Word: stupidity
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Missouri newspapers about the shootings other than the slightest notice of it. The Governor's name was never mentioned, and the impression was given that he was innocent as a babe of any responsibility for the act. I guess that Governor Hearnes figures if the people were stupid enough to elect him, they are stupid enough to believe that thousands of birds can be shotgunned on the mansion's lawn without his orders, or even his knowledge. I don't know how stupid a man can get, but when he can't tell a purple martin...
...even sell it any food. Then one day the Viet Minh mortared Thieu's little camp. After the bombardment, an old man suddenly appeared with eggs and chickens to sell. "I knew why he had come," says Thieu. "I said, 'Don't believe I am stupid, father. You came to check the accuracy of your mortar fire. I could kill you, but I won't!' " Instead he bought the chickens...
Thieu was neither stupid nor sentimental in the field. In 1954, promoted to major, he found himself leading an attack on the Viet Minh in his own village, Ninh Chu. The Communists retreated into Thieu's old home, confident that he would not fire on his own house. Says Thieu with grim satisfaction: "I shot in my own house." The only cause for criticism the young officer ever gave his superiors was an innate caution that made him less aggressive than they sometimes would have preferred-a reluctance to commit his troops to battle unless he felt absolutely sure...
...have seen the idiots in short pants slog through the marshes in Glacier Park to photograph a moose's eyeballs (the moose is about as nasty and unpredictable as the grizzly). I have seen them literally load bears into their cars in Yellowstone. It's stupid disrespect for nature and it's gettting worse. I can't blame the bears for mistaking people for garbage; it's sometimes hard for me to tell the difference...
...show that children-beset by teacher-imposed fear, confusion and boredom-merely grope for right answers, rather than understand. In a sequel, How Children Learn, to be published next month, he illustrates the spontaneous ways in which kids embrace knowledge before they enter schools, where they "learn to be stupid...