{"id":23,"date":"2001-11-13T23:59:00","date_gmt":"2001-11-13T23:59:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/patberry.net\/wordpress\/?p=23"},"modified":"2001-11-13T23:59:00","modified_gmt":"2001-11-13T23:59:00","slug":"idiotwatch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/patberry.net\/wordpress\/?p=23","title":{"rendered":"Idiotwatch"},"content":{"rendered":"

Now that The New Republic<\/cite> has retired its Idiocy Watch<\/a> feature, I’m going to steal the title (with a slight modification) and use it here to report dumb actions and statements that come to my attention from time to time. And I already have an introductory item. In an Associated Press article<\/a> published today, Ireland’s Foreign Minister Brian Cowen is quoted as saying, “We must reject a world order in which the 200 richest people have greater assets than the two billion people at the other end of the spectrum.”
\nHuh?<\/i>
\nIf they are the 200 richest people in the world, then by definition<\/i> they have greater assets than everyone else. That’s what the word “richest” means<\/i>.
\nI don’t know what qualifications are required for the position of Foreign Minister in Ireland, but apparently a high verbal score on the SAT isn’t one of them.
\nUpdate:<\/i> It’s been suggested to me that Cowen was trying to say “the combined <\/i>assets of the 200 richest people exceed the combined <\/i>assets of the two billion poorest.” OK, perhaps that’s what he meant <\/i>— but it’s not what he said<\/i>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Now that The New Republic has retired its Idiocy Watch feature, I’m going to steal the title (with a slight modification) and use it here to report dumb actions and statements that come to my attention from time to time. … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-idiots"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/patberry.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/patberry.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/patberry.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/patberry.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/patberry.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=23"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/patberry.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/patberry.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=23"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/patberry.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=23"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/patberry.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=23"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}