Full Frontal Phrenology

When Hillary and W. got to college, both had posture photos taken, nude or in underwear. So says M. F. Burnyeat in the May 16 TLS .

Burnyeat adds, “Officially, the idea was that the pictures would reveal which students needed remedial treatment for poor posture. In reality, the project was to correlate the students’ undergraduate posture with their success or failure in later life. As the evidece accumulated, it would become possible to predict the Presidential chances of each year’s intake . . . . Professor W. H. Sheldon of Columbia University, the eminence grise behind these programmes, was eventually disgraced and his research abandoned. The ultimate inspiration had been Francis Galton, the eugenicist founder of Social Darwinism, who proposed a similar photo archive for the entire British population.”

Not that Burnyeat has seen the pictures. But he did have the story confirmed by three friends who attended Ivy League schools at the time.