# Smart Poles **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [January 15, 2013, 11:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/smart-poles/647271 "2013-01-15T11:18:09Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Heart\_of\_Dorkness](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/4bbf92/32.png) [@Heart\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Heart_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2013, 3:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/smart-poles/647271/21 "2013-01-18T15:33:02Z")
> [@Number](#): > > Setting aside for a moment how much of a stone-cold badass thing it was to get _sent to Auschwitz on purpose_, he must have been incredibly clever to design the plan and pull it all off. Holy crap. You’re not kidding. So, get this: he’s like, “Man, it’s a pain trying to get out the word about what’s happening here. I know! We’ll broadcast it by radio!” And he did. He set up a motherfucking _radio station_ in Auschwitz, and used it to broadcast for the better part of a year: > [@](#): > > ZOW provided the Polish underground with invaluable information about the camp.[11] From October 1940, ZOW sent reports to Warsaw,[13] and beginning in March 1941, Pilecki’s reports were being forwarded via the Polish resistance to the British government in London.[14] **In 1942 Pilecki’s resistance movement were also broadcasting details on the number of arrivals and deaths in the camp, and the inmates’ state and their conditions using a radio transmitter that was built by camp inmates.** The secret radio station, built over seven months using smuggled parts, was broadcasting from the camp until the autumn of 1942 when it was dismantled by Pilecki’s men after concerns that the Germans might discover its location because of “one of our fellow’s big mouth”. How on earth the Germans didn’t discover that is beyond me. Maybe it just never occurred to them to monitor for a _radio broadcast_ coming from _inside_ the goddamn _camp_, because no fucking way, right? Damn. Stone-cold badass indeed. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2013, 5:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/smart-poles/647271/22 "2013-01-18T17:18:40Z")
[Karol Wojtyła](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_John_Paul_II) ---
**Author:** ![Sailboat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sailboat/32/461_2.png) [@Sailboat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sailboat)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2013, 5:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/smart-poles/647271/23 "2013-01-18T17:58:36Z")
Not sure if he meets any objective criteria for “smart,” but General [Stanislaw Sosabowski](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislaw_Sosabowski) came off as the smartest person in the Hollywood treatment of Operation Market-Garden, the movie _A Bridge Too Far_. But he was played by Gene Hackman, which might make anyone look smart. ---
**Author:** ![Namkcalb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/c89c15/32.png) [@Namkcalb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Namkcalb)\ **Post date:** [November 30, 2013, 11:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/smart-poles/647271/24 "2013-11-30T23:51:16Z")
> [@DMark](#): > > Every time I read the title of this thread, I think of stripper poles with a built-in telephone and wi-fi, so the strippers can check their Facebook pages while going through the motions on stage. That is what a Smart Pole means to me…sort of an iPole? This is why not many people are brave enough to talk about Polish traditional dance. The same thing with dances from Lapland. ---
**Author:** ![BrotherCadfael](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@BrotherCadfael](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrotherCadfael)\ **Post date:** [November 30, 2013, 11:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/smart-poles/647271/25 "2013-11-30T23:57:06Z")
The “dumb Polack” stereotype is definitely a [Dead Horse Trope](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DeadHorseTrope). (Warning: TV Tropes link!) It was already on the way out, but the papacy of John Paul II seems to have been the final nail in the coffin. ---
**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\ **Post date:** [December 1, 2013, 12:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/smart-poles/647271/26 "2013-12-01T00:11:39Z")
I can’t believe [Stanislaw Burzynski](http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/11/15/stanislaw-burzynski-cancer-controversy/2994561/) never got mentioned in this thread. Here’s a guy running a long-term cancer care operation in Texas with drug regimens that never have been validated clinically. He’s made many millions of dollars while keeping FDA regulators from shutting him down (despite numerous violations at his clinic). That definitely takes smarts. ---
**Author:** ![Jack\_Batty](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jack_batty/32/3201_2.png) [@Jack\_Batty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jack_Batty)\ **Post date:** [December 1, 2013, 12:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/smart-poles/647271/27 "2013-12-01T00:58:10Z")
Me. You’re welcome. ---
**Author:** ![Duckster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/duckster/32/1244_2.png) [@Duckster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Duckster)\ **Post date:** [December 1, 2013, 1:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/smart-poles/647271/28 "2013-12-01T01:02:11Z")
[Tadeusz Kościuszko](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tadeusz_Ko%C5%9Bciuszko) ---
**Author:** ![Siam\_Sam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d78d45/32.png) [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)\ **Post date:** [December 1, 2013, 1:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/smart-poles/647271/29 "2013-12-01T01:04:11Z")
Jerzy Kosinski, author of _Being There_. True story: He was supposed to be at Sharon Tate’s house the night of the Manson murders, but he had just flown into LA and was dealing with his lost luggage, which ended up saving his life. He also thought his wife was trying to murder him when he caught her with a bottle labeled “Polish Remover.” > [@DMark](#): > > Every time I read the title of this thread, I think of stripper poles with a built-in telephone and wi-fi, so the strippers can check their Facebook pages while going through the motions on stage. That is what a Smart Pole means to me…sort of an iPole? Oh, I see you’ve been to a Thai go-go bar. ---
**Author:** ![Hari\_Seldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hari_seldon/32/5173_2.png) [@Hari\_Seldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hari_Seldon)\ **Post date:** [December 1, 2013, 2:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/smart-poles/647271/30 "2013-12-01T14:00:06Z")
I don’t if you count Jews, but Sammy Eilenberg, [Samuel Eilenberg - Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Eilenberg), was one of the top mathematicians of the 20th century. He, but none of his family, got out of Poland in 1939 and ended up eventually at Columbia where he gave me my first job. ---
**Author:** ![njtt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecd19e/32.png) [@njtt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/njtt)\ **Post date:** [December 1, 2013, 4:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/smart-poles/647271/31 "2013-12-01T16:00:03Z")
> [@Namkcalb](#): > > Marie Curie - A genius radiation researcher Although I do not dispute that she belongs on this list, and deserves admiration, I would question whether there is any real justification for calling Marie Curie a genius. I am not aware of any significant conceptual innovations she made. She (along with her husband, Pierre) was set the task, by her teacher Henri Becquerel, the discoverer of radioactivity, of finding out what it is in uranium ore (pitchblende) that (as Becquerel had also discovered) causes it to be even more radioactive than the uranium extracted from it. She and Pierre (who, however, died in a street accident part way through the project) set about doing this using conventional, well established chemical purification techniques that eventually allowed them to discover the elements polonium and the very radioactive radium, which are also present in pitchblende in small quantities, along with the uranium. This required a _lot_ of hard work and determination, over many years (and perhaps courage, although the dangers of radioactivity were not really appreciated at the time), but very little in the way of innovative thinking or “genius”. Curie deserves admiration for her hard work and her doggedness (perhaps not only in her research, but also in getting herself accepted as a female scientist at a time when they were vanishingly rare), and perhaps her courage, and no doubt she was a very intelligent woman, but there was little about her to justify the term “genius”. Her fame rests far more on the fact that she was one of the first women to make any sort of significant and high-profile contribution to science, than on the nature of that contribution itself. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/smart-poles/647271.md?page=1)