Are we really this thick?

[NotAllThere]

Are we really this thick?

Yes. Average intelligence is alledgely an IQ of 100. That's not terribly bright.

hth

[Mich the Tester]

So how come you ended up as a tester?

I studied Geography and then spent a couple of years working for a Dutch water board, doing stuff like capacity calculations based on spatial demographics and so on. Then along came a software supplier and I was asked to do some testing for his pollution monitoring package. Shortly afterwards, someone from said software supplier called me and offered me a job on nearly twice the money plus company car to drive around the place testing on other implementations at water boards, so I went on testing.

I started doing something difficult and badly paid but quite interesting and went on to doing something fairly easy and well paid but sometimes a little dull. Still, testing can be great fun in the right projects.

[Mich the Tester]

I didn't realise that Geography was geeky...

Now Geology...

Oi. Leave out geology. Nothing geeky about standing on Vesuvius in an aluminium foil space suit and chucking stone buckets down into the magma. That's 'ard, as I believe the chavs call it.

[minestrone]

The life where you sit about all day drinking cheap cider, smoking tabs and watching TV with your mates sounds quite appealing I have to say.

If it was that bad they would try to get away from it but they don't.

[bogeyman]

Round Britain Quiz on the wireless with Gordon Clough used to amuse me.

They'd get all the extremely obscure arty type questions right & fail epically with anything remotely technical/scientific...

I used to love RBQ. My dad used to listen to listen to it, and so did I. He puffed away on his pipe and I played with my Meccano (then he'd tell me I was doing it all wrong and had a strut in the wrong place or something).

Happy days!

[bogeyman]

Yes the country is thick.

Just look at how wildly popular "Reality TV" and the Celebrity Culture nonesense is and you realise that the UK has become the native home of chavtastic morons.

At least we aren't mostly fundamentalist Christian loonies though.

The UK used to be the leading source of Engineering and Scientific innovation now we have Universities closing Science and Engineering departments through lack of demand and research funding.

It is somehow quite acceptable to be utterly ignorant of science amongst the social elite of this country, but if you've never read Proust - oh dear!

Science and tech is for the lower orders - the 'little men' who 'do things'.

[expat]

I started doing something difficult and badly paid but quite interesting and went on to doing something fairly easy and well paid but sometimes a little dull.

I'm afraid too that after 35 years in IT, I don't really see myself as better off in the end than I would hope to be in some other career.

For example, if I had gone into teaching, I would expect to have been a principal teacher in my subject for some years now (as many of my friends are): on 36k - 47k, probably at the top by now. With holidays (yes I know) and pension; and the ability to work in parts of the UK that are only in the post-retirement dream for me now; not to mention interesting overseas work if desired (rather than being into weekly commutes just to make money).

[SallyAnne]

Speaking on behalf of the young 30's thick-as-pigsh*t population...I can only say WE WERE EDUCATED UNDER A TORY GIVERNMENT!!!!
And they took our free milk away, so we didn't have the strength to learn.



However...there are 2 types of "educated": -

1) those who are just uber uber clever (like my other half - knows pretty much everything about everything, but keeps most of it to himself until faced with a quiz machine or until a topic is raised)

2) those who are old school educated and find pleasure in spitting their knowledge all over you at any opportunity (yesterday for example, I got trapped into sharing lunch with a bloke I work with. Within 5 minutes he had told me he went to Durham University, as a Lecturer 10 years ago used to teach "The Classics" (erm, I'm sorry I didn't go to public school - wtf are the classics?), he spoke latin to me, and then proceded to explain to me how similar latin is to programming - I just thought "**** off" straight away. )

It's the second group of people who give knowledge a bad name.


It's a fact though that sexy nerds are the new badboys...now if they only knew how to talk to girls....

[AlfredJPruffock]

I sometimes ask myself qustions like that. I wanted to get out in the world, and somehow after a few hiccups ended up in IT, then called DP. It's as cushy a number as there is, and I've never seen any sense in getting out of it; for occasional escape from it, I have taken the money and run to faraway places until broke again.

But, being much older now, I sometimes wonder what else I might have done.

Aye Expat

Am I correct in thinking you seem to be in a reflective mood the past while - look back in anger and all that jazz.

How is the Universe treating you these days ?

Any Jobber - Got the Sack
Monday Morning - Turning Back
Yellow Lorry - slow- nowhere to go
But Oh - that magic feeling
Nowhere to go !!!

No-where to go

[Sysman]

Round Britain Quiz on the wireless with Gordon Clough used to amuse me.

They'd get all the extremely obscure arty type questions right & fail epically with anything remotely technical/scientific...

I used to enjoy that one too. Mastermind together with a bright gf was also enjoyable when with our combined knowledge we could get a few answers right.

We went off Mastermind when they started allowing specialist subjects such as "The First 3 Chapters of Pickwick Papers", which was just folks trying to prove they could lock themselves away in a library for a week and remember everything they'd read.