S&M: Short and Male - a documentary by Howard Goldberg

D

draconian

Newcomer
http://vimeo.com/6780321

An interesting documentary about the issues faced by short people, mostly about short males.
some interesting parts:
- parents give their son, Akash, a height extension surgery. This is painful surgery involves breaking bones and lengthening them slowly and mechanically. I have to admit this part of the documentary was uncomfortable for me.
- the correlation between height and income. If you adjust 2 people for all factors, occupation, education, years of experience, etc...for every inch in height, the taller person makes $1k more.

It's somewhat of a depressing documentary. I'm 5'9" and there are times I wish I was taller.
 
draconian said:
http://vimeo.com/6780321

An interesting documentary about the issues faced by short people, mostly about short males.
some interesting parts:
- parents give their son, Akash, a height extension surgery. This is painful surgery involves breaking bones and lengthening them slowly and mechanically. I have to admit this part of the documentary was uncomfortable for me.
- the correlation between height and income. If you adjust 2 people for all factors, occupation, education, years of experience, etc...for every inch in height, the taller person makes $1k more.

It's somewhat of a depressing documentary. I'm 5'9" and there are times I wish I was taller.
Click to expand...

Just move to asia, problem solved ;)

The last point is just not true I think. If that would really be the case than the majority of my country should be stupidly rich as on average I believe Dutch people are the tallest or second tallest people in the world.
 
Warren Buffet and Bill Gates are both about 5' 10" (1.78m).

Seems like height isn't a major impediment to income unless you're banking on the NBA.
 
AlphaWolf said:
Warren Buffet and Bill Gates are both about 5' 10" (1.78m).

Seems like height isn't a major impediment to income unless you're banking on the NBA.
Click to expand...
He said 1k for every inch. That's pretty damn meaningless in a country where incomes span 3-4 orders of magnitude.
 
A survey of Fortune 500 CEO height in 2005 revealed that they were on average 6 ft 0 in (1.83 m) tall, which is approximately 4 inches (10 cm) taller than the average American man. 30% were 6 ft 2 in (1.88 m) tall or more; in comparison only 3.9% of the overall United States population is of this height.[11] Similar surveys have uncovered that less than 3% of CEOs were below 5 ft 7 in (1.70 m) in height. Ninety percent of CEOs are of above average height.[12]
Click to expand...
1.73 average seems quite short though, perhaps in 1950 maybe
A lot of democratic world leaders are also tallish
800px-Potus-heights.png

even 'shortish' dictators (hitler,napaloen) we'rent *that* short.
The only guy I can think of is the current french president + the north korea guy
 
I think this is a false correlation. Although height is determined partly by genes, but the variation is largely determined by nutrition. So it's quite likely that shorter people tend to be caused by malnutrition and thus had worse IQ and (therefore) worse income. However, the reverse wouldn't be true because not every short people are caused by malnutrition (as some may be caused by genes) and there is no evidence that short genes has any relation to low IQ.

There are also social factors. For example, taller people are probably better for leadership roles because they look bigger and therefore more "convincing." It's of course not to say that short people can't be good leaders because, for example, Napoleon Bonaparte is said to be pretty short.
 
Napoleon Bonaparte is said to be pretty short.
Click to expand...
A common misconception, he was actually about average height
the misconception chiefly stems from at the time french inches + english inches differed in length. (the french ones were longer, thus 5' in french maybe 5'6" in US/UK), like today US fluid ounce is more than the imperial fluid ounce.

Another guy that gets labeled as short is hitler, IIRC he was ~1.75m, which was prolly average for the time.
Remember average heights of ppl have been progressively getting longer.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top