Had a college professor who claimed "Neanderthal genes" to explain his broad forehead. We joked that it was part of yet another pick-up line to use in bars.
Q. So, what do you call a Jamaican Neanderthal?
A. Cavemon.
Anthropologists tell us Neanderthal men did not walk fully erect.
Which makes sense, given what Neanderthal women looked like.
I will always remember fondly the story of "Little Black Sambo". I was at that point in childhood where judgement was not yet developed but I could appreciate a good story, especially if fantastic things happened. After all, I was a little boy like Sambo.
So I feared for Sambo when he encountered the tigers. I was elated when he eluded them by first racing around the tree and then climbing it. I was mystified how tigers running round and round a tree could turn to butter (but set that aside so I could continue the story and reduce my fearful suspense). I was relieved to see that Sambo was safe. I identified with Sambo (although I am neither black or brown).
Hoorah for the fantastic tales from many lands that filled my childhood and those of my brothers and sisters with wonder!
I am still a child when I read fairy tales and fables.
Same. From a child’s perspective, that’s what the story was.
But walking into a Sambo’s meant being immersed in the visual world, which was loaded with racist tropes. Sambo was depicted as a foolish child with dark skin and either a giant grin or eye-popping fear.
Again, I was a kid in the 1970s and I knew it was racist.
"The experiment had revealed an “extremely undesirable, and previously unidentified, side effect of warnings: the more often older adults were told that a claim was false, the more likely they were to remember it erroneously as true after a three day delay,” they wrote. (While the researchers fixated on older adults, the data itself shows that this is a cross-generational issue.)
"People walked into that study pretty sure that shark fins didn’t treat arthritis. They were told repeatedly that shark fins do not treat arthritis. And they walked out of the study believing that shark fins treat arthritis.",,,
"We need to go on an informational diet. We need to become more discerning with what we want to know and what we need to know."
END FTFA
IOW follow Rolf Dobelli's advice and "Stop reading the news!":
Q. So, what do you call a Jamaican Neanderthal?
A. Cavemon.
Anthropologists tell us Neanderthal men did not walk fully erect. Which makes sense, given what Neanderthal women looked like.
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