House of Eratosthenes

I don’t really know if the news lately is supporting a runaway acceleration toward the events in this movie, or if watching that movie has influenced the way I see said news when it comes out. I’m willing to lean toward the latter explanation, for now. Just for now.

But the connections between “Idiocracy” and real life seem, to me, to be inescapable. It is a Rip van Winkle story, about a man of extremely average intelligence who finds himself the most intelligent human alive because he was forgotten in a suspended-animation experiment for five centuries. It’s the stupid people amongst us, you see; they were breeding like rabbits. While the genetic lineage of the more intelligent came to a stop.

The world’s average I.Q. falls through those five centuries, kind of like a lawn dart. And of course although a lot of people like to deny it, at school and work and leisure all standards rise or fall according to the human material that is supplied, and so everything is stupid-iated. Automated, but not really working well. Personally, I’m partial to the talking vacuum cleaner robot that keeps banging into the wall and intoning helpfully over and over, “your floor is now clean…your floor is now clean…” Hint: It is’t. This represents, to me, a beautiful capturing of the average telephone IVR (Interactive Voice Response). Who hasn’t had to endure the frustration of trying to explain to a cheerful and chipper computer voice that something isn’t right with the way your problem was handled, when the computer knows better?

In fact, I’ve been only half-joking that the big flaw of the movie is the 500 years. Probably should’ve made that something more like 60 or 70 there, Mr. Judge. It’s not like we’re stuck in first-gear on this process, after all. Signs all over the place indicate that we’ve got quite a bit of momentum built up.

For example — one of the supporting characters in the movie is an idiot lawyer who got his law degree at Costco. Yeah, that’s right. And look what we have here…

While finals are in full swing, and everyone is studying hard, I thought I’d throw this piece of not-quite-shocking research out there: Students like easy classes.

According to a recent study when students at Cornell University were given the median grades for courses, they tended to choose the seemingly easier ones. Who would have thought that?

Every semester, Cornell’s College of Arts and Sciences publishes the median grades of similar clases.

It’s been going on for about 10 years with the rationale being that students would get a better idea of their performance if they knew just how difficult the class was.

While that might be the case, students are cherry picking the courses with higher median grades and professors that give higher grades are the more popular.

That might backfire soon if the school actually puts those median grades on the student’s transcript, showing employers just how difficult the course was.

We’re supposed to be putting together a smarter and more intelligent society because there are more young people running around with diplomas and degrees. And sertifikayshuns…don’t forget the sertifikayshuns. But who’s minding the store? What do all these sheepskins mean? Something? Anything at all? By what process do we make sure of this? Is anyone anywhere willing to put great confidence in such a process? Is any greater confidence put into the assertion that a toe-head with a sheepskin is smarter than a toe-head who hasn’t got one? If so, why?

Meanwhile, the problems we confront today don’t seem to be the same problems, not even close, to the ones confronted by our grandparents. We don’t have Nazis firing machine guns at us from Omaha Beach, or a Great Depression with shanty-towns and soup lines. Instead…we have…

Calif. to recalculate release dates for up to 33,000 inmates
As many as 33,000 California inmates could be freed early, after the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation recalculates their release dates based on recent court decisions, officials say.

But a union that represents prison records clerks says a shortage of workers is stalling the state’s recalculation. Service International Employees Union Local 1000 planned to sue the department Wednesday, alleging the delay could be costing taxpayers millions of dollars as well as depriving convicts of their rights.

That’s right. We have a crisis of recalculation labor.

Why should I be surprised. My bill at Burger King comes to $4.78 and I hand the cashier a five dollar bill and three pennies, I’m standing there for another ten minutes.

The big problem with that story, in my mind, isn’t quite so much the dumbth — it’s the whining. I mean, read the whole story. You’ve got unions, you’ve got courts — the entire crisis is manufactured. You’ve got at least two situations, probably more, where someone in a position of authority decrees “minimal fairness requires X” — and then some massive bureaucratic leviathan struggles to achieve X, because without that everything is unfair, the authority said so.

Without that, the story and the associated crisis simply don’t exist.

Now, when did we ever vote on it that this makes some sense? Here, let’s try it on for size. You’re a clerk. I rob you. I take your thirty dollars and I shoot you dead. Jury convicts me and sends me to ten years…probation in five with good behavior. Judge says, crimes like this should be eight years instead. Or twelve years. Now we have to “recalculate” my release date.

Why is that? Suppose we just let me rot in there until my originally-scheduled release date. What is the worst-case scenario that results? What great crisis of unfairness erupts from that?

The article says it costs $43k to incarcerate a criminal for a year. Know what I’d like to see? I’d like to see a busybody study that figures out how many billions of dollars it costs California to have “fairness” re-defined so flippantly and so ritually by authority figures who purport to know what fairness is. Union authorities…judicial authorities…whatever. Just that phenomenon, and nothing more — how much does it cost us. I’ll bet we pass the trillion dollar mark on that a lot sooner than you might think.

Are you makin’ new words again, Morgan?

‘Cause I kinda like this one: stupid-iated

dumbth isn’t bad, either.

I’d like to see a busybody study that figures out how many billions of dollars it costs California to have “fairness” re-defined so flippantly and so ritually by authority figures who purport to know what fairness is.

Sadly, you’re probably right about the trillion dollars. I’m sure it’s more than $43K, anyway.
- philmon | 12/13/2007 @ 18:08
Phil,

I stole the d-word from Steve Allen.
- mkfreeberg | 12/13/2007 @ 18:16
Wow, $43K, that’s a full $13K higher than my salary as an electronics tech working in miserable conditions in the open air repairing traffic signals for the city of Oklahoma City. Time to start dealing dope to FBI agents I guess.
- Tom The Impaler | 12/13/2007 @ 21:37
A Further five minutes of thought makes me wonder how the HELL they spend $43K per year keeping up minimal comfort and living standards to inmates? Seriously I’ve seen how the inmates eat, and I’ve know guards, I’m guessing no fewer than five layers of totally unnecessary upper management with corner offices and secretaries who swallow. Otherwise a beans and hot dogs diet, three sizes fit all wardrobe, and concrete and steel living accommodations couldn’t POSSIBLY add up to more than $15K of that!
Time to run the alien audit probulator deep into the colon of the California Correctional system!
- Tom The Impaler | 12/13/2007 @ 21:53

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A No-BrainerThursday, December 13th, 2007

A No-Brainer
Thursday, December 13th, 2007