"So the time capsule would be a narrower selection for future audiences or future historians to view."

According to Dr Yablon, one of the first people to create a time vessel was Chicago photographer Charles Mosher, an early advocate of eugenics.

Mosher created a "Memorial Safe" time vessel for the American Centennial Exposition in 1876, celebrating 100 years since the country's signing of the Declaration of Independence.

In his book Remembrance of Things Present, Dr Yablon writes that Mosher appears to have had "fears about the contamination of Anglo-Saxon Protestant stock".

To memorialise that stock, Mosher filled a safe with some 10,000 portraits of notable Chicagoans and their wives, as well as literature on "progenerate" schools and colleges.

Mosher invoked eugenics pseudoscience in "vaguely expressed hopes that the 'healthy' could be encouraged to reproduce ... and the 'unfit' discouraged", Dr Yablon says.

He writes that Mosher "gave physical form to his racial visions, rendering his eugenicist utopia concrete through the vessel".

Time capsules attracted others like Mosher, who included eugenicist pamphlets in their vessels.

Dr Yablon says there's a more altruistic element to the tradition of time capsules that could be embraced as we face the global challenge of climate change.

At the turn of the 20th century, Louis Ehrich, a Jewish American from Colorado Springs, created a time capsule intended for today's citizens of his city.

According to Dr Yablon, Ehrich was concerned about environmental degradation and other developments in America, such as class conflict.

"He used the time capsule there to kind of create and instil a sense of duty to future generations," he says.

As students across the world protest for climate change action, Dr Yablon believes time capsules could help create a sense of responsibility to future generations and negotiate a way forward.

"We need more than just a philosophy or a ... legal theory of the rights of future generations," he says.

"We actually need to create a sense of emotional connection. Time capsules are a very powerful way of creating that."

Simply by existing, time capsules acknowledge future generations because what's the point of creating a time capsule, if it won't have an audience?

In that way, they connect the future with the present.

"The time capsule expanded our idea of how we communicated through time," Dr Yablon says.

Take Scottish artist Katie Paterson's Future Library, a time capsule reimagined.

Paterson's large-scale art project began in 2014, when a thousand spruce trees were planted in a forest just outside of Oslo.

The trees will be allowed to grow for a hundred years before they are cut down and turned into paper, which will be used to print 100 previously unseen manuscripts, by authors such as Margaret Atwood, David Mitchell and Karl Ove Knausgrd.

Dr Yablon says it's a project that is about more than just the books.

"It's that idea of exercising stewardship over the forest that will create the wood for the paper that will print these books," he says.

"The book is the lure, but the real message is the need to... cultivate those forests and preserve them, and preserve the larger environment."

And in so doing, maybe time capsules can counter their darker past, by helping to create a brighter future.

Topics:history,19th-century,20th-century,race-relations,human-interest,united-states,australia

First posted March 01, 2020 07:00:00

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The history of time capsules has a dark side linked to eugenics. But their future is brighter - ABC News

NewsUK NewsThe law actively discriminates against unborn children with Downs Syndrome and other non-fatal disabilities, but a campaign aims to change that, writes Brian Wilson.

Saturday, 29th February 2020, 7:40 am

Those of us with a family interest in Downs Syndrome tend to notice positive stories about people with the condition.

The past few days have provided a good crop. Theres the girl in Boston who loves baking and, when nobody would give her a job, opened her own little bakery with help from her mother and sister.

The Boston Golden Goose Market placed a regular order. Publicity led to more business and they are now employing people with and without disabilities.

Then theres Arras in northern France where a young woman is about to become the countrys first local councillor with Downs Syndrome. The mayor said: She will be a councillor like no other but she will be a councillor in her own right.

Or how about the enterprising parents of little Odhran McLafferty in Easter Ross who have signed him up with a model agency. Odhran will also feature in a campaign called Nothing Down aiming to change pereceptions of Downs Syndrome.

These stories point to an important truth. The term Downs Syndrome covers a wide abilities range and as many personalities as there are individuals. Just like the rest of us.

Our own son, now aged 27, is not a baker, a prospective councillor or a model. Hes just a nice, gentle guy who enhances the lives of those he comes in contact with and costs the state very little.

So why is society so determined to get rid of all these people; to eliminate them en bloc? Why in some supposedly advanced, liberal European countries are they now on the point of succeeding?

These questions are brought into focus by the campaign supported by the actress Sally Little, herself a Downs parent, to amend the 1967 Abortion Act in order to equalise the treatment of all unborn children with non-fatal disabilities.

By far the biggest category of terminations beyond 24 weeks involve cases in which testing has taken place for Downs Syndrome. That is the product of a relentless campaign to persuade parents that the birth of a Downs child is a disaster which should, at all costs, be avoided.

Most astounding hypocrisy

For as long as our son has been alive, we have squirmed to read glowing reports of more accurate tests which identify Downs pregnancies for one purpose only. Nobody can question the campaigns success in the UK, more than 90 per cent of Downs births are pre-empted (along, inadvertently, with many non-Downs births).

Another Downs parent, happy with his lot, is the journalist Dominic Lawson. He made a valid point this week about justified outrage over a brief appearance in Downing Street of a bonkers special adviser with a record of eugenicist ravings.

Dominic wrote: Hidden in plain sight is the most astounding hypocrisy. Eugenics is practiced in this country, funded by the taxpayer... I am referring to the law governing the termination of pregnancy and the fact it actively discriminates against those unborn children who are likely to have subnormal IQs or physical disabilities.

If there is enough truth in that observation to give pause for thought in the UK, then consider what is happening in Scandinavia. Denmark and Iceland have official policies of eliminating Downs kids. At the last count, they are 98 and 100 per cent successful, respectively.

But why stop at Downs Syndrome? Are there not other troublesome conditions which might cost the state money and cause upset to perfect families? Once this form of eugenics is accepted and packaged as an undisputed advance for medical science, it is difficult to draw a line.

There is of course an alternative. It is to offer balanced information rather than eugenic prejudice to prospective parents. It is to create a climate of support and quality provision to help families adjust. It is to welcome diversity as an asset rather than a curse.

And if you disagree with any of that, just remember the baker, the councillor, the child model... Lumping a category of people together in order to get rid of them all is not a healthy trait in any society.

More:

Prejudice against Downs Syndrome is a form of eugenics Brian Wilson - The Scotsman

The Hate-Monger is a minor Marvel comics villain, first documented by Jack Kirby and Stan Lee in December 1963, who is a clone of Hitler and wears a purple Ku Klux Klan robe. In Fantastic Four issue 21, The Hate-Monger bounces his Hate-Ray off the moon, amplifying peoples feelings of dread, fear and anxiety, inflaming their prejudices and turning humanity against itself. And yet somehow, last week, The Hate-Monger himself was given a job at the very heart of Dominic Cummings government. And this despite his saying the underclass should undergo enforced contraception, womens sport is like the paralympics, wives should provide sex on demand and black people were more stupid than white people. And all while bouncing a Hate-Ray off the moon and wearing a purple Ku Klux Klan robe. And being a clone of Hitler.

We should prevent racists coming into No 10 or wherever The Hate-Monger was working, said Kwasi Alfred Addo Kwarteng, MP for Spelthorne, former undersecretary of state for the Department for Exiting the European Union and current minister of state for business, energy and clean growth, and I think that we do need to look at these processes. What will it take for black Conservatives to disavow the Cumming government they facilitate? Didnt the fact that The Hate-Monger was wearing a purple Ku Klux Klan robe while bouncing a Hate-Ray off the moon and being a clone of Hitler set off some alarm bells? Views such as The Hate-Mongers define Cummings government. The assertion last November, by the resentful foundling and reformed coke-face Michael Gove, that Stormzy should stick to rapping and stay out of politics, assumes black folk are made for singing, dancing and running, while white people are better suited to white peoples activities such as Latin, crown green bowls and the clarinet. And the now muzzled Jacob Rees-Mogg blamed the Grenfell victims stupidity for their misfortune.

Boris Piccaninny Watermelon Letterbox Cake Bumboys Vampires Haircut Wall-Spaffer Spunk-Burster Fuck-Business Fuck-the-Families Get-Off-My-Fucking-Laptop Girly-Swot Big-Girls-Blouse Chicken-frit Hulk-Smash Noseringed-Crusties Death-Humbug Technology-Lessons Surrender-Bullshit French-Turds Dog-Whistle Get-Stuffed FactcheckUK@CCHQ 88%-lies Get-Brexit-Done Bung-a-Bob-for-Big-Bens-Bongs Cocaine-Event Spiritual-Worth Three-Men-and-a-Dog Johnson is the rarely visible public face of the Cumming government that hired The Hate-Monger.

PM Turdss spokesperson refused to clarify PM Turdss position on eugenics 32 actual genuine times in succession during a press briefing on Monday. The prime ministers views are well documented, said the spokesperson repeatedly. And they are. In 2013 Turds, born into incredible privilege, said: I am afraid that a violent economic centrifuge is operating on human beings who are already very far from equal in raw ability, if not spiritual worth for one reason or another boardroom greed or, as I am assured, the natural and God-given talent of boardroom inhabitants the income gap between the top cornflakes and the bottom cornflakes is getting wider than ever.

This was a not especially coded message, a Eugenics for Dummies, to Turdss privileged audience, at the opaquely funded Centre for Policy Studies thinktank at 57 Tufton Street, that their privilege was a result of their natural and God-given talent, innate raw ability and superiority to the poor, rather than of fortuitous accidents of birth. How comforting for everyone involved. Bastards. Bastards. Bastards.

I didnt grow up in a house full of books. I fumbled my way via a charity bung and a scholarship into the educational privilege I now benefit from at others expense. Old Marvel comics were the holy scrolls that made me. With great power comes great responsibility: it is because of Spider-Mans unequivocal moral system that I wont perform my multiple-award-winning standup shows in venues that work with the immoral secondary ticketing agencies Sajid Javid described as classic entrepreneurs. It is because of Howard the Ducks studied cynicism that I have a healthy disdain for the absurdity of the world I never made, and it is because of Ant-Man that I have made slaves of dozens of ants, with which I will fight our own enslavement by the far right. My ants shall not sleep in my hand till we have built Jerusalem, in Englands green and pleasant land.

The radical socialist principles of Christ are still almost visible through the curtain-twitching windowpane of the modern Church of England; at the start of this month, Dave Hill sacked Don Powell from Slade, leaving Hill the sole original member, but the group carries with it the spirit of Noddy Holder in a tartan romper suit with Christmas faggot juice all round his mouth; and likewise the original values of those psychedelic 60s and progressive 70s Marvel comics, flowing from the mushy pens of working-class, liberal Jewish autodidacts and acid-casualty, space-travelling college dropouts respectively, still haunt the dimmer recesses of their cinematic blockbuster manifestations, like the starving ghosts of early Christian saints in Pope Benedicts Prada slipper chamber.

Marvels chairman is now the Trump-donor Ike Perlmutter, who reportedly said it didnt matter which black actor played Iron Mans pal James Rhodes as all black people look the same, but its original four-colour countercultural pointillist visions continue to liquefy into damning prophesies of the populist age. In the 2011 Marvel comic Fear Itself, The Hate-Monger returns to a world where many of the cartoon Nazi values his former purple-robed form embodied half a century ago have now nudged into mainstream politics. But the modern Marvel Hate-Monger isnt a clone of Hitler who uses a Hate-Ray to transmit hate to Earth from the moon. Hes an everyday guy who thinks his opportunities are being taken by immigrants and he spreads his hate with internet forums and conspiracy theory websites. Hes just the kind of weirdo misfit Dominic Cumming is looking for. He may need to lose the purple Ku Klux Klan robe, however. Were not quite ready for that. Yet. I give it a matter of months. There are some very fine people on both sides.

Stewart Lees Snowflake: Tornado is at Londons Southbank Centre in June and July, and touring nationally now

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Downing Street a haven for weirdos, misfits and comic-book villains - The Guardian

The first thing we did Friday morning was telephone our brother. He is a logger who, at the age of 72, is still out in the woods with a chain saw and his 14-wheel log truck that is, for Paul Bunyans ox, painted blue and named Babe. He said he was floating a stack.* Skip breakfast, we told him, and get down to the Bijou to see Call of the Wild. Its the best movie weve seen in years, we allowed.

Bettern Tall Tale? he asked.

We paused. It is true that the ending of Tall Tale is unlikely ever to be surpassed. The movie tells of how a boy named Daniel Hackett saves his fathers ranch from railroaders. He does it with the help of Bunyan, John Henry, and Calamity Jane, as well as Pecos Bill. In the final scene, Pecos bestows his famous Friesian Widowmaker on Hackett. Then Pecos lassos a tornado and rides it off into the sky.

Its breathtaking cinema probably the only footage ever captured of a man roping a tornado and getting astride it. Yet reflecting on my brothers question, I realized that theres a flaw in Tall Tale. Its the blasted complexity of the plot. Macbeth, Lear, and those guys have nothing on Tall Tale. How, though, is a man supposed to follow all those twists? It might be possible for a youngster. For a man, difficult.

Call of the Wild, in contrast, has no plot that a grownup could fail to follow. Its just about a dog named Buck, who is spirited from his urban life by dognappers intent on taking him to the Yukon to sell him to prospectors needing hefty hounds to pull their sleds. Buck escapes, and ends up pulling a mail sled 500 miles north to Dawson, while fending off wolves and saving other dogs and humans.

In Dawson, one might imagine, Buck is going to encounter the loving owners from whom he was dognapped back in civilization. That, though, probably never occurred to Jack London, who wrote the immortal novel on which the movie is based. London, it turns out, was something of a lug nut, who was given over to every political enthusiasm of his day, from socialism to eugenics.

None of that, though, shows up in Call of the Wild. It is blessedly untarnished by politics, the #metoo movement, environmentalism, global warming, and the like. Jack London, it turns out, did see deeper stuff. Buck is rescued from the sled of a cruel owner by none other than Harrison Ford, who plays the aging prospector whod gone north because he didnt want to be around anyone.

So he and Buck head out into the wilderness, where an astonishing thing happens. Buck begins to find himself. The moviegoer begins to comprehend that Buck isnt going to bump into his original owners. They are not coming north to look for him. This isnt Dickens. Its Jack London. Buck falls for a beautiful wolf and takes off for where he is meant to be, chasing rabbits, butterflies, and the Northern Lights.

As our wife and we left the theater, we remarked that it was just incredible how the movie makers managed to train that dog and photograph him in so many hair-raising situations and how Bucks face would flicker with almost human expressions (the cock of an eyebrow or the hint of a smile). My wife explained that Buck was actually a computer-generated animation.

Thats what the critics claimed about Pecos Bill, we said.

________

* Laying breakfast by floating a stack of flapjacks in a bowl of maple syrup.

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'The Call of the Wild' Might Even Rival The Epic 'Tall Tale' - New York Sun

An outrageous, racist and outdated belief in the innate intellectual inferiority of black people periodically re-enters public debate, usually masquerading as a bold initiative at the forefront of science; challenging convention and thinking the unthinkable.

A 27-year-old called Andrew Sabisky provides the latest example. In a matter of days, this Downing Street aide joined, then quit, the UK governments policy machine after a series of controversial past comments came to light. It is easy to misunderstand the significance of this. Sabiskys view that black people are genetically pre-determined to be less intelligent than whites was widely attacked in the media and politics. Yet the evidence suggests that his thinking about the nature of intelligence may not be entirely out of step with those in power in the UK.

Like Sabisky, they may claim that a focus on past statements and actions is unfair: tweeting about his departure Sabisky blamed selective quoting and media hysteria about my old stuff online. But the record is all we have on these matters.

At a press briefing shortly before Sabiskys departure, the prime ministers deputy spokesman refused more than 30 times to state Boris Johnsons views on eugenics and the supposed intellectual inferiority of black people. The press secretary repeatedly stated that the PMs views are well publicised and well documented.

I have been researching racism in education for more than 30 years and, at regular intervals, this means revisiting the question of supposed racial differences in intelligence a topic that refuses to die despite the wealth of evidence against it. Viewed from this perspective, there are some key takeaways from the Sabisky affair.

Much of the press coverage presented him as a maverick outsider; someone fitting Dominic Cummings search for misfits and weirdos to advance government thinking. But Sabiskys appointment highlights a view that is in line with earlier statements on intelligence by the prime minister and his chief advisor.

What sets Sabisky apart from some people in government is not his belief in intelligence as a fixed and measurable trait, but the way he expressed it. In 2013, for example, Boris Johnson sang the praises of the free market economy and the competition that it fosters when he said:

That violent economic centrifuge is operating on human beings who are already very far from equal in raw ability, if not spiritual worth. Whatever you may think of the value of IQ tests, it is surely relevant to a conversation about equality that as many as 16% of our species have an IQ below 85, while about 2% have an IQ above 130. The harder you shake the pack, the easier it will be for some cornflakes to get to the top.

There is, of course, no mention of supposed race differences in intelligence here; but there is a clear belief in IQ tests as a useful measure of innate ability. What the prime minster failed to mention (or understand?) is that IQ tests are periodically re-calibrated so that 100 always falls at the overall average, despite the fact that average performance has risen over time. There will always be a percentage of our species below 85 because that is the way the test is designed and maintained. The significance of any IQ score is always open to debate.

A few years ago I wrote a paper challenging many of the myths that surround IQ. I included analysis of Dominic Cummings 237-page essay, Some Thoughts on Education and Political Priorities. At the time, Cummings was special advisor to the then education secretary, Michael Gove.

His essay attacks policymakers failure to embrace what he calls the relevant science concerning evolutionary influences on intelligence. Those familiar with the debates will know that evolution is frequently invoked as a causal explanation for current race inequalities, for example, in the work of J Philippe Rushton, whose evolutionary theory of race and intelligence places Negroids at the lesser end of the spectrum.

I think most would read Cummings essay as inferring that evolution and genes shape IQ but he never offers an explicit position on the controversial issue of race and intelligence. A section entitled Genes, class and social mobility ends with a lengthy quotation from an MIT professor who speculates that, in the future, people might discover alleles [types of genes] for certain aspects of cognitive function and those alleles might vary between different ethnic groups:

Then for the first time there could be a racism which is based not on some kind of virulent ideology, not based on some kind of kooky versions of genetics.

Unfortunately, Cummings offers no commentary whatsoever on the ideas contained in this quoted text.

I have called this strategy racial inexplicitness a careful avoidance of clarity about race and education amid a long and winding discussion that prompts the reader to join the dots without ever stating clearly where he thinks the dots lead us.

Reviewing Cummings sources and influences is instructive. One of his heroes is the American psychologist Professor Robert Plomin. Plomin has made headlines in recent years for his increasingly exaggerated claims about the genetics of intelligence, including most recently, that DNA is a fortune teller giving us the power to predict our psychological strengths and weaknesses from birth. Cummings invited Plomin to visit the education department to explain the science of IQ and genetics to officials and ministers.

Plomin, like Cummings, is currently vague about his views on race and intelligence. But in the 1990s he supported the claims made famous in the book The Bell Curve, which stated that class and race inequities in society mostly reflect genetics. He was one of 52 people who signed a 1994 Wall Street Journal article that claimed mainstream science shows that intelligence tests are not culturally biased against American blacks or other native-born, English-speaking peoples. The article also stated that:

The bell curve for whites is centred roughly around IQ 100; the bell curve for American blacks roughly around 85; and those for different subgroups of hispanics roughly midway between those for whites and blacks.

These statements blithely ignore years of critique that has documented the misunderstandings and racist misuses of IQ tests. They are also remarkably similar to the racist blog post that came back to haunt Andrew Sabisky.

Asked, in 2015, whether he now regretted signing the Wall Street Journal statement, Professor Plomin replied, Well I regret it to the extent its a distraction to my research. But I think the basic facts are there erm, about heritability of intelligence.

It would be nice to think that Cummings and Plomin now reject such spurious views, but they have not explicitly stated their current position. If these documented views do reflect their current thinking then it would be the case that deeply racist and regressive beliefs about the nature of intelligence and education lie at the heart of the British government.

These views are bad news for many groups in society, especially those deemed less gifted. And its not so unlikely that we could see them entering policy. Despite the negative press coverage generated by Sabiskys beliefs, such dogma could conceivably be translated into a superficially acceptable policy brief. One way would be for education reforms to claim to apply scientific methods to identify the brightest and best and single them out for special attention. This would be presented as a meritocratic exercise, intended to fast-track clever children regardless of their social background.

The methods would include cognitive assessments (often a code for IQ tests) and the talk would be of social mobility and colour-blindness, whereby the approach treats everyone as an individual. No one in authority would worry about the fact that such assessments seem to always place a disproportionate number of black kids in the less-able bracket. Thats how institutional racism works.

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Is dangerous thinking about race and IQ at the heart of UK government? - The Conversation UK