Cold Prairie Dead

[Jackaroe]

I was to the New International Center of Photography today
to see Andy Warhol. The Andy stuff was dandy, well I was
with some Andy fans, JFK and Jackie and a lot of smudged and
dirty silks, not my cup of cabbage juice, but what was more
interesting,  for me anyway, of interest here perhaps, was
the Eugenics and Photography Exhibition. Cold Spring Harbor
was there,  yes and Eastman, Rockefeller, Davenport,
Dugdale, Galton, the whole rotten crew and the "scrub
family," "the jukes," the "fitter family" and "perfect baby
contest" and one longitudinal study of a family of "feeble
minded breeders," progeny of one Ishmael. Physiognomist or
Phrenologist, pseudo-scientists, geneticists, psychologists,
The New York Academy of Medicine, propagandists, even the
president of these United States, the dirty money, the Nazi
connection again. I have seen photos of the IBM computers
used to take census in Germany in the 1930s.  I will never
fill out a census questionnaire. 

What do you think? 


http://www.icp.org/exhibitions/eugenics/index.html


>From Moby-Dick CHAPTER 79

  The Prairie

  To scan the lines of his face, or feel the bumps on the
head of this Leviathan; this is a thing which no
Physiognomist or Phrenologist has as yet undertaken. Such an
enterprise would seem almost as hopeful as for Lavater to
have scrutinized the wrinkles on the Rock of Gibraltar, or
for Gall to have mounted a ladder and manipulated the dome
of the Pantheon. Still, in that famous work of his, Lavater
not only treats of the various faces of men, but also
attentively studies the faces of horses, birds, serpents,
and fish; and dwells in detail upon the modifications of
expression discernible therein.
Nor have Gall and his disciple Spurzheim failed to throw out
some hints touching the phrenological characteristics of
other beings than man. Therefore, though I am but ill
qualified for a pioneer, in the application of these two
semi-sciences to the whale, I will do my endeavor. I try all
things; I achieve what I can
.  In some particulars, perhaps
the most imposing physiognomical view to be had of the Sperm
Whale, is that of the full front of his head. This aspect is
sublime
.  Champollion deciphered the wrinkled granite
hieroglyphics. But there is no Champollion to decipher the
Egypt of every man's and every being's face. Physiognomy,
like every other human science, is but a passing fable. If
then, Sir William Jones, who read in thirty languages, could
not read the simplest peasant's face in its profounder and
more subtle meanings, how may unlettered Ishmael hope to
read the awful Chaldee of the Sperm Whale's brow? I but put
that brow before you. Read it if you can.

If you plant ice you're gonna harvest wind under the
midnight sun