Intelligence

A recent report from Stanford University claims that human beings are less smart and emotionally stable than their cave-dwelling forebears. This is clearly nonsense. There were only three bears.

I read the report on a news website. The date was 11/13/2012. For a second this made me think the content was accurate and I was so thick I had missed the memo adding a thirteenth month to the year. Then I realised it was a US website, with their back-to-front calendar, and breathed a sigh of relief.

Given the content of the report, its author Geraldine Crabtree probably should have published it as a children’s book with illustrations rather than an academic document. Instead, she confounded us numbskulls with complicated sentences such as: “I would be willing to wager that if an average citizen of Athens of 1000 BC were to appear suddenly among us, he or she would be among the brightest and most intellectually alive of our colleagues and companions.”

Continue reading "Bad news humanity, we’re turning into dingbats" »

Hey, stupid! Look over here! Yeah, I’m talking to you, dumb arse!

Well, it’s true, you know. Humans are getting thicker. Even sciencey guys say so.

It’s common sense, really – or would be if we had any left. You used to have to be whip smart to survive, to dodge dinosaurs* and hunt down animals to feed yourself and still have enough time to bag yourself a woman and procreate.

Continue reading "Sorry to tell you, humankind, but you already peaked" »

The government wants to be your Facebook friend, follow you on Twitter, read your emails and text messages, and know which websites you visit. It then wants to file all that information for up to two years in case you are found to be a terrorist, crime lord or paedophile. The government also wants your computer passwords and might even send you to jail if you refuse. Creepy.

These changes are under consideration by the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security, and if implemented, will substantially increase the powers the intelligence community has to spy on Australians in the name of national security. Many of the proposed changes are of dubious value and a direct attack on the civil liberties of all Australians.

Increased powers to intercept phone calls, emails and other communications are just the start of the government’s assault on basic freedoms. For example, the attorney-general may soon have the power to modify warrants after they have been issued, and the duration of search warrants may be doubled from 90 days to six months.

Continue reading "You’ve got mail. ASIO wants to read it. All of it." »

Kyle Sandilands is a genius. An absolute, out and out Einstein.

The 40 year old broadcaster has no talent, no decorum, no personality, no looks, no style, no charm and no knowledge of anything outside the vast universe that is his ego. Yet the guy is hugely successful.

I have rarely listened to Kyle Sandilands on the radio, nor indeed watched the talent shows on which he is a judge. That’s not snobbery. It’s just how it is. But just as you didn’t need to read Eat Pray Love to know it was bag of fertiliser-grade horse manure, you don’t need to listen to Kyle to know his shows are rubbish. And that, right there, is the proof that he’s so damn clever.

Continue reading "Is Kyle Sandilands Australia’s smartest man?" »

For a smart guy, Steve Wozniak — the man who, with Steve Jobs, co-founded Apple — has some pretty dumb ideas. Speaking at a business meeting on the Gold Coast recently, Wozniak claimed that machines are becoming more intelligent than humans.

Wozniak was reported to have said ‘We’re already creating the superior beings, I think we lost the battle to the machines long ago. We’re going to become the pets, the dogs of the house.”

In Wozniak’s eyes, humans are going to become mere spectators to the doings of machines. ‘Every time we create new technology we’re creating stuff to do the work we used to do and we’re making ourselves less meaningful, less relevant’, he said.

Continue reading "Tough luck geeks, we’re still smarter than silicon" »

The CIA, the Pentagon, the British Government and presumably the Taliban are all looking for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

Well, I found him. And had I been paying more attention I could have saved the entire US military-industrial complex from disgrace.

Around four or five years ago Julian Assange came to my house for dinner.

Continue reading "Wikileaks founder tracked down at my dinner table" »

One of the most disturbing things about this morning’s counter-terrorism raids in Melbourne is the profile of the suspects, who were allegedly planning a Mumbai-style machine-gun attack on Australian Army barracks.

They were, The Australian reports, construction workers and taxi drivers of Somali and Lebanese descent, living in suburban Melbourne.

Combine this with the admission of Anglo-Australian terrorist Shane Kent that he was part of a terrorist organisation and it’s clear terrorists don’t look like anything in particular and could be living in your street.

Continue reading "Race profiles a blunted tool in fight against enemy within" »