Jewamongyou

Anybody who bungee jumps must be aware that there is a possibility the cord might snap.  I suppose the knowledge of this danger adds to the thrill.  Every now and then we hear of somebody using a cord that is too long and, well, the results are predictable.  Sometimes alcohol is involved.  Sometimes it’s just ignorance or stupidity.
But most inhabitants of the civilized world have come to expect that companies that specialize in providing such thrills to their customers use due diligence and follow strict safety procedures.  After all, they charge money for their services and their customers’ safety is in their hands.
No doubt Australian tourist Erin Langworthy expected as much from the African company, to whom she paid the equivalent of about $150.  Yet all good things must end – and this holds true for bungee cords just like anything else.  Unfortunately for her, the bungee cord reached the end of its warranty after she jumped and it snapped.  Fortunately for her, she survived.
I am not an expert on bungee cords, or on bungee jumping, but I do know that when the stakes are high, one does not simply continue to use the same equipment over and over again until it fails.  I do know that common sense, and decency, require careful inspection of equipment on a regular basis in such situations.
Here is some of her account of what happened:

“I actually brought my arms up over my face, to protect myself when I hit the water. I sort of remember it all, it was quite cold so it snapped me out of it,” Langworthy said on “Good Morning America.”
With her legs fastened together, Langworthy struggled to bring herself to safety while swimming amidst crocodiles.
“I tried to stay afloat, and your legs are quite heavy cause of the line. I was hearing the rapids. Luckily we had been rafting, so I remembered some of the safety tips,” she said.
Langworthy reportedly was pulled downstream and entangled by the bungee cord before she eventually swam to the Zimbabwe bank of the river where she was rescued.
“When I was first brought out of the water, they put me on my back and so all the water I had inhaled meant that I couldn’t breathe,” she told Australia’s Channel 9 News. So I made them roll me on to my side and that’s when I started coughing up water and blood.”

It is a fact that cords do sometimes snap.  As a venerable sage once said, “shit happens”.  But how can the rescue crew, which works by the river on a regular basis, not know how to save somebody from drowning?  Either those Africans were too busy feasting their eyes on her white bosom or they were too ignorant to know how to get water out of her lungs.
If they ever do figure out how to use condoms in Africa, water safety and rescue might be next on the list of things for them to learn.

The Left has argued for years that there is no meaningful correlation between brain size and intelligence.  Though science, and common sense, say otherwise, there has been an ongoing campaign to misinform and confuse the public in this matter.
Nobody claims that absolute brain size is a sign of greater intelligence; if this were the case, then elephants and whales would be far more intelligent than humans.  Body size must be taken into consideration.  Furthermore, nobody claims that there is a perfect correlation either; some people with large brains will be stupid, and some people with small brains will be geniuses.  Nevertheless, there is a robust correlation, somewhere in the neighborhood of .4.
The reason the Left is so loath to admit this correlation is that it means that any discovery of average brain size differences between the races would present a challenge to their beliefs.  Just as the rabbis of old built a fence around the Torah, reasoning that if Jews obeyed rabbinical injunctions, they would be less likely to transgress against actual Torah commandments, so too does the Left build fences around their faith.  In this case, they both deny that there are brain size differences (taking body size into account) between the races and that such differences can be a smoking gun for actual I.Q. differences.  Building these fences makes them feel safe and secure in their faith.
However, a recent Oregonian article (from 12/13/11, as of today not yet available online) does admit, indirectly, that brain size can be correlated with intelligence – at least among cabbies!

Street smarts help cabbies’ brains grow

London taxi drivers aren’t like the rest of us.  Researchers have known for more than a decade that these elite cabbies – who train for years to master “the knowledge,” a mental map of 25,000 streets – have a larger than average rear hippocampus, a brain region linked to learning and navigation.

What scientists didn’t know was whether the drivers grew bigger hippocampi as they trained or whether they had big ones (and thus an innate navigation advantage) to begin with.  So a team followed three groups:  trainees who successfully acquired the Knowledge and became cabbies; trainees who failed to qualify; and a control group of non-taxi drivers; over four years, testing them and scanning their brains before, during and after training.

The team found that the brains of qualifying trainees were no different from those of nonqualifying trainees or non-taxi drivers before beginning training.  But as the cabbies learned the Knowledge, their hippocampi grew, literally changing their minds…

The hippocampi of unsuccessful trainees stayed the same throughout, which could suggest that successful cabbies really do have an innate advantage:  Their brains are more malleable than others’.

The mainstream media does have a lot of faith in the stupidity of the masses, that they are unable to put two and two together.  I fear that they may be right.  The masses need bigger brains.