Hooton Warns Against Human Beanpoles

Ernest A. Hooton, professor of Anthropology, yesterday lamented a trend toward taller men, and concluded that 'most people who stand six-five or six-six are tragie."

This news comes only two weeks after the prediction of Edward Hunt, instructor of Antropology, which announced that girls, too, are becoming tall and lanky.

The only solution, Hooton says, is for these "stringbeans" to marry short girls. For example, girls like the short, squat French-Canadians that Hunt mentioned.

Most disturbing to Hooton today is the fact that these tall giants are dominating the player rosters of basketball teams. "I am sorry for men so tall," he said, "and it is probably well that they get a break in some game, but isn't there too much emphasis on height?"

Personally, Hooton would choose a smaller, faster player like Bob Cousey, a high-scorer of the N.B.A., for his basketball team if he were a coach. He also feels that football would be a better game if it did not us "so many pachyderms."

Hooton first noticed this "appalling height situation" while watching televised professional basketball games. "I had not watched basketball since my school days," he confessed.

But this might all be an optical illusion. Some television screens tend to make tall men seem like even taller men. Ray Felix, basketball star for Baltimore, commented sadly, "I'm seven feet, but I say I'm six-eleven because I don't want people to think I'm a goon."

Hooton said that with marriages between tall men and short women the offspring would eventually turn out to be the average of their parent's heights although at first you might get some children, for example, "rather on the short side."

Like Hunt, Hootoon believes that with many diseases now conquered and better living conditions appearing, the rise of the tall people is to be expected.

He added that his solution could also work with the combination of tall women and short men.