The dumbest man in the world.

Recently, I wrote about the Samantha Schermanhorn and Kaylie George case of youthful stupidity. Some people thought I was being harsh on them or that I was picking on them – not so, I was merely using them as a specific example of a general phenomenon – people are just rather dumb, these days. Stupidity is not just reserved for the young –mature individuals are quite capable of it, too, as I will now reveal.

I once met an actor who was a tall, muscular body builder. He was enormous. He was a strong, aggressive, very confident man, who had a certain arrogance about him. He really believed in himself. He was an actor on the cusp of becoming famous – he was getting decent sized roles in popular TV series and was, at the time, working on an epic feature film. He would soon be known to the world. He already had a following in certain quarters.

Now he liked to boast. One of the things he boasted about was his Mensa membership. He would actually whip out his Mensa card at random moments in conversation, to prove his intellectual worth. It was quite funny, if a little sad. He would use his Mensa membership as a reference to support his side of an argument, as if to say, “I am bright…so I am right”.

His primary characteristics were size, strength and aggression – but he was fond of referring to himself as “one of the brightest people in the world”. I think he was rather overstating what Mensa membership connotes – since it takes the top 2 % and that is not very exclusive in terms of intelligence, at all.

Anyway, one day, he really gave me pause to doubt his intelligence.

Can you guess what he said that convinced me he was the dumbest man I had ever met? Think carefully.

Well, he began boasting, one day, of how he refused to wear a condom during relations with his HIV positive girlfriend. He considered one completely unnecessary and thought that he had no chance of catching HIV from her, during normal relations.

That really brought a silence to the room.

It seemed that he thought he was so big and tough that nothing so small and puny as a mere virus could harm him. It was quite a mad moment.

Now, I don’t know how long he had had this particular girlfriend – but it was immediately clear to me that this very tall man would have a very short life. He lived in a part of the world notorious for its HIV rates – and he refused to wear condoms. I have seen two estimates of the rate of transmission of infection if unprotected in heterosexual relations – one in three hundred and one in five hundred. If it is the latter, five hundred instances of unprotected relations – quite possible in say a year or so of a new relationship – would result in a two in three chance of infection. If it is the former, that same year would result in a much higher chance of infection.

So, for all his boasting about his intelligence, his actions prove otherwise. Here was a man dumb enough to think himself invincible, who daily put himself at risk of HIV in a pretty suicidal manner, with a girlfriend known to be HIV positive.

I won’t name him, since he is becoming famous. However, if you are the sort who consorts with film stars, be very careful of those who are tall and muscular – for one of them is very likely to be HIV positive. He will also refuse to wear a condom.

Now, reflecting upon his behaviour I see a comparison with the Samantha Schermanhorn and Kaylie George case. Both are instances of people doing things which have an inevitable outcome, given long enough. Both actions are certain to lead to death or injury if pursued for any length of time. Yet, in both cases, the participants seem unaware of the risks.

So Samantha Schermanhorn and Kaylie George are not alone, in their foolishness. Hollywood has its fair share too. Considering that the actor is at least three times older than the girls, it seems fair to consider him even dumber than them. I hereby propose him as the dumbest man in the world.

Posted by Valentine Cawley

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Perez Hilton/Mario Lavandeira, blogger: the meaning of his success.

Perez Hilton, whose real name is the less euphonious, Mario Lavandeira, is one of the world’s most successful “bloggers”. I use the quotation marks because what he puts on his blog does not compare to what most serious bloggers are trying to do. In brief, Perez Hilton blogs about the doings of the famous – and has an undying interest in the trivial. His blog consists of everything an intelligent person wouldn’t want to know, about people an intelligent person wouldn’t want to know in the first place.

It worried me to learn that Perez Hilton’s eponymous website secures around 100 million visitors per month. That is an astonishing number compared to the typical blog and is indicative, not of Perez Hilton’s greatness as a writer, but of his audience’s lack of discrimination. Now, I am not going to criticize his readership, for themselves, nor blame them as individuals for being interested in such classic items as: “Faeces throwing monkey” and “Soledad O’Brien: not as nice as she looks”. Other posts call Joaquin Phoenix’s rap debut, a “joke”, praise Whitney Houston’s good looks, and speculate that Courtney Love’s daughter Frances Bean (all of 16) has the hots for Robert Pattinson, of Twilight fame.

It all comes across as extremely unimportant, vapid, trivial and ultimately valueless. Yet, it sells. A hundred million people a month pop by to read what Perez Hilton considers important enough to highlight in Hollywood gossip. It is also making Mario Lavandeira a rich man: last year he earnt two million US dollars.

The big question is: why? Why do so many people actually waste precious time in their lives actually reading such material? The answer is that the culture in which they live has lost sight of what is important. They grow up surrounded by the trivial masquerading as important – and so lose the ability to distinguish what is worthy of attention, from what should be ignored. Everything Mario Lavandeira/Perez Hilton writes, should be ignored by anyone of any discernment – and probably is. However, there are millions of people who find the most minor deeds or misdeeds of “celebrities” fascinating enough to pop by for a daily read of “Perez Hilton, Queen of all Media”.

I am not sure whether this global fascination for the trivial is a temporary cultural issue, or whether it is indicative of a lasting decline in the mental powers of the human race. You see people who are thinking about whether Joaquin Phoenix really should shave, are people who are not thinking about anything more important. When you have a whole human race doing that, then matters are dire. From Perez Hilton’s traffic it would seem that a significant chunk of the human race are, in fact, preoccupied with matters as trivial as whether a particular 16 year old girl fancies Robert Pattinson, or not.

It is my hope that our present era of triviality will pass and usher in an era of more substance. However, the signs don’t look good. The celebrity culture has a great momentum about it. More and more media space is consumed with gossip on the most trivial of individuals. Then, on top of this, there is a generation on generation decline in the intellectual (genetic) quality of the human race as a whole, which is well documented and has been going on since at least the 19th century. (see Richard Lynn)

It looks like the future will be as the present, only worse – and the Perez Hilton’s of the world will find it as easy to make two million dollars a year, in the future, as they do, today.

Incidentally, Perez Hilton/Mario Lavandeira’s site was so busy it took me several minutes to load on both of the two occasions I have ever visited the site, in my life (both for research purposes, I hasten to add!). I found the whole experience rather uncomfortable and, had I not the need to come to understand the Perez Hilton/Mario Lavandeira phenomenon, I probably would not have bothered waiting.

The fact that Mario Lavandeira’s gossip can attract so many visitors leads me to ask one question: if Albert Einstein were alive today, and had a blog, would he attract 100 million visitors a month, even with his global fame?

I seriously doubt it. It is more likely that Einstein would attract a few hundred thousand interested souls lost in a dessert of others, consumed with whether a particular star brushes their teeth often enough.

We live in trivial times – fingers crossed for deeper ones, to come. A good sign would be if Perez Hilton’s site hit rate began to drop precipitously. Should it ever fall below a million a month, perhaps we could breathe more easily and look forward to more considered times ahead.

Here’s hoping.

(If you would like to learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged eight years and seven months, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, five years exactly, and Tiarnan, twenty-eight months, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html I also write of gifted education, IQ, intelligence, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, College, University, Chemistry, Science, genetics, left-handedness, precocity, child prodigy, child genius, baby genius, adult genius, savant, wunderkind, wonderkind, genio, гений ребенок prodigy, genie, μεγαλοφυία θαύμα παιδιών, bambino, kind.

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