Saturday, April 5, 2008

“Ruthlessness gene” discovered

Two things struck me from this article entitled “Ruthlessness gene” discovered:

  1. The headline promised more than the article delivered. Obviously this kind of article doesn’t purport to present all of the circumstances of the test nor all of the findings. Nevertheless, they didn’t discover a “ruthless” gene; they observed behavioral tendencies within 200 students who played a modified version of Monopoly and they found that 18% of the so-called “dictators” kept all their money, which amounted to 50 shekels or 14 bucks. Researchers did not indicate if those 18% were hungry for pizza that night. Regardless, and modern science notwithstanding, dictators — those psychopathic beasts — remain “without excuse.”

  2. The second thing that struck me was that they cropped the image to fit the web frame. As you can see below, we remedied this horrible injustice to the memory of two of the most sadistic dictators in modern history.


Thank you.

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