Sep 17 2023 - Headlines in the News - Stupidity Crisis

 

Headline in the Bing News feed - "A neuroscientist explains why stupidity is an existential threat to America | Opinion by Bobby Azarian - a cognitive neuroscientist and author.   He explains that there is both "collective intelligence" and also "collective stupidity" and they have equal influence. His says that stupidity is a scientific concept that refers to a specific type of cognitive failure.  He theory is that it is a failure to use one's cognitive abilities effectively. You can be "smart" and still have a low IQ or no expertise in anything.  He goes on to explain the Dunning-Kruger effect. That's where individuals overestimate their level of intelligence, knowledge or competence in a particular area.  Ignorance of their ignorance. The worry in America is the politicians who are regularly being elected to office but clearly exhibit the Dunning-Kruger effect.  He goes on to worry about a stupidity crisis that is "threatening the nation." The news source that reported this opinion piece?  It is Raw Story.  There are a few articles by Raw Story in the Bing feed.  Who is this news organization? An American progressive news website founded in 2004 by John K. Byrne - they are bringing attention to stories they see as downplayed or ignored by other media outlets.  They are given mixed reviews - maybe because they are left-leaning.   They have won a number of awards for their stories and the big story they predicted/reported before the event - making it a predictive "breaking-news" story? “We’re gonna kill Congress”: Trump’s far-right supporters promise violence at today’s DC protests,” was published the morning of the Jan. 6, 2021 riot, predicting exactly what would happen on that fateful day. Considering this, where should I look for stories and reports now that the internet retrieval is controlled by Google/Bing and similar organizations who are seeking revenue and not information? If we were looking for quality news organizations, who would we choose?  A survey was conducted by Gallup/Knight about Americans' perceptions of the least and most biased news outlets in the US.  The article is HERE.  It is a love and hate story that divides between Republicans and Democrats.  Who is the winner?  The Wall Street Journal - both Democrats and Republicans rated it favourably.  The rest are a story of love and hate.   I've been looking for this image and found it today.  It was taken in 2010 or so and from the Loblaw Warehouse on Queens Quay at Bathurst.

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Polar Opposites

Yesterday's topic included the Antarctic.  Today let's look the other way towards the Arctic Circle.  This is slightly different, as Antartica is a place, and the arctic circle is a parallel - a line of latitude, with the North Pole at its centre. The Arctic Circle has a significant role in marking the daily patterns of sunlight and darkness. This is where there is the midnight sun and the polar night. Polar night starts to happen at the fall equinox, so they have a little bit of midnight sun to go. And then there are the Magnetic Poles.  These are locations on the Earth's surface where the planet's magnetic field points straight downwards at the north magnetic pole and upwards at the south magnetic pole. An intriguing feature of the poles is that they are always moving; in the case of the magnetic poles, only an average position can be determined. This from the Canadian Encyclopedia: "There remains one mystery: every 100 000 years or so, Earth's magnetic field wanes, and the magnetic poles reverse. Volcanic flows provide a logbook of these periodic reversals, because lava remains magnetized in the direction of the magnetic field at the time it cooled. This property provided some of the early hard evidence for the theory of PLATE TECTONICS. Geophysicists speculate that these magnetic flip-flops are due to the chaotic nature of the flow of magma in Earth's core. When will the next reversal occur? There seems to be no pattern, so scientists are unable to make any predictions." So what if Earth's magnetic poles flip? Will the world end for us?  First of all, it takes between 1,000 and 10,000 years to reverse.  It is a slow process. Scientists say it's the weak in-between phase that would be roughest on Earthlings. What would happen is ozone holes would form due to charged particles bombarding Earth's atmosphere during solar storms.  They could last from one to 10 years. The risk identified would be skin cancer. The more significant concern is technology. Solar storms can damage satellites, cause power outages, interrupt radio communications.  And then all the species that rely on geomagnetism for navigation - bees, salmon, turtles, whales, bacteria and pigeons.  What will happen, scientists don't know.  What we know is the geomagnetic field is currently weakening.  We could follow more topics on this at Livescience.com  A grunge abstract for today's theme.