Category: Prejudice

Dead End Kennedys

November 20, 2024 By arne hendriks Off

The title of the iconic punk band Dead Kennedys‘ last album “Bedtime for Democracy” (1986) is said to come from the film “Bedtime for Bonzo” starring Ronald Reagan and is an indictment of Reaganomics, neoliberalism, war, and infobesity. It also features the track “Shrink”. The…

Zen Road to Affluence

February 26, 2024 By arne hendriks Off

In 1966, Marshall Sahlins wrote an important and still quite sensational paper entitled “The Original Affluent Society”. In it he argues that the original hunter-gatherers did not exist, as was commonly believed, on the edge of famine but had a sufficient degree of material comfort…

The Swallow Cycle

October 2, 2023 By arne hendriks Off

Thumbling stories have two things in common: 1. The protagonist is by default very small, and 2. To emphasize and perhaps ridicule this smallness, at some point in the story, they’re swallowed by an animal, preferably a cow. The good news is that most times…

SitzZwerg

September 28, 2023 By arne hendriks Off

In the Appendix to the online dictionary Wictionary is a section called “Terms considered difficult or impossible to translate into English”. One word that caught our attention is ‘Sitzzwerg’. The German word Sitzen means to sit, and Zwerg means dwarf. Thus a Sitzzwerg is a…

Court Dwarfs: Nano Morgante

June 13, 2022 By arne hendriks Off

Surely one of the most remarkable sculptures created during the reign of Cosimo I de’ Medici is that of the dwarf jester Nano Morgante, whose real name was Braccio di Bartolo. Morgante, which means giant, was ironically nicknamed after the giant from the poem of the same name…

MCR3

November 7, 2021 By arne hendriks Off

According to research at the University of Cambridge the protein melanocortin receptor 3 appears to have an important role in linking signals of caloric sufficiency to the control of lineair growth of the human body. The research provides a mechanistic basis for the global secular…

Vamana

April 6, 2021 By arne hendriks Off

The Hindu god Vishnu manifested himself on earth through ten primary incarnations. Within each of these incarnations are lessons for humanity. The first four incarnations are animal/human hybrids between a man and a fish, a turtle, a boar and a lion. The last six manifestations…

The Peruvian Variant

May 30, 2020 By arne hendriks Off

Nearly 4,000 common variations in DNA are known to affect stature. Each variant nudges your height up, or down, with one millimeter or so. But now researchers have identified the single largest genetic contributor to human height known to date. The sensational findings of the…

D(r)egrowth

November 7, 2018 By arne hendriks Off

What does it mean when your spellingcontrol keeps changing the word degrowth into the word regrowth? How obsessed with growth must a society be when decades after the word degrowth was introduced to inspire a paradigm shift towards the destructive idea of continuous economic growth,…

Cumulative Default Yielding Response

October 27, 2017 By arne hendriks Off

Despite the fact that physical dominance is no longer an evident evolutionary advantage and is not very cost-effective people continue to grow taller. Archaic biological systems are replaced by confused growth-obsessed cultural values. Despite evidence that in Western societies being tall continues to be positively…

The Devil’s Dwarfs

June 4, 2015 By arne hendriks 0

At the onset of the First World War the British Army announced that no man under the height of 160cm (5 ft 3 inches) was deemed strong enough to fight and serve their country. As the war dragged into the second year, with enormous loss…

The Simple Growth Obsession Test

January 15, 2015 By arne hendriks 0

We’re obsessed with growth. The Simple Growth Obsession Test is a simple test to check for yourself how much growth and our deeply embedded sensitivity for signs of growth create an emotional response when confronted with signs of its absence or presence. The test itself is…

Tall Tales: Tall Men

December 1, 2013 By arne hendriks 6

Most women prefer tall men over their shorter rivals. Over a century of feminism hasn’t changed much about that. Unfortunately this preference is one of the forces that leads to a global increase in human height. Because of women’s preferences tall men have more children and…

Force-Feeding Milk

June 2, 2013 By arne hendriks 1

On the occasion of the FAO’s World Milk Day the Thai Ministry of Health’s director-general Jedsada Chokdamrongsuk revealed an ill conceived plan to boost Thai’s youth milk consumption from 14 to 60 litres per year. The reason for this? To  increase the average Thai male height…

The Raw Tom Outrage

January 20, 2013 By arne hendriks 1

Tom Watkins is a 15 year old kid from Amsterdam who’s raised on a Raw food vegan diet. Raw foodies eat uncooked, unprocessed organic foods as a large percentage of the diet. The idea is that raw food is healthier than cooked food because it doesn’t…

Overcoming the Uncanny

March 12, 2012 By arne hendriks 0

People are often disturbed by the idea of shrinking the human species. The confrontation with unusually small-sized adults sometimes triggers a psychosomatic sensitivity  also known as the uncanny. The uncanny is a Freudian concept of an instance where something is familiar, yet foreign at the same…

Auxology Update

October 11, 2011 By arne hendriks 1

Auxology is the highly multi-disciplinary science that studies all aspects of human physical growth. It includes such diverse fields as economics, medicine, nutrition, and anthropology. Auxologists could, and perhaps should, play a key role in inspiring the cultural shift needed in order to accomplish a smaller…

Peter Gabriel on Humanoid Height

April 21, 2011 By arne hendriks 0

Human prejudice against being small is a complicated mix of biological and cultural reasons. In the 1972 dystopian song ‘Get them out by Friday’ by progressive rockband Genesis, small size is appropriated for the economic benefit of a greedy project developer. The 9 minute mini-opera envisions a…

22 billion reasons to keep growing

May 17, 2010 By arne hendriks 0

In 2003, the US Federal Drug Administration approved the use of human growth hormone for healthy short children in an attempt to make them taller. There is nothing medically wrong with these children; they produce normal levels of growth hormone on their own. They are…

310 for every Cm

May 10, 2010 By arne hendriks 1

A 2003 University of Florida and University of North Carolina study found that short people are paid less than their taller peers: Each centimetre in height amounted to about $310 more a year in pay. In a similar study conducted in Australia in 2009 by professor…