Here in Mexico, referring to something a Mexican has done or said as stupid is still a real offense.
North of the border for decades, we tossed around the word stupid a lot. It’s not always meant to be taken seriously. It’s often just a throw-away, as in “You turned Granpa’s shoe-stretcher into a table lamp! Freakin’ stupid.” This was rhetorical, meaning simply that you didn’t like it.
But today defining stupid has gotten more serious.
Something called the “Flynn Effect” is the phenomenon identified by New Zealand intelligence researcher James Flynn. It’s now the 10th anniversary of his findings—that average IQ’s, measured by standardized tests, had steadily increased world-wide through the course of the 20th Century. Although I don’t believe it included royal families.
Flynn and other scientists puzzled for years over the reasons we kept getting smarter, especially in the face of women boxing.
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