I'm a fan of roundabouts because they prevent t-bone crashes, need no electricity nor maintenance. Also, they require an extra degree of focus on the driver's part.
But most of all, roundabouts baffle people. Especially in an area that introduces them, the controversy, the letters to the editor, the hand wringing. And that's what's really great about them. I've long believed roundabouts are a window into a person's ability, beyond driving skills.
I think a lot about the state of the world. Always have. I'm a news hound, but in particular the last 5 years, thinking a lot about the country we live in. In particular, the people in this country. More to the point, the roughly 1/3 of adult Americans who are breathtakingly ignorant.
There's a well-studied psychological phenomena for this, the Dunning-Kruger effect. It explains why idjits believe they're smarter than you. The gist: ignorant people are too dense to even recognize their own ignorance.
Why do we have utterly batshit 'Q' followers? Pizzagate? The Fox channel talking head bloviators spewing white privilege garbage. Maskless incels flipping out on youtube.
Is it because of Dunning-Kruger? Or does this reflect the state of public schools? How can people grow up, going to classes, even on the basics of math, English, civics, and be so willfully ignorant of reality?
I've travelled to multiple countries, been to Europe 11 times I counted, met loads & loads of people, and never experienced people as dense as those as I meet sitting at my local breakfast diner's counter.
