A bump on the head

Today's topic is the science of Phrenology, or the method of telling someone's personality from the shape of his nose. Finding perhaps the only person brave enough to believe in this unfairly ridiculed science, I wrote him a friendly and not at all mocking letter. Alas, he must have fallen down the stairs at child, critically crushing his courtesy bump, as he responded quite rudely, and our thorough investigation into the Cold Hard Facts behind this most interesting phenomenon must go on without him.


The best way to test phrenology is to find a picture of someone we know all about and make his head fit the profile. And who better to look at, than..


Comparing this specimen to the chart.

The first thing we notice is the prominent swelling of the forehead in the benevolence area, indicating compassion. But more than that, the head is of course well rounded. Our fearless leader has no shortage of affection, constructiveness, causality, self-esteem, and eventuality. This man possesses the "dome-shaped head of the superior type," indicating conscientiousness and spirituality. Clearly he is a kind and caring person, upright, moral person, who is open-minded and would never purge millions of people just because a) he can and b) he has an inhuman desire to rule by fear. A higher being, civilized in every way. This profile is completely objective and comparing it with the biography of specimen we can see how the character traits we assigned to our subject impacted his life.

Of course a phrenologist must be careful, for hair can mask character and a bump or concavity in the skull can really be a wrinkle or acne. Most phrenologist ignore this, but some insist on shaving their subjects bald and surgically removing any skin imperfections before proceeding.

Another scientific error results from deformation of skull, in which a patient may be of one type but due to his weirdly shaped head, he appears to have problems. This man is one example.
His grotesque ugliness makes it impossible for us to tell his true personality.

The last cause of error is due to a failure to appreciate the "interaction between faculties". In fact most of the time the phrenologist is way off, it's not because he was actually wrong, but because of the complex personality interactions with a bump he missed. Getting these interactions right is extremely difficult, and it helps to "cold read" insights into the subject's character, lest the unwary phrenologist miss anything. Some so called experts suggest that this may be a cause for saying phrenology is bunk and should have been at least disproved 100 years ago, but they are lying through their teeth. Furthermore most of these Skeptics tend to have an indentation where their intelligence bump should be, if you know what I mean. So we shouldn't pay attention to what scientists have to say. In fact science isn't even a phrenologically acceptable career for any skull shape.

For any further questions just email phrenology.org; they'll be sure to address your concerns. And, while you're at it, you might as well demand an apology for my sake, for no one mortally offends Stalin and lives to tell the tale.