The Dumbing Down of America – By Design

[tay]

British gameshow


QI







University Challenge

The psychologist Raymond Cattell identified ‘fluid’ and ‘crystallised’ as factors of what human capacity, defined by one authority as the extent to which one deals “flexibly and effectively with practical and theoretical problems”?

What name denotes the class of devices used in clocks that intervene between the motive power and the regulator, causing an intermittent impulse to be given to the regulator and converting rotational to oscillatory motion?

A 9th-century poem in Old English contained in the Exeter Book, the posthumously published papers of D.H. Lawrence, a novel for children by E. Nesbit, and an allegorical poem by Shakespeare all refer in their titles to what mythological bird?

The wife of King Tyndareus of Sparta gave birth to two boys, Castor and Pollux, and two girls, Helen and Clytemnestra, after being seduced by Zeus in what form?

Three bonus questions on world history. In each case, give the Chinese dynasty whose time span corresponds to the following events in Europe and West Asia:

(a) The rise of Rome as the dominant Mediterranean power, and the first two centuries of the Roman Empire.
(b) The beginnings and spread of Islam, and the reigns of Charlemagne and King Alfred the Great.
(c) The aftermath of the Black Death, the Reformation, and the start of the English Civil War.

An addition-elimination reaction, in which two or more molecules combine to form a larger one with the loss of a small molecule such as water or alcohol, is usually known by what name?

Which relative of the thistle whose seeds are a source of cooking oil is known as ‘bastard saffron’ because its yellow flowers are often used as a cheap substitute for the spice?

Three bonus questions on Tennyson’s Idylls of the King:

(a) Who is the subject of the opening lines of the first Idyll, ‘The Coming of Arthur’: ‘Leodogran, the King of Cameliard, / Had one fair daughter, and none other child; / And she was the fairest of all flesh on earth’?
(b) In the Idylls, which young noblewoman declares her love for Lancelot but is dismissed by him with the words: ‘Smile at your own self hereafter, / When you yield your flower of life / To one more fitly yours, not thrice your age’?
(c) Tennyson dedicated the Idylls to which recently deceased public figure, describing him as one ‘who loved one only, and who clave to her’?


American gameshow

So are you suggesting that strong Teachers Unions which insure decent pay and benefits = a better education for the students......?

 

[Locutus]

I have a feeling this lumosity thing could save the day. I mean, look at these intelligent folk.

er, I mean, douchebags.

ohhhhh.......'it just feels like gaymes'. :lol:

 

[tay]

The "American Dream" used to be summed up in two words -- upward mobility. And, after World War II, almost everyone in the United States was upwardly mobile. Ben Fountain writes (link is external)

The biggest gains occurred in the post-second world war era of the GI Bill, affordable higher education, strong labor unions, and a progressive tax code. Between the late 1940s and early 1970s, median household income in the US doubled. Income inequality reached historic lows. The average CEO salary was approximately 30 times that of the lowest-paid employee, compared with today’s gold-plated multiple of 370.

The top tax bracket ranged in the neighborhood of 70% to 90%. Granted, there were far fewer billionaires in those days.

Somehow the nation survived.Democracy’s premise rests on the notion that the collective wisdom of the majority will prove right more often than it’s wrong. That given sufficient opportunity in the pursuit of happiness, your population will develop its talents, its intellect, its better judgment; that over time its capacity for discernment and self-correction will be enlarged. Life will improve. The form of your union will be more perfect, to borrow a phrase.

But if a critical mass of your population is kept in peonage? All its vitality spent in the trenches of day-to-day survival, with scant opportunity to develop the full range of its faculties? Then how much poorer the prospects for your democracy will be.

“America is a dream of greater justice and opportunity for the average man and, if we can not obtain it, all our other achievements amount to nothing.” So wrote Eleanor Roosevelt in her syndicated column of 6 January 1941, an apt lead-in to her husband’s State of the Union address later that day in which he enumerated the four freedoms essential to American democracy, among them “freedom from want”.

There is a lot of want in The United States these days. But, besides economic want, there is a growing inability among many Americans to think critically. And this inability is fostered by what Fountain calls the "Fantasy-Industrial Complex." Just as the Military-Industrial Complex threatened American democracy, so too does the Fantasy-Industrial Complex. There is now another American Dream:

the numbed-out, dumbed-down, make-believe world where much of the national consciousness resides, the sum product of our mighty Fantasy Industrial Complex: movies, TV, internet, texts, tweets, ad saturation, celebrity obsession, sports obsession, Amazonian sewers of porn and political bull****, the entire onslaught of media and messaging that strives to separate us from our brains.

September 11, 2001 blasted us out of that dream for about two minutes, but the dream is so elastic, so all-encompassing, that 9/11 was quickly absorbed into the the matrix of FIC. This exceedingly complex event – horribly direct in the result, but a swamp when it comes to explanations – was stripped down and binaried into a reliable fantasy narrative of us against them, good versus evil, Christian against Muslim.

The week after 9/11, Susan Sontag was virtually crucified for pointing out that “a few shreds of historical awareness might help us understand how we came to this point”. For this modest proposal, no small number of her fellow Americans wished her dead. But if we’d followed her lead – if we’d done the hard work of digging down to the roots of the whole awful thing – perhaps we wouldn’t still be fighting (link is external) al-Qaida and its offspring 15 years later.

 

[Danbones]

lol
the national leadership debate in the US twixt Trump and Clinton is up against monday night football

 

[Ludlow]

It's social engineering I tells ya and the Illuminati is behind it all controlling how we act, think and use the terlet we ain't got no sense I tells ya we be dumbed down so much our chins have disappeared. Only thing left to do is start one of those tv shows in Alaska.

 

[tay]

 

[Bar Sinister]

Of course US schools are sub-par. Funding fluctuates wildly from region to region, there is no agreed upon curriculum and nonsense such as Creationism and Anti-Gobal Warming is taught.

Unions are killing our childrens future, they are dead against Charter Schools which have proven to be far better than their counterpart, the Public School Systems.

What is a Charter School?

Nonsense. The US is about the only nation in the western world with charter schools. Nations like Germany, Canada, France, Singapore, Finland and so on all have superior educational systems and their schools all have unionized employees. In fact charter schools in the US have been shown to be pretty much a complete failure due to their annoying habit of channeling school funding into the pockets of for profit corporations.

Here is a current international ranking. Top 20 Best Education Systems Countries In The World | eBlogfa.com

 

[Ludlow]

Of course US schools are sub-par. Funding fluctuates wildly from region to region, there is no agreed upon curriculum and nonsense such as Creationism and Anti-Gobal Warming is taught.



Nonsense. The US is about the only nation in the western world with charter schools. Nations like Germany, Canada, France, Singapore, Finland and so on all have superior educational systems and their schools all have unionized employees. In fact charter schools in the US have been shown to be pretty much a complete failure due to their annoying habit of channeling school funding into the pockets of for profit corporations.

Here is a current international ranking. Top 20 Best Education Systems Countries In The World | eBlogfa.com

Well it's akin to social engineering . You know kinda similar to farmers being paid to refrain from growing crops in order for the govt. to manipulate certain markets. I blame the Illuminati don't you Bar Sinister?. Seeing as how you're so smart and we're some dumb muthafukkas.

 

[Curious Cdn]

The dumbing down of America ... we rest our case.

 

[Ludlow]

The dumbing down of America ... we rest our case.

Does this mean that you'll rest your festering gob as well, dumbazz?

This useless plebe calling other people dumb is like the elephant man calling others unattractive.

 

[Jinentonix]

Darwin was a definite improvement, it was a secular dumb bludgeon. Darwin was an idiot who spent his time playing the markets.

Say what? Darwin was headed for the seminary before his opportunity on the Beagle even came up. Evolution is the same thing as adaptation, it's just a fancier word and sounds more science-y so don't let it freak you out. Darwin observed the basics of evolution through the shorter-term process of adaptation. When a species adapts to a new/different environment then passes on that adaption to it's offspring and so on, that is evolution.
Evolution can also happen when a mutation occurs in the genetic code, or from an error when the DNA is being encoded. The vast majority of the time those mutations are detrimental to a species, but once in while the mutation ends up being an improvement. When that mutation gets passed along to viable offspring and so on, voila, you have evolution.

As Galileo once said, "I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use."

 

[Ludlow]

Say what? Darwin was headed for the seminary before his opportunity on the Beagle even came up. Evolution is the same thing as adaptation, it's just a fancier word and sounds more science-y so don't let it freak you out. Darwin observed the basics of evolution through the shorter-term process of adaptation. When a species adapts to a new/different environment then passes on that adaption to it's offspring and so on, that is evolution.
Evolution can also happen when a mutation occurs in the genetic code, or from an error when the DNA is being encoded. The vast majority of the time those mutations are detrimental to a species, but once in while the mutation ends up being an improvement. When that mutation gets passed along to viable offspring and so on, voila, you have evolution.

As Galileo once said, "I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use."

Yayuh but we be dumbed down by design Elmer.What de faq Galeleo got to do with that I think it be illuminai whatchu you thank mildred.

The dumbing down of America ... we rest our case.

hey,,pssst. hey stoopid. tell the troof. time to come out. how long ye been pretending to be smart? ye still got ye wife fooled or has she moved on down the line?/

 

[Cliffy]

 

[pgs]

Wow how poetic , another meme .

 

[Cliffy]

Wow how poetic , another meme .

Just aiming for your and the others Cons intellectual level.

 

[Bar Sinister]

Well it's akin to social engineering . You know kinda similar to farmers being paid to refrain from growing crops in order for the govt. to manipulate certain markets. I blame the Illuminati don't you Bar Sinister?. Seeing as how you're so smart and we're some dumb muthafukkas.

Well you certainly got the part about you being a dumb MF right. And it really isn't hard to be smarter than a bunch of clowns who think with their dickks and never bother to fact check.

 

[EagleSmack]

Of course US schools are sub-par. Funding fluctuates wildly from region to region, there is no agreed upon curriculum and nonsense such as Creationism and Anti-Gobal Warming is taught.

So what you're saying is that you really do not know much about US schools.

Nonsense. The US is about the only nation in the western world with charter schools. Nations like Germany, Canada, France, Singapore, Finland and so on all have superior educational systems and their schools all have unionized employees. In fact charter schools in the US have been shown to be pretty much a complete failure due to their annoying habit of channeling school funding into the pockets of for profit corporations.

We have charter schools because our schools in the inner cities are complete disasters.

 

[pgs]

Just aiming for your and the others Cons intellectual level.

I am pro not con .

 

[Cliffy]

I am pro not con .

As in prophylactic?

 

[pgs]

As in prophylactic?

Well there you go .