CSotD: Intelligence
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Juxtaposition of the Stupid, Part One
(Frazz)
(Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal)
It's only fair to start by admitting that I have no idea what SMBC is talking about, because, when I took physics back in the Dark Ages, we just had to memorize some formulas about water displacement and things falling down.
That was pretty much how high school math worked, too.
We seemed to be in a kind of post-Sputnik transitional period, where everyone knew we had to step it up, but we hadn't quite figured out how, and so Farmer Brown's apples were still the exemplar and our teachers were better accountants than they were mathematicians.
I say this because, by the time my kids took math and physics in high school in the mid-80s, they were actually learning why solutions were framed the way they were.
Our teachers only wanted us to show our work to prove we hadn't cheated.
But my kids could come up with the right answer and have their teacher say, "Okay, that works for now, but here's why we do it this other way …" and provide both the theory and a little preview of upcoming problems in which instinctive methodology would leave you high and dry.
Other places apparently were somewhat ahead of us: I think tiny rural schools like mine and underfunded inner city schools shared a problem in attracting hip, up-to-date faculty, because my college classmates seemed far more clued in on this stuff than I was.
But let's not pat ourselves on the back yet, because Farmer Brown's apples are still important, and I see two sources of foolish on-line whining on the topic.
The first is a general whining about "word problems," which is either a failure of teaching or a perceptual problem I simply can't grok. If Farmer Brown has five apples and he sells them for 20 cents each, how hard is it to figure out how much money he ends up with?
You don't need a lot of mathematical theory to know that multiplication is just a quicker form of addition. Line up the damn apples, put two dimes next to each one and add them.
I have trouble with abstract problems, but if you can reduce it to apples, I'm cool.
Maybe that's just me.
But then you've got people proudly crowing that they haven't used algebra since school, which shows that they not only didn't learn how it works but they didn't even learn what it was.
Maybe they have a high enough income that they can just pile groceries into their cart without comparing prices of similar items.
And maybe, when they paint a room, they buy their paint one gallon at a time and just keep going back each time they run out.
And they never have to double a recipe because, when they need more food, they just throw another frozen dinner into the microwave.
But they still shouldn't go on Facebook and boast about how little they know.
I don't understand all the theories behind physics and calculus, but I understand the theory behind trying to cover up your ignorance instead of making it a point of pride.
Which brings us to …
Juxtaposition of the Stupid, Fatal Version
On the national level, we've reached the stage where we've essentially got trolls running the government, because, as Cory Booker and Kamala Harris and others pointed out yesterday, you can't possibly be that stupid and therefore you must think that we are.
I am not comfortable with a head of Homeland Security who honestly believes that only foreign terrorists matter, and who doesn't find our homegrown white supremacists a threat.
But I am reassured when she also says, under oath, that she doesn't know if Norway is a predominantly white country.
I don't feel any safer, mind you. But at least I know we're dealing with a deliberate, contemptible liar and not merely a dimbulb incompetent.
Though Cory and Kamala and I could all be wrong.
Maybe "I didn't notice" and "I don't remember" are honest responses from that whole crew.
Booker may find it impossible to believe you could hear vulgar, racist garbage pour from the mouth of the President of the United States and not notice, but then maybe he just hasn't been in the right meetings.
Perhaps they didn't hear anything noticeable or memorable.
The Troll Army — in government, in media, on social media — has seized the argument that there is nothing offensive in calling Africa and Haiti "shitholes" because other presidents have used more vulgar terms elsewhere.
For instance, they note, Joe Biden called extending healthcare to the lower middle class "a big fucking deal." That was more offensive, because "fuck" is more offensive than "shit."
And also because extending healthcare to the working poor is more offensive than deporting refugees.
I am perfectly willing to believe that they are so used to hearing open, blatant hatred of black people and Latinos expressed in their meetings that Trump's statements genuinely didn't attract any notice.
Gosh, I feel better already.
Just as I feel better knowing that the President is cognitively perfect.
And, as Mike Luckovich notes and the doctor reports, that he weighs 239 pounds.
Which means that Donald Trump is the same height as Alex Rodriguez, and only nine pounds heavier.
(Alex is the one without the hat. Fun Fact: His family is from
Hispaniola's other shithole country.)
The bottom line is what I said about Martin Luther King Jr the other day: The mission is not to convert bigots, because you won't. The mission is to awaken the decent people who need to get up and speak up and hit the polling booths.
That's an important mission, and you won't get any help from this government in carrying it out.
Because it's not an issue of intelligence. As Jen Sorensen neatly points out, this is not an Idiocracy.
It's worse.
Don't let nobody turn us 'round:
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