There is a cute, little Weiner dog running around in down stairs office. The practice, undertaken purely for human amusement, is probably more than a little cruel to the critters we inflict this on, as such breeding often involve extensive inbreeding and all the genetic troubles that entails. But this led me to wonder what can be achieved by breeding humans over the generations. If we can manipulate the shapes and temperments of dogs in such way, what's stopping us, asides from moral and logistical considerations, from achieving similar things for humans. Of course, this is the idea that lay behind the mission of the Bene Gesserit cult of the Dune series.

Then I read this article and found that Stalin was thinking along similar lines. However, like a true Communist revolutionary, he sought leap-frog the intermitent stages of development and create his super-soldiers by . . . read the article for the grostesque details.