I just saw an ad on TV yesterday promoting a show being aired tonight titled “Battle of the Child Geniuses”.
Is this necessary at all? What are the repercussions of this?
And most importantly, are Legos going to be involved? In my mind, there is no indication of how intelligent a child is unless he can create a working computer out of plastic interlocking toys.
Um… Check out which channel this particular brand of “entertainment” is being broadcast upon, and then ask your questions again. In fact, you could probably re-use your post for a number of different programs:
“Who wants to Marry a Multimillionaire?”
“Cops”
“When Animals Attack 1/2/3/4/5 … 62”
“Robbie Knieval Once Again Does Something Stupid”
I love the part that goes:
“She cannot cross a street by herself, but she is a child genius”
or something like that. Seems like cruel and unusual punishment to put kids through that kind of stress, but that’s just me.
If I was 12, I’d be on that bad boy in a second 
Hahahaha! That’s so true. . . anyway, have anyone seen the commercial where they say something like “The hardest questions, like what is the square root of negative one?” Okay, I was a really dense child, but I knew that by the time I was twelve.
But more to the point, I think this is worst idea ever. Don’t these people watch movie? Child genuises on game shows always end up being really screwed up.
Since when is the mindless memorisation of facts an indicator of intelligence?
I say, put a machine they’ve never seen in front of them and see which one can figure out what the machine does.
Or give them a bunch of related sentences of a language they don’t know, with no spaces between the words. Give the translation of each sentence. Now ask them to figure out which word is which, including all the prefixes/suffixes/infixes.
Any idiot can memorise.
“The hardest questions, like what is the square root of negative one?”
Yeah? Hmmmm. So what’s the answer then? After all, one times one is one, yes, but neg one times neg one is postive one, have fun.
The answer to square root of negative one is i. It is an imaginary number.
I too knew this at a young age, sixth grade or so, but I can’t say that I really understood what it meant until I took calculus in high school.
I just wish my fifth grade teacher had had a better answer when I asked if it were possible to have infinities of different size. I gave as an example comparing the number of odd integers with the number of integers. She told me to go away.
I was clever enough to know the question, but not understand the answer.
Maybe one of the kids on this show will wet his pants and boost rentals of Magnolia.
I’m watching this thing right now. This is just sick. These kids got up in the beginning to brag about how smart they were. It reminds me of every snotty kid I ever went to school with.
I realize they’re just kids. But their attitudes make it hard for me to root for them.
Nothing like getting a head start on traumatizing children at the earliest possible age. Putting 9 year old kids on national television with only one kid being the winner and all the rest losing in front of the a million people probally aint too good for they’re emotional balance.
I managed to watch about 15 minutes of this “show” before I changed channels in disgust. I know, I know…what was I expecting? Well, I suppose I was hoping it wouldn’t be as bad as it looked. And frankly, it was worse.
First, it was a ridiculous rip-off of “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.” They did the whole pull-back shot, dramatic flashy lights moving to the stage, dum-dum-DUMMM! music that is absurdly cheesy on WWTOAM, nonetheless a cheap rip-off of it.
Second, the questions weren’t that hard. Hard for a 12 year old, maybe, but c’mon…Manifest Destiny? Absolute zero? I’m agreeing that just having them see who the Brilliant Trivia King/Queen was isn’t a big whoop de do.
Third, it was so obscenely, obviously exploitative that I felt bad for the kids. And what was with having all 50 kids introduce themselves at the beginning? Blargh.
Finally, the whole premise of the show is dumb. So there.
id imagine this show was nerveracking (sp?) for the kids involved. im sure the bright lights, who wants to be a millionaire-like suspense music and dick clarks condescending remarks are gonna totally create a new generation of unibombers. great… THANKS FOX.
Eh … I look at it this way. The kids have one strike against them anyway because the smartest kid in America is probably NOT watching the Fox network.