1 jan 01
What a binary date.
I suppose I'll try to keep this short (for me), even though this =is= the
first entry of the new year. I just want to comment on some silly stuff I
have seen online of late -- specifically, high-IQ societies. I've been
trying to compile a list of addresses of gifted organizations, and many of
them link to these places - MENSA, the MEGA society, the Prometheus
Society (not to be confused with the publishing company - I mean it,
=don't= confuse them), what have you. MENSA peopl scoring 98th percentile
and above on intelligence tests (though it also takes results such as high
SAT scores, which really confuses me. I don't think SAT shows much in the
way of intelligence -- sure, a stupid person may not be able to get a high
score, but I believe a normal intelligence person certainly can score
high. Thus the people currently populating our undergraduate
institutions. But I digress.) Some of these other societies try to be
even more exclusive by admitting those in 99.999th percentile.
Well, what do you get for that extra 1.999 percentile? From what I can
see, not much. Perhaps it is something sociological going on, but from
reading these societies' journals, I must say I am not impressed. Some
supposedly smart people like to crow about how they don't bother with
mundane stuff like memorizing multiplication tables or spelling rules and
the like, because evidently this would take up the valuable mental real
estate they use for concocting their inane theories which happily
disregard actual facts. But doesn't quantum mechanics teach us that
reality is an illusion? (No it doesn't. It just tells us that reality is
different from what we have as our instinctual mental templates.)
(argh! Stu was =staring= at my crochet cigar box when I asked him where
it was -- it's sitting on the printer! I like how =I'm= always blamed
when something of his goes missing, as if I like to randomly pick up stuff
and put it in other places -- okay, I do do that, but I generally pick up
my own stuff and randomly set it down.)
In any case, I like my own exclusive society, the Meep society, composed
of human beings I like. No test is involved, and even without the test
scores taped to their lapels these people seem to accomplish many
things. I must say that I am an elitist - I do not like people who crow
about various attributes but never seem to apply those plusses to anything
useful. Ms. vos Savant, you have an over 200 IQ? And what do you do with
that intelligence? Answer questions about stupid word puzzles and write
books trying to explain hyperbolic geometry isn't real? (Let me tell you,
sister, Euclidean geometry isn't real. And yet the buildings and bridges
stand up. Amazing what illusion can do.) I knew some supposed geniuses
at S&M who really just stuck their heads up their asses all the time.
And after listening to some biographical tapes on Thomas Jefferson, I
became less impressed with our supposed most intelligent president - this
was a man who never admitted he was wrong. Some like to say he merely did
not like confrontation, which allowed him to prevaricate about his
involvement in a smear campaign against John Adams (who was a pompous
shithead in his own right, but a pompous shithead I think I'd rather be
around.) This was a man who sincerely believed in the innate inferiority
of Black Africans, who thought that such people could not be educated so
that they would understand Euclid, and originally these weren't totally
idiotic suppositions (as he had no example of educated blacks in front of
him). However, in meeting Benjamin Banneker (I'm sure =that= was a lovely
meeting) and reading the works of Phyllis Wheatley, and his own personal
knowledge of the Hemings' family (and the craftwork of his own slaves) he
did not change that opinion one whit. He denigrated the poetry of
Wheatley as trash, supposed someone else did the calculations of
Banneker's almanac, and didn't even free his own slaves (probably because
of all his debt) -- the Hemings' children were freed only after they were
21. Oh yes, and did I mention Jefferson blamed England for the South's
dependency on slaves? He blithely ignored the real reason domestic
slaveowners wanted to restrict slave importation -- so they couild keep
prices for slaves high.
Anyway, Monticello is still a pretty neat house, even if Jefferson was a
sincere asshole. Perhaps my opinion is harsh, considering his main sin of
the time (noticed by his contemporaries) was to wish the world the way he
wanted it to be and to see it that way, ignoring any evidence to the
contrary. Such people piss me off now, and I don't care that "standards
are different in different eras", Jefferson still pisses me off.
By the way, my favorite president right now is the imperialist and
naturalist Teddy Roosevelt. Gotta go for a man with whiskers.