Category: Numeracy

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Can I Get Disability Payments for This?

I have a disability that is a constant burden. In my daily walk of life, it causes me many, many difficulties that weigh me down, reduce my ability to work or even have enjoyment of life. It’s severe and debilitating.

I simply caNOT understand–or many times even remember–that most people LIKE being stupid, ignorant and blind to the world around them.

Most people cannot (solely because they don’t want to take the vanishingly small effort to do so) understand that

x+y=z, therefore z-y=x

. . .or that a basic grasp of such things are, in the very a natural, ordinary and proper human existence, useful in so very many ways that if one were to stop to list them there would likely not be enough (electronic) ink to do so.

And that’s just scratching the surface of things most people do not even take for granted, because they remain obstinately blind to them.

But it’s not just that basic, almost first grade level, algebra’s usefulness in kitchen management, carpentry, shopping and much, much more eludes them (because they are too intellectually lazy to be able to win a game of checkers against a head of cabbage), no, it’s not just that. It’s also that such folks view any use of very simple math extending beyond extremely basic addition and subtraction as magic, only invoke via calculators of some sort. (But then, such folks also do not usually even understand the formulae they must use to input data into a calculator beyond simple multiplication, division, addition and subtraction.)

My disability is that I just do not get that.

Algebra, statistics (and the calculus necessary to understand how statistical formulae work; without that, one is far too easily manipulated by phony statistics. . . just sayin’), gemoetry, etc., are all extremely useful tools–as ways of thinking about our world around us–for anyone wishing to

save money
save time
save effort

. . . that it boggles my mind that so very, very many not only are utterly incapable of even seeing the daily multitudes of applications of simple maths like algebra and geometry but are actually dismissive of such simple maths as non-utilitarian (though few such folks would even understand what I just wrote).

I have tried and tried, but my disability seems to prevent getting my head around that mindset.

So, when a salesman (of construction materials in the case that came to mind) clicks away on a calculator and comes up with something that simply cannot be, given the physical constraints of a job, the materials involved, etc., because he unthinkingly applied the wrong sets of criteria AND improperly applied a wrong formula, pencil and paper proofs might not be enough to demonstrate the flaws. . . and searches at that business for someone who DOES understand what the problems are might go all the way to the top of the food chain (as it did; the owner of the business understood the simple maths involved *sigh*). One out of four persons (two out of five, including me), 25% (or, if I were included in the population count there, 40%) could do the simple math.

That’s pretty typical. When I’m in the room, the number of folks getting simple math goes up. When I leave, the general IQ drops. No, seriously, and I’m not really all that smart or math-or-letters-literate*. Really. About half my extended family, for just one population sample, can better me there. And while the IQ scores I was once a bit ambivalent about (I turned down an invite to a local chapter of MENSA while in college–issued by a psych prof who had a legitimate access to my records–because I just didn’t, and still don’t, feel that smart”) say I should be bright enough to grasp why people choose to be dumb, I just still don’t see it.

Shouldn’t I be getting some sort of disability payment from the nanny state for this painful, disabling disability?

Continue reading “Can I Get Disability Payments for This?”

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The Zero Fears His Superpower

Or, at least The Zero would if he could count to five without taking his shoes off.

 

 

 

 

Check out The Zero’s face in this video. “WTF?!? What’s he talkin’ ’bout, Willis? Is that MATH?!?” If you’ve ever wondered what Odumbo’s face looks like when confronted with numbers, well, here ya go:

http://youtu.be/o1yTY2MciOk

Oh, and during all the demonizing of Ryan and his budgetary proposals, do remember that they guy who was THE ZERO’S PICK to head up his “deficit committee” and represent the administration’s policies, Erskine Bowles (Clinton SBA head, later WH chief of staff), über-Democrat, had a different view:

Just sayin’. Serious policy wonks don’t share the views of Mass MEdia Podpeople like Rachel Maddow and Michael Moore. *sigh* The only real negative I can see in having Ryan as a vice presidential candidate is that he’ll be wasted “debating” Cwazy Unka Joe (if The Zero’s campaign even lets that massacre happen). At the top of the ticket, he’d have a chance to obliterate The Zero, metaphorically nuking him from orbit.

Oh, fun. Jerry Pournelle suggests (in my words, not his) that with the Romney/Ryan strengths on  economic policy against The Zero’s (and zero-cubed, Cwazy Unka Joe) profound weaknesses, some Dhimmicraps might be tempted to play the “no foreign policy experience” card… and that that would be a real tarbaby for the Dhims, as

 

“…anyone including Elmer Fudd has more experience in foreign affairs than the current President had on taking office.”

Bazinga!

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Tar Him, Feather Him and Give Him a Box of Matches to Play With

Read:

When an adult took standardized tests forced on kids

and

Revealed: School board member who took standardized test

And get back with me. I’ll be playing the Jeopardy Theme…

Back now?

I got hold of a pdf of the “test” this moron with 2 masters degrees (in education, of course) took. His carping (from a summation by his interviewer), “The math section, he said, tests information that most people don’t need when they get out of school,” is typical. Of COURSE most people will never NEED to have at their fingertips the information that there are 360 degrees in a circle and that the hours of a clock face (obviously–duh: 360/12) divide those degrees up into 30-degree chunks. (see pic below) That’s just ONE way to get the correct answer, without guessing, to one of the easy-peasy questions on the maths test. But, as Lovely Daughter pointed out to me in email, such problems as that particular question posed ARE easily answered with very simple reasoning, no math needed.

*sigh*

And so it proved for the entire math test. Indeed, most of those questions that weren’t simple addition, subtraction, multiplication or division (4th grade stuff, at best) HAD THE FORMULAS PROVIDED TO SOLVE THEM! The rest? Any formulas or processes were blatantly obvious to anyone competent in sixth to eighth grade math.

All the unthinking test taker needed to do with such fare would be to plug the data into their (provided) calculator.

Simple, basic reasoning ability and the ability to read simple text and follow directions: that’s ALL the test measured.

His gripe about the math test is that no one he knows needs to know any of that information, so kids shouldn’t be tested on it? Well, they’re not. The test is a math test like a “driver’s test” at a kiddie bumper-car ride is Le Mans. The test is simply a test of whether those taking it can think their way out of a wet paper bag.

And the guy’s gripe about the reading test?

“On the FCAT, they are reading material they didn’t choose. They are given four possible answers and three out of the four are pretty good. One is the best answer but kids don’t get points for only a pretty good answer. They get zero points, the same for the absolute wrong answer…”

Well, duh. It’s a TEST, dumbass! Do employees choose all their reading material at work, or do they have to follow directions? Do people really WANT to read the directions for taking a prescription medication? Is “reading” but not comprehending such material really a Good Thing? OF COURSE reading COMPREHENSION is a survival and success attribute, but this guy thinks kids should only be quizzed on whatever they WANT to read, and that getting wrong answers is just as good as actually understanding the printed word and being able to use information thus transmitted to get correct answers.

This guy’s a perfect example of those things that are wrong with education in America. We’d all be better of if he and his ilk were placed on chain gangs making little rocks out of big ones. For life.

Note: while I am absolutely convinced that there is ample evidence to assert that “education departments” of colleges and universities are intellectual wastelands largely populated by the least intellectually gifted attending college or university, I also know a number of standout exceptions to that rule. There are good teachers who are bright, capable and hard-working. Unfortunately, I think the evidence is strong that those who combine those characteristics are not the norm in education.

My hat’s off to good teachers everywhere. Sadly, I don’t feel I need tip it all that often.

Continue reading “Tar Him, Feather Him and Give Him a Box of Matches to Play With”

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Was Pollyanna Stupid or Evil?

It’s a tough question. If you’re unfamiliar with the reference, take some time out. I’ll wait. Meanwhile, I’ll leave this here for interim consderation:

Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.–Napoleon Bonaparte (ascribed)

There is such a thing as human evil. I’ll allow no argument on that point, because any argument otherwise is simply either stupid* or evil. Period. So, accept as axiomatic that human evil exists. Is it then stupid or evil to look human evil in the face and see good? (I’ll allow a third option: insanity.)

Examples abound:

Idiots who defend Islam as a “religion of peace”. Stupidity or witting enabling of the evil hate cult of Islam?

People who assert that America is an unjust society, because we have people they class as poor? Evil or stupid? Consider this:

Ahhh, I’m tired of this already, and my BP is starting to climb… *sigh*

So, are those who are enablers of the hate cult of the Butcher of Medina evil or stupid (or both–likely, IMO)?

Are those who seem to be actively attempting to destroy our society via such activities as encouraging the kleptocratic “gimme” culture evil or stupid (or both–likely, IMO)?

And when do we stop ascribing destructive behaviors to stupidity alone and start calling it malice?

Yes, I aborted a bunch of stupid/evil material ranging from “pro-choice” (which is really, “Deny ANY choice to the unborn”), “Edumacation”, the Thugs Standing Around program of full employment for goons and petty tyrants, and “feddle gummint” tyrannical meddling in citizens’ lives while actively enabling outlaws to The Cult of Anthropogenic Climate Scare-ism and numerous points in between. One can select any issue dominated by the lies of the Mass MEdia Podpeople Hivemind, politicians *gag-spew* and Academia Nut Fruitcakes and plug it right into the “Stupid or Evil” matrix for consideration.

*I include in my use of “stupid” acts of witting, deliberate avoidance of facts. Witting, deliberate distortion of facts is evil–slander against truth.

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New Math or Just Innumerate?

(Note the date of recording.)

I think I’ll go with innumerate twit:

See? I told y’all not to trust that so-called “birth certificate”. Even The Zero (inadvertently) admits it’s hinky. (A guy who has created such a big fuss about the issue but doesn’t even know when he was born–or worse, when he IS NOW–is incompetent to manage his own affairs, let alone be president of a garden club. Just sayin’… )

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One Small Example…

…of the stupidity of usual and customary modern (mis)”education” practices:

“Drill and kill.”

That’s a phrase used to deprecate dilling facts such as multiplication tables until they become second nature. Combine that with stupidly practiced positive reinforcement of “tender widdle egos” and we have such idiocies as congratulating ignorant little brats for “5×6=33” or ignorant and nearly illiterate college students who are super-confident of their intellectual prowess.

No, the proper view of drilling facts is:

“Drill to skill.”

Indeed, facts must be drilled, practiced, exercised regularly for quite some time before they can be useful and contribute to useful skills–or even by themselves be skills. Intellectual pursuits are non different in this regard than physical pursuits. Most pubschools have some sort of athletic teams. Are the kids just set out on the field and told to “just have fun” or do they have a coach who drills them in fundamentals and has them practices skill sets and play patterns?

The latter, of course. Apparently, pubschools view athletic endeavors as more important than intellectual ones, because in athletic endeavors, pubschools actually coach kids to attempt to be successful, having them practice and drill the skills they need until they are skills.

Or take an even simpler task. Has anyone ever seen any person just pick up a hammer for the very first time and drive a 10-penny nail in two (or maybe three) blows, perfectly straight with no problems? No, because it takes (usually) some minimal instruction (I can’t count the number of inexperienced adults I’ve seen simply holding a hammer incorrectly!) and lots and lots of practice.

Ditto for calculus or stats calculations or grammatically-written sentences or playing piano: (proper) practice yields skills that mere knowledge cannot. Of course, that’s one reason many “educators” deride such things: actually supervising such practice to assure what’s being learned is useful is often hard work (and I use the term derisively; teachers teach while “educators” are more often puffed-up, toxic drones who need an extra two syllables to assure themselves of their importance).

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And the answer to this problem is…

…easily computed using standard algorithms: raze “schools of education” to the ground, put education professors, remote educrats and their pubschool administration dupes on chain gangs making little rocks out big rocks, with breaks for frequent “counseling sessions” by Dr. Tarr and Mr. Fether.

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The Brightest, Most Intelligent President Evah #1

I know this has been beat to death, but it needs to be used to beat something else to political death.

Barack Obama: “I’ve now been in 57 states? I think one left to go?”

Yeh, yeh, I’ve heard all the excuses about this “mis-speaking” but none of them wash. It doesn’t matter HOW tired or pressured this asshole was, “57” (with one left to go–and specifically excepting Alaska and Hawaii, since he was referring to the contiguous states) is simply not the kind of thing that any American who’s marginally literate would even mistakenly say, because the 48 contiguous States would have been drilled into his unconscious.

No, this “intelligent” Hahvahd-edumacated idiot has only a surface, semi-, transient connection to anything approaching a knowledge of American history and geography, and he’s ruling by fiat from the White House along with fellow Dhimmicrappic conspirators against the Constitution in Congress who are afraid Guam will capsize because of over-population and that “every month that we do not have an economic recovery package 500 million Americans lose their jobs.” (Total US population is somewhere a tad north of 300 Million, even counting children, illegals, retirees and welfare slugs.)

Hmmm, seems innumeracy is rampant in the “Party of Smart People” eh?

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Your “Feddle Gummint” at Work: IRS Raids Car Wash for 4¢

There ya go. Yet another reason for The FairTax from the IRS.

The kicker? Interest and penalties on the 4¢ amounted to $202.31.

BTW, if you’ve gotten all your information on the FairTax–what little there is available in mass media–from the Mass MEdia Podpeople Hivemind, politicians *spit* and Academia Nut Fruitcakes, you owe it to yourself, your children, your grandchildren and our society as a whole to follow the link to FairTax.org and there to practice some genuine autodidacticism (no, despite what the NEA may say, autodidacts are NOT perverts) on the subject.

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The Three R’s

An antidote for the trials and tribulations we face today is… more trial and tribulation, as found in the “Three R’s”–Reading, Righting and Revolution.

One of the biggest barriers to good governance nowadays is the ignorance of the People. The answer to that is to teach the People to read. No, not just how to read but to read. And not to read just the poisonous pap they find in Mass Media Podpeople Hivemind rags but to read history. And not just to read history but to read the actual documents of history: the documents of our nation’s roots and its founding, extending at least as far back as the Magna Carta, first and foremost.

Then we need to be serious about righting the wrongs of a government grown bloated and overbearing, that neglects its principal duties and besets its citizens with oppression. A good pruning is sorely needed.

But those two steps will take a revolution, I fear, or rather, will be a revolution the like of which our political elites–in government, Mass Media Hivemind and Academia Nut Fruitcake Bakeries–will not easily allow.

Think: the generation that was inspired by the Boston Tea Party had not passed when George Washington–the Father of our country, as he is rightly styled–put down the Whiskey Rebellion, which was nothing but another “tea party” protesting oppressive and unfair government taxation. (Note that George Washington’s whiskey production was, like others of his class, taxed at only 2/3 the rate of poor Western farmers’ whiskey. Therein, and in the earlier shameful response to the so-called “Shay’s Rebellion”, I fear, was the seed of Elite Oppression of the People sown even in those early days of the republic… *sigh*)

It would be a Good Thing if we were able to effect the Three R’s by means of personal influence and see the real revolution take place at the polling booth, but even then, it may well take more than JUST personal influence and voting, the way the “community organizers” of the left have devised such slick ways to steal votes.

Interesting times.