Interesting symptom of anti-intellectualism....

This morning, I was watching the news - can't recall if it was local or national - and mention was made of the cold in which both NFL Championship games were going to be played. The weather lady was talking about the wind chill factor and said that it was an extremely complex formula which determined the value. In fact, they showed the formula on the screen which included height of the individual and a few other factors. More complex than one would think but certainly not 'horrible'. O.K., fair enough.

Then the fun began...the idiot newsreaders started their "Wow, I just had a horrible flashback to high school when I saw those equations." And that was the least of it. It just went on and on as though this was just unbelievably difficult and like graduate particle physics.

Now I certainly don't mind if people acknowledge that things are interestingly difficult or unusual or daunting, but the idea that these people who ostensibly are writing, analyzing, and interpreting the so-called news can be this anti-intellectual. Those of us around when Stevenson was the nominee remember how he was personally denigrated for being an intellectual, as though it was a dirty word...and the same happened to Gore...still happening.

On edit: sorry about the overuse of the word 'intellectual' but I'm trying to stress that particular attribute, rather than that of some synonym.

This society had better understand that its best hopes lay with those who are educated; that respect for their intellect should be proffered and acknowledged as a positive attribute.

:puke:

embarassing...

Cannon fodder is cheap and easy to get, just wave a flag. But national defenses and weapons and engineered pieces of equipment.

Better vote down them tax levies and put Dubya in the White House.

Probably "communications" majors.

The new formula for winds in mph and Fahrenheit temperatures is:

Wind chill temperature = 35.74 + 0.6215T - 35.75V (**0.16) + 0.4275TV(**0.16)

In the formula, V is in the wind speed in statute miles per hour, and T is the temperature in degrees Fahrenheit.

Note: In the formula, ** means the following term is an exponent (i.e. 10**(0.5 ) means 10 to the 0.5 power, or the square root of V), - means to subtract, + means to add. A letter next to a number means to multiply that quantity represented by the letter by the number. The standard rules of algebra apply.


Any 5 year-old with a calculator could solve that! It's not even calculus!

On edit: link with history of formula and reference to height of a person - http://www.usatoday.com/weather/resources/basics/windchill/2001-08-09-windchill-revamp.htm

and that's my point...

I call her a weather lady b/c she may be a meteorologist but plays cutesy seductress on TV. I could call her something that my grandmother used to say in yiddish, but it would be unseemly and regarded (incorrectly) as misogynistic.

Now the seductress part may be all in your own mind....:)

Anyone that gets out of 9th grade without proficiency in such formulae was cheated out of an education. (Indeed, 8th graders should find it easy.)

In America, they're shoved into lockers & given swirlies by guys like this.

actually 110% as the morans like to say...

:hi:

refused to congratulate his own son, my husband, when he finished college. He thought people who went to college were snobs who thought they were better than everybody else.

Unfortunately I think that attitude is still around today.

At a presidential campaign stop, a woman called out to him, "You have the vote of every thinking person!" Stevenson called back, "That's not enough, madam, we need a majority!"

He also said in 1952: "The tragedy of our day is the climate of fear in which we live, and fear breeds repression. Too often sinister threats to the bill of rights, to freedom of the mind, are concealed under the patriotic cloak of anti-communism."

Make that "anti-terrorism" and he's got the modern age nailed.


wp