Friday 11 April 2008

E=MC... erm... Hammer?

Today saw me pondering the meaning of intelligence.

Not because I am particularly philosophical, but because my intellect was commented on - and regardless of whether or not I agree with the cerebral commendations, it started me questioning what actually makes someone intelligent. I know that typically intelligence is determined as the ability to learn, and that emotional intelligence is a seperate issue, and that IQ is partially dependant on class, culture and gender.

I took one of those daft online IQ tests, and it gave me a result of 128, which isn't bad considering I have Dyscalculia and so can't answer the numerical questions very well. I never excused being "shit at maths" until I went to college and my Psychology tutor diagnosed me. I only did a few weeks of college, but I liked Ian. He's a CBT (Cognitive Behavioural Therapist) turned A-Level tutor, and watched me processing statistical information in class. He saw that no matter how many times I read the statistics on the board, it would take me ages to copy them onto paper because they'd get lost in my head on their way to the page. He simply told me one day that Dyscalculia is what I have. It's the arithmetic version of Dyslexia. I think that's used as too much of an excuse though. He said that a friend of his has it quite severely - and has to remember telephone numbers by letter because he can't 'see' numbers properly. I think I'm just thick.

Having said that, the national average IQ is 100, so I suppose 128 isn't bad for 2am. Not Good enough for MENSA. Though they probably wouldn't have me anyway - even if I was a genius. They'd say the dog ate my score.

...A genius probably wouldn't worry about MENSA's dog eating their score. A genius would know what the hell a dog is doing at MENSA in the first place. Especially one with a penchant for imaginary paperwork. It'd be a liability if you ask me. What if someone sent an important memo and he ate that? Then what would they do? Better to employ an autistic savant to be in the office - Dennis Hoffman in Rain Man for example. Someone with an eye for detail, and an impeccable memory.

Maybe the dog at MENSA is the one that can count? I heard it on the radio. The dog's owner would shout basic sums and the dog would bark the answer (one bark for 1, two barks for 2 etc). As I heard it on the radio she might just have had a tape recorder with one bark on it, that she repeated as necessary. I was impressed at the time though. I don't know what happened to that dog, but I haven't read about it since - so maybe it was a fraud. Surely it would be more famous now, if it really could count. At the very least they would have had it on Richard and Judy.

I hope that dog at MENSA is ok. If it's eating paper then they can't be feeding it properly. I'll worry about that now - I'll have guilty dreams where I feel I should've called the RSPCA.

I think my investigation into the world of intelligence has led me to the conclusion that I have no business making such a claim.

Another person who needs to stop telling the world what they're thinking is Robbie Williams. BBC News say he's going to present a Radio4 show about Aliens. Whilst I've always found Mark Owen to be a rather odd little creature, I am not sure that qualifies Robbie to actually lecture on Extraterrestrial life-forms. He claims to have seen things flying over his home in LA for the past few years. He's been treated very recently for drug addiction, so I'm not all that surprised he's been seeing things.

On the subject of uncommon appearances; Christies are about to auction a painting by 84yr-old artist Lucian Freud. It's a life size work called 'Benefits Supervisor Sleeping' and is expected to fetch up to 18million. The subject is a JobCentre worker called Sue. To say the woman is "fat" would be politically incorrect. It would also be factually misleading - as she's not merely fat, she is incredibly obese. Somehow it's even worse because she's nude.



I look at that photograph and two things leap out at me (not those two things, though they're so large they probably would leap out at you in real life). The first, is that in the photo it takes two men to carry the painting. I think it would take many more than two men to lift the real woman, even though the canvas is lifesized. The second thing that I think when viewing the piece is: 'Did people use that sofa afterwards?" The idea of unknowingly sitting on that sofa after it had reluctantly supported the enormous weight of the nude woman makes me uncomfortable. It'd be like sitting on Calum Best's sofa knowing he'd probably had Abi Titmuss on it.

That's why I'd never buy a second-hand sofa. You don't know it's history.

After thinking about it...I reckon that online IQ tests are probably as unreliable as the dog that never made it onto Richard and Judy.

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