Stupid is as Stupid Does

One of the most important, yet unanswered, questions in the world is: Who is smarter, males or females?

There are so many important yet unanswered questions in the world such as:

males or females, darwin awardsWhat is the meaning of life?

Does God exist?

Are we alone in the universe?

Why did the Fairy Godmother give Cinderella glass slippers?

Why did the Prince think that there was only one girl in the kingdom that the slipper would fit?

Why was the Prince looking for a girl who would fit the shoe perfectly? Since it fell off during her escape it must not have fit Cinderella’s foot properly to begin with.

Why didn’t the shoes change back to rags at midnight like her other fancy apparel?

And, why are women so obsessed with shoes?

These are all important matters to ponder, but the question that I have been grappling with lately is, who is smarter, males or females? I began wondering about this last week after losing again to my wife in Jeopardy. How could this be? After all, aren’t men intellectually superior to women? Haven’t the best thinkers throughout history been men such as Socrates, Plato and Aristotle?

Scientists have discovered that on average the male brain is 14% larger than female gray matter and as all guys know… size matters. Bigger is better. Unfortunately, analysis has also determined that brain size has nothing to do with intelligence. It turns out that men just think they are smarter. Recent studies have found that there is no difference in IQ between the genders even in math and science. This is probably because genetically the DNA of men and women are 98.5% identical. That’s right, the genetic make-up of Donald Trump and Mother Teresa would have been 98.5% the same — a thought that should make Mother Teresa roll over in her grave.

Sorry guys, it gets worse. Research shows that often times we are more like Homer Simpson, Ralph Kramden and the main characters in the movie Dumb and Dumber than the ancient philosophers. We are, in fact, sometimes idiots or at least we are prone to do really asinine things from time to time. A recent examination of the Darwin Awards has proven this.

The Darwin Awards are given out annually to recognize individuals who have enhanced human evolution by dying in extraordinarily moronic ways and thus eliminating themselves from the gene pool.

Researchers examined the Darwin Award recipients for the years 1995-2014 and independently verified the veracity of 332 of them. Fourteen of the prizes were shared by a man and a woman including one awarded to a couple who decided to stop along the side of a highway for some whoopee. But rather than move over onto the shoulder, they parked in the right hand lane where they were hit by a truck and killed. No doubt their last words were, “Oh God, I’m coming.”

But of the remaining 318 awards, only 36 were bestowed on women. The other 282 (88.7%) were given to men. Some of these honors were very deserving such as:

The guy who decided to demonstrate the strength of the boardroom’s “unbreakable” windows by throwing himself against one. He, unfortunately, encountered two problems: 1) The windows weren’t unbreakable and 2) He was on the 24th floor.

The inebriated college kid who thought it would be fun to climb to the top of an electronic station transformer and pee on a wasp nest that was attached to the transformer. He was shocked to find out that it wasn’t quite the electrifying experience he expected.

The drunken man who tried to put a marigold garland around the neck of a tiger at a zoo as a New Year’s Eve greeting. The tiger wasn’t in a party mood.

The chap, who after being bitten by his friend’s poisonous snake, decided he was a man and didn’t need medical attention so he went to a pub instead. He actually needed medical attention more than he needed a pint of Guinness.

And, the guy who rescued a cobra and then decided it would be a nice gesture to kiss the poisonous reptile. The snake, not appreciating the unwelcome advance, decided to bite and kill the guy.

As you might have expected, alcohol was involved in many of these episodes. As you might not have expected, many of the misadventures involved wild animals.

So there you have it, although men are equal to women in intelligence they are occasionally idiots who do stupid things. But why do we men sometimes do such foolhardy things? It appears that men, especially young men, don’t always access or understand the risk they are taking or they make little or no attempt to manage the risk. After all, nothing seems particularly dangerous after ten beers. Sometimes these idiotic things are done to gain male social esteem or to show our courage or just for bragging rights. But usually they are done to impress girls.

However, it turns out that the fairer sex isn’t all that impressed with men who jet ski over Niagara Falls or play chicken with oncoming trains or enter a wild animal’s cage at feeding time. Women are just not that interested in men who are constantly trying to prove how macho they are. They tend to prefer guys who are honest, trustworthy, good communicators (even during the NCAA March Madness Tournament) and understanding of their need to buy hundreds of pairs of shoes.

Those of us who survive our dumb deeds eventually figure that out and then we are usually levelheaded until our mid-life crisis. Fortunately, sooner or later most guys outgrow that too although some just continue to tweet along.

So, now that we have that sorted out, why did the Fairy Godmother give Cinderella glass slippers?

JC Wade
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