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My composition? O...No!, not mine, but juan from someome else beternMe. Just shows how rocky the road can be for some people. Wink

Election Question: How Can We Tell the Stupid People From the Smart Ones?

It was probably a lot easier back in ancient times to figure out who the stupid people were. They were the ones who did things like taunt the mammoths.

How smart do you have to be to tell if someone else is smart? Hopefully not very smart, because a lot of life — and especially politics — involves asking people to separate the bright from the dimwitted. We can’t figure out or do everything ourselves, so we need to know who the smart people are so we know whom to listen to and entrust with important jobs. But if we incorrectly think morons are smart and listen to them and put them in charge, that would be a disaster.

You could also call it election year 2008.

For some reason, many people thought certain other people — who we can now clearly see are idiots — were smart and should be in charge. So how do we prevent such an error from happening again?

It was probably a lot easier back in ancient times to figure out who the stupid people were. They were the ones who did things like taunt the mammoths. And they were pretty easy to identify because their heads had been crushed by mammoths. No one ever even contemplated putting them in charge. Then again, back in that time, there wasn’t really any need for Stephen Hawking-level intelligence either, since there was no such thing as theoretical mammoth hunting studies.

Eventually civilization arose, and intelligence became more treasured. Ironically, this created opportunities for morons to thrive. No longer threatened by mammoth crushings, idiots survived and eventually evolved, developing a form of camouflage. Basically, they learned to appear to be smart while in fact being completely useless to society. We know these idiots today as intellectuals.

Now, some people think that the problem many Americans have with intellectuals is that they hate smart people. This is not a correct understanding of the objections (and not correctly understanding things is the sine qua non of stupid people). The problem is that these people just think they’re really smart but are in fact less than useless — less than useless in that they can’t do anything useful themselves. They become things like politicians and get in the way of actual smart people. In fact, they’ve developed a complex network of morons — the media, journalists, academics, NPR — to prop up each other as smart and call everyone who actually does useful things dumb. And if you try to explain how they’re actually just getting in the way, they get angry, since dumb people get angry when you explain things to them that they can’t understand.

So how do we tell the smart people from the faux-smart people? This is a smart question. Some may suggest we use Science! to answer this question and just give everyone IQ tests, but having high intelligence doesn’t make someone smart and can even lead to great stupidity. Think of a dog. A dog doesn’t have much intelligence, and if it’s walking down a path and sees a tree in front of it, it would never contemplate any other course of action than walking around the tree. If instead, a human with high enough intelligence came upon a tree in his way, he could use his considerable brainpower to come up with a convincing philosophical argument that the tree isn’t actually there and walk right into it.
Though that’s quite an intellectual feat, it’s not exactly… smart. Similarly, there are pundits out there who make complex esoteric arguments that President Obama has done an awesome job. Again, not an easy thing to do, but a pretty silly thing to devote one’s brainpower to. Yet we have entire universities full of people working on similar walking-into-a-tree feats of intelligence.

Think of intelligence as a tool. Just because someone owns a nice hammer doesn’t mean he could build a house. In fact, he could instead just take that hammer and swing it around wildly and smash holes in everything (remind you of any current presidential administrations?). Also, there could be someone who has a hammer so fancy that he doesn’t want to tarnish it by doing anything practical with it.

So if intelligence isn’t enough of a marker to identify smart people, what do we look for? Well, what is the whole point of being smart in the first place? Is the reason humans thrived so much better than any other animal because we can write complicated theses? No, it’s because humans can build tools and figure out better ways to hunt, i.e., do useful things. As Forrest Gump said, “Stupid is as stupid does.” Similarly, smart is as smart does. If someone is actually smart, then he should be able to do useful things.

For instance, look at Obama. People said he was smart because he sounded smart. That’s stupid. If you actually looked at his past, though, you would notice the lack of accomplishments that would show he knew how to do anything other than pretend to be smart. He was a community organizer — which I’m pretty sure is a made-up job — and then a mediocre legislator. There wasn’t a single useful thing he did, as his only ability seems to be convincing stupid people he’s smart — something he’s gotten a lot worse at since he’s actually tried to do things for the first time in his life.

So, in the future, instead of thinking someone is smart because he has a very interesting-sounding argument that two plus two equals five, look into the person’s background to see if he’s ever actually done anything useful, like run a business or at least once have an actual job that doesn’t have the word “community” in it. Using that method, it doesn’t seem too hard to find the actual smart people; you probably don’t even have to be that smart to do it. But if it is too hard, maybe we can task scientists to resurrect the mammoths so they can hunt down the stupid people and crush their heads again.

We will call that Plan B.
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OK, you can keep Sarah Palin, and I'll keep Obama. Obama wouldn't let a mammoth step on his head, but he would have tried to save them from extinction. Palin would have shot them from a helicoptor. She would have done that because that would have been the ONLY way to keep them from stepping on her head.

(By the way Cage, that WAS pretty funny. Of course I don't agree with you, but it was very well done. Thanks for the smile!)
Did I write this?? No, but at least I am giving the name of the website and the author so people who want to verify it won't feel like they are locked in a CAGE of misleading posts.


From Buzz Flash.com
The Right Wing Celebration of Ignorance:
FINDING A VOICE by Ann Davidow


There is always more than one point of view on any given subject. In fact there are likely to be many. Of course some of them are borderline crazy while others are the vacuous inventions of political pretenders who just make stuff up as they go along. Disturbingly, absurdities of outrageous proportions delight information-challenged devotees who are transfixed by mindless rants they take for gospel - - the big lie writ large.

Writer, Hal Crowther, observed in the June 1st issue of The Progressive Populist, “What seems to set the 21st century extremist apart is that he’s so proud of his ignorance and admires it so much in others.” It’s as if attending to experts or the rigorous demands of scientific thought were somehow elitist preoccupations not to be trusted by regular folks. And it doesn’t concern them that hero Limbaugh has made millions upon millions drawing his audience into tortured reveries that rise from the depths of some intellectual netherworld. Apparently it isn’t only misery that loves company, ignorance does as well.

Seeing Limbaugh wave his arms and shout into his microphone makes one imagine that people will realize he is off on a tangent that serves only to gratify his personal ambition and grow his wealth. He revels in the fact that many consider him to be the voice of the Republican Party. Can it be that self-respecting members of the GOP are content with a person who launches outlandish attacks on the president, progressives, environmentalists, or anyone who falls outside the right-wing collective?
It is equally unsettling to learn that Glenn Beck received a standing ovation at Liberty University where he delivered a commencement address. At times Beck’s ramblings were almost unintelligible as they often are during his appearances on Fox. But Liberty surely knew what they were getting when they invited him to speak, not exactly a ringing endorsement of the university’s bona fides as an institution of higher learning.

How did so many intellectually challenged people come to have so much to say in our public forums? When Michelle Bachmann stands up in Congress and says there was no administration response in the Gulf from “day one” that should have been a moment for some colleague to shout out “you lie” but there was mostly silence and not much follow-up except on some of the more progressive media outlets. Pal Sarah Palin also chimed in to suggest that her “drill-baby-drill” chant was intended to encourage drilling on land in Alaska not deep-ocean drilling, and she opined that maybe those who opposed drilling in ANWR for example had learned the error of their ways about which she had warned. They just keep delivering statements that are patently false and manage to seduce supporters too lazy to look beyond fantastical rhetoric.

Alaska Congressman Don Young made the astonishing observation that the gushing well in the Gulf posed no great environmental threat - - just a natural phenomenon he said. Rush Limbaugh tells us the site of the Exxon Valdez spill is now “pristine” although that claim is widely disputed. The Ocean is capable of absorbing or dispatching some amount of pollution on its own, but most informed observers are inclined to believe that the magnitude of the BP well leak will outstrip the ocean’s ability to cleanse itself, to say nothing of the damage it will cause to fisheries and the shoreline. It seems there is a corrupting attachment to oil and oil companies among some legislators in various parts of the country, an impenetrable barrier to finding solutions for our addiction to fossil fuels and a refusal to admit that accidents aren’t just ‘nature’s way.’

In attempting to present all sides of an issue, even responsible news sources tend to give voice to absurd and irrational opinion and to suggest equivalence in the range of views afloat in our society. During an interview, Paul Light, NYU Public Service Professor, was asked if it wouldn’t make sense to let ‘the people’ decide issues in national referenda rather than having Washington make all the decisions. Light said he didn’t think so because he wouldn’t want choices made on the basis of what Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Rachel Maddow or Keith Olbermann said.

To equate those four personalities is to ignore the difference between partisans and propagandists. Olbermann and Madow are partisans to be sure, but there’s a world of difference between them and the right-wing choirmasters. Trying to be fair doesn’t mean no judgments should be made about opinions that are flagrant distortions and ones that have a point of view but are reinforced by facts.
Last edited by rocky
Well, Rocky, that was not as FUNNY as Cage's post. It didn't make me smile like Cage's post did. It made me shake my head in sadness as a matter of fact, because it is TRUE. As I said in a thread I started a couple of weeks ago, what ever happened in this country to make people hate intelligence and education? America was once proud of these things. Now it seems like a lot of Americans are proud of their LACK of intelligence and education. (Guess I'd better stop now or an uncaged elephant may try to step on my head. Big Grin )
quote:
Thank You, Forrest.

Your attitude does help explain why most kids in Alabama schools can barely read and write. Lack of intelligence doenst prevent them from building Hyundais, Hondas and meth labs though.

Long live anti-intellectualism!!!
Posts: 529 | Location: Dixie | Registered: 07 August 2010



And what would that attitude be, juan? I doenstknow what you are talking about. Big Grin
No, not for fun. You have been watching the lib spin again.

quote:
Helicopter wolf-kills help caribou calves

SURVEYS: Survival rate soars after shooters thin a herd's predators.

By CRAIG MEDRED
cmedred@adn.com

Published: November 11th, 2008 10:53 PM
Last Modified: November 12th, 2008 07:41 AM

Slaughtering wolves on the Alaska Peninsula appears to have had the desired effect -- more caribou got a chance to live, according to biologists with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game.

As ugly and as politically incorrect as the wolf killing might seem to some, they said, the helicopter gunning that took place earlier this year saved caribou, especially young caribou, from being eaten alive.

Fall surveys of the Southern Alaska Peninsula caribou herd completed in October found an average of 39 calves per 100 cows. That's a dramatic improvement from fall counts of only 1 calf per 100 cows in 2006 and 2007.

The success of past wolf-control programs, and of some of those still under way elsewhere in the state, has varied significantly, depending on what predators were involved. In some cases, bears, eagles and climate have proved to have more influence on calf survival than wolves.

In this case, however, even some groups staunchly opposed to Alaska wolf-control efforts are conceding the removal of 28 wolves appears to have played a major role in caribou calf survival.


Read more: http://www.adn.com/2008/11/11/...u.html#ixzz14vpeRqaG
quote:
Originally posted by O No!:
Well, Rocky, that was not as FUNNY as Cage's post. It didn't make me smile like Cage's post did. It made me shake my head in sadness as a matter of fact, because it is TRUE. As I said in a thread I started a couple of weeks ago, what ever happened in this country to make people hate intelligence and education? America was once proud of these things. Now it seems like a lot of Americans are proud of their LACK of intelligence and education. (Guess I'd better stop now or an uncaged elephant may try to step on my head. Big Grin )


Let me guess anyone who disagrees with you or the left is considered unintelligent?

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