The Intelligence Conjecture

An economist named Jonathan Gruber got his name in the news because he called the American people “stupid.” Come on, Gruber, even if your fellow citizens are stupid, isn’t it stupid to say so in front of cameras and microphones?

A while back I had to call the police to my house. (Nothing major – just dumbassery committed by college-age kids who should know better.) The officer and I talked and he took notes and then our conversation took a tangent and we were discussing people in general. At one point the officer said this: “People are dumb, and they’re getting dumber every day.” Cops deal with people all day long, so if anyone knows whether people are getting dumber, a cop should know.

I turned on the TV and a quiz show was in progress. A contestant was asked to define an astronomical object named Miranda. It was multiple choice; he had to choose the correct answer from four possible answers. After a few seconds of indecision, the contestant stated: “I’m not a smarty astronomist, so I’ll use my lifeline.”

Smarty astronomist?

I have my own theory about intelligence. The amount of intelligence in the world is nearly a constant. That means, average IQ multiplied by the number of people is a number that doesn’t change or changes only a little. So as the population goes up, the average IQ goes down, because there is less intelligence to go around. Inversely, in earlier times when the population was smaller, the average IQ was higher.

Think about it. Modern humans don’t know how ancient Egyptians built the pyramids. Oh, we’ve worked out methods of handling stone blocks that the ancients might have used. In theory, we could build a pyramid today. But do you really think modern Egyptians could build a duplicate of, say, the Great Pyramid of Cheops, using copper tools and without machinery made of anything besides wood?

There are countless other examples of ancient ingenuity, such as the cities of Machu Picchu in Peru and Tiwanaku in Bolivia. Their stonework is so incredible that some people have proposed that they were built, not by human hands, but by the advanced technology of visiting space aliens. I have no doubt those cities were built by humans – just smarter humans than are around today.

Why has every civilization on Earth collapsed at some point? It’s because a civilization is founded by smart people. Then the population grows and grows until eventually the people of that civilization simply grow themselves into stupidity. They become too stupid to keep their civilization going and it collapses. It’s probably what happened to Atlantis.

We don’t have to go back to ancient times for evidence. If you’re a senior citizen, think back to your childhood. Weren’t people smarter back then? Sure they were. Heck, we went to the Moon in 1969! The flippin’ Moon! And the engineers who designed the rockets back then made their calculations on slide rules – pieces of wood (or plastic or metal) with numbers and markings printed on them. The most powerful computer of that era had only a small fraction of the computing power that is in your mobile phone. And we went to the Moon! Now it’s almost 2015. Have we been to the Moon lately? No. Not since 1972. We have no way to get to the Moon. It’s almost as if … we forgot how.

Thousands of years from now, America will be a myth, a legend. And when humans finally return to the Moon and discover the pitted and bleached skeletons of their ancestors’ landers and rovers, they will marvel that humans made it to the Moon in such a primitive time as the twentieth century. Doubtless some people will insist that we present-day humans must have had help. Help from – what else – an advanced race of space aliens. But no, we didn’t have help. We used slide rules and our brains, and they were enough because we were smart.

Christmas Day 2014

Another Christmas Day is done. And what did I accomplish?

I slept late, just because I could. I didn’t get out of bed until after 8 AM. I shuffled to the bathroom and peed last night’s special Christmas Eve blend of Sauvignon Blanc and 80-proof vodka. While doing that, I observed my face in the medicine cabinet mirror. My hair looked like a crazy man’s hair. Maybe I am a crazy man. If I am, would I know it?

I shuffled to the living room and grabbed the cord on the window blind and pulled the blind open. I could see blue skies in the west. Sunny day. That’s a nice change; it’s been cold and rainy for the past 3 or 4 days.

I turned on my computer and while it booted up I scanned the TV channels. Regular morning programming seemed to be all that was available. Meh. I read email and then surfed the news for a long time. There is so much interesting stuff on the Web. After a while I decided to fix breakfast: fried eggs and pork sausage links, a tasty combination of high cholesterol and a sage-flavored fat-bomb. To which I say: “Yum!”

Then I watched 1992’s My Cousin Vinny. I saw it years ago and felt like watching it again. It was the movie that brought Marisa Tomei international visibility playing Mona Lisa Vito, Vinny’s (Joe Pesci) fiancée. I really like the movie, but it still seems to me that Tomei, who was 28 at the time, was too much younger than Pesci, who was 49, for them to realistically be a couple. It turns out the role of Mona was planned for Lorraine Bracco, who was 38, but she turned it down. Trivia: The American Bar Association's publication, the ABA Journal, ranked the film #3 on its list of the "25 Greatest Legal Movies.”

After that, I watched The Interview. In case you’ve been on Mars for the past month, that’s the movie at the center of the Sony Pictures hacking. It’s the movie that garnered threats of world annihilation if Sony should release it. There are plenty of reviews on the Web so I won’t write another here, except to say that one reviewer described it as “scabrous, puerile and scatalogical.” In other words, uproariously funny if you’re a 14 year old American male. Although it didn’t make me laugh, I confess I almost smiled several times. If you like the Seth Rogen/Evan Goldberg brand of comedy, you’ll think this film is hilarious.

After that, I walked down the street to my friend Butch’s home. He asked if I preferred to come inside or go for a walk. I chose the healthy option and we walked a couple miles around the ‘hood, and our conversation went like this: “Remember what that used to be? … Yeah, that used to be … ” followed  by the appropriate noun – the post office, the barber shop, the bank, the drug store, etc. Eventually we arrived back at Butch’s house.

Butch has a small Christmas tree sitting on a table in the corner of the living room. I’d be willing to bet serious money that if he didn’t have a wife, there wouldn’t be a tree. Having a woman in the house can have that domesticating effect on a man. I scoff at his tiny tree, and he scoffs at my never having a tree. I tell him he’s wrong; my tree is in my head and I can see it just by closing my eyes, and though his tree is nice, the tree in my imagination is much prettier and much less work. So I’m happy with it.

After some time, a carload or two of his family arrived so it seemed like a good time to make my exit. I snagged a couple of his wife’s homemade cookies on the way out and walked back to my house. When I turned on the TV, I saw that some kind of musical Christmas special was on. It was called A Hollywood Christmas at the Grove and the next band up was going to be Pentatonix. I happen to like Pentatonix, but in small doses. I mean, a cappella music gets old quick, but they do it quite well. Trivia: music is older than language. Bone flutes have been dated 40,000 to 80,000 years old, and experts assume that people were singing (or at least humming) before they began making flutes. In Judaism, the Torah was set to music as a way to remember it before it was written down.

And so my day ended like this: TV reruns and this blog post. Which I will now publish to the Web. It’s the only thing I’ve accomplished today. At least, it’s the only thing I can point to; the only tiny scratch I’ve made on the Universe today. It’s my Kilroy was here, my Mr. Chad, my Foo was here. I blog, therefore I exist.

And now it’s midnight. I’ll watch some Pentatonix on YouTube followed by Modern Family reruns until bedtime. Goodnight, all.

Must Be the Christmas Season

Something about the Christmas season makes people crazy. And sometimes it makes them mean. Which is why I prefer to avoid people at Christmas.

For example, I know better than to go to the stores or malls during Christmas season, but today I wanted a pizza. So, knowing better, I drove to Walmart to buy one of their deli pizzas. As I turned into the parking lot, there was a white car stopped at a stop sign in a lane to my left, a lane I intended to enter. Behind the white car was a black SUV. I turned left into the lane the white car was in, but then I had to stop because the black SUV was blocking part of the lane and I couldn’t proceed.

The driver of the white car was a white woman with a passel of young kids. The woman jumped out of her car and came over to mine, screaming her words at me. “Didn’t you see the stop sign?! I almost hit you! You drove right through it! What is wrong with you!” Then she jumped back into her car. I looked back at her car, wondering what she was talking about, as I had not encountered any stop sign. I’ve driven that route into the parking lot a hundred times and there has never been a stop sign on my lane. The furious woman had the stop sign, not me. Her kids looked my way, frowns of disapproval on their faces.

The woman drove off and the black SUV pulled up beside me and stopped. The driver was a middle-aged black woman. She looked at me and said, “You see how some people are? But don’t let her take your glory.” And she drove away.

If that first woman had had a gun, she might have shot me, she was that angry. All because she thought I had driven through a stop sign that existed only in her head.

But I think the second woman’s advice was sound – for this Christmas season, and all times of the year. Never let the other person take your glory.

Santa

In one week it will be Christmas Eve. Maybe that’s the reason I began thinking about that children’s Christmas song, “Santa Claus Is Coming To Town.” Thinking especially of these lyrics:

He sees you when you're sleeping.
He knows when you're awake.
He knows if you've been bad or good,
So be good for goodness sake!

He sees kids when they’re sleeping? That sounds a little creepy. And he knows if every kid on the planet has been bad or good, so he must be watching all the time. Monitoring us. Is Santa … God? It would explain a lot. Like, how can he visit so many kids in one night? He’s God – He just stops time. And, how does he get into homes with no chimney? He has the power to pass through walls. And, how can he have flying reindeer? Easy to do if you’re God.

Anyhow, I googled “Is Santa Claus God” and found that I’m not the first to ponder this topic. In fact, one person had composed this helpful chart.

That settles it. You no longer have to wonder about God. He wears a red suit with a big, black belt around his waist and black boots on His feet, He rides in a sleigh pulled by supernatural beings disguised as reindeer, and He delivers toys to good children every year on his Son’s birthday. And Heaven? Obviously, it’s at the North Pole.

It all makes sense now. Happy Holidays!

Science

I saw this headline:

Feeling young at heart wards off death, scientists find

The headline was followed by these sentences:

Researchers at University College London found that those who felt younger than their actual age were 41 per cent less likely to have died in the follow up period.

And

Scientists have proven that people with a youthful spring in their step and an unswerving optimism about the future seem able to cheat death.

I see this kind of thing (“scientists have proven …”) on the Internet all the time, and I am going to write about it because it touches on one of my pet peeves: journalists who don’t understand science but write about science.

I’m fairly sure that the researchers at University College London made no statement to the effect that feeling youthful helps a person live longer. If they did make such a statement, they should be sent back to school to study science.

The gist of the article was that researchers followed more than 6,000 people for eight years monitoring their happiness levels and health, and they found that happy people tend to live longer than unhappy people. In the field of epidemiology (the science that studies causes and effects in health and disease processes) this kind of study is called an observational study.

I’m sure many people have wondered if happier people live longer than less happy people. Framing this question scientifically, we’d like to know:

• Is there an association between happiness and life expectancy?
• If there is an association, does happiness help us live longer or is something else happening?
• How does happiness help us live longer?

An observational study usually begins by collecting data. In this study, the data is the happiness and health of 6,000 people. Collecting data allows us to observe associations that develop over time. After collecting and carefully analyzing this data, the researchers reported that they observed a correlation in the data which can be stated: happiness is associated with longer life. Let  me stress that at this point, nothing has been proven.

When we see an association between two variables (let’s call them A and B) we might assume that A causes B. But perhaps B causes A. Or, perhaps both A and B are caused by a third variable, which we’ll call C. In this case, C would be what is called a confounding variable.

After running an observational study and finding an association, the next step is to form a hypothesis – a possible explanation. The hypothesis must be testable. To test the hypothesis, we conduct experiments and collect data from the experiments; this process is called a clinical study. Then we analyze the data and reach a conclusion. Not until all this is done do we have anything remotely like “proof.” Even then, nothing is considered proven until other researchers repeat our experiments and reach the same conclusions.

It may seem reasonable that feeling happy could make us live longer, but perhaps having better health is the confounding variable that makes people happy and helps them live longer. Or perhaps having more wealth is the confounding variable that makes people happy and, by allowing them to eat healthier foods and have access to better health care, helps them live longer. The researchers acknowledged their study had not proven anything when they stated “The mechanisms underlying these associations merit further investigation.”

So folks, when you read a headline that says, for example, “Eating an egg a day is associated with diabetes,” just remember: words like associated with or correlated with mean that you are reading about an observational study, and observational studies are not proof of anything! To repeat: such studies only allow us to form a hypothesis, which must be tested by a clinical study, and the results of the clinical study must be reproducible. An observational study is the beginning of the road, not the end. Don’t let sensational health headlines worry you. Read carefully and apply at least a little skepticism.

Does every journalist get every story one hundred percent correct? Unlikely. Don’t be the person who thinks, “I read it on the Internet so it must be true!” It may be better to think, “I read it on the Internet so some of it may be true.”

Fishing

I’ve had a lot of jobs in my life. One of the most unusual was tuna fishing on a pole-and-line boat in the Pacific. Since we were a pole-and-line boat, the first thing we did while we were trying to find a school of tuna was catch baitfish. These are small fish that tuna like to eat.

We had guys on the boat who placed hooks on the fishing lines, guys who baited hooks, and guys who held poles with baited lines in the water and hauled in the tuna they caught. I started at the bottom of the ladder as a junior hooker and quickly worked my way up to senior hooker. Then I was transferred to junior hook baiter. From there I worked my way up to master baiter.

Didn’t see that coming, didja? The 13-year-old kid inside me lives!

Thanksgiving Eve

A cold rain fell all last night and all of today. A little colder and it would be snow, but the temperature is 38°F. The windows are fogged and streaked with condensation. Forecasters say the rain may turn to snow tonight and last until daylight tomorrow morning.

The gray sky’s feeble light is obscured by awnings, leaving the room dim and gloomy, but that doesn’t bother me. A sheet of clear plastic taped over the window air-conditioner crackles as wayward breezes outside push and pull on it, making the plastic sheet puff out and then retreat back, as if the a/c unit was a breathing thing.

I have the thermostat turned down so that the boiler doesn’t run. Today, I get my heat from a kerosene stove. It sits silently nearby, casting warmth and a comforting glow into the gloom. It’s the next best thing to having a fire in a fireplace. Heat and firelight; ancient things but still very comforting on a cold day or a cold night. To our primitive ancestors, a fire could mean survival. Maybe that’s why it still feels so comforting to us. It’s wired into our brains now: fire means you won’t freeze to death, fire means the big cats won’t eat you tonight. Once in a while the stove gurgles as a bubble of air is pulled into its fuel tank. It does that now, as I type these words.

A Linda Ronstadt CD is playing. (Remember CDs? Before iTunes, before Spotify, there was a time when you could hold music in your hand.) This CD is one I bought in the ‘70s called Living In The USA. It has some very pretty melodies and some toe-tappers, too: Back in the USA (Chuck Berry), Alison (Elvis Costello), White Rhythm and Blues (J. D. Souther), and the tune that is playing right now – Mohammed’s Radio (Warren Zefron). (Don’t ask what the lyrics mean; Mohammed’s Radio means something different to every person who hears it.)

The song ends and I hear a train whistle blow. It’s distant, maybe a mile or two away. Just barely, I hear the rumble of steel wheels on steel track. Then another series of whistles and it’s gone. Silence.

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving, an American holiday to celebrate American obesity by stuffing our faces with turkey and ham and sweet potatoes and green beans and cranberry sauce and biscuits and pumpkin pie and … oh, you get the idea. I think too often, we forget about the reasons we should be thankful. It’s too easy to focus our attention on things that are less than ideal, while everyday blessings, like just having clean water to drink, are taken entirely too much for granted. I have food in the fridge, for which I am thankful. I have clean, running water at the turn of a tap, for which I am thankful. I haven’t decided if I will eat anything at all tomorrow. Maybe I’ll spend a day meditating on all those things for which I’m thankful.

And I hope you enjoy your Thanksgiving, my friends.

Football Watching Day

Today was an exceptional fall day. Cloudless, blue sky to the horizon in every direction; temperature 62°, warm sun, light breeze. There might be prettier days in Heaven, but here on Earth you’d be hard-pressed to find a nicer day than today. In short, it was a perfect day for lounging in front of the TV and watching football while munching on pizza, popcorn, and salted nuts. So I did.

It seems like all my neighbors were wasting their day mowing grass. I wanted to say to them, “People, what are you doing? This isn’t a grass-mowing day, this is a football-watching day.” I watched the Redskins/Titans game. The ‘Skins won today; it was their first win in 5 games. Now it’s 4:30 and I should probably go for a walk. I hear walking is healthy. I’m skeptical, but now that the game is over, what else is there to do? The pizza is gone, the popcorn is finished, and the salted nuts are seriously damaged. A little voice in my head tells me walk it off. Ok, ok, I’m going.

(Time passes…)

I went to a nearby park beside the river that flows past my small city. I communed with Nature. I took photos. I had the park to myself and it was very peaceful. Now I’m back in time to watch the Cowboys/Giants game.

Photos (click any photo to enlarge):

Ice Cream

Ice cream. Who doesn’t love it?

I’ve never snorted cocaine, nor injected heroin, but if they’re more addicting than Cookies ‘n Cream ice cream, then I’m staying far, far away from both of them.

You’ve seen those 3-pint tubs of ice cream in grocery store freezers? Or as I sometimes call them late at night, single-serving tubs. They work like this:

Day 1. I buy a tub of ice cream and take it home. I eat a nominal “serving” (as defined on the side of the tub). I think, That can’t be a serving, and I eat another.
Day 2.  I eat three servings. Before getting into bed, I remove the tub from the freezer, and I get a spoon, and I nibble at and scrape away the lumpy surface of the ice cream so that it’s smooth as a billiard table. This amounts to at least one more serving, but I don’t count it because I’m just “neatening up” the ice cream.
Day 3.  I no longer bother with the pretense of servings. I attack the tub with a spoon until the ice cream is gone.

Cookies ‘n cream should be on the Schedule One drug list, and the stores that stock it should be guarded by the DEA.

That is why I rarely buy ice cream. I can handle it fine as long as it stays inside its tub in the store’s freezer.

Another thing: on the store’s freezer aisle, I was surprised to see all the 3-pint tubs. The last time I bought ice cream, it was sold in half-gallon cartons. When did everyone switch from half-gallon cartons to 3-pint tubs?  And why do single-pint tubs cost twice as much as 3-pint tubs?  (Store: “We have to charge extra for the convenience of the smaller container.” Me: “What?”) Incidentally, the half-gallon cartons did not last any longer than the 3-pint tubs.

You can measure the passage of time in America by the shrinkage of cans and cartons. Sixteen ounce cans went to 15 ounces, then 14.5 ounces. Six ounce cans of tuna went to 5 ounces, then to 4.5 ounces. A roll of toilet paper shrank to a half-roll, then went back to a full roll, which the manufacturers like to call a double-roll, but we all know it isn’t really a double roll – it’s just a roll. Though admittedly, a so-called double-roll is double the size of a half-roll. Maybe that’s what they mean. “You’re getting double the amount you would be getting if we sold you half as much as we’re selling you.” You can’t deny the logic.

I’ve wandered off the topic of this post, “Ice Cream,” and there’s only one thing to be done about it. It’s time to go to the freezer and see if the Cookies ‘n Cream is as tasty as it was yesterday. I’m really not an ice cream addict. Really, I’m not. I can stop eating it whenever I want to.

At least, that’s what I’m telling myself.

[p.s.: This is Day 3. As foretold in the Prophecies, the tub is empty. My stomach is happy.]

Fall Again

It’s that time of year again in central Virginia. When I got up at 6 AM, the temperature was 49°. At 10 AM, it’s 60°. The sky is blue, the sun is bright, and trees are turning their fall colors. Brown leaves are gathering in street gutters and on sidewalks. Soon they’ll be in my yard, thanks to the neighbor’s willow oak.

The high temperature is forecast to be 78° today and 75° tomorrow. Then highs will drop to the mid-60s with nighttime lows in the high-40s. That’s ideal; no heat needed, no cooling needed. Some people leave a bedroom window partly open at night and sleep under a blanket.

In fact, I enjoy sleeping with a window cracked open, especially in summer. I like the smell of fresh air, of mist in the air, of falling rain. I like grasshopper songs, distant rumbles of thunder and locomotive air-horns on passing trains. I feel connected to the world.

On the last October day, my neighborhood throws a Halloween party in the park across the street. It started as a neighborhood party, a safe place  for local kids to go and have something to do. There’s a haunted house, a bounce house, a costume contest. There’s a tent where a young lady will tell you your fortune. And so forth, but you get the idea. There are free snacks and drinks, like pop corn, soft drinks, and apple cider. And, of course, lots of music. Naturally, people from all over the city began showing up, and it became a city party. Now people come from neighboring cities as well, which they’re asked not to do, because it’s just a neighborhood park, but people (and monsters and princesses) are going to do what they want to do, and that is to be around other costumed people on Halloween. The park now gets a quite a crowd of people of all ages on Halloween, from small kids to grandparents. This year’s party will be on a Friday evening. If the weather is good, I predict a large crowd and a good many monsters and princesses – even a few Britney Spears.

 

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