Yay, Americans are getting smarter!
You’re probably saying, “Rob, that’s not very likely. What proof do you have?”
Easy. Every Thanksgiving, I scour the internet for videos of people having horrible mishaps when frying turkeys — and these videos are getting very hard to find. The most recent fryer fire I could locate was uploaded to YouTube more than a year ago, on December 10, 2013.
Combine the lack of videos with the proliferation of phones that shoot video and it can only mean fewer fires.
What you will find on YouTube are many videos of fire departments staging turkey fires to demonstrate the dangers of hot oil, open flames, turkeys and (presumably) alcohol. Having served as a firefighter, I can tell you that they pass up few opportunities to light things on fire for training. Here’s a good one:
So, if we connect the dots we can surmise that all these demonstration videos have made a difference and yielded smarter Americans. Now, all we need are some videos about how local talk radio can rot your brain…
That, or fewer people are filming themselves while they do stupid things?
Nah. Probably not that.
Now THAT would be proof that our national intellect is improving.