The great dumbing down.

There have been a spate of articles in the last several years about a very worrying trend, mankind is getting more stupid. Who knew that was even possible? I.Q. scores are apparently dropping quite rapidly.

A recently published study verifies the decline, even showing intelligence variation within specific families, which rules out a dysgenic cause (i.e. stupid parents having stupid kids.)

This isn't big news to anybody who reads a paper, turns on the television or opens his or her eyes, but it is troubling. Wish I was smart enough to figure it out but I'm not. A curious statistic is that this trend does not appear to exist in people who eat fish at least once a week.

The drop in smarts reverses a long term trend called the Flynn effect that saw an increase in intelligence quotients since the Victorian era of about three points per decade. Things seemed to hit the skids with people born after 1975. Now we are losing about 7 i.q. points a generation.

One only has to read the letters of Abigail to John Adams, try to solve a 19th century elementary math primer or go on TMZ to see how far we have actually fallen. Wonder what the cause is? Is it environmental, laziness, bad parenting, sweetened cereal? Who knows? Get smart, people. Eat more fish.