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23% Of America Is Illiterate
Following on the heels of the dumbing down of the State of the Union speech we noted yesterday, we thought a simple visualization of just how stunningly poor our nation's reading skills really are would be useful. One in five Americans lacks the basic reading skills beyond a 4th grade level - are you one of them?
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Illiterate masses fuel .gov power like no other group.
I know how to write good.
I can read anything as long as there are no more than 140 characters.
What does illiterate mean ?
It means they are ill -AND- terate (I suggest you google terate on your own)
Go to any pre-algebra class, 25% will not have a clue.
Or how to calculate a percentage.
Que? No hablas Ingles!
.
Dang, looks like ain't nobody never learned you no good english.
That's unpossible. America is perfectly cromulent.
23% of America is illiterate.
Edit 93% of America is illiterate. *Fixed*
90% of Americans don't know the difference between there, their, and they're. Grade 3 english.
The collective doltishness of the flock has transposed the meaning of lose and loose.
It is mostly wrong for so long as to become endemic. The new normal.
Entropy reigns supreme.
Boris is not understand what your talking about! Their are too many English words for sound same. Its too hard!
(See what Boris do!? Is make self-deprecating statement of ironic humor!)
In other news, 23% of government employees are literate.
Grow that government larger, ObaMao! Yes you can! You're going to bring about a "smarter, more efficient government" just as you will surely bring 1 million electric vehicles to America's roads by 2015 (as promised in your 2009 SOTU, but...hmmmm...not mentioned last night).
Associated Press Photo of President's convoy driving to the Capitol Hill Building for last night's State of The Union Address
In other news, it's nice to see the dot.com 2.0 bubble back and bigger than ever, as television ads for every future failure of a company from Seamless.com to musicMagpie, and every asinine company in between, are back on the air.
But, I'm probably wrong, as "most of these Winners of the New World 2.0 companies don't even have earnings per share," and the Muppets will all grow increasingly wealthy on a permanently rising slope!
I do hope that the Bernank can maintain his "virtuous circle jerk" at least until he's no longer the Fed Head, for the sake of his illustrious legacy.
If you loose an arrow and don't watch it, you could lose it.
I have no doubt that 23% of america is illiterate... the problem is that this is an irrelevant statistic when 85% of americans are fucking retarded (and I'm being generous).
I really think the illiterate need to chime in here.
Talk about a one-sided discussion!
They'll post rebutals on YouTube, the soapbox for the illiterate.
If they are going to point out the best and worst towns, don't you think they could place them on a map correctly? Should we add geography too?
"23% Of America Is Illiterate"
.. and the other 84% can't do math so good
If 2/3 dropped out of high school that means 1/3 have high school degrees and cann't read.
I wonder how many have college degrees? ( In economics)
No Child Left Behind! Whether they can read or not!
90 percent of them have a smart phone-any corelation?
qjbevf;o' boi;jrv;jjrbv':K;kk2k4ejbnvq3tr;b'
The funding for the proposed "Chime Provision for the Poor and Illiterate" bill was blocked in committe.
Humans aren't smart individually, not even you. Man's body of work is brilliant (look at anything on wikipedia), but get anyone outside their comfort zone and they are "fucking retarded." So congratulations on observing the obvious.
you didn't say that.
You're right. In all the words in that post, I didn't use the word "that." Congratulations to you, too, for observing the obvious.
You didn't say shitmuffin.
I believe the correct phrase is, "You aint sed that."
I think you have this bass akwards. Large groups of people are only as smart as the least of them. In a riot, both the rioters and the riot police demonstrate the mentality of the least of them. Only individuals can show intelligence. Humanity as a whole seems no better, and in some ways worse, than yeast.
Rioting is an extreme condition, and I don't think your conjecture that all exhibit the quality of the least is valid. Yeast has not invented technology and dominated the planet the way man has. Every "intelligent"/"smart" person made some incremental steps past the multitude of all knowledge recorded through history up to that point. I really don't think anyone is remarkably "intelligent." Idiot savants have their unique facets, but I don't consider them smart necessarily, either.
I dunno, it seems to me yeast have trained us humans quite well in perpetuating their kind. It turns out certain wines get specific flavor characteristics from the yeast strains which live in wasp stomachs and are transferred to the grapes when wasps eat them. So vintners tolerate the wasps to preserve their wine flavor and the wasp-yeast benefits.
Name one technology that was co-created by a committee of 1 Billion people and I will concede your point.
1 person can be a genius.
Think of deciding which restaurant to eat at with 6 other people.
Now think of any meeting you sat in with 20+ people.
Sure, everything is based on what came before, but each invention is the work of one or a small number of people thinking at once, not the work of a committee of people sitting around looking for a 50%+1 vote.
Individuals can choose whether to have children, how many to have, etc. Humanity as a whole multiplies to the maximum amount of food and resources available.
The larger a group of people, the more irrational, emotional, ideaological, and rigid the group is. Not with one view, but with their sub-groups.
Forget about Genius. I bet that if you took a group of 1000 random people and put them together in a group, they would collectively have a sub-100 IQ, or substandard on any test of cognitive ability, provided you allowed everyone to speak. As soon as one person said something, like "anyone who says the answer is B is an idiot", even if B is correct, at least 60% of the people will not answer B because they do not want to feel like an idiot.
Actually, we know this to be true:
http://www.cracked.com/article_19664_6-counterintuitive-tricks-to-beatin...
solution-moar smart phones, free anyway to get them in the hands of poverty strichen dumb fucks.
sales flattening-obvious correlation to the problem...
where is my smart phone? ap for being smart?
dis dat da
Ahhhh... yeast infections, or is it beer?
The yeasty smelling mob rose to the occasion.
Chicago has a literary rate of 63 percent. This means that 37 percent of the population are not literate or cannot read/write.
Arne 'Duncan' Donuts, former CEO of the Chicago Public School system, is the President's choice as US Sect. of Education.
Well, in his defense, if this sloven mess doesn't like him, then he must be better than CPS and their moronic union. But that doesn't say a hell of a lot.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1YXOSaMZzs
Obama only appointed him because he thinks he can get free doughnuts for life...
And if you believe that, I have two bridges in Brooklyn to sell to you, too.
I see your illiteracy and raise you some Santa Cruz.
This shit is f*cking hilarious.
Meet Chairman Bernanke's Replacement - Happy Hour In Santa Cruz
They're all over there with their friends.
So their!
.
Dr. Sandi has gone rouge.
My lips to God's ears!
Uh huh! Just as I suspected! This board is populated by YANKEES!!! ANY intelligent person knows it's spelled "THAR" in ALL cases and uses!!!
They don't even consider science literacy. 95% at level 1.
"90% of Americans don't know the difference between there, their, and they're. Grade 3 english"
Hole in one!!!
Like I said, there all idiots!
there, they're, their now, don't be so quick to judge
Das rite! Muhfuggas don' need a spell...we got Obama phones and welfare and food stamps and shit...
remarkulas stats, if'n we could pay the teachers moar we kuld have fantabulous chilenz.
Derek Zoolander can help
It's alright. He's from Barcelona.
You got it plad. 20% of Americans don't speak English. Here in California we teach Spanish to immigrants whose native language is Mixtec or Vietnamese.
derrr prez oboma sayz i can haz 9$.00 hour an da fone
25% of illiterates were born in another country - amazing TOTUS can navigate the telestrator
True, but that would require you to WORK.... You'll still choose to sit and home, crank out even more illiterates, and collect welfare- $9/hr ain't gonna get you off the couch and turn off Springer....
Have to do it...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5yaK7xHWmU
Uber lame.
We send kids home from school for wearing Stars and Stripes on Cinco De Mayo.
Mexican Independence Day is September 16. Further evidence of the idiots that run schools, not even getting holidays straight, and Mexican-Americans who are Americanized into treating Cinco de Mayo as some kind of holiday that is in fact not really celebrated in Mexico save for a few bars that cater to Americans...
Dar un Grito, bitchez...
As I understand it, Cinco de Mayo was made into a big holiday by Corona, to boost beer sales. It's a good thing we Anglos are so much better, that we do not have a holiday dominated by a beverage company.
Oh wait, what's that? The red white and black Santa Claus is a trademark of the Coca Cola Company, and people drink 6 times as much Coke in December as any other month?!
¡No hables inglés! not No hablas ingles! Illiterate immigrants even. Sheesh!
Vive usted en Bakersfield?
¿Vive usted en Bakersfield?
<FIXED!>
Mostly it's the teachers....
Mostly it's the parents...
<FIXED!>
I'd bet that 25% cannot even find their way TO the pre-algebra class........
25% out of how many?
"Go to any pre-algebra class, 25% will not have a clue."
There are only 3 kinds of people in this world I have absolutely no tolerance for:
1. People who are racist.
2. People who don't know how to count.
How many people out of a 100 is that?
The bigger problem in this country is numeracy, nobody can do the math.
For an explanation of that I quote from the wisdom of Barbie: "Math is hard!"
Miffed;-)
Well, roun here mofo you do the math you gon kleen it op!
$10T + ($1.5T*4)= RAYCISS!
it means 23 percent deserve 9.00 an hour.
That's only if they're employed, otherwise they get more.
That's what happens when 1/4 of the population can't read, but can still vote.
Lucky if 50% of eligibles even vote....
Level 1: 55% vote
Level 5: 89% vote
Evidently the more you read, the more you comply with MSM urgings to be a good serf and vote.
Sad.
I look for margins to shrink... there's the Obamaphone App that with one touch of "I Agree" sends an automatic vote along party lines every election, forever.
Diebold machines can't read?
No, but they can write.
fuck it, let's let children vote too. If knowledge and intelligence aren't a prerequesite for voting, why let age stop you?
IIRC, Bakersfield isn't on the coast of CA North of SF, it's in the lower Central Valley. You'd think the maker of this graphic could read a map.
I've met a few that make $100+ an hour.
I can't give them a document because they are obviously illiterate because even though I ask for comments, nothing comes back from the people that pay me to explain risks, costs, time, end goal, executive goal, strategic placement, blah, blah, blah.
BUT when I do the same idea with pictures and sounds in a power point none of them will shut up.
I've learned that even after the moving picture show, nobody in the room really wants to read anyways, so I scheduel another business cartoon with charts and whooshing Letters and buzzwords randomly taken from Gardner reports. True story, sold more security solutions with ignorant business drivel than with truth. Gardner incidentally is a great business, it's cartoons with easy blurbs with people with far too much money to perform a google search on their own.
These people run the world. Avid cartoon readers that love a song and dance.
Next year I'm using sock puppets, see if anyone notices.
The sock puppet thing would be real hit in my office. I am sure that my employers would see it as pure genius. Just make sure there is no math. Math scares them. I use math to get rid of them when I am cranky.
LOL
You guys are cracking me up .. the sad part is, it's real ...
I sometimes inject meaningless acronyms that sound filthy as project names until someone bright enough changes it. Sit in the meetings and wait for someone, anyone, to say "it" instead of saying the whole thing. My favorite so far
A.S.S.C.O.C - Advanced Security Systems Command Operations Center
I sometimes wonder if there is a Director of A.S.S.C.O.C...anycase the Trick is in presentation.
Advanced Security Systems
Command Operations Center
revision 1.0
Presented by CPL
See that. Took an Engineering degree to do that and going slowly mad in my industry over a quarter of a century.
I use math to get rid of them when I am cranky.
DILBERT my friend! When did you change your name?
If you need to convey a lot of information in a short time span, visual is really the best way to go. We're wired to remember pictures, not text (which is a "more recent" development from an evolutionary viewpoint), so, this is why ppt. is so popular.
However your point (that raw text is less appreciated) is true - I used to prepare handouts with my earlier presentations, now I don't bother, since in reality no-one's interested in reading, even if I do include plenty of visuals.
The scary thing is I present to Clinicians: And not just juniors - my audiences usually include Departmental Heads and those of a similar Consultant standing.
Looking on the bright side, the ID Teams do understand my hour long rants - seems no-one else does (which is why we still abuse our few remaining "working" antibiotics!)
I'm sure our Miffed Microbiologist would have something to add to this . . . . (as we approach the End of Days for safe routine surgery . . . . .)
We're wired to remember pictures, not text...
And which also probably explains why Lipitor is the world's leading drug... and possibly leads to more heart deaths every year compared to those who do NOT take statins. (How many doctors wave that cholesterol chart at their patients - the one with no or incomplete labeling of the X axis...)
.
A common mis-spelling of illitterati--the foot soldiers of the NWO.
Morans of the Wurld Untie!
Left foot, left foot, right foot, breathe, step, right foot, chew gum, exhale, breathe...you are all now aware that you are breathing manually.
It's really hard to feel sorry for sheeple. THey really don't have the intellect to understand what's going on and of course they are the first to go into the meat grinder. That's life for you. Just be grateful that you and yours ZH readers have above average IQ.
The vicious cycle is just starting to pick up steam in US and Europe. The two tiered society by wealth and age is not going to lead to anything but violence.. Just a matter of time.
The old tried and true give them a gun and tell them to shoot the other guys.
Divide&Conquer..funny how it's working so well these days.
Well, there are some that can be forgiven. Those who acquired ESL, the sick, the blind, the old. I'm curious about level 2 people. I wonder what degree of literacy this level implies....probably barely literate, and without much excuse.
And of course the level 5s aren't much better, as a breed than level 2s. It looks like they move to DC and learn parasitism.
'Just think how stupid the average person is, and then realize that half of the population is worse.'
George Carlin
What was the number....47%...are on the government teat one way or another. Trhat same 47% think that the $9/hr - indexed to inflation - will fall for free from the skies.
Say What Again said what:
lolwut? y u uzn so mny bg wrdz prfssr? wtf? snds lik ur makn a sp33ch or smthn.
w8 a sec il go gt a dcshnery but tipe slo lol
Oratory
Texting... the new King's English.
You have to have a 'king' before you can have 'King's Ebonics'... Oh wait!
"There's never been a better time to be illiterate," the realtor told me.
Or as the saying goes, "Flip that Idiot !!"
Say What Again said:
"I know how to write good.
I can read anything as long as there are no more than 140 characters. "
That's called ADD.
And there's an "app for that".
George W Bush as preeeezoooodent says it all...
English m*therf*cker! DO YOU READ IT!?
Frankie: How are you today?
Dumb Person: I'm good, how are you?
Frankie: I'm well, thank you. However, I never questioned your goodness. I asked "how are you"? So, how are you?
Dumb Person: *dumbstruck*.. Don't you be hating on me. I didn't do anything to you!
They sure the hell know how to read ballots.
Yes Diebold does..
Indeed they do ACP. Sadly they're what's now referred to as, "Low Information Voters". This really may be the end.
Gots obamaphone.
"Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people."
-John Adams, 2nd President
It also requires a moral people, and common basic values. When those are too diverse, then you need lots of regulation, barriers, rules, pervasive government. That's why the "diversity" and "PC" crowd are also the big government crowd. Each supports more of the of the other.
TBT or not TBT said:
There is also a far less obvious aspect of this. It's a subtle effect of the "think of the children" phenomenon, which really shifted into high gear in the late 1970s*.
A society obsessed with keeping children from ever experiencing any harm or hurt feelings also deprives them of the valuable, and often unpleasant, learning experiences that are a part of growing up.
Also, as the most effective, and abused, political propaganda platitude, "think of the children" spawned an ever expanding shitheap of laws and rules relegating adults to second-class status and transforming America into the land of the banned.
The result is a nation of post-adolescents, ill equipped for adulthood and having no incentive to grow up.
*The late 1970s produced such abominations as the Department of Education, the censorship of violent cartoons (Looney Tunes and Popeye were butchered), and the pansyfication of toys. Hell, in 1972 you had still had cool things like the Electroshot Shooting Gallery, yet by 1977, creeping anti-violence was already producing lily livered toys like Chutes Away.
It's not the diversity of viewpoints and of moral and ethic postures that's the problem.
It's the lack of moral and ethics altogether that's the problem.
When "I'll do what's best for numero uno and screw my fellow man" is the de facto social standard, that's when you end up with a society which can only be controlled with a tight set of rules and regulations and the legal use of force (which doesn't work so well, because the rule makers and the rule enforcers are also as amoral and unethical as the rest of society).
Socially accepted and celebrated sociopathy: that's the problem.
You can't fix stupid but you can subsidize it.
-Darwin
Illiterate people go in for bread and circuses in a big way.
But is it cat fud or dog fud? Chicken or fish?
Remember the "Chicken of the Sea" reality show?
Dumb is not just for blonds any more.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UPujnYOX9dc
Naw, people can't afford cable tv or tv's anymore. They have laptops, tablets and phones...this week they are watching the million plus spiders raining from the sky in brazil.
Can't name a tv show with the same viewership for three minutes of random spiders from the sky.
without illiteracy there is no obama
KEEP OBAMA IN DA PRESIDENT!!!
Did anyone bother to read the Bell Curve?
It's more like Paretto Principle; 20% of the people have to provide for 80%.
"...read the Bell Curve?"
No, I haven't read that book yet.
No need to read the book. Enjoy 'The Bell Curve' movie. Most people kind of liked it. A few loved it and there are always a handful of haters.
It's looking more like Idiocracy was a documentary, or perhaps should rate up there with Brave New World and 1984 for predicting the future.
Level 5 makes 30k per year. That is poverty. I thought the top 20% of intelligent would make at least 60k.
I don't even think I am middle class any more, but I still feel like a poor guy working for the bankers.
That can't be right; a $36K income cannot be the top 5%.
Note: to me, using the side bars, it seems like in each of the three catagories, it is only about 5% that make Level 5. Either way, that is a terrible way to make a graph.
Don't worry.....I speak jive.
Remember it's easier to control people who are dumbed down, divided over hate of each other and ignorant. Because if you actually had a population that used their head and could form intelligent discussions over things, they would be able to see how the govt. and big business is screwing them.
Stupid is the New Paradigm.
Illiterate masses fuel anti .gov power like no other group.
Dude, it works both ways
Yes, this news really is doubleplusungood.
How ken this b? O w8 i gotta txt my bff. K thx bye.
I would comment but I only know enough English to write this one sentence.
Level 6 literacy: read, understand and apply a Microsoft support document.
The individual words look like English, but their import is as indecipherable as hieroglyphics.
I wish M$ would hire programmers from Earth instead of scaly reptilians covered with slimy sucker pods.
Microsoft is now hiring only programmers whose native language is Ubantu.
Please give generously to the Derrick Zoolander Center for kids who can't read good. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NQ-8IuUkJJc
So a quarter of the people in the US are on welfare and illiterate.
That is a monsterous tax on the productive.
Prolly closer to half.
It's fortunate for us that about half of the jobs in the United States require less than a day of training.
And the problem really is that the producers, literate, and trained workers can no longer out-compete the world while being taxed at high enough rates to support the illiterate and non-workers at the lifestyle the non-producers have been promised. The result is a devaluation of the dollar to slowly erode the lifestyle of all Americans.
It would have been helpful if the literacy critics were not geographically challenged.
////////////////
To my junker...Bakersfield is no where close to Berkeley. You may think the entire world revolves around Berkeley but it really doesn't, only in your world, seek help ;-)
http://geology.com/cities-map/california.shtml
They are within 500 miles, so they must qualify as level 4 literacy. Not everyone can be a Level 5.
lol...good point.
But for some reason the Level 5's always call on the Level 2's & 3's to fix their cars (which only has a broken gas guage). The Level 5's distinctly remember putting gas in around MLK Day, so of course, they think the lower levels are ripping them off somehow...they just can't prove it.
Its a real societal conundrum ;-)
LoL, I read the title as 23% Of Americans Are Illegitimate, err, wait..
The U.S. illegitimacy rate is 51 percent for births to women aged 20 to 30.
Curious:
Illegitimate in this case means that the woman is unmarried, or that a father is not named?
OT - A friend of mine was conducting a DNA survey study in Europe, and it pointed out that a minimum of 30% of children born within marriage were not in fact the husband's children.
confirmed as 29% in Canada... from genetic pediatrician...sluts :)