William Butler Yeats

Poets from yesteryear dabbled with racist notions here and there, such as William Butler Yeats, who wrote in The King's Threshold (p.389) a passage that has troubled scholars:

The stars had come so near me
that I caught

Their singing. It was praise of that great
race

That would be haughty, mirthful, and white-
bodied,

With a high head, and open hand, and how,

Laughing, it would take the mastery of the
world.

No writer in their right mind would drop such a bombshell today. I try to bear in mind the times that Yeats lived in and take his words in that context, the same sort of allowance that I make for homophobic writers of yesteryear such as Edward Gibbon. Gibbon always talked trash about sodomites, in accord with the views of his age, but there remains ample cause for speculation over his own sexuality, which never seemed to manifest in any open manner.

What Yeats had in mind was an ideal future generation, such as we envision now through manipulation of the human genome. Whether such a future race would be white is open to debate, and I think Yeats would concur with this, because we now know that white skin is more vulnerable to skin cancer and only possesses an advantage in climates where the human body must remain covered for protection from cold. An ideal skin pigmentation depends upon the climate, and climate cannot be directly controlled, yet, although it can be predicted. So a variety of skin pigmentation would be the optimum configuration of any human population. No one color should be the rule--otherwise, we are putting all our proverbial eggs in one basket.

The future ideal race may lack a physical form altogether and be entirely virtual. This would ensure immortality--as long as the host server remains operational (a mighty big if, to anyone who knows anything about computers). As though to underscore this frailty, my computer experienced a power outage just as I typed that last sentence.

And now I must digress to the issue of computer malfunction. If your computer clicks off due to power failure, and even after the power resumes, your computer refuses to come on again, here's a trick. Unplug the power cable in the back. Wait five minutes. Plug it back in. Chances are, everything will come back, no problem. In fact, Firefox 3.5 reloaded every one of my windows that I feared had been lost, which is another reason I love Firefox 3.5. Also, Blogger had stored an online copy of this very missive, which is why I love Blogger. What I really don't love is typing in the same text I had already typed before. Had that scenario presented itself, you would not be reading this now. I'm doing this for fun, remember.

One more trick I have up my sleeve is to open up the power supply and replace the fuse, because I've seen fuses blow in the past, and it costs less than one dollar to replace one. Just for those that wish to know. I ignore those silly little stickers that warn of "dangerous voltages -- no user-serviceable parts inside". Look, if the power supply is unplugged, it is not going to kill you. I was seconds away from opening up the power supply and inspecting the fuse when I decided to try 'er again and see what happened.