Is the world really that dumb?

I ask this question, because in my mind anyway, there's no way I'm really that smart.

I've decided I can't pay too close attention to world news because it just makes me upset, and I'm trying to be a better person and when I run into people being stupid, I have a tendency to let them know they're being stupid and why. It never really goes that well.

On the other hand, I'm always amazed at how stupid I can be sometimes. I had a math teacher in high school (seriously, I only had one for all three years, and no I did not repeat the same class over and over till he passed me out of pity, at least not that I'm willing to admit to) that forbid the words 'dumb' and 'stupid' to be said in his class. We came up with what we thought were clever ways to get around this by discovering words like torpid, insipid, etc. If you did happen to say either stupid or dumb in his class he would go over to this dusty chalk board, cover a section with chalk, erase it with an even older and dustier eraser and he would then take aim and chuck it at you. Most students just sat there cringing waiting for the eraser to pelt them and cover them with chalk dust. I quickly figured out that I didn't have to sit still for him and could ever deflect the eraser. I didn't always win these matches, but I did become quite skilled at eraser blocking. I also learned a good amount of math and that's where my love of mathy things started was from that teacher who took the time to explain derivatives and calculus to a poor confused teenager.

There are few things more maddening than projection operators. Sure they sound all cuddly and friendly and like they'll be really easy to work with and make your life soooo much easier. They are none of the above and they definitely don't make your life easier, at least until you finally figure them out and can get a good handle on them. Sure they're just matrices and blah blah blah, but what if it's not a matrix, but it's a TENSOR??? What then smarty pants? Tensors kill people, or they at least have the capacity to kill people, if we ever get a spaceship that can leave our solar system and happens to fly just a little too close to a black hole. That's right, they'll end up being forced tot watch the movie Event Horizon. Sure, it's got the guy from Jurassic Park in it (I am a child of the 80's and 90's) and he still is wicked awesome in that movie, but the only thing that could have made that movie worse was if Pauly Shore had shown up. Actually that would have made it down right terrifying and put it squarely in the jaws of the horror movie genre. Tensors, they will kill you in the end. That's been the last bit of my conundrumming lately. My ears are pounding and my head aches from it. It's not as hard as I thought it was, and was making it, now I just have to make sure I don't mess up the coding....c'est la guerr.