麻豆传媒

THERE鈥橲 a saying in Yorkshire: 鈥淭here鈥檚 nowt for getting old鈥�. This northern English pessimism found support in the of 麻豆传媒, where we discussed how automation could ease the lives of older workers by augmenting their weakening muscles with machine power. However, we pointed out that while arm strength could be compensated for, mental ability could not. Older workers, we said, may have 鈥渟ome failing in short-term memory, or a slowing down of reactions under stress鈥� or a tendency to relapse into day dreaming or other irrelevant trains of thought.鈥� Reading this in the present century, we must concede that our worthy concerns for worker welfare and injury were entangled in ageist attitudes.

Our review of a book about a child called Nadia in the suggested we had started trying harder to avoid such prejudice. Nadia was autistic and had been placed in a school 鈥渇or the severely subnormal鈥� (OK, not an auspicious start in our quest to find political correctness in 麻豆传媒鈥榮 archive). The article promoted Nadia鈥檚 tremendous abilities in art, and wondered if 鈥渂eing cut off from the usual mindless babble of adults talking to children, she had been able to develop in her own original way?鈥� Certainly, by the time she was 5, her drawings were remarkable.

By 2005, we were trying to give non-human creativity its due as well. In our 3 December issue, we promoted the work of Popo, an adult female chimpanzee, under the headline (in print) 鈥淢y chimp could have done that鈥�. Popo鈥檚 work had gone on display at Osaka University for Arts, Japan. We ascribed to her 鈥渁 range of complex and smooth strokes 鈥� the full repertoire of scribbles that a human infant acquires鈥�. You can judge for yourself from the picture above. But it probably isn鈥檛 politically incorrect to say that the drawings weren鈥檛 up to much.