WatchNearly one in seven people believe that the world will come to an end in their lifetime and one in 10 think the Mayan Calendar signifies that it could happen sometime this year, a new poll found.
IPSOS Global Public Affairs conducted the poll on behalf of Reuters and surveyed 16,262 adults in 21 countries.
Across those countries, the United States and Turkey rank the highest, with 22% believing the world will come to an end.
France was the most optimistic country surveyed, with only 6% of people saying they believed the world will end.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/10-world-ending-2012-poll-article-1.1071291
I guess France has the fewest idiots.
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this will be the 4th time the world ended... #1. Y2K. #2. May 21, 2011. #3. Oct 21, 2011 and now #4... and remember what Nostradamus said in 1999 the great King blah blah blah
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Maybe the world has ended, and we're all just beating a dead horse.
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Does anyone know of a place where I can take out an insurance policy that the world will not end in 2012?
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iwog says
I wonder if all the multimillionaires in Dallas, Fort Worth, Houston and Atlanta agree with your assessment. There's a lot of them down there. I've seen it.
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rootvg says
There are a lot of even richer people in san francisco, LA, and NYC.
Do you have a point?
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Kevin says
Most of the conservative money is self made. The liberal money generally is not.
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CaptainShuddup says
Anecdotally, the Romney campaign slogan will be Anybody but Obama.
It'll work. We're already seeing it. The Democrats' losing 63 seats in the House in 2010 and the number of high profile retirements in both the House and Senate tells us 2012 will be a complete bloodbath.
Why would Scott Brown be leading Liz Warren by significant numbers half a year ahead of the actual vote if Obama and the Democrats were going to be returned to office? That wouldn't make sense.
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rootvg says
And how exactly is that? Gives some examples and evidence, please.
Sounds a lot like "liberals aren't real Americans 'cause I say so".
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rootvg says
Last I looked the Forbes richest list, was about 60% Democrat.
I suspect they ALL (Elephant or Donkey) describe themselves as "self-made". Heck even Romney considers himself a rags to riches story. No Richie Rich is, but hey you are free to delude yourself in this country. I'm not buying it though, and neither will I let it slide by without countering.
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Dan8267 says
First, grow up. I don't owe you anything.
Second, it's common knowledge that the Bay Area is loaded with trust fund babies and inherited wealth. A lot of houses in better areas are handed down from generations past particularly in better parts of San Francisco. My wife's boss has lived in SF all his life, went to SF State and then Berkeley later on, said yeah...it was always that way.
Dallas, Fort Worth (especially Fort Worth), Houston and then Atlanta are self made towns. There's not really anything down there except for money. Atlanta can be nice in certain months but Dallas is flat, nasty and windy. There's nothing to do there but eat, shop, work or fuck. People spend insane sums of money on their homes because they're barricaded inside them for most of the year. It's one of the reasons we left.
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Vicente says
Donald Trump is not. His family sent him to the best schools, taught him what they knew about real estate and gave him his first bump. He took a little pile and made it into a big pile.
Ross Perot is completely self made. He got rich because IBM capped his commissions, he got pissed off and started EDS with a loan from his wife in 1962. One of his early projects was processing claims for Medicare.
I think Carl Lindner was self made as well. His family were small business people but the big deals were all his.
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Vicente says
Romney's family were affluent but if you do the research, they only paid for his education. Yes, he went to the best schools but the deals were his. He took the education and family contacts and used them to start Bain Capital and make all that money. He's not a trust fund baby.
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Ross Perot ran as independent. He was pro-choice right down to supporting federal funding so women would always have that choice available locally. So he'd be pretty unwelcome in GOP circles especially these days. Frankly I'm not sure where to pigeonhole Ross, he's an outlier IMO.
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rootvg says
It's pretty sad that you took a request for clarification as an attack. It also demonstrates a distinct lack of confidence in your position. Why are you getting so defensive when asked what you mean by "self-made"?
I've never claimed that you owe me anything, but guess what, honey. If you don't clarify and back up your accusations, we the audience don't owe you any acceptance or credibility. Only a fool writes something in public and then gets defensive as soon as someone posses a question about what he just wrote.
rootvg says
1. It's not common knowledge. Most people's perspective of Silicon Valley is that it is new money, not old money. You're thinking about Texas and the South.
2. Whether or not it was common knowledge does not make it true. Where are your statistics, your evidence? Are you seriously proposing that just because you heard a statement repeated many times, you should not verify or question it's accuracy? What are you, a Fox News listener?
3. Contrary to what you believe, the Bay Area isn't all of liberal America. I've never fucking been to San Francisco and I work in I.T. You know there is this whole other coast, called the East Coast, where so-called liberals thrive.
So get off your ego trip and back up your statements with reasoning and evidence -- which you have yet to do -- instead of getting all bitchy because someone asked what you meant.
As it stands, right now not only do we not have any reason to believe anything you said is true, but we don't have any reason to believe that you are even being sincere in your statements.
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rootvg says
Yeah Mittens had plenty of advantages over any of us. Best schools, contacts, but sure "the deals were his" and he didn't so far as we can see fuck any of them up while doing his vulture thing and putting people out of work. But maybe he didn't actually have a huge trust fund handed to him, what a huge disadvantage for him versus some schlub in the Bay Area who got to inherit a "historic" row house with single-pane windows. OK, even if true Mittens is rectifying that for HIS kids who will be covered to the tune of $100 million.
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Vicente says
The godless, greedy GOP leaders need the brainwashed Jesus freaks because the top 0.1% can't win a popular election by themselves.
On one hand, you can never have too many poor people as the more you have, the more disposable they become. On the other hand, the whole election thing with it's one person - one vote practice is very inconvenient for the ruling class.
The solution is for the GOP leaders to promote the Jesus freak agenda like outlawing abortion, removing Evolution from the classroom, etc. while hiding the fact that they spend all their time snorting cock off of a hooker's ass and then blackmailing her to get an abortion and stay silent about it.
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thunderlips11 says
Their calendar isn't about magic, or prophecy. The Mayan calendar represented advanced scientific knowledge, even by recent historical standards.
The asshole Spanish Catholics burned their writings...We don't know what they expected to happen at the end of their 5200 year cycle, or what knowledge the catholics sacrificed to their false god. Pretty sure it wasn't anything like 2012, the movie, though.
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CBOEtrader says
I have it under good authority that some Mayan coder said that "we're not even going to be using this calendar in 5200, so we can save a few bytes by not handling dates past that". Had the Mayan civilization lasted, there would be hordes of Mayans performing year-5200 compliance testing.
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Vicente says
Ross Perot ran in 1992 as an Independent but had a very close relationship with big name Republicans going back to the sixties. He and Nixon were close for years.
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rootvg says
Bullshit.
Take a gander at the forbes 500. Identify all the liberals and all the conservatives, and them come back and tell me which ones are "self made".
I'll accept "self made" as "was not born as a member of the 1% already". Turning a decent upper middle class upbringing into extreme wealth ala Bill Gates counts. Inheriting your parents wealth / business like the Koch Brothers does not.
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rootvg says
Uh, that was a hell of a small pile. Frank Trump, the Donald's Father, built his wealth on low-income housing projects (ie Government Contracts Subsidies).
Before Donald was in High School, Frank Trump made multi-million dollar deals. In 1962 he brought an apartment complex in Ohio for almost $5M, big money in those days.
The Donald took over his daddy's multi, multi, multi million dollar business just three years after leaving Wharton, in 1971.
When Frank Trump passed, he left $400M. I call that a "Big Pile".
rootvg says
You're kidding right? Romney's Daddy was the governor of Michigan, chairman of the Automobile Manufacturer's association, and the CEO of an auto company. His grandparents were big landowners in Mexico, having descended from a polygamist sect that moved there in the mid 1800s.
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That seems like a low estimate.
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The average IQ in USA is 98.
Here we used to call any result of 51-70 a moron, being the notch above imbecile.
I'm not sure this measure means anything any more.
Mrs. Vicente is Italian, and their usage of the word roughly equates to "cretin" in English. The sort of person who grabs the parking spot you were clearly in line for.
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CaptainShuddup says
Nope, it's because Dick Clark won't be around to count in the New Year. Well played, Mayans, well played.
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*BHAAHHH*
Why should I put my trust in some old calendar made by some un-American -- probably communist -- savages when I have a good o'le American calendar on my wall.
Let me check...
OK, my American calendar has an end date of December 31st, 2013. So, that is what I am putting my money on as the end of the world date, clearly the 2012 set by Mayans is incorrect.
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Doesn't anyone else see the irony in believing that a society predicted the end of the world, but could not see their own society's imminent collapse?
That's why I don't listen to any fortune tellers who aren't multiple lottery winners.
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Vicente says
The average IQ of any age group is exactly 100 (this is true in the US as well as anywhere else). Given that human intelligence has increased over time, assigning labels like "moron" to someone at a certain IQ level is probably a bad idea. That same person may well have been average 100 years ago.
IQ is a crappy measurement of intelligence anyway. There is actually no way to compare IQ tests between people who have different native languages, due to language / cultural bias in IQ tests and a lack of a single accepted standard. Any chart you have ever seen claiming that a certain nation has a significantly higher or lower IQ than the united states is almost certainly wrong and trying to argue some point.
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Kevin says
I don't think you have to be a scientist to realize that Americans are dumber than most other countries.
In fact, there are many such international tests that are used to rank students across countries. You see, when you're building a nuclear reactor, it doesn't matter what culture you come from. The laws of physics are the same.
http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0923110.html
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-12-07/teens-in-u-s-rank-25th-on-math-test-trail-in-science-reading.html
http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/us-teens-math-test/2010/12/07/id/379224
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/26/opinion/26tue2.html
http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2010-12-07-us-students-international-ranking_N.htm
http://www.cbsnews.com/2100-201_162-838207.html
Yes, Americans are dumb. Yes, it's getting worse. Yes, our culture of stupidity is largely to blame. Yes, this will affect the economy. Yes, this will affect social security when you finally retire. Yes, this will impact health care in our country. Yes, all those effects will be bad.
On the bright side, assless chaps are now half off. Stock up for the upcoming post-apocalyptic landscape.
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Dan8267 says
Well, no, you do. Since you'd have to actually do scientifically valid studies to confirm this hypothesis.
American students (at the elementary and highschool levels) currently underperform students from other countries, but:
- This has been true for as long as we've measured it, going back over 100 years.
- The gap between american and other countries is getting BETTER, not worse.
Academic performance of teenagers is indicative of little and nothing.
At the university level, it's not even close. American universities produce more graduates, more research papers, and more inventions than the rest of the world combined. This is why so many foreigners come to american universities.
Dan8267 says
American students underperforming in mathematics is not even close to the same thing as "Americans are dumb".
I know it's fun to talk about the downfall of america and all, but it just isn't true.
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Kevin says
Really? My impression was that the gap is larger now than in the 1950s and 1960s when the government actually stressed math and science curriculum. Still, it would be nice to get some actual figures.
Kevin says
Oh god, I wish that were so.
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Dan8267 says
You mean like the NAEP, who's job is to do exactly that? They show that since 1963 (when they were founded), and emphasis was placed on math and science over language and critical thinking, the former group has improved and the latter declined. There is, conveniently, no real way to compare the latter groups with other countries.
In the 50s and 60s all anyone talked about was how dumb our kids were compared to the commie kids who did nothing but study all day.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0252012267/theatlanticmonthA/
This gem from 15 years ago really sums things up. Nothing new under the sun:
http://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/issues/97oct/fail.htm
The myth of stupid kids is one perpetuated mainly by two groups:
- Right wingers who want to end public education
- School administrators who want more money.
Bill Maher saying that Americans are getting dumber or is dumb is like saying that the ground is dirty. It doesn't prove anything other than Bill looking for things that confirm his pre-existing notions. The data doesn't support it.
Go ask 50 random kids in any of the so called "high performing" math / science countries equivalent questions to the ones that BIll mentions and tell me how they do.
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Kevin says
So, we should ignore all the studies that rank America in near last place in math, science, and engineering in the list of developed and developing nations because the answer to 1 + 2 varies across cultures?
I'm not buying that.
The laws of physics doesn't vary from our galaxy to any other. Why should they suddenly change when crossing a political boundary? We compete in a global labor market. How we score compared to others on standardize international tests matters in important things like getting jobs.
It's going to take a lot more than an op-ed column expressing the opinion that international comparisons of students is impossible to convince me that America isn't lagging behind other nations, especially when all the high tech industries are moving abroad.
But hey, feel free to ignore the problem. That usually makes problems go away.
Kevin says
- A majority of Americans cannot name a single branch of government or explain what the Bill of Rights is.
- 24% could not name the country America fought in the Revolutionary War.
- Nearly half of Americans don't know that states have two senators.
- 18% of Americans think that the sun revolves around the Earth.
You don't deny any of these facts. So I guess that means you accept them, but don't think they are important. Well, I guess we just have different standards of what constitutes stupid.
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Dan8267 says
Can you tell me how many cogwheels a Hammond tone-wheel console organ has? If you can't you must be some kind of Moron.
You think those Chinese can name a single branch of government?
I think your confusing complacency about our inept government with intelligence and it's disingenuous on the Bill Maher order.
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Only one of those questions is about science. Go to any other country and ask equivalent questions and tell me how the kids do.
The open ed itself isn't the important thing here. Read the papers it links to. When you say that Americans are behind and getting worse, you need real data, and the data doesn't support that conclusion.
When people keep saying the same thing for decades but nothing changes, you should question their claims. Isn't that what you were trying to argue in the women in stem thread?
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CaptainShuddup says
So basically you think that cogwheels in a Hammond tone-wheel console organ are just as important as knowing how our representative democracy works?
I'll make you a deal. I wont rebuild any Hammond tone-wheel console organs if morons don't vote. Sound fair?
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iwog says
No but apparently our Educators don't think so, because out of three kids I have that have gone through high school not single one of them brought home a Civics book "Ever!".
If you ask me, if people actually understood how democracy works, nobody would vote Democrat. That is why Liberal endocrine is taught above all else in our high schools. It even supersedes History. Or history is filtered and revised to fit the Liberal endocrine.
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CaptainShuddup says
Yet it's conservatives who can't seem to compose an intelligible sentence these days. Perhaps that's part of the Liberal endocrine, or maybe it's the flouridation.
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Vicente says
This conservative writes well enough, so it seems.
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CaptainShuddup says
That's odd because the most educated people in the world vote more Democrat. Students at the nations most respected universities are overwhelmingly Democrat. Blue states are generally highly educated, high income while red states are generally low educated, low income.
This is another one of those beliefs that is exactly the opposite of the real world isn't it.
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iwog says
The most educated people in the world vote Democrat because they've either been mindfucked into thinking they should or because they've made enough money to afford the taxes to pay for the social engineering someone has convinced them is necessary for us to be civilized. If you lived in the South for awhile and you paid attention, you can see all of this play out.
The less well educated vote the other way because they don't know any better (some of them don't) or sometimes it's because they're more self reliant and don't want to deal with or pay for a nanny state. If you're stronger and smarter and quicker, you don't need it.