Loss of Language, Loss of Thought (the dumbing down of America)

IC ^ | Wolfgang Grassl

[Miss Marple]

True, to some extent.

However, speaking as the dinosaur I am, there is defnitely a degradation of standards.

the problem is not a few abbreviations or bits of slang; the problem is short attention spans, the inability to concentrate, and a total lack of reason or logic in drawing conclusions.

Example #1 of this is the election of Barack Obama, without anything to recommend him except a vague phrase and the ability to deliver a speech from a teleprompter. Older people asked, “What has he DONE? What is his background and experience? What is his platform? Who does he value as a mentor? Where was he born, what is his health, what type of grades did he make in school?”

Those questions were discounted by the Hopey-changey crowd, who saw nothing except some guy who said things that sounded nice.

Example #2 are the global warming adherents, who refuse to believe any scientific evidence, instead going with feelings. No logic, no understanding of economic consequences, nothing.

Example #3 is the woman who got federal money and thought it came from “Obama’s stash.” No understanding of taxes supporting the government, etc. This woman believes money just appears.

Do go back and look at the examples I gave in books and movies. You will be surprised.

[abigailsmybaby]

Like gag me with a spoon! LOL

[dfwgator]

“Don’t wanna sound like a d—k or nothin’, but it says on your chart that you’re f-—ed up. Ah, you talk like a fag, and your s—t’s all retarded. What I’d do, is just like... ha ha... like... aha... you know, like, you know what I mean, like... haha...”

[narses]

Government schools are institutionalized child abuse. Period.

[HowlinglyMind-BendingAbsurdity]

"The problem ultimately lies in a misconstrued metaphysics, or rather in the absence of any notion of ontology at all. When Bill Clinton was asked whether he had sexual relations with a White House intern and famously replied that this depended on the meaning of "is," his statement was of course evasive and facetious. But it was also intelligent: For apart from the time-indexed meaning of the copula in the present tense, the "is" in "This is a ball" is different from that in "A ball is a spherical object." The first sentence identifies a particular (or token) as a member of a class (or type), whereas the second offers a definition through the synonymy of types. The "is" in "it's like" is neither of these, for it seeks to define a type -- for example, "a ball" or "market segmentation" -- by reference to a token. It does not even modify the definiendum directly. There is a curious reluctance to think about the nature of things, maybe as a result of decades of teaching that there is no such nature apart from what one wants them to be. Rather, students increasingly see the world phenomenologically -- as a haphazard arrangement of "stuff" and of events informed by the sensory impressions of their own experience but devoid of any structure."

It makes a nice question for a logic class, even with the president's evasions
of the ontological definiendum.

"Release the second chakra!"

Barry Soetoro: "What does 'absence of any notion of ontology' mean?"

"We must have a long talk sometime...."

[the invisib1e hand]