Fun facts about the United States

It's still astonishing regardless. How could it be possible that one out of every 10 Americans from 18-24 can't find the U.S. on a map?

I didn't need this list to tell me that my fellow Americans are, far too many of them, fat, lazy, overconsuming, selfish and ignorant. I already know. In fact, the accuracy or lack thereof of the list is largely irrelevant to me.

Iiiiiiin other words:

Percentage of people who don't have the resources to actually respond to justified criticism, but, darnit, they know know that the list /feels/ right: 95%.

You're in that 95%?

Did you know that 37.834% of statistics are made up on the spot?

hmm... odd, my data show that 43.7% of all statistics are made up on the spot.

Who's right? wanna armwrestle over it?

Incorrect, as should have been made obvious by the following:

"In fact, the accuracy or lack thereof of the list is largely irrelevant to me."

Instead, I was saying that I already knew certain things about my fellow Americans (for entirely different reasons, unrelated to the posted list). Those were:

"... my fellow Americans are, far too many of them, fat, lazy, overconsuming, selfish and ignorant."

Reading comprehension: learn it, live it, love it.

No, in KojimaTech poll-data formula, that counts for that 95%

Replace 'Americans' with 'humans' and you can tack 'duh' at the end of it. Humans --if given opportunity for it-- will indulge themselves and do minimal if any effort towards self-improvement or well-being of anyone but themselves. Who knew?

In other news, Queen Victoria is dead.

Well ... yes, and it's a fact that there's no unique biological trait in Americans in particular that sets us apart as somehow worse than anyone else. However, our culture is pretty horrid. In their defense, though, most Americans have no clue how much damage they help to inflict every day and how little they really understand about their own government. Frankly, they're not supposed to know.

Don't get me wrong, though -- overpopulation and overuse of resources is everyone's problem, and the consequences are going to get us all equally no matter where we are or what our political affiliations happen to be.

Edit: If you wanted to get really technical about it, I would argue that any animal would, if it were capable, do exactly as we have done. In fact, give any population of animals too much food and too little competition, and the population will invariably explode until it reaches a point where everything runs out and a die-off occurs. There's even a term for it in biology, one I encountered once and, unfortunately, promptly forgot. Anyway, it perfectly describes our present situation.

One of the lines I tend to overuse when folks complain about things being too "confusing" or "difficult":

"Hey, if life were always easy, our brains would rot and we'd be as dumb as than cattle."

It seems obvious that life is getting too easy in the U.S.

--
moo

It isn't just that. We're deliberately kept ignorant -- our education continues to be "dumbed down," and our mainstream media is highly compromised and controlled. We're a highly ignorant population save for the ability to perform well in certain specific specializations (that is, we're typically well-educated only with respect to our individual jobs), but it takes a considerable amount of resolve not to be. Furthermore, it takes first "waking up" and realizing you've been lied to your whole life before you can even really try. Even beyond that, there's the fact that in all honesty, most people don't want to know how bad it really is.

"You have to understand, most of these people are not ready to be unplugged. And many of them are so inured, so hopelessly dependent on the system, that they will fight to protect it," said Morpheus.

Most certainly, conservation of personal energy and gathering plenty of 'backup' though eating as much as one can with little to no planning ahead is quite universal. I guess the U.S. folks simply *are* in position that allows to take advantage of it (and being born in this sort of setup certainly adds its share) ... but it's really not some exclusive trait ^^

Who was it who didn't know what year the Judiciary Act was passed in, yet insisted they knew its contents? Those were good times, Reitsuki. You and me, fighting the good fight, together....sniff, sniff


Nothing has to be checked for accuracy. Watch a State of the Union address sometime.


Honestly, couldn't you have a supporting quote from a better source than a sci-fi movie? I mean, couldn't you have quoted, say, Nietzsche instead of the Matrix? Google hasn't completely destroyed books yet, has it?

On another note, as long as we're nitpicking today, I want to know the percentage of Americans who are able to use apostrophes correctly. I bet it's down to below 5% these days.

I rarely watch movies, never watch TV, and read frequently. I quoted The Matrix in this case because the quote was relevant to my point ... and, in fact, that movie is a widely understood to have a good deal of depth to it. There's a reason philosophy professors have latched onto it (and, perhaps to a lesser degree, its sequels):

http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/ptech/11/25/matrix.philosophy.ap/

I suppose if I simply wished to namedrop, perhaps in an attempt to lend to my ideas verisimilitude, such as I might also do by dropping ten-dollar words like "verisimilitude," then I would instead have looked for some way to use Nietzsche. It would have no doubt been amusing to see me look for a way to make the concept of the "will to power" somehow relevant to this discussion.

But since my purpose isn't to try to impress everyone with how brilliant I think I am but rather simply to get my point across, I went with Morpheus and The Matrix instead. I suppose you'll just have to cope.

How True!!!

But this one true fact still doesn't make up for your pack of LIES!




Meh, what do we need brains for. We'll just use those nice little AI robots being built by 6 fingered little 8 and 9 year old kids in a chinese sweat shop as we speak! Then when your country[ies] are still figuring on 1 + 1 , we'll be on to figuring out how to escape global O.O warming and live underground and in the oceans!

Ah, I love being rich, even if we are run by the crooken repubbies

Good old money... money money money money.. but I still fell so empty... "ppppft"



So we are trading riches for BETTER BRAINS AND MONEY>>>>>> WIN WIN!!!

Typo my ass.

THat was more like a doctored list! If thats even a typo...

Watch how easy it is just to make you list seem good for americans!

*look below*

[destroyed, because I thought it was too mean]

Tre, please don't.

wow, I could swear this thing was dead... damn


My last days before the forum armageddon, I need to live it up!

No more being sad and mopy, I need to be happy!

HAPPY!

Aw screw it....

Rats. Now we'll never know.

Yeah... would have been nice to see just how nasty folks can get when something threatens their worldview.

I wasn't mean, just stupid.

Yeah, because working popular culture into their classes is an easy way to grab student's attention.


I wasn't saying specifically Nietzsche. You can tell by the word "like". Any actual philosopher would have done perfectly well.
Funny, I would have thought of using a quote from The Matrix as name-dropping more than using a quote from a real philosopher, since more people know what The Matrix is than almost any philosopher, these days.


Well, you didn't get your point across to me. I automatically ignore people who try to use pop culture to support their "logic". I assume if the only supporting quote they can dig up is from some flick, it's probably not worth my attention.

Just curious, Lianne, what was your motivation in posting this? (eta:by "this," I mean the OP)

Partly, yes. But partly, it's because the movies actually explored relevant concepts.



Yes, and I understood that. My point, which you also seemed to have missed, was that I wasn't going out of my way to pick and choose from an "approved list" of philosophers because, frankly, that's silly. I've referred to George Orwell when it suited my point. In other cases, I've turned to Lau Tzu. If I felt it were relevant, I might quote Jonathan Swift. In this case, a contemporary work of fiction offered a perfect illustration.

Why is that so awful? Is it because it's contemporary? Are you one of those pseudo-intellectuals who believe a source can only have value if it's centuries or, at the very least, decades old? Or is it because of the medium? In which case I have to assume you'd turn your nose up at Shakespeare as well, given the fact that the chief difference between theater and the modern movie is strictly technological.



You misunderstand what "name-dropping" means. What I did was choose something that had wide appeal, making it easier to be understood (also, I just like the movie). By contrast, intellectual name-dropping is more of a kind of pissing contest wherein you try to show off by quoting the more esoteric sources. When few or any know exactly what you're talking about, you then puff your chest out and smugly assure yourself that that proves you're the more intelligent and well-educated person.

Naturally, when you're engaged in that kind of activity, you'll also want to look down your nose on the masses and snub anyone who dares to quote a contemporary, "common" source. You might, for example, harass someone on an Internet forum for not quoting a "real" philosopher. Like Nietzsche.



Ah, I see you're already sighting down your nose at me. How common. How positively gauche, my use of a movie quote!

... by the way, did you know that Shakespeare was to the Elizabethan era much the same as movies are to the present?