Tuesday, June 21, 2011

Smart is as Smart Does





I was going to post a picture of the gaggle of goons starring in the recent Republican proto-candidates "debate," with the caption "Satan's Little Helpers" but it's just too sad.



They're all smart enough to get to enjoy travel, luxury accomodations and generally living large without actually working or even being coherent. Except for the coherency part, exactly like a criminal kingpin does. Someone in a blog comment made the distinction that despite being proven wrong in every single one of her claims and statements, Michele Bachmann is not stupid, like her drooling twin Sarah Palin. She seems to have that type of amoral sociopathic intelligence that has propelled so many like Lucky Luciano, Dubya Bush, Stalin and many religious cult leaders to heights of unrestrained power.



So, America, turn your burning eyes away from such awful spectacle to a very small high school in Odessa, Washington State, where young Kira Powell, 16, is one of four students in an advanced chemistry class. She recently won prizes at a science competition and a symposium for her independent project. Kira wondered about the properties of that powder (sodium polyacrylate, a polymer) inside disposable diapers that absorbs liquid and holds it so well. Since it is nontoxic, she used it on test patches of dry farmland (plentiful around Odessa), and the results were impressive: 22% - 27% more wheat was produced with its use. In either normal or abnormal dry conditions, these crystals in the soil which retain 800x their weight in water would almost be worth that weight in gold (pre-2008, of course). I have no idea what the cost/benefit ratio actually is, but Kira, you give us some hope.



And, she won a state golf championship!



1 comment:

  1. There is hope in the young until they are sucked into the reality of laws and restrictions. With the freedom to learn and explore (which you are using now) the debate could change between the forces of good and evil. There should always be hope.

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