Skip to main content

Jackie O

Ms. Frozen in the North and I enjoy two reality shows: The Amazing Race and Survivor, the first where contestant race around the world the other where they are left stranded on an Island, a-la-Robinson-Crusoe mold.

Last Sunday while watching the Amazing race the ignorance of the average American amazed both my wife and I, the contestants were given a picture of a women waving from an official car, and they had to figure out where this picture was taken. Immediately, my wife and I recognized Jackie Kennedy -- wife of JFK, but none of the contestants recognized her! Not one, not even the "old guy" on the show. The contestants were in Burma (there virtually every cab driver could identify Jackie and could also tell the hapless Americans that the picture was taken in front of a famous hotel in the capital).

Later on the contestants were told the head to the tallest building in the Persian Gulf, one contestant actually asked for a flight to a country called the "Persian Gulf", eventually everybody figured out that they needed to fly to Dubai. America is fighting two wars in the area, and whereas Afghanistan is rather far, Iraq actually has a small beachhead on the Persian Gulf and tried to create a bigger one by annexing Kuwait in the 90s.

Thinking about the entire episode I guess the educational system is to blame, there is no more room for general knowedge in the curriculum. The I realized that if the media are incompetent with regards to geography so should the population.

As an aside years ago we lived in Singapore, the city state is globaly considered #1 or #2 in education, a great point of pride for the the country. The local TV station introduced a local version of Who wants to be a millionaire, but clearly little vetting had been done of the contestants, who not only were cloths challenged (some men were wearing singlet vests..) but when asked the most mindless general knowledge questions were unable to answer. One even called a friend who was categoric that a large ice and snow formation in the water was a glacier and not an Iceberg.

My point, even in advance education systems there is no room left for general knowledge, if I cannot make money from it, there is no need to know it. As an undergrad student I was always surprised when a fellow student would ask from the professor: Will this be in the Test? As if this information could not be of any other use in the future. Thankfully most teachers reply was a stern direct look at the student and a silence -- still there was always one or two who would ask!

P.S. After two embarrassing airings, the Singapore version of Who wants to be a millionaire was put on hiatus and a new version was shot where better contestant vetting was done.


Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

what people get wrong about tariffs

 The issue is simple. What percentage of the economy is dependent on tariff goods? The truth, is that the US economy is far more closed than people understand. People genuinely believe that all manufacturing has ceased to exist in the United States all given to China on the altar of woke policy the truth can be further from That statement. Only about 15% of US GDP is related to foreign trade. Of that amount, slightly more than half is from Canada in Mexico. And half of that is energy. What that means, is that about 7% of US GDP is tariff dependent. The proof in the pudding, is how little money tariff generates. People think that 30 or 50 billion is a lot it’s not in an economy that has $3 trillion. The impact on the US economy will be less visible but not absent. Inflation hasn’t occurred yet first because tests have hardly started to bite, but more importantly it’s such a small percent of the economy. Now certain things are critical. The rare earth metals from China were critical....
Post a Comment
Read more

The end of Tesla?

 it takes a special kind of idiot, to think that he can antagonize his entire customer base, and think that it will not impact his business. When Elon Musk went to work for Donald Trump, and created the doge department, he antagonized every liberal, and these people represent 90% of his client base.That’s not a brilliant move. Now Elon Musk is worth hundreds of billions of dollar, so he shouldn’t care a great deal, however, he needs to care because of several other issues. The cyber truck has been a disaster, most have had to be recalled because of defective glue, it’s not a truck, it’s not a car, it’s noisy, relatively uncomfortable, but great as a development platform. What Tesla has learned in making car manufacturing more seamless is truly amazing. The problem was that Elon Musk was so pissed with the Democrats, and with Joe Biden, in particular because of some slight, which were just plain stupid too. By the way, that he decided to support with hundreds of millions of dollar, ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Demographics

 I am preparing a kind of family tree for our children so that they know where they came from.  In my family I am the only survivor, although my brother and sister died recently they were both in their seventies (a story I told already).    It was a fun process, but it provided more than that.  First, I married relatively young I was 26 when I married and nearly 30 when our first child was born.   I was looking at my ancestors.  On my mother's side, she had 6 siblings, Four died before the age of 30, two in war, and two from illnesses.  Only she and a single sister survived.   The two boys had a child each but they died in WWII, and the other sister died as an infant.   what is interesting is that every one of my mother's siblings had children in their early 20s.   I know that my mom was hardly 20 when my brother was born.    What is remarkable is that among our friends, we are the only ones to have fou...
Post a Comment
Read more