edlib Posted June 9, 2003 Posted June 9, 2003 Actually, I have to contend the point that only the stupid fled England. Let's see, they were leaving a place with: religious intolerance and oppression, outrageous taxation, overcrowded and unsanitary living conditions, horrible class divisions, bad food, and crappy weather. I dunno... seems to me like the people who stayed just might have been the stupid ones.
Kylilin Posted June 9, 2003 Posted June 9, 2003 Don't forget that these people started accusing each other of witchcraft and burning each other at the stake for it.
Nitro Posted June 9, 2003 Posted June 9, 2003 *dies laughing cause he's watching Monty Python and the Quest for the Holy Grail, and the witch/duck scene came on as I opened this thread*
Jabba The Hunt Posted June 9, 2003 Author Posted June 9, 2003 Quote Originally posted by Admiral Thanks you for a good laugh Jabba. at least someone realised it was a joke. (oh and btw nute i got 121 on my last IQ test (118 the time before (which is just assumed to be a statisical inaccuracy) and I have a report which states that puts me in the top 8% of british intellect (for all you dummies out there, that means theres more intelligent people in britian)
Nute Gunray Posted June 10, 2003 Posted June 10, 2003 I don't know where you keep getting this "more smart people in Britain" thing. If you're all so smart, why didn't you invent the nuclear bomb, have a space program, develop hi-tech electronics, make a decent car, and figure out how to have flavor in your food? Personally, it's my belief that the British conquered most of the world A) to get out of England and B) to find a way to make food taste better. Good thing the British invented the jet engine. They sure put it to good use fending off the Blitz with all their super hi-tech jet fighters. I'm still really curious how the entire british education system works. plz answer. I found a different breakdown for the IQ test thingie. I like it more because it accounts for the fact that we're actually educated now: 100 is higher than 50% of the population 110 is higher than 75% of the population 120 is higher than 93% of the population 130 is higher than 98% of the population I still don't like the IQ test. I'm not in the top 2% of humans. I wish I hadn't thrown away all my psych notes that talked about the other, better tests.
Kylilin Posted June 10, 2003 Posted June 10, 2003 Quote Originally posted by Nute Gunray If you're all so smart, why didn't you invent the nuclear bomb, have a space program, develop hi-tech electronics, make a decent car, and figure out how to have flavor in your food? Or brush your teeth either.
Zoom Rabbit Posted June 10, 2003 Posted June 10, 2003 Happy birthday, Jabba! Ben: college is where we learn to drink, a skill that comes in handy when we go to a university. My take on the idea of British IQs being higher than American because the stupid people were sent over here to colonize is this: the family name on my mom's side is 'Twaddle,' which means 'nonsense' in old English. My theory is that one of my ancestors was the village idiot. In the modern world, the IQ of Americans and Brits is best compared by looking at our leaders. In America we have a president who controls an arsenal of nucular weapons...however, in Britain we have a man who thought Iraq was capable of attacking his country within 45 minutes. With what, rocket-powered attack camels? Let's face it...we're both idiots. Enough of this twaddle.
Nute Gunray Posted June 10, 2003 Posted June 10, 2003 But we're idiots that are always 56 minutes away from blowing everyone into sub-atomic particles. We should hold the world ransom or something.
Gold leader Posted June 10, 2003 Posted June 10, 2003 Isn't it the other way around? Face it, the world needs 12 blockbuster hollywood movies a year, and the US needs billions of dollars to fill the crater in their trade balance. I don't know my IQ, but I do know that the average is supposed to be 100. However, every year the average increases a bit (1 or 2 points, IIRC) On average, we're all getting smarter. But this is logical, a decent newspaper contains more info than a medieval farmer recieved in his whole life. The problem with the IQ tests is that the different education systems across the world tend to emphasize different subjects, and that there are many different kind of tests. Because of that, it's often not fair to compare IQ averages of 2 countries. Thanks to the Treaty of Bologna, the education system in Europe is going to be more uniform. Right now in The Netherlands we're running ahead of schedule with the implementation of the Treaty. you have to do 5 years of high school before you can go to college , after which you get your Bachelor title. University requires 6 years of high school. Uni is split up in 2 parts: the Bachelor phase takes 3 years, followed by a 1 or 2 year Master phase (2 years for the technical studies). This means that it'll take me at least 5 years of study before I get my M.Sc. title. Does this make my education worse than the one of my fellow American engineering student, who has to study 6 years for the same title? No. It has an ABET accreditation, and the graduates are highly appreciated in the industry. It's just different.
Nute Gunray Posted June 10, 2003 Posted June 10, 2003 India and China produce just as many movies as the US. If anything, the US is a glorious savior charging ahead to save the world from poorly made movies. After reading your information concerning this new standardized EU education, particularly the high school stuff, I think I see where the US's extra year of higher level education comes from: we have less high school. Education is handled, mostly, on the state level when dealing with policy and the Federal government sets some standards How many years of high school you get is handled on the district level. A school district is a fairly small area. My county has maybe 200k people in it, but 6+ school districts. Some districts have junior high school, which means you go from Kindergarten (age 5) to sixth grade (11) at elementary school and then have seventh and eighth grade at the junior high (sometimes this building is part of the same complex as the senior high school others it's a different site). Ninth through twelfth grade is senior high school. This is how my district was, so I had six or four years of high school depending on how you look at it. However, HIGH SCHOOL didn't really start until ninth grade, as junior high was a lot like elementary school except i had to walk to different classes. A lot of districts (mine included now) have a distinct third tier. K-5 is now elementary, 6-8 is called middle school (it's what junior high was, but in it's seperate facility and not called high school) and 9-12 is high school. So now, we clearly have only four years of high school. I think this is more common in the US nowadays than the junior high thing they used to do. If the EU has five years of high school and five years on the Masters degree analogy, it's ten years of education. If the US has four years of high school and six years on it's Masters, it's ten years. Then you go and bust out this ABET thing that I've only heard of once and don't remember anything about. Not that it matters than American universities produce sub-par engineers. We import Asians for that anyhow.
Gold leader Posted June 11, 2003 Posted June 11, 2003 I once heard that 50% of the Phd graduates in the US are foreigners. Is this the reason or the consequence of the level of scientific research of the US being unmatched? Anyways, yay Asians!
Nute Gunray Posted June 11, 2003 Posted June 11, 2003 i would say it's a consequence of the US's Olympus Mons sized mountain of research dollars. Everyone wants a slice of our pie.
Jabba The Hunt Posted June 12, 2003 Author Posted June 12, 2003 Nute, you may produce most of the worlds hi-tech inventions, but we probably invented them (55% of the worlds inventions come from england if u didn't know )
Nute Gunray Posted June 12, 2003 Posted June 12, 2003 No, the US hi-tech gear was invented here. Your little British computer you came up with in the 40s sucked and we invented our own. The last useful thing the British invented was the jet engine, which we promptly stole from the Germans.
Gold leader Posted June 12, 2003 Posted June 12, 2003 55% seems a bit on the high side, I reckon. The latest British invention I can think of is the radar.
Admiral Odin Posted June 12, 2003 Posted June 12, 2003 It doesn't matter if we invent them or not, since in the end, we take the technologies we didn't invent and make new versions them far superior to the originals.
Jabba The Hunt Posted June 12, 2003 Author Posted June 12, 2003 Well i got that 55% from the discovery channel, and remember we aren't just talking about big things. The clockwork radio was invented here .
Nute Gunray Posted June 12, 2003 Posted June 12, 2003 I remember hearing about the clockwork radio a while ago. it seemed like such an obvious thing. i was surprised it hadn't been invented earlier. When I invent my steam powered steam generator, then we'll see which country is true master of invention.
Zoom Rabbit Posted June 14, 2003 Posted June 14, 2003 I dunno about IQ, but I can tell you this much about US educational standards versus European ones... Just ask a European kid a question--any question--in English. Then French. Then German. Then Spanish. Chances are he understood you at least three times. The American kid? Once, in English, if you're lucky.
Nute Gunray Posted June 14, 2003 Posted June 14, 2003 What's the point though? By 2100, it'll be English, Arabic, or Mandarian Chinese that are the only spoken languages on Earth. (Or nute willing, just English.) (because of the war)
Commander 598 Posted June 15, 2003 Posted June 15, 2003 Bah! I envision the Soviet Union rising from the ashes and the world speaking Russian.
Jabba The Hunt Posted June 16, 2003 Author Posted June 16, 2003 Actually the world will probably be speaking American English, well if Bill Gates has is way
Nute Gunray Posted June 16, 2003 Posted June 16, 2003 Actually, the world will be speaking American English because it already does. Well, it'll be our words and streamlined spellings, but accented. Zany how English works; it gave Americans no accent. You see, an accent is corrupting constant sounds. The American dialect doesn't corrupt constants, so we get no accent. That's why people singing in English sound American, with the exception of Liza Doolittle's father in My Fair Lady.
Nitro Posted June 17, 2003 Posted June 17, 2003 Quote Originally posted by Nute Gunray That's why people singing in English sound American, with the exception of Liza Doolittle's father in My Fair Lady. I'm scared that I thought the same thing.
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