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Wednesday 2 November 2016

The US election is increasing American stupidity.

I read "The Daily Beast", it gives me a very one-sided view of US politics. But this:

"Say you’re a Donald Trump voter and, with just six more rotations around the sun until Election Day, you want to contribute your hard-earned money"

I'm aware that many Americans think that the universe is 6000 years old, and that some think that the earth is flat. That the moon landing didn't happen and that 9/11 was done by the US government. But here's a "journalist" under the impression that the earth rotates around the sun?

Well, of course, it does. This takes a year. The US election isn't six years away, it's six days. This idiot thinks doesn't know that the apparent progression of the sun across the sky, is because the earth spins on its axis, not because it "rotates around the sun". And if there's anyone proofreading these articles, they didn't catch this bad idea.

Stupidity must be infectious.

3 comments:

  1. This is a characteristic of journalists generally, not necessarily American ones. They are all humanities grads, with no understanding of science or maths.

    CNN once said that Alpha Centauri was 4.5 million light years away, an error of nine orders of magnitude. This may be a record, but errors of one or two decimal places are rife in every article that includes figures. The media also like to report on upcoming meteor showers, but can never get the facts right, telling people to look at the constellation the shower is named for, as if the emanating point is where all the meteors will be seen, and telling them to go outside at the predicted peak time as if that is when the "event" will occur.

    You would think that the writers on the financial pages would be better with figures, but they don't understand percentages, and they get very excited about presumed movements in indexes linked to political stories, which may be quite small related to movements a few days before that had no ties to politics.

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  2. And of course the critics gremlin strikes- that should be six orders of magnitude.

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