Quote of the Day
[...]
"The Herr Doktor got shot," Doris Rives informed him. "With a charge of
BB's, in a most indelicate portion of his anatomy. He was out hunting,
the last day of small-game season, and somebody mistook him for a
turkey. Nothing really serious, but he's face down in bed, cursing
hideously in German, English, Russian, Italian and French, mainly
because he's missing deer hunting."
"I might have known it," Melroy said in disgust. "The ubiquitous
lame-brain with a dangerous mechanism.... I suppose he briefed you on
what I want done, here?"
"Well, not too completely. I gathered that you want me to give
intelligence tests, or aptitude tests, or something of the sort, to some
of your employees. I'm not really one of these so-called industrial
anthropologists," she explained. "Most of my work, for the past few
years, has been for public-welfare organizations, with subnormal
persons. I told him that, and he said that was why he selected me. He
said one other thing. He said, 'I used to think Melroy had an obsession
about fools; well, after stopping this load of shot, I'm beginning to
think it's a good subject to be obsessed about.'"
Melroy nodded. "'Obsession' will probably do. 'Phobia' would be more
exact. I'm afraid of fools, and the chance that I have one working for
me, here, affects me like having a cobra crawling around my bedroom in
the dark. I want you to locate any who might be in a gang of new men
I've had to hire, so that I can get rid of them."
"And just how do you define the term 'fool', Mr. Melroy?" she asked.
"Remember, it has no standard meaning. Republicans apply it to
Democrats, and vice versa."
"Well, I apply it to people who do things without considering possible
consequences. People who pepper distinguished Austrian psychologists in
the pants-seat with turkey-shot, for a starter. Or people who push
buttons to see what'll happen, or turn valves and twiddle with
dial-knobs because they have nothing else to do with their hands. Or
shoot insulators off power lines to see if they can hit them. People who
don't know it's loaded. People who think warning signs are purely
ornamental. People who play practical jokes. People who-"
"I know what you mean. Just day-before-yesterday, I saw a woman toss a
cocktail into an electric heater. She didn't want to drink it, and she
thought it would just go up in steam. The result was slightly
spectacular."
[...]
"Next time, she won't do that. She'll probably throw her drink into a
lead-ladle, if there's one around. Well, on a statistical basis, I'd
judge that I have three or four such dud rounds among this new gang I've
hired. I want you to put the finger on them, so I can bounce them before
they blow the whole plant up, which could happen quite easily."
"That," Doris Rives said, "is not going to be as easy as it sounds.
Ordinary intelligence-testing won't be enough. The woman I was speaking
of has an I.Q. well inside the meaning of normal intelligence. She just
doesn't use it."
- from Day of the Moron by H. Beam Piper (printed in Astounding Science Fiction, September 1951)