From: djheydt@kithrup.com

In article <782e1458-f73f-4b9b-99b6-825d2330be01@googlegroups.com>,
William Vetter   wrote:
>On Saturday, May 3, 2014 12:45:40 PM UTC-4, David Friedman wrote:
>> On 5/3/14, 12:46 AM, William Vetter wrote:
>>
>> > Shockley is well-remembered for his Nobel Laureate sperm bank and
>similar insane eugenics shit.
>>
>>
>>
>> Why do you regard a Nobel sperm bank as an insane idea? Obviously there
>>
>> are lots of very smart people who don't have Nobels, but the fact that
>>
>> someone does have one is surely pretty strong evidence he's smart. If a
>>
>> woman wants to conceive by sperm donation, doesn't it make sense for her
>>
>> to want a donor with heritable chatacteristics she wants her child to
>>
>> have�of which intelligence might well be one?
>>
>I do not believe that Nobel Prize mojo is an inheritable trait, and I
>would not equate it in any direct way to supreme intelligence.
>>
>>
>> Putting it in terms of Nobels is a bit of a publicity trick and sharply
>>
>> reduces the number of suitable donors, but what's wrong with the
>>
>> underlying idea?
>>
>As I have been led to understand Robert Shockley's eugenics idea, he
>believed that intelligence was concentrated in the masculine principle
>of Caucasians.
>
Alas, yes.

There was (maybe still is) an eminent Professor of Virology at UC
Berkeley.  He has a building named after him, and I'm sorry to
say I can't remember his name.  (If I were on campus I could take
you straight to the building, but that's another matter.)
Anyway. he damn near invented modern virology.

However, when AIDS came into the picture, he took the stand that
AIDS could not POSSIBLY be caused by HIV or any other virus, and
stubbornly stuck to his guns for years.  He must have been
brilliant.  Still, he was dead wrong and if I were looking for a
sperm donor, I would not have picked him.

--
Dorothy J. Heydt
Vallejo, California
djheydt at gmail dot com
Should you wish to email me, you'd better use the gmail edress.
Kithrup's all spammy and hotmail's been hacked.
and I don

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