indexed

Reminds me of the British high tech industry.

"Tee hee: boffins! Snark. Why do they all go to America anyway?"

same goes for voting democrat. Bail us out, liberals!

...we never learn.

This is my new background, and something I have believed for some time now.

This is, I think, both the most optimistic and utterly depressing thing I have seen in years.

So true. God Bless America.

So so true! And yet I look at myself and all of my geeky friends and can't help but think: *we're* it? ::laughs nervously::

Still, I look around at many of the shenanigans today and realize that we probably can't do a whole lot worse.

Thanks for this. So much more elegant than my recent rant.

lol...very apropos given the current economic situation on Wall St.

I tend to think economic activity and anti-intellectualism have the opposite relation. Boom times are when critical thinking flies out the window and economic herd behavior occurs. Intellectualism would have prevented the housing boom which is now busting.

I believe this is the most brilliant index card to date!

Olinga Abbott: Do you think the housing boom was a good thing, given the amount of people now in danger of loosing just about everything? I would argue that a sensible, sustainable economy not based on speculation and boom-bust theories would be a healthier and stronger economy in the long run.

Steven,

You may want to re-read my comment. We are arguing for the same point of view!

Ah, but economic strength isn't the same as "economic activity" - it implies stable growth, I'd assume. So you're right that the boom occurs when people don't think, but that's not what's described in the graph.

Olinga, you're confusing the dependant and independant variables there. She is saying that anti-intellectualism causes economic decline. You are right, if the axes were switched, we'd see that economic decline decreases anti-intellectualism

Nerds will rule one day.

This may not be accurate, but I've gotten the feeling from many of the cards that her graphs tend towards relational graphs, not cause/effect graphs.

That is, she's just looking at a relation, not trying to find/state what the cause of it is.

I would like to point out that recently, in my eleventh grade class, a girl asked what "Intellectual" meant. That, my friends, is why nerds will one day reign.
Also, everyone teases you until you need to save the world...

Actually, the question of what an intellectual is is not simple, and I don't blame somebody in grade 11 for asking, no matter how vacant they sounded when asking it.

An intellectual once said (not necessarily an exact quote) that an intellectual is a person who has found something more interesting than sex.

Eleventh-grade Anonymous: you will profit from reading The House of Intellect.

EscherEnigma: well said!

I decided to rip-off Jessica Hagy to make a comment that seemed appropriate: The truth about the creative class.

Thanks again for some pithy truth.

Meritocracy?

It's times like these I kind of feel bad for people who, in high school, thought "Catcher in the Rye contains more truth and simple common sense than Dune, or any Science Fiction novel!"

It turns out, Salinger is the phony, and Herbert was totally right when he said that people will always be the same; that the only thing that really changes is technology.

People are just availing themselves of the changed technology. Nerds have always had the bailing buckets ready -- and always will. It's warm and fuzzy, but only if you're the one on terra firma with the new shareware....

Many comments about intellect vs. non-intellect and state of the economy in the US. I see the graph as comparing strong economies (US, Japan, Western Europe), vs. weaker ones (North Korea, Iran, Libya, Cuba). There is a strong relationship between economic power and intellectual control.

Hello! it was great to meet you at the signing tonight. thanks for the card!

this is one of my favorite posts of yours, so i thought it was as good a place as any to leave a note.

keep up the great work!
~e