All that newspaper reading pays off
Bookworm on Jul 19 2008 at 4:38 pm | Filed under: Silly Stuff
From LGF to me to you — the Pew News IQ test. With the same humility that characterized Charles Johnson’s take on taking the test, I humbly report that I aced it. (Of course, with only 12 questions, that wasn’t too hard.)
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19 Responses to “All that newspaper reading pays off”
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I scored 91%. I guess I need to pay attention to the stock market more.
Spiff
I found it interesting the differences between male and female scores ( males scored higher) , and that the older the test taker, the better the score. Higher educational levels correlating with higher scores was not a surprise to me, but the previous two were a surprise to me.
Ha, 91% also. Missed the stock market one too.
Yup…did 97%. I should get a real life.
91 for me too…couldn’t remember which country declared independence from Serbia.
A trend! I got 91% too.
What amazed me was how low the average score was for college grads. How someone who graduated from college could not know more of these kinds of things is beyond me.
I met someone not that long ago who has a bachelor’s degree and yet had never heard the term “The third world.” I know that term is not in favor anymore but even so, how can someone not have heard that term by the time they are 30?
>>I met someone not that long ago who has a bachelor’s degree and yet had never heard the term “The third world.”>>
You know…this is one of the fears I have about Obama. Well, actually, I fear Obama as a presidential candidate because he’s a Marxist, but then, I think Hillary is probably one as well. Of the two, I don’t know which would be worse – Hillary has been around enough to know how to get things done, but she’s also been around enough to know that there are limitations on what she can do. Obama hasn’t been. There’s no doubt he’s intelligent, but intelligence and ignorance can go hand in hand…one does not preclude the other. There’s not doubt that he has been schooled in the law. But what does he know _other_ than the law? What was the breadth of his education before he began his law degree? Certainly once he got into law school, he studied _law_. It’s a tough degree, and certainly one that hasn’t much time to waste on unrelated topics…so…what does he know about things unrelated to the law? It seems that he not only doesn’t know a lot, but he is ignorant enough not to know that he doesn’t know. That’s bad. You need to study enough to have _some_ idea of the topic, even if it’s only to avoid charlatans when you’re looking for an advisor. If you know absolutely _nothing_, you’ll take advice from anybody.
He seems to me like a callow youth who has just graduated from high school, but somehow has done so with a law degree.
Hmmmm… Middle age, male, college grads did the best; young, female, poorly educated had the lowest scores; so why do we middle age, male, college grads find young females so interesting? Even when they don’t know who the chairman of the Fed is? … Even when they look great in shorts and a tank-top?…
Oh, nevemind…
Check out my post on Big Government, suek.
http://ymarsakar.wordpress.com/2008/04/13/global-government-evil-or-good/
It addresses some of the issues when people who are ignorant and/or malicious try to change the world for the “better”.
Look at the EU for another example.
Even when they don’t know who the chairman of the Fed is? … Even when they look great in shorts and a tank-top?…
The biological imperative decrees that younger women are more vital and health when bearing children and will have more years to bear your children.
What tends to happen when society is able to divorce the procreation aspect of sex and human social conventions from the recreational aspects, is something that’s going to change the face of the future more than any tech product around.
Unchallenging.
>>What tends to happen when society is able to divorce the procreation aspect of sex and human social conventions from the recreational aspects, is something that’s going to change the face of the future more than any tech product around.>>
Anyone who hasn’t read Mark Steyn’s “America Alone” _should_. Our immediate problem is islam, but even if that weren’t a problem, envisioning the future when people choose not to have children is certainly thought provoking.
I’ll have to agree with Tiresias. Yeah, I knew all the answers but I get no satisfaction being in that 3 percent percentile. Most of the info should be common knowledge. This tells me a lot of the other 97 percent don’t know squat.
I speculate that if this poll had been sampling political blog readers, the spread would be different.
Then again, the age thing would still be true.
Public awareness of the number of American military fatalities in Iraq has declined sharply since last August.
Maybe cause the media stopped reporting on Iraq when it looked like the people that they sold into violence and death were punching back and clawing their way back to victory? Oooh, bad news… for the media.
The drop in awareness comes as press attention to the war has waned.
It’s amazing, BOok, when propaganda is able to edumacate the populace to the point where it affects statistics… NOT
That’s what propaganda is for. What is the MSM is for in this war of ours. Period.
More Republicans (34%) and independents (24%) than Democrats (19%) can identify the majority leader.
Funny.
If I hadn’t watched a jack load of Fox News and political clap trap in the days leading to 2007, I couldn’t have made my score of 10/12.
Fed chair was never mentioned to me, and if it was, it was years ago and only once. Alan Greenspan retired and then poof, black hole. Course, I stopped watching cable altogether by that time…
Other quesiton missed was Dow Jones. I saw a blogger’s photo that said the DOW had hit 10-11k.
Course, this was back in March, so…
And yet we let them vote, Zhombre. In fact in Chicago, Miami, Seattle and doubtless others – we let them vote several times.
Yes, Tiresias, and in Chicago they even vote from the grave. I think the Founders, quite wisely, had reservations about pure democracy because popular opinion can be so easily swayed and manipulated by demagogues; by bribes and spectacles, as in the Roman bread and circuses; by rumors; by passions; by pure blood lust, as in the French Revolution (under a certain set of circumstances, a lynch mob is an accurate representation of the popular will). A democratic assembly condemned Socrates to death. The Romans once conducted a poll in Jerusalem and its consensus was give us Barabbas. Don’t get me wrong: I believe in consensual government, but the Constitution I am loyal to is about limits to power, even the power of vox populi.