Gifted? "I just want to point out that the opinions of the brightest half of Her Majesty's advisors tend to be neutralized by the half that is the most dim-witted. Of course, if I was a half-wit, I would think that people who can read were born mentally gifted too"
"2002: Achieve 20 year ambition. "IQ scores are a nonsense interpretation of the effects of literacy" included in Mensa Canada's national publication. 2003: Experience flash of insight on a sunny Saturday morning. Encourage Mensa to promote honest standards of literacy, have Mensa dues paid by the Government of Canada to compensate for the catastrophic effects of secret reading scores for the past century. Expect that Mensa should become the universal arbiter of literacy standards."
My point of view has of course been adequately reported in previous issues of MC2; Oct/Nov 2002 and Aug 2003 issues respectively. And, having achieved my literary objectives and goals for the first decade of the twenty-first century, as it were, I am inclined to spare the membership further hharrassmmentt, hharranggue and hystterriccss. However, you asked for it. 800 words shouldn't be a problem.
I for one, have never doubted your superiority, James. Now as to whether you were born that way; I would first need to inspect a detailed list and bibliography relating to your reading habits by the age of ten. Like yourself, "focus" and "discipline" never quite made it into my abridged active vocabulary and in my high school days, I never ceased to wonder how it was that it was wonderful to memorize books without necessarily being able to read them. Today. of course, the idea that someone who has learned to read exceptionally well should be able emulate the skills of a talking dingbat and then some........ And there I go again. And those godforsaken high school textbooks........there I go again. Now then you say, I mean write, that your social skills were desperately lacking. Nooooo kidding! I've heard that line at least five times this week. Let's put it this way. You can read or you can talk and nobody can be in two places at once. I'm pretty confident of that.
You can see for yourself that Charles Dickens and Mark Twain have little to worry about from my direction, writing as I do as one who has just fallen off a turnip truck. I talk like that too. Always thought it gave me an edge in the business world inasmuch as the half-wits who actually own the planet wouldn't feel too threatened by my savoir faire, il n'ya pas de quois and macho image. Always made a point of limiting my business letters to two sentences. The first would ususally be like please forward your past due car loan payment to my attention at your earliest convenience. The second was always the same. Pleae feel free to contact me at XXX-XXXX if you have further need for information in this matter. Sometimes I would resort to phone calls. Nothing irritates a delinquent loan customer like the voice of somebody who can actually speak English. Getting past my bed time so I'll just drop in some of my recent postings on a Mensa Chat site. Like I said, I mean wrote. I've been trying to give the Canadians a break. Looks like Schmidl's been reading too. How about that. Oh yeah and I've been playing Canta 147 for 50 years on my piano without knowing what moderato means? Oi vay. Now for that last post.
Up here in the woods (Canada) the birth rate has been well below replacement levels for quite some time. The demand for immigrants is insatiable as long as they don't speak English. The fact that exactly one half of the population is above the average levels of literacy prevailing in politics, business and education, is beyond the cognizant ability of the average citizen. The larger cities have been immigration vortexes or vortices for quite some time. Of course by the third generation anyone who can actually speak English at all is insane like the rest of us. Why politicians call this multiculturalism rather than insanity is anybody's guess.
And the post before that
An intellectually stimulating situation, for me, about a year ago, was to visiit the University of Toronto bookstore and purchase the latest Psychology textbook for about C$120. So I have had my very own copy of "Psychology" sixth edition by Henry Gleitman, Alan J. Fridlund and Daniel Reisberg, readily at hand for at least a year. "How do we know what we know?" is one of five main sub areas in this cohesive and coherent intellectual enterprise and gets mentioned early on in the second paragraph of the Preface. Yet strangely, literacy is an alien concept to the authors of this tome. I had scarcely unwrapped the thing before I was counting references to literacy and intelligence in the index. For I have been struggling to comprehend the distinguishing features for at least 55 years. I suspect one learns about 15 times as much in an hour reading than an hour of listening. So far I have noticed absolutely nothing on the statistics of reading speeds, vocabulary recognition, the nature oif medium messages or the reason that the business world considers literacy a mental or personality disorder. Many of the illustrations if not most are from television and motion pictures. More or less what yoiu would do if you were paid to confuse mediocrity with excellence. Ghost writers for politicians and rock stars etc. commonly use a tape recorder, then have someone type it up. Many a newspaper reporter phones it in. I wonder.


HOME