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Family of Stephen Jay Gould Files Wrongful Death Lawsuit
Tampa Bay On Line (AP) ^ | May 20, 2005 | By Mark Pratt, Associated Press Writer

Posted on 05/20/2005 7:40:19 PM PDT by aculeus

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To: L.N. Smithee
Feedback Doctor: Survival of the Fittest

L.N. Smithee: I can't believe his heirs couldn't see the irony. Oh well.

Actually, perhaps they do. These days, the fittest is the one with the best legal team.

61 posted on 05/21/2005 9:56:42 AM PDT by Gondring (Pretend you don't know me...I'm in the WPPFF.)
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To: aculeus; Gondring
Agreed. A perfect example of Gould's sleight-of-hand masquerading as science was his The Mismeasure of Man where he attacks the missteps and outright foolishness of 19th and early 20th century psychometricians. With his usual inflated and self-congratulatory prose style, he leads his eager followers into believing that there is essentially no difference between the phrenologists of the past and the people who devise modern intelligence tests.

While the usual gang of liberal idiots gave the book glowing reviews (The NY Times, NY Review of Books, et. al.), this piece of trash did not fare nearly as well when reviewed in scientific publications (e.g., Science). It is also telling that the book never made the NY Times' bestseller list.

For a good academic reflection on this issue, click here.

62 posted on 05/21/2005 9:57:49 AM PDT by Pharmboy ("Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God")
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To: Wolfgang_Blitzkrieg
Anyway, it's no loss cuz old man Gould was an evolutionist, and as such, contributed nothing of real worth to the world. Ice water in your veins. I shudder to think what sort of philosohy make a person so very cold.
63 posted on 05/21/2005 9:57:50 AM PDT by Adult Adoptee (Exodus 2:1-10)
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To: Adult Adoptee

I believe this is called hyperbole (like "mile high ice cream cone").


64 posted on 05/21/2005 10:34:36 AM PDT by The Red Zone (Florida, the sun-shame state, and Illinois the chicken injun.)
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To: Jim Noble

Some firms and hospitals offer scanning services to the public for "check up" purposes, at fairly moderate self pay prices. If there's enough of this kind of market, scarcity ceases to be a problem.


65 posted on 05/21/2005 10:42:13 AM PDT by The Red Zone (Florida, the sun-shame state, and Illinois the chicken injun.)
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To: Gondring
Oh, but wait..."Trojan" is a Classical reference...

The artist formerly known as 'Prince' refers to it.

... I suppose we can pretend it refers to a consumer brand of latex products...

Yep. Same reference.

66 posted on 05/21/2005 11:35:33 AM PDT by dread78645 (Sorry Mr. Franklin, We couldn't keep it.)
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To: Pharmboy

Well, it must have been tough for him to face reality rather than the ivory tower and back-slapping urbanensia.

A few years ago, I was taking classes toward a masters degree in education, and The Bell Curve debates were part of one class I took. Instead of assigning The Bell Curve, the professor assigned readings of anti-Bell Curve essays, etc., including Gould.

I realized, after that unit, that I was the only one in the class who'd read both sides, and all these teachers (most of my classmates were practicing teachers) were going back to their classrooms with totally distorted views of what Murray and Hernstein's book said. It gave me a cold shiver to realize these people were supposedly graduate-level students and felt like they were educated--and were educating our youth--yet had no true picture of that issue.


67 posted on 05/21/2005 12:29:50 PM PDT by Gondring (Pretend you don't know me...I'm in the WPPFF.)
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To: Gondring
Well, it must have been tough for him to face reality...

Precisely. And, that is why he NEVER shut up about it. He wrote books, columns, appeared on panels, testified in court, etc. etc. He figured if he just kept pouring it on it would become reality.

As you likely know, the left (especially memebers of the hard left like Gould) have a huge investment in the supreme importance of the environment in determining all facets of human behavior. When I met Gould for a beer back in the 1980s (I worked with someone who knew him from his Oberlin days) I accused him of being a Lysenkoist. He did not appreciate that and said I was waaaay too much of a genetic determinist.

68 posted on 05/21/2005 12:47:35 PM PDT by Pharmboy ("Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God")
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To: Pharmboy
When I met Gould for a beer back in the 1980s (I worked with someone who knew him from his Oberlin days) I accused him of being a Lysenkoist.

Good for you.

I never had the "pleasure" of meeting him but I come from the same part of NYC (my Queens high school's district was contiguous with his) and even had a girl communist sitting directly behind me in most classes. (Our last names were 'this close' alphabetically which is how most teachers arranged seating.) She and a boy-communist dominated class discussions of current events and parroted the Moscow line.

David Horowitz, another Queens "Red Diaper" baby gives some flavor of the intense pro-Stalin CPUSA of those days in his autobiography. (One of his parents' friends confessed years later to having played a small role in the Trotsky murder.)

I suspect Gould's parents were enthusiastic supporters if not members of CPUSA.

69 posted on 05/21/2005 1:55:30 PM PDT by aculeus (Ceci n'est pas une tag line.)
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To: aculeus
Gould has written that he "...learned his communism at his grandfather's knee" (that is pretty close to an exact quote as I remember it from a column of his published in Natural History). I do not remember him ever writing about his parents, but it would be hard to believe that they were not also rabid commies.
70 posted on 05/21/2005 2:35:41 PM PDT by Pharmboy ("Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God")
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To: Pharmboy
Gould has written that he "...learned his communism at his grandfather's knee" (that is pretty close to an exact quote as I remember it from a column of his published in Natural History).

No big deal, but I remember it as "his father's knee".

As someone (Groucho Marx?) once said, "It was certainly a low joint."

71 posted on 05/21/2005 6:36:01 PM PDT by aculeus (Ceci n'est pas une tag line.)
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To: aculeus

We have finally found something to disagree about! (And, it's just a generation-thing).


72 posted on 05/21/2005 6:48:02 PM PDT by Pharmboy ("Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God")
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To: Pharmboy
"It may also not be irrelevant to our personal preferences that one of us learned his Marxism, literally at his daddy's knee."

... and it was in their (Gould + Lewontin) hilarious Gothic cathederal nonsensical paper, The *****'s of San ******. (Memory is a fickle bitch.)

http://www.stephenjaygould.org/library/gould_structure.html

73 posted on 05/21/2005 7:03:09 PM PDT by aculeus (Ceci n'est pas une tag line.)
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To: aculeus
Well, it looks like aculeus wins the game, set and match on this one. I wish I could find the Natural History column, because the grandfather quote stuck with me. But, he who has documentation gets the gold ring. Good job.
74 posted on 05/21/2005 7:07:59 PM PDT by Pharmboy ("Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God")
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