August 16, 2011

Why Do Short People Still Exist?

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A friend emails to say he’s sick and tired of Rick Perry and wants me to write a post about the first non-Perry item that comes up in my RSS feed. Fine. But who to choose? One potato, two potato, I haven’t linked to Modeled Behavior for a while, so let’s see what’s up there. Sadly, their top post right now is about Rick Perry. But the next post down is from Karl Smith:

I am short. My wife is short. Chances are my son will be short. Here’s a question – why?

At this point in human history, height in the Western world is mostly genetically determined. Yet, as far as I can tell the advantages to having tall genes outweigh those to having short.

Even in a preindustrial environment this seems to be true. This is likely why taller people, especially men are more attractive and have higher status.

So, why did genetic shortness persist?

Hmmm. What kind of ill-informed ev psych speculation can I offer up here? Maybe shortness isn’t especially maladaptive. Maybe the big, tall cavemen all went chasing after the saber-tooth tigers and got eaten while the short guys ran away to live another day. Or maybe the short guys, being less sexually attractive, had to develop a better line of patter and became more socially adept? Or maybe agility and climbing ability are as important as speed and strength. Perhaps the little guys tended to stay at home and help with the farming instead of going out on hunts, thus providing lots of opportunities for afternoon quickies while Og was away? Or maybe shortness genes were all conserved via women, for whom it was an advantage?

Hell, I don’t know. So let’s get back to Rick Perry. Authoritative information on his height is surprisingly hard to come by, but in this picture he’s pretty close to standing up straight and looks to be about six feet tall or maybe a little under — but in any case clearly a bit shorter than Barack Obama. (Perry is also about six feet wide, but that doesn’t matter.) Since it’s widely known that the taller candidate usually wins in a presidential contest, this makes Perry a pretty chancy GOP opponent for Obama. Mitt Romney is 6′ 2″, which makes him a safer alpha male bet for Republicans. And pipsqueak Michele Bachmann is obviously doomed. So I’ll stick with Romney as the favorite to win the Republican nomination this year.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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