Skip to main content
Topic: Is stupidity taught? (Read 22113 times)

Is stupidity taught?

I was just "surfing" channels when I found Conan O'Brien's monologue in progress…

His joke was about the recent NASA conjecture of there being flowing water on Mars. He (Conan) said that Rush Limbaugh had commented that a hydrogen atom bringing two oxygen atoms together seemed "somewhat gay"!
I don't know what Rush said. But I do know —pretty well— that neither Conan nor his writers were aware that H2O is the chemical formula for one oxygen atom and two hydrogen atoms, which comprise a molecule of water.
He knows his audience well!

But Liberals are presumed to be smart and knowledgeable about science-y stuff! :) (And late-night TV talk show hosts are presumed to be Liberals… :) ) So.
What gives?

Do we need to re-visit what engenders or supports stupidity? :)
进行 ...
"Humor is emotional chaos remembered in tranquility." - James Thurber
"Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts!" - Richard Feynman
 (iBook G4 - Panther | Mac mini i5 - El Capitan)

Re: Is stupidity taught?

Reply #1
You're slipping. That was almost Howian in its vagueness. I found the transcript of Limbaugh's show.  From Rush's remarks, it's clear stupidity is taught.

Quote
Anyway, NASA's been converted to Muslim outreach. 
:faint: :die:

Quote
But if there is, it is automatic that it's much more advanced than we are.  Whatever life forms are out there are smarter than we are.
Now if he find any scientist to actually make that claim. And he adds to his ignorance by talking about pyramids on Mars. There were some New Age types that there was face carved into the planet's surface and maybe pyramids based on old low-res images. Modern imaging revealed those to mountains, of course. He seems to confuse New Age mumbo-jumbo with Liberalism and adds to his confusion by equating that with science. I personally know a politically conservative man who used to work with petroleum industry that's as New Age as you can get. Kooky beliefs have nothing to with your politics. But people like Rush make a lot of assumptions, fact and experience-free. Oh yeah, the theory that Mars once had an ocean is part of climate change agenda. One hundred percent Grade-A stupidity taught to his listeners.

Or perhaps it's not stupidity. It's being caught in the trap that everything's political. NASA says Mars had catastrophic climate change, therefore it must be a conspiracy to push through climate legislation or something 

Oh yeah, he says this silliness:

Quote from: Rush
My point is just because you discovered water on Mars does not mean there's life there.


Nobody is saying there actually is.

As evidence that Rush could cause stupidity, there's a caller that claims Mars couldn't have had a catastrophic event because it doesn't have an iron core. In fact, it's Earth's magnetism that prevents catastrophic events originating from the sun from reaching Earth. But there's the cause/effect situation going on. Did the caller listen to Rush because he was stupid to begin with or did the show make him stupid?  


Re: Is stupidity taught?

Reply #2
You must have ducked! (That is, my question went over your head — even though you say you read Limbaugh's transcripts. I did, too, by the way…) The "H-two O" joke/reading that Conan used was merely a fantasy borne of either a persecution complex or an abysmally bad elementary/secondary education or a typical post-secondary education.
Based upon your reaction, I'd say the last is the more likely.

Limbaugh made no "gay" joke… Conan (or his writers) did; and they were (whichever or all) too stupid to realize that someone might check!
As evidence that Rush could cause stupidity, there's a caller that claims Mars couldn't have had a catastrophic event because it doesn't have an iron core.
There's a reason I dismiss your bone fides, Sang: If there were no inhabitants on Mars, the word "catastrophe" is inappropriate… Indeed, that was the point of Limbaugh's caller — and he merely agreed; as do I. What -beyond a bizarre mathematical concept!?- warrants using the term?
Of course, the terminology given out by NASA makes one think of AGW and all its impending perils!

You've forgotten the directive (and the pronouncement by the agency's director…) at the ascendance of BHO about NASA's "new" direction, its "new" focus: see here.
Quote

   Published July 05, 2010FoxNews.com    Facebook34438 Twitter1351 livefyre1 Email Print     bolden_charles.jpg  Shown here is NASA Administrator Charles Bolden. (YouTube)
   NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said in a recent interview that his "foremost" mission as the head of America's space exploration agency is to improve relations with the Muslim world.
Though international diplomacy would seem well outside NASA's orbit, Bolden said in an interview with Al Jazeera that strengthening those ties was among the top tasks President Obama assigned him. He said better interaction with the Muslim world would ultimately advance space travel.
"When I became the NASA administrator -- or before I became the NASA administrator -- he charged me with three things. One was he wanted me to help re-inspire children to want to get into science and math, he wanted me to expand our international relationships, and third, and perhaps foremost, he wanted me to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science ... and math and engineering," Bolden said in the interview.
You know what, Sang?
You've proved my point! Thanks.

This is worth responding to:
As evidence that Rush could cause stupidity, there's a caller that claims Mars couldn't have had a catastrophic event because it doesn't have an iron core. In fact, it's Earth's magnetism that prevents catastrophic events originating from the sun from reaching Earth.
Earth's magnetism results from its iron core… If words like "catastrophic" and "cataclysmic" are so unfamiliar to you, perhaps you shouldn't use them. (NASA: I'd give you the same advice! :) ) But, Sang, I'd ask you a few simple questions — but I'll only pose one now:
How would you describe the event(s) that separated Pangaea into our familiar continents? :)
进行 ...
"Humor is emotional chaos remembered in tranquility." - James Thurber
"Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts!" - Richard Feynman
 (iBook G4 - Panther | Mac mini i5 - El Capitan)

Re: Is stupidity taught?

Reply #3
Given your example, the question is more like Is misspelling taught?

As to Rush Limbaugh, he is your guy, Oakdale.
Quote from: Rush Limbaugh

My only point here is -- and this is inarguable, as far as I'm concerned. There's nobody that could change my mind on this.  And it's not because my mind is closed; it's because I'm right, and it is this.  Whenever you have a scientist talking about a "catastrophic event" on Mars brought about -- "likely brought about" -- by climate change, that's all I need to hear to tell me we have somebody who is either actively involved or has himself been co-opted and is unaware of it by a leftist agenda that is related to the effort to push this whole notion of man-made climate change on earth.

Thanks for the transcript, Raccoon.

Re: Is stupidity taught?

Reply #4
Limbaugh made no "gay" joke… Conan (or his writers) did; and they were (whichever or all) too stupid to realize that someone might check!

:faint:  I have to put this to you simply and in short sentences. Conan is comedian. Comedians make jokes. He make a Rush joke.

And no, NASA has not been converted to Muslim outreach. Your Foxnews links resulted in Fox's 404 error page. Maybe Fox took down the articles in a rare moment of shame over its misinformation? Within 2 minutes of Al Jazeera videos you can find out what really happened Bolden is trying to get the Muslim nations to contribute to the efforts :p The Right is too busy being offended by anything and everything to know what's really going on.

Yup. Ersi. That's what Rush had the ignorance to say, despite the fact that nobody would even suggest that any past Martian climate change would have anything to with humans.

Re: Is stupidity taught?

Reply #5
A nice subject for a thread, though I struggle to know what you guys are arguing about. :)

H2O - Maybe he thought that means one hydrogen atom and two (gay) oxygen atoms - takes all sorts. So was that stupidity or ignorance, was it taught or never taught one way or the other.

If all stupid people are taught to be stupid does that mean that all uneducated people are not, by definition, stupid.

Given (!) that all religions are stupid, or at least the one you don't subscribe to, is that stupidity taught at church, by a light bulb or original sin?

Enjoyable - to this stupid observer!

Re: Is stupidity taught?

Reply #6
It seems he confused "gay" with "polygamous".

Re: Is stupidity taught?

Reply #7
Scientists: Earth endangered by new strain of fact resistant humans

Quote
MINNEAPOLIS (The Borowitz Report) – Scientists have discovered a powerful new strain of fact-resistant humans who are threatening the ability of Earth to sustain life, a sobering new study reports.

The research, conducted by the University of Minnesota, identifies a virulent strain of humans who are virtually immune to any form of verifiable knowledge, leaving scientists at a loss as to how to combat them.

“These humans appear to have all the faculties necessary to receive and process information,” Davis Logsdon, one of the scientists who contributed to the study, said. “And yet, somehow, they have developed defenses that, for all intents and purposes, have rendered those faculties totally inactive.”

Re: Is stupidity taught?

Reply #8
Your Foxnews links resulted in Fox's 404 error page.
The problem's at your end, Sang… The link to the article, and it's link to al Jazerra's videos, are intact. You must be referring to the "definitional" links — to such terms as "NASA", "Charles Bolden", "President Obama", "Middle East", "United States" and such. It's not unusual for news stories to have such links, originally; or for them to "go dead" after five years… (But I usually strip them out, myself, when I post quotes; ditto with numbered references, unless I include the actual reference. An obvious example of this would be anything from Wikipedia…) That said:
Maybe Fox took down the articles in a rare moment of shame over its misinformation?
Your ability to jump to erroneous conclusions (when they suit your prejudices) remains unimpeded! :) (see Jax's post:) )
I have to put this to you simply and in short sentences. Conan is comedian. Comedians make jokes. He make a Rush joke.
And yet how many people do you know who'd believe it wasn't a joke? :)
进行 ...
"Humor is emotional chaos remembered in tranquility." - James Thurber
"Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts!" - Richard Feynman
 (iBook G4 - Panther | Mac mini i5 - El Capitan)

Re: Is stupidity taught?

Reply #9
To me, two hidrogen atoms together seems as gay as two oxigen ones...
Finally someone exposes the chemistry gay lobby. I always had my suspictions about that periodic table.
A matter of attitude.

Re: Is stupidity taught?

Reply #10
And yet how many people do you know who'd believe it wasn't a joke?  :)

Zero. I tried to locate a video of Conan saying that , but came up empty. I directly searched Youtube after Google came up empty. And I'm not bothered to dig any deeper because nobody expects a comedian's monologue to be completely factual because it's expected to be jokes.  You know that thing about comedians making jokes....

Re: Is stupidity taught?

Reply #11
You know that thing about comedians making jokes....
Yeah. It's like Liberals believing anything that they think they can use, to promote their agenda… :)
Do you still claim that FoxNews took down the page I linked to? Are you mad at Limbaugh for making a "homophobic" joke? (You know what a joke is, don't you? It's like Conan and his writers assuming that anything they say about Limbaugh, and anything they attribute to him, will be accepted without question by their audience.
You jibe Rush for jibing NASA for deliberately misusing the word "catastrophe" — but Rush is right!)

What happened was that some people heard that Mars had (has?) liquid water, but that it doesn't have much now — due to an "ecological disaster"! You can easily draw the same conclusions obviously meant to be implied:
Life on Mars is either gone or never got going, because the climate changed… We human inhabitants of Earth are changing the climate of our planet. Hence, if we don't stop doing what we're doing, Earth will become a dead planet, like Mars.
(You do see where and why such reasoning is wrong, don't you?)

Some simple questions occur to me:
When did Mars have oceans? What evidence have we for such? Was there life, then? What evidence of such have we found?
Just one more (I know your attention-span! :) ): How does any of this information and speculation support the theory of Anthropogenic Global Warming Climate Change?

As Rush said -long ago- words matter!

p.s.,
So do motives…
进行 ...
"Humor is emotional chaos remembered in tranquility." - James Thurber
"Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts!" - Richard Feynman
 (iBook G4 - Panther | Mac mini i5 - El Capitan)

Re: Is stupidity taught?

Reply #12
H2O - Maybe he thought that means one hydrogen atom and two (gay) oxygen atoms - takes all sorts. So was that stupidity or ignorance, was it taught or never taught one way or the other.

It's just as likely to be a simple misspeaking. I can hardly be the only person who's accidentally said one thing while he meant the other. Of course we can hold professional speakers like presenters, politicians and comedians to a slightly higher standard, but the way some people reject later clarifications of what was meant can take ludicrous forms.

Re: Is stupidity taught?

Reply #13
... Or maybe he's  dyslexic.


Re: Is stupidity taught?

Reply #15
Some simple questions occur to me:

Oakdale's going already in Mars to deny Earth's climate changing. Good, you just have five more to go... (and that considering Pluto as planet, as it always was.)
It will end soon, finally.
A matter of attitude.

Re: Is stupidity taught?

Reply #16
Oakdale's going already in Mars to deny Earth's climate changing. Good, you just have five more to go...
It somehow hasn't occurred to Bel that "climate change" is something that doesn't require human intervention… And he won't explain why it has to, except for his politics… :)
Guess what, Belfrager: Your Pope and a lot of the silliest scientists will -ahem!- have to deal with reality, eventually.

The history of the earth and its climate is fairly-well known. Those who take it to be their job, to alter such — for a political agenda — have a hard row to hoe! (But they can give a lot of money; and get a lot of money…) What I mean is quite simple: The science of Climate Change is going to be, willy-nil-he, determined beyond the reasonable doubt that even the Skeptics have asked for…

Oops! I was originally talking about "stupidity" and whether or not it's taught… :) (Of course, it is! People need to belong to a group. They'll believe whatever they're told what that group believes. And they'll do like someone I won't mention by name berate anyone who disagrees with their tenants…

Might I suggest, that if you can't follow the game unless you have a program (a list of the players…), you don't know the game? :)

Add your own parens! :) wherever you think this should have ended!
My suggestion: "Re:)" :) (We all know what the simple lack of a space-character can do…)

Bye, for now.
进行 ...
"Humor is emotional chaos remembered in tranquility." - James Thurber
"Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts!" - Richard Feynman
 (iBook G4 - Panther | Mac mini i5 - El Capitan)

Re: Is stupidity taught?

Reply #17
Belfrager. It takes oakdale an effort to get his backside off a chair, shiuft the books bocking the door to get out and mix with the world so no chance of him getting to Mars.  :D
"Quit you like men:be strong"


Re: Is stupidity taught?

Reply #19
You're really asking for me to post again the list I've already posted...
No.
But I am asking if you still maintain that Truth is arrived at by voting?! :) (Or "official" pronouncement by fraternal organizations?)

Does God exist? Gee, I don't know: Let's ask around… In fact, let's ask all those groups on that long list you copy/posted, Bel! And let's take their "consensus" opinion.
What have you got to lose? :)
进行 ...
"Humor is emotional chaos remembered in tranquility." - James Thurber
"Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts!" - Richard Feynman
 (iBook G4 - Panther | Mac mini i5 - El Capitan)

Re: Is stupidity taught?

Reply #20

You're really asking for me to post again the list I've already posted...
No.
But I am asking if you still maintain that Truth is arrived at by voting?!

Truth? aren't we speaking about scientific consensus? Scientific consensus is arrived at by... consensus, as in a thousand names list of world leading institutions at the area of climatic and ecologic fields. Right?

I don't believe you confuse science with truth so why don't you stop insisting to be a reediction of Galileu of the modern times? At science, the truth is always provisory until someone demonstrates it to be wrong.
You're not being such person Oakdale. :)
A matter of attitude.

 

Re: Is stupidity taught?

Reply #21
Neither are you, Bel. Science asks questions. Science sometimes doubts the idea that "consensus" is right. Science DOESN'T try to get skeptics charged under RICO laws-- as has recently happened here in the states-- because the skeptics actually DARE to not believe the "consensus".

Science actually observes things. When what a person observes and what "consensus" tells him turn out to be two different things---well, there's a problem.
What would happen if a large asteroid slammed into the Earth?
According to several tests involving a watermelon and a large hammer, it would be really bad!

Re: Is stupidity taught?

Reply #22
Science asks questions.
[...]
Science actually observes things.

Aren't you forgetting about "explaining things"? :)

The very basic principle postulate in science is that an action always causes a reaction. The observed reaction is climatic and environmental changes so science goes on trying to find the action that causes it. This is the problem we've been talking about.

Now, at the first stage of such search for explanations (causes) many hypothesis, as many as human imagination can get, can be placed, human activity being one of them.
The second phase is about a work, simultaneously made by hundreds or thousands of people (scientists), all around the globe, following the scientific method approach, to determine which hypothesis is more fit to explain the observed phenomena.

When 99% of such works points at one direction and only one, than, my friends, that's called scientific knowledge.

What happens with climatic change denialists is that they don't even are a part of the above process, they simply refuses to consider reality, to observe the reaction, even much less to consider the cause.

Their role is not being interested at a common cause but only to play the industry game they believe to be what makes the world to advance. If it gets detroyed in the process, not their problem...
A matter of attitude.

Re: Is stupidity taught?

Reply #23
Quote from: OakdaleFTL
It somehow hasn't occurred to Bel that "climate change" is something that doesn't require human intervention…


Nor, according to some apparently, does pregnancy.

But it helps.

Re: Is stupidity taught?

Reply #24
But I am asking if you still maintain that Truth is arrived at by voting?!

Is that really what you think scientific consensus means? Really? You can't be fucking serious. Now when 97 percent of a scientists in their given fields run tests and experiments independently of each other and come to the same conclusions, and you know how scientists bicker with each other, their might well be something to. I read a couple days ago that the GOP lags behind even other conservative parties around the world in accepting that this time the climate change is caused by human activities (and it's still down what a "greenhouse" gas can be expected to do.) There's nothing genuinely conservative about denying what apparently the whole world knows, except for the GOP.

Meanwhile, none of this changes that Conan told a Rush joke and that Rush indeed said idiotic things. Water and a past climate changes on Mars is pushing a climate agenda on Earth? Is he back on drugs? Anybody got a list of substances that paranoia?