Today the Angry Men made a tragic discovery. Apparently, according to the infallible Intarweb, we rate only a modest “High School” reading level overall. Sad, really, since we pride ourselves on being educated beyond all need or reason. (Or perhaps that’s just some of us projecting onto the others. Well, and by some, I mean me…)
However, it did get us to thinking: What, in its infinite wisdom, would this Dark Oracle powered by the unholy forces of Redmond think of various sites around the all-knowing Blogosphere. So, we gave it a try—plugging everything into http://www.criticsrant.com/bb/reading_level.aspx and viola, the results were, ah, somewhat surprising.
Let’s start with the mainstream of American political thought:
- The Senate (http://www.senate.gov): Genius! [darn, now their heads will really swell…]
- The House (http://www.house.gov): Genius! [hmm, maybe something’s wrong with this thing]
- The White House (http://www.whitehouse.gov): High School [no, no, aparently this thing does work after all, it just biases high…]
- The Supreme Court (http://www.supremecourtus.gov/): Elementary School [wait, what?]
- The Republicans [RNC] (http://www.gop.org): College Post-Graduate [hmm]
- The Democrats [DNC] (http://www.dnc.org): Genius! [oh, come on!]
But you know, this thing is really focused on Blogs, so maybe it’s just that these staid, stodgy, government sites and wishy-washy party sites aren’t an ideal test. Let’s try some honest-to-goodness blogs. Hmm, let me pick out an excellent example of clear reasoning from each political side:
- Democratic Underground [http://www.democraticunderground.com/]: Genius!
- Little Green Footballs [http://www.littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/]: College (Post-Grad)
Uh huh.
Well, maybe they’re just outliers. Let’s take three sites so extreme, so bizarre, so brain damaged that they just have to show their true colors:
- North Korea’s Propaganda Site [http://www.korea-dpr.com]: Genius!
- Transcendental Meditation Homepage [http://www.tm.org]: Genius!
- Scientology, religion of the Stars! [http://www.scientology.org]: Genius!
Uh oh! Well, surely that was just bad luck. Let’s try two more crazy sites, one from either side of the political spectrum:
- On the Left, Counterpunch, featuring brilliant intellect Hugo Chavez [http://www.counterpunch.org/chavez09202006.html]: College (Post-grad)
- On the Right, brilliant mind Lyndon LaRouche [http://www.larouchepub.com/]: (also) College (Post-grad)
Yipes! This is really troubling.
Okay, now for the acid test, let’s use one of the most hillarious but least readable sites on the whole Intraweb:
- TimeCube!!! [http://www.timecube.com]: High School (!?! – apparently it’s only at the college level that you get educated stupid!)
So, now in fear and trembling we wonder whether the whole world has turned upside down.
Fear not, noble reader, and take heart. All is not wrong with the world, for at least two sites on the Great Web of Life return the right results:
- /. rates a High School level, which is being generous, but…
- Chick Publications rates the Elementary result it so richly deserves…
Left as an exercise for the reader: find even more amusing examples and post in the Comments section.
(And, as always, Discuss amongst yourselves.)
November 7, 2007 at 5:09 pm
[…] Politics of Erudition, er, the Erudition of Politics, er, Whatever November 7th. 2007, 4:54pm Chris Rosebrough wrote an interesting post today […]
November 7, 2007 at 5:11 pm
Ran myself… got a Genius. I was kinda hoping for High School, though. I wonder how our entire page got High School. I bet it’s counting a lot of redundant words like labels, addresses, etc.
As to your Overeducated status, I made the argument a while back (based on some really damn good economics that won the Nobel in 2001) that essentially *everyone* working in a white collar job is bound to be overeducated: https://12angrymen.wordpress.com/2007/05/21/graduation-time-time-for-credentialism/
http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economics/laureates/2001/spence-lecture.html
November 7, 2007 at 5:51 pm
[…] post by Angry Overeducated Catholic This was written by . Posted on Wednesday, November 7, 2007, at 4:54 pm. Filed under […]
November 7, 2007 at 5:55 pm
My blog rates Junior High. But then, I blog slice-of-life crap and crap that amuses me. Not the weighty political/philosophical crap you guys churn out.
Also I can’t type, so my frequent fat-finger misspellings may skew things.
November 7, 2007 at 7:03 pm
The English language version of Granma (party organ in Cuba) is listed as Genius. http://granma.cu/ingles/index.html
Granma makes for some pretty funny reading in general—well worth the look.
By contrast, http://www.bbc.co.uk is listed as High School….
November 7, 2007 at 8:51 pm
what no cheezburger?!?
November 7, 2007 at 9:13 pm
ANM got College (Postgraduate), so evidently I’m slightly less intellectual than MPA 🙂
November 7, 2007 at 10:03 pm
Angry New Mexican Says:
###ANM got College (Postgraduate), so evidently I’m slightly less intellectual than MPA :)###
Just less wordy.
November 7, 2007 at 10:24 pm
It is interesting that USA Today’s site and MS NBC’s site both are rated college undergrad, but CNN is rated high school. My understanding was that USA Today is the dumbed down version of the news (in color). Poor CNN.
Especially since adultfriendfinder.com was rated Genius. Sigh!
Frankly, I think that having 12AngryMen rated lower isn’t that bad. It means that we are targeting readers across the spectrum.
The challenge would be to write a “Genius” rant that was completely meaningless — like Leo Gorcey’s character Terrence Aloyius “Slip” Mahoney in the Bowery Boys — who uses multiple syllable words with wild abandon completely unfettered by appropriate context or meaning.
November 8, 2007 at 1:25 pm
APO wrote:
###Frankly, I think that having 12AngryMen rated lower isn’t that bad. It means that we are targeting readers across the spectrum.###
Actually, I suspect the algorithm is messed up or that it’s scanning a lot of other text on the page besides the content.
(Edit:) I ran your posts and got Genius, too.
###The challenge would be to write a “Genius” rant that was completely meaningless — like Leo Gorcey’s character Terrence Aloyius “Slip” Mahoney in the Bowery Boys — who uses multiple syllable words with wild abandon completely unfettered by appropriate context or meaning.###
Two words for you: Word salad. 😛
Dressing is optional but thorazine is not.
November 8, 2007 at 1:33 pm
Fantastic find by the 12 Angry Men, even if the algorithm appears intrinsically flawed.
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July 27, 2008 at 8:10 pm
Hey guys I finished only secondary education and had been elected as a village chief. I wonder how I could do my job well despite my limited academic background. But there is such a thing as “graduate of experience.”