It’s obvious that intelligence no longer receives the attention and respect it once did. Gone are the days where people like Albert Einstein could achieve celebrity. The above video shows how far we’ve come in this country when people like Kellie Pickler (God love her) are widely known and recognized. The conclusion of a recent New York Times article is that Americans are actually hostile to knowledge and I think to some extent, that’s very true. Many people no longer see it as a priority to have a wider base of knowledge beyond what is required to nominally function in their small circle of American society. As evidence, Kellie Pickler thought Europe was a country and she received a high school diploma. Additionally, a 2006 National Geographic Survey found that only 23% of people who have attended at least some college can point to the major countries of the Middle East (just the main ones like Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Israel). The common response is: why does it matter if I know where Iraq is? That question is the point of the article and the root of the entire problem with American stupidity (almost every other major country in the world outperforms us in core subjects such as math, reading, science etc.)
Along those lines, we as Americans live so concentrated only on our own lives that we fail to realize what’s actually going on in the world. I’m just as guilty as anyone of living introspectively. However, I challenge the 10 people who read this blog to look beyond your job, your neighborhood and the activities of your kids. I challenge you to understand that God created a vast world that should not be pigeon-holed. Try taking off your American goggles and looking at the world from the outside in. Europe is a continent. Europe is a continent.
A new study suggests that drinking diet sodas increases your risk of metabolic syndrome by 35%. Metabolic syndrome is the collection of risk factors for heart disease and diabetes that include abdominal obesity, high cholesterol, high blood glucose levels and elevated blood pressure.
Doesn’t that sound appetizing?
Here’s my conundrum: I quit drinking regular soft drinks because they were bad for me. All the sugar, yeah yeah whatever. I started drinking diet drinks because they were the lesser of two evils and because I cannot drink something as tasteless as water all the time. Now, I guess I need to stop drinking soft drinks all together. Being diabetic with a big gut is not how imagined myself in five years. Why can’t things that make us healthy also be good tasting? Why couldn’t I have been one of those psychos who really loves healthy food and exercise instead of computers and Guitar Hero? Who knows.
This might be the worst thing I’ve ever read. A neighbor and mom of a friend of Megan Meier pretended to be an online boyfriend of Megan’s and then, after a month, started insulting her and degrading her. Apparently, Megan had told this woman’s daughter that she didn’t want to be friends anymore and the former-friend’s mom did this to mess with Megan. Megan committed suicide shortly after this conversation. The two families still live four houses apart.
The Nazi archives have finally been made completely public. The world’s biggest and most elaborate hoax, according to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, sure has a long paper trail – more than 50 million pages. For those of you who don’t know, Ahmadinejad is the Iranian President who denies the existence of the Holocaust. He’s even held conferences to talk about how it didn’t happen. I wonder if a few days in the archives might change his mind.
