A very humorous but fake study from the conservative “The Intelligence Institute” has been circulating around the Internet. The headline: “Intelligence Institute Study shows Fox News viewers have an IQ that is 20 points lower than the U.S. National average” The good news, the study says, “…an IQ of 80 is well above the score of 70, which is where psychiatrists diagnose mental retardation. P. Nichols says an IQ of 80 will not limit anyone’s ability to lead happy, fulfilling lives.”

Again, that is fake.

But it turns out that there is something else going on.

The underlying conclusions of this “study” are affirmed by research conducted by a number of reputable organizations including the University of Maryland, NBC/Wall Street Journal, and the Sunlight Foundation. Unfortunately, this study, and the “Intelligence Institute,” appear to be figments of some prankster’s imagination. There is no evidence that the institute exists and the sole source for the Yahoo! item is a press release that contains no verifiable identifying data.

Nevertheless, the perpetrator of this hoax seems to have a solid grasp on the cognitive capacity of Fox News viewers even if no study was conducted to document it. As noted above, plenty of other real studies arrived at the same conclusions. Here are some key “findings” by the imaginary Intelligence Institute…

And for that information, CLICK HERE.

Have a look:

I’m speechless.

More here.

Rachel Maddow can be very scary, because she’s like, all truth and stuff. For example, she claims that evolution is real and the moon landing was real! Imagine that!

But seriously the question is, how can people get things like this, and lots of other things (Obama’s place of birth, what really happened at Benghazi, etc.) so wrong.

Many misconceptions are politically motivated, but they are so absurd that it is hard to understand how they are spread and maintained. Recently, Rachel threw a few “truth bombs” and discussed the “truth” bubble that conservative politicians and the conservative media live in. This prompted Eddy, Lauren, Lux and Mindy, of Teen Skepchick to engage in a discussion of Echo Chambers, as Episode 2 of their new podcast. Here.

I was just looking at the newly released Time Top Ten Space (science) Moments of the year. This is a little unfair, actually. The year is not over. Something could easily happen between now and January 1, 2013. Anyway, there are things on this list I didn’t know, so I therefore assume that you did not know them either.

It appears that the Moon sunk the Titanic. At first this sounds silly, but it is actually quite possible and even if an exaggeration of sorts, interesting. On January 4th, before the Titanic sailed, there was a Spring Tide. This is the monthly (in lunar months, obviously) extreme high tide caused by the opposition of the Sun and the Moon. On this day, however, Earth was at it’s annual perihelion in its orbit around the Sun, and the Moon was at a 1400 year orbital low in relation to the Earth. So, the Spring Tide that month was extremely extreme.

This, then seems to have lifted large ice bergs that would have normally been grounded and put them back into action, and one of them went over to the Titanic and sank the damn thing.

One of the items I knew about but want to remind you of: An Earth-like planet was spotted at Alpha Centauri. Danger Will Robinson, Danger!

The others are all more commonly known, and they are good choices for a list of top ten space science events. Interesting, though, that the strangest and in some ways most unexpected one is about an early 20th century boat.

UPDATE: The pages are DONE. Good work, Miriam!

Let’s try to act like a civilized society, for at least a few minutes, OK? There is a facebook page called “No respect for suicidal teens” that seems to have been put up by someone annoyed by attention given to someone who killed herself that the facebook page creator has judged worthy of death. Thus the page. It almost looks like a persona vendetta of some kind.

Miriam Mogilevsky has created a petition asking Facebook to take this page down. I should note that there are actually two almost identical pages; either the person who created them was incompetent, or that person created two pages in order to cause some confusion so it would stay up longer.

A lot of teenagers commit suicide. An even larger number try. Those who use inadequate methods or who otherwise don’t succeed tend to get help and usually get past that period in their lives and survive. Those who use, say, a handgun tend to die. Clearly, suicide is not inevitable. There is about a 100% chance that someone close to you, whom you know and love as a adult attempted suicide at one time in their past and you don’t even know it.

I’m sure the person who put this web site up is emotionally immature and ignorant. Or, possibly a sociopath, but I’m assuming the former. They may get past this stage in their life when they are being an unmitigated ass. Let’s help that person get past the unmitigated ass stage by getting Facebook to take notice of these pages and take them down.

My friend, Aslhey Miller, just wrote this thing and it is important. She has fallen in love with someone that her father does not approve of, and he, her father, has gone ahead and “disowned” her (a strange word when you think about it) for that reason. You should read this because it is socially and politically relevant, and Ashley is a social and political activist and a great writer. But she wrote it because she is a writer and needs to write about these things. This was not easy for her … not easy to make the decision to write about this experience. I would appreciate it if you would go and give her some kind words.

This is the essay: Racism, homophobia, and how I lost my dad last week.

But if you ask her for more details she’ll get mad at you. Watch:

Governor Brewer, two things: First, you are entitled to your own opinion, but you are not entitled to your own facts. Second, you need to learn to govern. You are the “govern”or. Act like it.

Hat Tip Archy