Stupidity, Take Two: Science and the Media Oscars

First on the plate, CNN anchor asks whether Global Warming had anything to do with the asteroid that came close to the Earth.  So, the Oscar for “dumbest question of the week” goes to:

The Oscar for dumb question of the week!

Second, for Fox can never be left out of the “we will just make it up if we need to” game, an anchor asserts that solar can never work in America like in Germany because we don’t have as much sun.  Which is totally incorrect …  So, the Oscar for best “Lie to serve a purpose in a fantasy” category goes to:

http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2013/02/07/fox_news_expert_on_solar_energy_germany_gets_a_lot_more_sun_than_we_do_video.html

After watching these two, I have to admit that maybe there is no evolution.

Lowering Your Stupid Quotient!

I dug this out of the archives, written in 2007.  I am uncertain if it was ever posted anywhere, but it is as relevant today as it was then, so I decided to repost it:

I've got enough IQ. No one ever says that (with good reason), but I'm breaking the taboo for a very specific purpose. Mention of your own IQ is taboo, because we have forgotten that it is an artificial invention of the human mind trying to understand itself, not a God given supernatural score so that the ego can say, "I win! I beat you by three points." Besides, in practical human affairs, the IQ isn't very important!

You are born with the essential IQ (Intelligence Quotient) that you are going to have going through life. It is a measure of your brain's potential to master academic matters, to reason. Unfortunately, having the horsepower to work through Relativity or Quantum Mechanics is irrelevant in most life situations. If I just want to take a trip to the grocery store, I'm probably better off taking my Honda station wagon than taking that Ferrari I have in the garage (fantasy is also part of the brain's activity). I need more groceries day-to-day than I do conversations with colleagues on spatial dilation as the speed of light is approached. Most daily activities leave me with IQ to burn! Add to that the fact that I can't really change that IQ much (although I can leverage it with education). I'm pretty much stuck with the cards dealt!

When it comes time to play that hand you've been dealt, there is a much more important factor in most situations. I recently worked my way through a very important effort to keep a top faculty member at my daughter's school, an effort that ended in the Superintendent's office around a conference table with the key players from the school district. A large number of people had failed to bring the situation to a resolution until it had devolved into full crisis. I went into the situation with only one determination -a total refusal to be stupid! Not to have day-winning insights, not to dazzle anyone with intelligence, hardly to use intelligence at all. 100 IQ points was plenty for this situation. The dogged refusal to be stupid won the day!

Let's contrast that with the behavior of some very intelligent people in the news. Larry Craig and his "wide-stance" nudging of the cop's foot in the Minneapolis Airport - stupid! The clothes police busting Terry Francona in the middle of a baseball game because he was wearing a pullover in the dugout due to a medical condition that causes him to become chilled - stupid. The Chinese Shaolin Temple (and, indeed the Chinese Government) are demanding an apology from someone who wrote in a blog that the warriors of the Shaolin Temple were once beaten by a Japanese Ninja, saying that they “strongly condemned the horrible deeds” of the user - stupid. Jimmy Carter, with a posted IQ of 175, a few years ago telling the press in Mexico that he was suffering from Montezuma's Revenge - stupid. Now, as we said, there isn't much you can do about your IQ, but your SQ (Stupid Quotient) is something that you can actively change. It is a matter of attention and discipline. You really can refuse to be stupid, thereby lowering your SQ.

So, let me give the kids out there some advice. The next time you find yourself in a job interview or around the conference table working on a project or sitting in front of the boss, be positive. Be friendly. Let your ideas and your creativity flow. But, in the midst of it all, REFUSE TO BE STUPID!

Now … I get to add the American Sequester!  The most STUPID of all!

Fog Over the Bay

The San Francisco Bay is really a bowl surrounded by decent sized hills and an opening through the Golden Gate to the Pacific.  This is what we looked like this morning, with the fog settled in.

And this is how it looked out the door:

I’ve always been enchanted by the fog.  Add the foghorns over by the Golden Gate and the spell is complete!

Getting Things Wrong in a Foreign Language

Paul of Blackwatertown fame brought the Loose Blogger Consortium this Friday topic.  But, he's got an advantage!  He's in Europe.

In America, we don't have enough close neighboring countries that I have been in for enough time to get in trouble.  I mean, I know a few Spanish cuss words, but I know when to not use them.  And I accidentally used a Japanese cuss word with our exchange students that stayed with us years ago.  My Dad didn't translate it as a cuss word when he used it after being part of the occupation force in Japan in WWII.

That is just too boring.  However, America is bigger than most Europeans are used to one country being and we can have misunderstandings based upon the region of the country you are from.  For example, in Kansas, the 3 meals of the day were breakfast, dinner and supper.  In California, it is breakfast, lunch and dinner.  That type of translation won't get you in much trouble.

But ... I did recall one that caused a real problem.  My wife said we were doing something NEXT Saturday.  So, Saturday showed up and ... I wasn't ready at all!  I expected the trip to be a week off still.  In Kansas, the coming Saturday is THIS Saturday and NEXT Saturday is the one following.

That's as good as I can do.  I haven't had a topic I couldn't dig something out for in a coon's age.

11 People On a Rope

11 people were hanging on a rope, under a helicopter. 10 men and 1 woman. The rope was not strong enough to carry them all, so they decided that one had to leave because otherwise they were all going to fall.

They weren't able to choose that person, until the woman gave a very touching speech. She said that she would voluntarily let go of the rope, because, as a woman, she was used to giving up everything for her husband and kids or for men in general, and was used to always making sacrifices with little in return.

As soon as she finished her speech, all the men started clapping ......

What Bigots Lose

This is a salute to one of the greatest pianists of our time, Van Cliburn, who died today of bone cancer in shackman’s city – a city I like – of Fort Worth, Texas.  Click on the picture above and it will send you to the Wikipedia entry of his life.

I have never known this man who played for every President from Eisenhower to Obama other than as an icon, although I am transported when I hear his music.  I love his talent, his artistry.  Bigotry could lead me elsewhere if I so chose and this would be one of the great losses of bigotry.

Bigotry?  Why?  He was gay and many reject gay members of our society for that reason alone.  He played The Star Spangled Banner to begin each of his performances and many would reject out of hand anyone seemingly so obviously patriotic.  He was a devout Baptist and some would reject anyone who is a believer in God.  Some would even reject him because he was a man from the American South, obviously culturally inferior.

These are the losses of bigotry, for his life was a most generous gift!

Turn

Will Knott brought this topic to the LBC – and do me the favor of checking out what the other members have to say … after you read my take, of course.

I have lingered quite close to death once in my life, when at the age of five, I was hospitalized with what was believed (apparently) to be a systemic infection.  It turned out to be mononucleosis, something that doctors would not really suspect a five year-old of having, so that is not totally surprising.  The bad news, though, was that the nursing shift made a grievous error in my care and double-dosed me with penicillin for two weeks!  This played havoc with my system, as you can guess, and it was taken over by opportunistic fungal growth which almost did me in.

You are probably thinking that I am going to tell you of something that caused me to suddenly take a TURN for the better, or some such, but that is not so.  Instead, it is the conclusion of my hospital stay that is the mystery.

At the end of the stay, they took out my tonsils.  Even in the 50’s, this was not the most daring of surgery.  The nasty part was that the anesthetic was ether, and anyone who has ever come out of ether induced sleep can attest that the effects after are quite awful with headache and severe nausea.  But, that isn’t the point of the story, either.

No, the story is about what I “saw” or dreamed of during the surgery.  There was a current, an electric stream, that was so strong that it poured in a beam of almost unimaginable force.  The beam streamed from left to right, I remember that quite vividly, and was horizontal.

A massive man entered the picture, a man of immense strength and power.

 

Somehow, he grabbed that raging torrent and struggled with it mightily.  Slowly, ever so slowly, he bent it so that it gradually assumed a flow back over his shoulder.  His effort in doing this was Herculean, but his will was iron!

He turned that stream!  He succeeded.  And, somehow, I knew at the age of five that what he did was very important!

Why would a child have such a preposterous and involved vision?  I’ve often wondered what it meant at any level.

When I awakened, they gave me ice cream.  And I turned green ...