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In January, Pew reported that a quarter of the American population hadn’t read a book in the previous year. Many among the remaining three-fourths confirm the suspicion that people lie to pollsters. The percentage of non-readers has tripled since 1978, a year that witnessed 900 Americans poison themselves in the jungle because a guy wearing sunglasses told them to and Clint Eastwood fill theaters by co-starring alongside a monkey.
Speaking of cinema, remakes, reboots, sequels, and films based on old toys and comic books, but nothing original, comprised the box office’s top-ten list for 2014. Most of the year’s bestselling brands, er, movies, such as Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (#8), a prequel to a remake, and The Amazing Spiderman 2 (#9), a sequel to a reboot based on an old comic book, fell into multiple such rehash categories. Old is the new new.
One sign of the intellectual apocalypse comes in the form of what masquerades as the intelligentsia recasting brain corrosion as progress. In an article on a new study, CBS.com earlier this year asked: “Could playing video games make you smarter?” Compared to huffing paint video games serve as the thinking parent’s alternative. But kids also play musical instruments, read, and interact with other flesh-and-blood, non-pixelated children, for which Grand Theft Auto V doesn’t leave a whole lot of time. As it turns out, the scientist-sophists compared ten kids (the Einsteins) who played action video games to ten kids (the Patrick Stars) who played non-action video games for several weeks. The sample size and the brevity of longitudinal (shortitudinal?) study suggest the degree to which yesterday’s science-class flunks publish today’s junk-science bunk.
Read the full article here:
The Stupidest Year Ever | The American Spectator
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