Homo Yahoo

Steve Hanson picked up positively on my The Olympics are sacred blog, including my use of the term Homo Yahoo.

I want to be clear what I mean by that, aware that there are some who do not know the reference to Dean Swift and think that Gulliver's Travels is an animated cartoon they once saw.

I mean Swift's Yahoos, whom he meets in the country of the Houyhnhnms, to a considerable degree.

I read a commentary on that recently where it was claimed that Yahoos look like human beings but are actually deformed and degenerate. That is not Swift. It is not Lemuel Gulliver. Yahoos are human beings and Gulliver is of them.

I would take issue, however, with Swift. I dislike his revulsion at the human body and the implicit idea that sex should be left alone apart from eugenic reproduction. Idiot.

So I am taking his word but ignoring some of the association. He is funny, though. I am just thinking of the section where Lemuel says he is sure he could persuade  the Houyhnhnms that our race is not the dirtiest and most disgusting if only he could let them see a pig. Very good, Dean Swift.

But I am happy if my term Homo Yahoo also includes users and collaborators with the company Yahoo and most of its work.

It certainly includes Paul Crave (see my previous post)

Without wishing to suggest a golden age, I want to indicate the 7 billion pushing and shoving bipeds some of whom I like a few of whom I desire are getting a bit undesirable in their actions and attitudes.

We have had maybe 100000 years of extraordinary mental evolution; but something has gone wrong. Just as we have been able to extend active and healthy life, build a machine to fly a few of us to the moon, and so on... just then... we turn into a bunch of dungheads or develop a previously latent capacity.

And after us, the deluge of shit.

http://steveaitch.wordpress.com/2012/03/04/any-questions-radio-4-020312/