Composting

     So a news story has popped up today that caught my interest.  I was on the BBC when I saw it first of course, then followed a link to the FOX story (the first link) so I could link that on my twitter feed and perhaps throw in a witty little slur about FOX viewers' IQ.
     But something prevented me from so doing.  Partly it was the phrasing; I couldn't conscionably poke at a number of people's intelligence (simply for thinking differently than myself) without some sort of facts to back it up.  Enter the Google searches, where rather than finding anything conclusive or even remotely informative I was subjected to forum after forum of nitpicking, various blog entries (with varying grammatical and logical errors), and basically two ideologies pitted against each other in a semi-anonymous, all-out bickering environment.
     So I scrapped the tweet and delved into the warm composty goodness of online viscera, surprised at times by thoughtful answers and helpful links but mostly disappointed (and occasionally amused) by the slew of name-calling, racial bashing, and partisan sniping from either side (though <cough> one side seemed a bit more trigger happy than the other).  Which leads me to my sighing point, that really IQ is hardly a practical measure of worth in any case and that surprisingly few people could really describe what it represents, much less how that effects voting or web browser choice, or even favorite color, religion, etc.
     It's another status symbol, a latter-day cootie of the global schoolyard.  We may as well be reporting on average demographic thetan levels or blood type; either would make a similarly grand gesture at nothingness, sending people who deeply care about those things helter-skelter to change their browsers, clothing, soft drink, et al to the appropriate preference.  Because it's an ego thing, really a matter of preying on self-identity rather than news.

So while I may truly believe the FOX news family is aimed at exploiting and largely viewed by the generally ignorant, fearful, and/or bigoted, I have no hard facts to prove it.  Just gut instinct and a personal prejudice.