Being Smart

John Hawkins has an interview with Thomas Sowell. He talks a lot about intellectualism, and there is this quote:

Intellectualism has become the readiness, willingness and ability to call dangerous things safe and safe things dangerous.

Actually, a lot of being smart is saying the opposite of common sense. You can’t be smart saying what everyone already believes; instead, you got to blow people’s minds!

Examples of smart things to say:

“When you really think about it, there is no safer thing to do than place your face in a fire.”

“From the proper perspective, the best fit for the round hole is the square peg.”

“Getting a bucket stuck on your head is actually a sign of great intelligence, because it shows curiosity.”

So basically, being an intellectual is pretty much the same as being functionally retarded. Anyway, try to be an intellectual yourself by saying your own smart things in the comments. We be smart blog!

25 Comments

  1. Few people watch curling, and fewer still understand it. Like arugula, then, it is clearly something extraordinary that can only be appreciated by a sophisticated mind. Watching curling, like eating arugula, is a mark of intelligence.

  2. The New York Times is the gold standard of journalism.
    (Cheap, but somebody has to repeat the mantra.)

    Confucius say: With hand in pocket, you feel cocky all day!

    Actually smart: Keep your booger-hook off the bang-switch.

  3. To cure E.D. slam your willy in a door as hard as you can.

    To know if your electrical outlet has power to it stick your finger in it

    To clean a dirty baby stick in a washing machine or dishwasher.

    to dry freshly clean baby put in the Dryer.

    Playing in a thunderstorm is fun.

  4. The Ivy league class with their super intelligence decided to mimic animal behavior and are “presenting” for the aggressors Obama and Islam. When you are going to get raped by the bigger male so you might as well pretend its your idea that way they might give you shiny presents.

    Seriously though the Ivy league is what like a meager 10 IQ points on average above the rest of us? That’s about enough to think yourself into a hole or a bucket but not enough to get yourself out.

    Modern day Ivy league grads are the intellectual version of John Travolta in “A Boy in the Bubble.” So insulated are they by their gated communities guaranteed wealth and success that they simply have neither an understanding or the inward ability to cope with the real world.

    I liken it to the Farmer laying in his nice soft bed in his nice warm house while the animals in the barnyard who have been hoof to cold hard earth every minute of every day of their life feel the tiny our of the ordinary tremors
    long before the cushioned farmer. They feel something happening even if they lack the ability to explain it to the farmer in a way he will understand. This is my view of the Tea Party dynamic.

    Or you could say that the slaves in the lower deck see the water seeping through long before the captain up on top of the ship does.

  5. I always get a kick out of the alternative method of sounding intellectual. That is, to say something painfully obvious and act like it is some great insight. Here’s an example from one of my philosophy classes. “Look at this book. Now watch as I turn it sideways. It looks different now!” (Cues oohs and awes from gullable students)

  6. “Government is not a machine, but a living thing. It falls not under the (Newtoniam) theory of the universe, but under the (Darwinian) theory of organic life.”
    – Woodrow Wilson (intellectual), Congressional Government.

    “If it bleeds, we can kill it.”
    – Arnold Schwarzenegger (action hero), Predator.

  7. Inspector Clouseau, eying a small dog sitting next to a hotel manager: “Does your dog bite?”

    Hotel Manager: “No.”

    Inspector Clouseau gets bitten trying to pet the dog, and angrily says: “I thought you said your dog does not bite!”

    Hotel Manager: “That is not my dog.”

    For some reason, probably having to do with raising six kids, this bit of movie foolishness sends my aged mother into paroxysms of laughter every time she sees it.

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