"When the vicious and feeble-minded people reproduce, they do so more recklessly."

Mary Stopes, 1918
Wise Parenthood: A Practical Sequel to Married Love
quoted in Love and Eugenics in the Late Nineteenth Century, p. 58

...in Parenthood and Race Culture: An Outline of Eugenics (1909), Caleb William Saleeby crystallized the position which social purists had come increasingly to adopt: "we have in marriage not only the greatest instrument of raceculture that has yet been employed -- half-consciously -- by man, but also an instrument supremely fitted, and indeed without a rival, for the conscious, deliberate, and scientific intentions of modern eugenicists."

from Love and Eugenics in the Late Nineteenth Century, p. 71

Oxford University Press Book Description

• A wide-ranging exploration of how the eugenic debate obsessed fiction writers and social reformers alike, in late Victorian England
• Strong supporters included [George Bernard] Shaw, [H.G.] Wells, Herbert Spencer, Marie Stopes, and Virginia Woolf; among fierce opponents were Thomas Huxley, Mona Caird, Chesterton, and Belloc
• A radical contribution to English studies, nineteenth-century and gender studies, and the history of science

the quote below is from: Recent studies in the nineteenth century
by Kate Flint
source: Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900, 22 September 2004
via: HighBeam™ Research
Copyright © 2004 Rice University

Familial relations of a very different kind form the subject matter of Angelique Richardson's Love and Eugenics in the Late Nineteenth Century: Rational Reproduction and the New Woman, which considers the ideas concerning human selective breeding that were in circulation at the end of the nineteenth century. Developed by Charles Darwin's cousin Francis Galton in the 1860s, and drawing on theories of evolution, eugenics looked to provide solutions both for the problems of the urban poor and for the challenge of maintaining national supremacy. Richardson shows how these theories had particular resonance for a number of intellectually and politically concerned women in the period, who firmly believed that "the women of Britain could best serve the race, the country, and their own interests through the rational selection of a reproductive partner" (p. 215). This was the view that time and again comes across in the fiction of some of the best known New Woman authors, particularly Sarah Grand and George Egerton (although, as she shows, resistance to eugenics is an important aspect of Mona Caird's work). Richardson's achievement is to get us to recognize this fact and its implications, as well as the part played by their writings in the late-century debates between the hereditarians and the environmentalists. This is a bravely revisionist reading, which will give considerable pause for thought to all those who have enthusiastically embraced and celebrated the progressive, protofeminist aspects of the New Woman movement. One understands freshly that the resistance to romance which can be found in so many of the New Woman novelists and polemicists is less a defiant call for woman's autonomy and self-determination than a demand for rational reproduction. Richardson exposes not just the class biases, but in some cases the antihumanitarianism of these writers.

I occasionally -- never more than six times per day -- send out email alerts about the sort of late breaking news for which you have come to depend on CBO. Um, yes.

In fact, there are two such lists. One has around 4,000 Valued Readers, who have stuck with me for years, though thick and thin -- quite a bit of both, actually. The other list goes out to several dozen carefully selected individuals. The manner of their selection involves first identifying those highly influential and well positioned people in the online scene today, such as it is, whose criticism (snarkiness, verbal sneering, certain types of jokes, etc.) could seriously hurt me, or at least make me feel really really bad. I then defuse such potential embarrassments by spamming these people so relentlessly that none will give me the satisfaction of saying anything at all. It's a strategy that has cost me in terms of what Robert Putnam calls "social capital" (a term he lifted from someone else, possibly Angelina Jolie), but all in all, I feel it's just so much cheaper than having to pay Mafia protection rates. At any rate, Donna Wentworth is on the latter list -- as well as being listed in the left column here under "partners in crime"; we're still working out the plan -- and this patent-pending overlong overture will explain, I hope, the hijacking reference. I almost met Donna several years ago, and we've only spoken once or twice, briefly, by telephone, but I am nonetheless confident that she doesn't even have a pilot's license. Or so much as a box cutter, for that matter.

I suppose I should also explain that, while my list has been very effective in keeping these folks from talking to me, they will, on occasion, strike up a conversation among themselves, as if I weren't even there. As if I were, in point of fact, chopped liver. Not that I mind, mind you. Not that I hold any grudge, or anything like that. What do you take me for? I comfort myself that in Days of Olde they used to shoot the messenger. Now they just ignore the bastard. It's possible I've said too much already. Here's Donna's letter, forthwith, with embedded URLs. If you made it through all this blather, I hope you have the energy left to read on...

Subject: Another list hijacking
Hi all,

My deepest apologies -- I haven't participated in
this list for *quite some time,* being mired in
things Copyfight-related, so I've slipped into
obscure lurker-dom, alas.  But I wanted to let you
know about a website I've been working on that
many of you may be interested in: EFF's new 
Legal Guide for Bloggers. It's a collection of
FAQs aimed at helping the average blogger
understand her rights in the face of legal threats
that most people don't even understand. We don't
want people submitting to these threats (like
cease-and-desist letters from trademark holders)
without recognizing that they have a protected
right to speak.

Check it out and pass the word along if you think
it may suit any of your respective readerships.

Best,
D
 -- 
Donna Wentworth
Web Writer/Activist
Electronic Frontier Foundation
http://www.eff.org

The fish has laryngitis at the moment, but it's trying to say:

click me, click me! DO IT TODAY!

from: San Jose Mercury News, Dan Gillmor Column
source: Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News, 25 August 2002
via: HighBeam™ Research

Several weeks ago I said here that you need to get active, if you are concerned about the way the cartel is trying to take over the flow of information. You don't have to be a weblogger or political candidate to make a difference.

Several organizations are already working on your behalf. I urge you to visit their Web sites and then, if you agree with what they're saying and doing, consider supporting them with your contributions, time and energy.

Two of the more prominent such organizations are the Electronic Frontier Foundation (www.eff.org) has been at this for more than a decade, and the much newer DigitalConsumer.org (www.digitalconsumer.org). I'm going to create a Web page listing every such group I can find -- let me know of the ones you're familiar with.

It's more than nostalgia. It's wanting to believe again, but not being able to. It's the feeling that what we don't know could hurt us. Bad. Would be more than we could take. Where Ground Zero equals Childhood's End. How many of us have taken the hit directly in our personal lives? Absorbed the full impact of America's broken heart? Which didn't happen three years ago, but continues yesterday and the day before. Today. We want to believe all those things we learned in school about America the Beautiful. But that simple faith has been betrayed and we can't get it back by wishing, clicking our heels and repeating "There's no place like home..."

Heavy City, yeah. But what more can you say? How much less? It's part of the background radiation at this point, and even if your Geiger counter's going crazy, how you gonna wrap your head around something like that? No way. But images carry the day, contain affects too early to unpack; call the bomb squad. `

This started out last night as a thing about where to get images for your blog. For my blog, to be more precise. For CBO. Because my old practice of lifting anything I took a fancy to off Google Images doesn't set too well with certain notions of intellectual property law. And who wants the Kopyrite Kops to come calling, yo?

A white man in Boulder, Colorado, for whom the term "middle-aged" has become a euphemism for a let's just say less shiny truth, hopes the irony of that "yo" is not lost on you, Gentle Reader. That man would be me. However, here's the workaround. Pay close attention here, because this is an advanced technique of Capitalist Zen, which I studied for years at the Advanced Level in several occult Fortune 50 societies. And the secret, as such arcane matters often turn out to be, is simple. Sell out. Why, you may even find yourself ripping yourself off. And it's all perfectly legal -- as long as you're selling something. Society understands sales. Oh yes!

Even though that clip is from "my" book, it still says I can't copy the bit I've copied. So technically, I guess I'm breaking the law. It's a moot point, though, because Perseus, my erstwhile publisher, would never complain -- especially since, if you click the grafik, you can buy the thing. Me, I'm way past any illusion of earning royalties on this one. But it doesn't matter. I get to legitimately use the images of the books I'm <cough> selling here. Society may not understand the "winning though worst practices" bit, but that doesn't mean you can't. And note that this works for anyone, for any book. And it doesn't just work for books.

Take, for example, the Manhattan Dawn grafik at the top of this post. That's from art.com, of which I'm an affiliate. Go ahead, click the link. You see? You can buy the print for a low-low $21.99 -- or have it mounted for just $75.98. Personally, I couldn't care less if you buy it or not. That's not the point. The point is that I can drive home my deeper point about America's heartbreak by offering you a piece of the action. In fact, this method doubly underscores the "subliminal" message. Don't you think?

Marketing. I been trying to tell you all this time: it's an art.

This magical Koan des Kapitalismus also works great for all sorts of dorm wall decorations, via allposters.com. Once again, you need to become an affiliate, but that's a piece of cake. And once you're street legal, so to speak, you can "sell" (i.e., display) things you might otherwise get busted for -- like say, this richly detailed suitable-for-framing photo-illustration of the knucklehead pitch. Beauty, ay?

But of course the all-time winner source for pictures of just about anything you can think of -- and a lot a stuff you never imagined -- is good ol' Amazon. Do you really think I link to all these books because I expect anyone will buy them? You're kidding me, right? Bloggers? Buy books? Never happen. You should see my Amazon Affiliate reports. This last quarter I made maybe 30 bucks. Quarter before that it was 15. Oh yeah, this is the get-rich-quick scheme of the century I'm runnin over here! Funny thing is, when I ran an e-zine (for those of you who arrived online last week, that's a sort of email newsletter), I made hundreds of dollars every quarter. Sometimes thousands. No lie. But blogging put an end to all that right quick. Something about the general level of blog-O-sphere literacy, I suspect. Or IQ. But I've gotten over it (and you know, Velveeta® and Spam® really aren't all that bad), because look at all the pretty pictures I can still get!

Mati Klarwein was an artist who, among other things, created album covers. This one was first released in August 1969. He also did the cover for Santana's Abraxas (below), originally released in September 1970. Pictured on both covers is the now-infamous Black Magic Woman. However much time has elapsed since then, she still comin to get ya.
This image is from the back cover of The Art of Rock: Posters from Presley to Punk. Just going by memory, I can tell you the artist is (now, sadly, was) Rick Griffin, the king-hell holy modal rounder of psypadeelic cartooning, bar none. I mean, Crumb is good. Crumb is an art god, no doubt of it. But Rick "a puff of kief in the morning makes a man as strange as a hundred camels in the courtyard" Griffin could put your head in a whole nother place, even if you happened, due to circumstances beyond your control, to be straight for a second.
A O X O V O X O A

But it ain't all just high kulchur and hippie dope paraphernalia out there, Bubba. Soon's I can save up, I'm gonna get me one-a these babies. You best believe it!

from: Powerful radio rocks on job site! by Tom Sockel
source: New Equipment Digest, 1 August 2002
via: HighBeam™ Research
Copyright © 2002 Penton Media, Inc.

Tough enough to withstand an 8-ft drop to concrete, Job Site Radio (Model 49-24-0200) also boasts audio power and clarity, plus unexpected convenience features such as auxiliary audio input, weather band, 12-v port for CD players and cell phone charging, and "pass-through" plug with extra outlet. Great sound comes from separate woofers and tweeters, 3-stage Punch EQ bass boost, and high-end digital tuner.

Milwaukee Electric Tool Corp., Brookfield, WI (800) 414-6527