Re: Ban coffee?

On 2025-03-31 8:50 a.m., Dave Smith wrote:

On 2025-03-31 9:33 a.m., Cindy Hamilton wrote:

On 2025-03-31, Janet <nobody@home.com> wrote:

In article <vsd2l6$38jd0$2@dont-email.me>,
Bruce@invalid.invalid says...

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On Sun, 30 Mar 2025 20:55:38 -0600, Graham <g.stereo@shaw.ca> wrote:
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On 2025-03-30 4:10 p.m., Dave Smith wrote:

On 2025-03-30 3:50 p.m., Graham wrote:

On 2025-03-30 1:05 p.m., Bruce wrote:
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Why do Scandinavia and the Netherlands always win everything?

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Scandinavian countries are mostly secular.

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That shows, once again, that religion holds people back. It has a
retarding effect.
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Stats show that the USA is increasingly secular but even if they
were in the minority, the religious would still dominate.

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Secular has more to do with the official relationship between the church
and the state, or lack thereof. The church is still quite prominent in
Scandinavia. Denmark has a Evangelical Lutheran Church is the state church.
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But how many attend?

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3% regularly. This confirms my theory that the bigger a country is,
the more retarded its population is. My other theory is that the
further people live from the ocean, the more retarded they are. These
two theories combined explain fly-over Americans.

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    Yolur theory is undermined by China. IQ in China is 7
points higher than in USA  (104/97)

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Do they test everybody, or just the smart ones?

  Are you suggesting that China would not be completely open and honest? They have the best numbers.  Other countries wish they had those numbers.  But seriously..... it can be an issue.  When our provinces first started testing of all school students to monitor the quality of results of school boards the Catholic boards tended to show better performance and of course they were quick to claim it was because they education system was superior. It had a lot more to do with their lack of special education facilities. They sent their special needs students to the public school special ed classes. Who would have expected that they all those special needs kids would lower the average.
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 > I'm willing to believe they're smarter, but not on the basis
 > of 104 vs. 97.
 It seems to depend on the site. The numbers are different. China tends to be at or near the top and the US tends to be well down the list. While there are slight differences in scores reported, the rankings are pretty consistent.
 I wonder about the cultural effects  on the IQ testing.  IQ tests are notoriously affected by language and culture.
 

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I'm willing to believe they're smarter, but not on the basis
of 104 vs. 97.
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And it's difficult to define "intelligence", let alone measure it.