Tag: Stupidity

My hypothesis is that some men have no stigma attached to failure due to pure solid stupidity.  

If true, it follows that if hot plasma stupidity could be contained, cooled and compressed through the states of matter to form a perfectly arranged crystalline structure at absolute zero, solid diamond stupid should look like this:

America is the greatest engine of innovation that has ever existed, and it can’t be duplicated anytime soon, because it is the product of a multitude of factors: extreme freedom of thought, an emphasis on independent thinking, a steady immigration of new minds, a risk-taking culture with no stigma attached to trying and failing, a noncorrupt bureaucracy, and financial markets and a venture capital system that are unrivaled at taking new ideas and turning them into global products.

 – Tom Friedman, The Secret From Our Sauce, March 7, 2004

How solid is that?

oh no, it couldn’t happen to ME,” snobs.

The “It’s all those stupid borrowers fault!” arrogant snobs.

The “I have no problem with them being put on the street if they’re not paying,” snobs.

Here’s a few questions I have for them, red-hot off the griddle of my righteous indignation about the foreclosure fandango:

Dear Mr Snob,

Haven’t you heard interviews with some of these people? Did you listen up when you had the chance?

What if there were a secret store of wealth that America could use to pay down its debts and restore prosperity? What if we could free hundreds of billions of dollars to reinvigorate our society and restore confidence to industry and financial markets? Such a reserve does in fact exist. It is our accumulated store of institutionalized stupidity.

Readers of “Dilbert” who have worked in large organizations must constantly explain to children and other innocents that the pervasive stupidity depicted in Scott Adams’ comic strip is only slightly exaggerated. It exists in every corner of our “efficient” quasi-capitalistic marketplace. In prosperous times, institutionalized stupidity is annoying, but in times of extreme economic difficulty, this huge reservoir of dysfunctional behavior is inevitably tapped as desperate necessity becomes, temporarily, powerful enough to overcome the general human tendency toward stupid institutional behavior.

Whence institutional stupidity? The best answer I can come up with is that our species is designed by evolution to adopt destructive simplifications of behavior. The eagerness of individuals to substitute obedience to simple rules for independent development of specific solutions is the foundation of institutional decay. Fixed rules substitute for context-based decisions and dogmas crowd out considered judgments until schools produce dropouts, prisons incubate criminals, food plants ship toxic peanut butter, and Vista bogs down your computer. As every institution ages, the accumulation of irrationality in its growing mass of rules, dogmas, and habits raises the level of dysfunction and stupidity, until some final crisis sweeps away the accumulated mountain of folly.

A year ago, I began using the FIOS high-speed Internet service provided by Verizon, a huge telecommunications corporation. Ever since I began using FIOS, Verizon marketing personnel have contacted me, on average about twice a month, asking me to sign up for the FIOS service. Each time they call me, I carefully explain to them that I am already a FIOS customer, and they reply that they will not solicit me again. Then, a few weeks later, the phone rings again with another FIOS solicitation. Verizon has probably spent more money on re-marketing FIOS to me than they did on the initial installation of the service. This is not an isolated anecdote. Such stupidity accounts for hundreds of billions of dollars of waste. Let’s look at the big examples.

Clueless, arrogant, cynical, stupid, greedy, heartless bastards.

cross-posted from The Dream Antilles

Plexico Burress, Shakespearean Tragic Hero



OMFG. New York Football Giants star receiver Plexico Burress last night shot himself in the thigh with a handgun.  Will he play again this year?  Who knows?  He was released from the hospital today.  There are other questions though.  Like: WTF is he doing with a loaded pistol in a night club during the season?  And htf did he shoot himself in the thigh?  Isn’t that like totally embarrassing?  And is this the stupidest economic “accident” we’ve seen this year, a year of gigantic, incredibly stupid economic “accidents?”

So those of us in the “life as figure of speech” department were thinking about Plexico Burress this afternoon.  And we were thinking hard.

The big question for us is whether he’s a metaphor for the United States’s economy?  Or the war effort in Iraq?  Or the Bush Administration?  Or the War on Terror^TM?  Or something else that’s a gigantic f*ck up?

What kind of figure of speech is he anyway?  Is this an example of synecdoche? Is this an example of metonymy? Is it metaphor?  WTF is this anyway?  And, more important, what does it mean, if anything, to us?

The New York Times supplies the back story:

It was unclear what led to the gun’s discharge. There were no reports of any fights inside the club before the shooting. The police did not say whether any charges would be filed, but they noted that felony charges were possible if a person possesses a loaded, unlicensed handgun in a place other than his residence or business.

Under the league’s personal-conduct policy, violations of local gun laws can result in a player’s suspension…snip

It is the latest controversy involving Burress, who signed a five-year, $35 million contract with the Giants just before the season opener. He was suspended for 12 days, including a victory over Seattle, because he missed meetings without explanation.

Against San Francisco on Oct. 19, Burress shouted at Coach Tom Coughlin on the sideline after drawing an unsportsmanlike-conduct penalty. The N.F.L. fined Burress $45,000 for verbally abusing the officials.

Coughlin held him out of the first quarter of the Oct. 26 game against the Steelers because he missed treatment on a neck and shoulder injury the day before.

The Times also reports that Burress, who is 31, has a 5-year $35 million contract.

I know that you, dear readers, are incredibly busy and perplexed by other, vital questions, but seriously now, have you ever heard of anything as ridiculous and expensive as this?

Then again, oops.  I guess so.  How about Michael Vick?

Oh, goddess supreme, preserve us in safety from the end of this Empire.

Is it just me, or are these guys just epically stupid?

Try this one:

Hi all! Pickle here to bring you an oldie but goodie from teh tubz! I first encountered this charming and eloquent young lady’s performance on Keith Olbermann’s show a few months ago. All I can say is: SUCH AS!!!

Like, totally, OMG!!!

From the “You did what……why???? department…..

According to this Yahoo!News story, Clint Straatman, a PE teacher at Minico High School in Rupert, ID, took a Mexican flag from a student…

because “white kids” might have hurt the 16-year-old.

¡Malo!

But wait…..it gets better…..

He said he put it in a garbage can because he had no place else to keep it.

¡Muy, muy malo!

Camelo had brought the flag to school, as did other students, in celebration of Cinco de Mayo….