Monk

If one wanted scientific confirmation that writers and artists tend to be mentally ill, I guess we got it for you. I wonder if this applies to wanna-be writers. Probably not. Though, I suppose you do not have to be an artist to be crazy.

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The First Lady's speech Tuesday was written at a 12th grade level - the highest in history among the wives of presidential nominees and far above Ann Romney's lowest mark of a 5th grade level.

-- Eric Ostermeier at University of Minnesota and Smart Politics

An interesting analysis evaluating political speeches in terms of American grade levels. Of course, liberals have to enjoy a chuckle over how simple and childish the Republican speeches are, but one has to remember that these speeches are heavily manufactured, and our elites obviously assume that Americans are generally dumb. Hey, that's the way they make us! At least we can still amuse ourselves with the fact that the Red Staters are objectively dumber.

It's a shame that we don't have a comparative analysis on the speeches of the men. Though, it is noted that Obama's State of the Union speeches only clock in at the eighth grade level, which shows how the speech is crafted more to the assumed level of the audience than as a reflection of his own intellect. One wonders at what grade level Bill Clinton's speech from last night would rank.

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The Flesch-Kincaid test is designed to assess the readability level of written text, with a formula that translates the score to a U.S. grade level. Longer sentences and sentences utilizing words with more syllables produce higher scores. Shorter sentences and sentences incorporating more monosyllabic words yield lower scores.

-- Eric Ostermeier at University of Minnesota and Smart Politics

Before the Jews of Hungary were emancipated in the 19th century, they were not permitted to own land. By the end of the century, they were on their way to owning fully one-fifth of Hungary's large estates and were hugely successful in business and the arts. The Jews of Germany had a similar history. They comprised many if not most of the country's lawyers, doctors, composers, playwrights and scientists, and were so astonishingly successful in business that while they were just 1 percent of the population, they were 31 percent of the richest families. What did it? Was it nature (Jews were smarter) or nurture (Jews had a certain culture)? Here's my answer: I don't know.

-- Roger Cohen of The Washington Post

Here's my answer: probably both. Myself being neither especially smart nor well-cultured, I won't pretend to be able to give a good argument for the position. Just saying. It is a provocative question. In my more Christian moods, I have even thought that their intellectual gifts could be taken as a strong indication that the Jews are indeed the Chosen People of God.

When someone commits a horrific, inexplicable crime, we naturally wonder whether he’s mentally ill: Who but a crazy person could do such a thing? But when a killer acts crazy after his arrest, we also might wonder whether he’s preparing for his trial. That’s the speculation around Colorado shooter James Holmes, whose psychiatric treatment and bizarre behavior in court and prison make people wonder whether he’s truly insane or building a case for an insanity defense. It leads to the question: Can a criminal get away with faking insanity?

-- Douglas Starr at Slate.com

Personally, I find the challenge to be in faking sanity, and apparently I am not always very successful at that.

Wherever I turn, the popular media, scientists and even fellow philosophers are telling me that I’m a machine or a beast. My ethics can be illuminated by the behavior of termites. My brain is a sloppy computer with a flicker of consciousness and the illusion of free will. I’m anything but human.

-- Richard Polt at The New York Times

I imagine that what makes us 'human' is the fact that we can be analogized to both, the animals and the computer - that potent admixture of bestiality and genius. It can drive us kind of crazy too, but that's part of the wonder of our life and its tragedy.

The Brain -- is wider than the Sky --
For -- put them side by side --
The one the other will contain
With ease -- and You -- beside --

The Brain is deeper than the sea --
For -- hold them -- Blue to Blue --
The one the other will absorb --
As Sponges -- Buckets -- do --

The Brain is just the weight of God --
For -- Heft them -- Pound for Pound --
And they will differ -- if they do --
As Syllable from Sound --

-- Emily Dickinson

One of Sully's readers pointed out how well this poem goes with the Roger Penrose quote on the brain being the most powerful thing in the universe.

“'Consider the human brain ... If you look at the entire physical cosmos, our brains are a tiny, tiny part of it. But they’re the most perfectly organized part. Compared to the complexity of a brain, a galaxy is just an inert lump.”

-- Sir Roger Penrose

Of course, some brains are a little less perfectly organized than others, but it's looks that really count anyway.

Daimon says, "Then I guess you lose both ways - brains and looks."

But I'm funny.

"Unintentionally."

Like me, you may be aware that getting shot in the head may not be the worst way to go, particularly if someone is catching you unaware and shooting you from behind in the back of the head, "1984" style, because the speed of the bullet is such that you will be dead before you can know what has happened, before you can even hear the shot. Apparently that logic also applies with car crashes.

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It takes as long as 150 to 300 milliseconds (ms) to be aware of a collision after it happens. Other neuroscientists think it can take as much as 500 ms. Now this might not sound like a lot of time, but think of what happens during a car accident. At the 1 ms mark, the car's pressure sensor detects a collision, and at 8.5 ms the airbag system fires. At the 15 ms mark, the car starts to absorb the impact to a significant degree. It's not until the 17 ms mark that the occupant starts to make contact with the airbag, with the maximum force of the collision reaching its apex at the 30 ms point. At the 50 ms mark, the safety cell begins to rebound, and after 70 ms the passenger moves back towards the middle of car — the point at which crash-test engineers declare the event as "complete."

And then, around the 150 to 300 ms mark, the occupant finally becomes aware of the collision. That's assuming of course that an airbag was deployed or that the occupant was wearing a seatbelt. Otherwise, the person wouldn't have known that they were even in a car accident. Which, if the accident was fatal, is not necessarily a bad thing.

-- Andrew Sullivan's Dish

Numerous brain imaging studies have shown that what we call “multi-tasking” in humans, is not multi-tasking at all. Your brain is merely trying to rapidly switch it’s attention between two tasks. Back and forth, as quickly as it can. It’s shown not only that we’re dumber when we do this (an average of 10 IQ points dumber – that’s the same as pulling an all-nighter.), but that we’re also 40% less efficient at whatever it is we’re doing. But, my favorite part about multi-tasking is that it’s proven that the more you do it, the worse you are at it. Check that out. It’s one of the only things where the more you practice it, the worse you get at it.

The reason why that’s the case is that when you practice distraction (which is what multi-tasking really is – paying attention to something that distracted you from what you were originally paying attention to), you’re training your brain. You’re training your brain to pay attention to distracting things. The more you train your brain to pay attention to distractions, the more you get distracted and the less able you are to even focus for brief periods of time on the two or three things you were trying to get done in your ‘multi-tasking’ in the first place. How’s that for self-defeating.

-- Joe Kraus

So, it isn't just me. So-called multi-tasking is truly beyond human capability. I suspect that this is probably true of 'speed reading' as well.