American Genius - The History Channel - This Looks Really Good


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My lady just informed me of this:

 

http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/american-genius/

 

It is interesting also that I watched a C-Span interview tonight on The Wright Brothers.

 

Did any of you know about their sister who was also brilliant and an integral part of their revolutionary vision of man flying?

 

I sure did not.

 

 

http://www.c-span.org/video/?325996-1/qa-david-mccullough

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Quite a few people had a man flying vision back then. Way back, Leonardo da Vinci even had an idea he drew up on paper of a helicopter.

The Wrights put together the proved concept of a glider, powerful enough and light enough gasoline engine, and wing-warping plus dealt with quite a few other lesser problems successfully into their stick-to-it-ness. In that sense their genius was like the genius of Thomas Edison. My uncle once gave me a quick tour of part of Wright-Patterson AFB. He pointed out a hanger and said that's "Hanger 51"--nothing to do with the Wrights but UFOs--and that big field off to our right is where the Wright brothers did a lot of their work.

Genius isn't much if you don't do the work--the real hard work. Even a penultimate genius like Tesla worked and worked very hard. The invention of the wheel seems so simple you wonder why it was genius. But the more you think about the wheel the more you realize how simple it wasn't if you start with a round rock rolling down a hill. The Inca civilization had no wheel.

So, what was revolutionary? Their vision of an airplane--a controllable flyable airplane--is in all essentials all fixed wing aircraft since. The reason is its perfect aero-dynamic fit with reality. We (oops!) can still think of the Wright Flyer as "modern"--the rock of man-flying creation.

--Brant

(those links should be clickable)

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Quite a few people had a man flying vision back then. Way back, Leonardo da Vinci even had an idea he drew up on paper of a helicopter.

The Wrights put together the proved concept of a glider, powerful enough and light enough gasoline engine, and wing-warping plus dealt with quite a few other lesser problems successfully into their stick-to-it-ness. In that sense their genius was like the genius of Thomas Edison. My uncle once gave me a quick tour of part of Wright-Patterson AFB. He pointed out a hanger and said that's "Hanger 51"--nothing to do with the Wrights but UFOs--and that big field off to our right is where the Wright brothers did a lot of their work.

Genius isn't much if you don't do the work--the real hard work. Even a penultimate genius like Tesla worked and worked very hard. The invention of the wheel seems so simple you wonder why it was genius. But the more you think about the wheel the more you realize how simple it wasn't if you start with a round rock rolling down a hill. The Inca civilization had no wheel.

So, what was revolutionary? Their vision of an airplane--a controllable flyable airplane--is in all essentials all fixed wing aircraft since. The reason is its perfect aero-dynamic fit with reality. We (oops!) can still think of the Wright Flyer as "modern"--the rock of man-flying creation.

--Brant

(those links should be clickable)

Even in ancient Greece. Icarus and Deadalus....

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The National Geographic Channel is not the History Channel. But thanks for the tip.

Thankfully, Merlin has the patience to correct my errors when I am rushing with a post.

Additionally, was anyone aware of the Wright brother's sister?

That C-Span interview is effusive in how critical she was to the success of the project.

At one point, after a fatal crash which killed the young Army Lieutenant flying with Wilber Wright, she was personally responsible for saving her brother's mental health from the severe depression after the crash. He was badly injured in that crash, breaking his leg in two (2) places.

A...

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Additionally, was anyone aware of the Wright brother's sister?

That C-Span interview is effusive in how critical she was to the success of the project.

At one point, after a fatal crash which killed the young Army Lieutenant flying with Wilber Wright, she was personally responsible for saving her brother's mental health from the severe depression after the crash. He was badly injured in that crash, breaking his leg in two (2) places.

I wasn't aware of her. There is a Wikipedia article about her. It doesn't appear she was a co-inventor. How many minutes into the C-Span interview is the part about her?

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Additionally, was anyone aware of the Wright brother's sister?

That C-Span interview is effusive in how critical she was to the success of the project.

At one point, after a fatal crash which killed the young Army Lieutenant flying with Wilber Wright, she was personally responsible for saving her brother's mental health from the severe depression after the crash. He was badly injured in that crash, breaking his leg in two (2) places.

I wasn't aware of her. There is a Wikipedia article about her. It doesn't appear she was a co-inventor. How many minutes into the C-Span interview is the part about her?

Ran search in the transcript for "sister" and:

DAVID: THEY COULD TALK TO YOU ABOUT ALMOST ANYTHING. WILBUR LOVED ARCHITECTURE, AND WROTE THESE LETTERS FROM PARIS DESCRIBING THE GREAT FRENCH ARCHITECTURE, PARTICULARLY GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE, THAT HE WAS SO OVERWHELMED BY. TO ME, HE DOESN'T SAY THIS BUT I CAN'T HELP FEEL -- GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE IS REACHING FOR THE SKIES, REACHING UPWARD, JUST WHAT HE WANTED TO DO. IT WAS HIS FORM OF A CATHEDRAL. HE WAS VERY INTERESTED IN PAINTING. AT EVERY CHANCE, HE WILL GO TO THE LOUVRE, TO SPEND HOURS LOOKING AT PAINTINGS. HE WROTE THESE DELIGHTFUL LETTERS HOME TO HIS SISTER -- OR HIS FATHER -- ABOUT IT. THEY LOVED MUSIC. THEY LOVED BOOKS. NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE WAS ORVILLE'S FAVORITE WRITER. KATHERINE LOVED SIR WALTER SCOTT. ON ONE OF HER BIRTH IS, THE BROTHERS GAVE HER A BUST OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. HERE ARE THE PEOPLE LIVING IN A SMALL HOUSE IN OHIO, NO ELECTRICITY, AND THEY ARE GIVING A BUST OF A GREAT ENGLISH LITERARY GIANT TO THEIR SISTER FOR A BIRTHDAY PRESENT. THERE IS A LOT OF HOPE IN THAT. I THINK WHAT I WOULD LIKE TO GET TO KNOW EVEN MORE, IS THE SENSE OF PURPOSE THAT THEY HAD. IT SOUNDS A COMBAT PUN, BUT HIGH PURPOSE, NOT SOMETHING ORDINARY. BIG IDEAS. NOTHING WAS GOING TO STOP THEM. BRIAN: IN DECEMBER, 1903, HOW OLD ARE THEY? DAVID: ORVILLE WAS IN HIS LATE 30'S, IN WILBUR WAS IN HIS 40'S. BRIAN: WHEN THEY WERE STARTING, HOW OLD ARE THEY? DAVID: THEY GOT GOING IN 1899. WILBUR WOOD HAS BEEN IN HIS 30'S, ORVILLE MIGHT HAVE ALREADY -- I HAVE TO DO THE MATH. BRIAN: WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE IS BETWEEN THE AGES? DAVID: 4.5 YEARS. KATHERINE IN ORVILLE WERE CLOSEST IN AGE. WILBUR AND ORVILLE COULD FIGHT LIKE DOGS. BY THE END OF THE ARGUMENT, THEY WOULD SWITCH SIDES. IT WAS A RIOT. ARGUING WAS THEIR WAY OF WORKING PROBLEMS OUT. AS CHARLIE TAYLOR SAID, THEY WERE NOT MAD AT EACH OTHER, THEY WERE JUST TRYING TO GET TO THE ANSWER AND THEY HAD DIFFERENT IDEAS OF HOW TO GET TO IT AND THAT IS ONE OF THE WAYS THEY WOULD GET TO IT. BRIAN: THERE IS ANOTHER NAME, CHANUTE AIR FORCE BASE IN ILLINOIS. YOU WRITE ABOUT A GUY NAMED CHANUTE. DAVID: HE WAS BORN IN FRANCE AND CAME TO AMERICA. HE WAS ONE OF THE PREEMINENT CIVIL ENGINEERS OF HIS DAY, A GREAT BRIDGE BUILDER, A RAILROAD BUILDER, WHO TOOK AN ACTIVE INTEREST IN FLIGHT. IN PARTICULARLY, GLIDING. IT BEGINS WITH GLIDING. LIKE LANGLEY, CHANUTE WOULD NEVER TRY HIMSELF, HE HAD SOMEBODY ELSE DO THAT. THE ONE WHO DID DO A LOT OF GLIDING AND WAS REALLY THE PIONEER OF GLIDING WAS -- AND HE WAS KILLED. BRIAN: WE HAVE SOME VIDEO OF THAT, LET'S WATCH. [video CLIP] >> WHEN YOU LOOK AT THIS PICTURE, YOU CAN SEE ONE OF THE GREAT PROBLEMS HE FACED HE WAS ABLE TO BUILD WINGS THAT WOULD LIFT THE WEIGHT

There are more references and stories about her in the interview...

I am ordering the book because of their diaries and personal letters.

A...

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KATHERINE, BACK IN OHIO, WAS A HIGH SCHOOL LATIN TEACHER, GOT WORD THAT THIS HAPPENED. SHE CALLED THE SCHOOL PRINCIPAL, SAID SHE WAS TAKING AN INDEFINITE LEAVE OF ABSENCE, AND IN AND THAT TWO HOURS, HAD PACKED AND WAS ON THE NEXT TRAIN THAT DAY. CAME HERE, STATED FORT MYERS IN A HOSPITAL WITH HIM FOR AT LEAST ONE MONTH. AND SAW TO IT THAT HIS CARE WAS THE BEST AS POSSIBLE. BUT ALSO, TRYING TO GIVE HIM ENCOURAGEMENT AND SPIRIT TO COME BACK TO HIMSELF. I THINK, IN SOME WAYS, SHE SAVED HIS LIFE. HE NOT ONLY RECOVERED, SO THAT HE WAS ABLE TO WALK AGAIN, BUT TO FLY AGAIN. HE CAME BACK. HE SAID, NO, IT HAS TO BE THERE. HE NOT ONLY GOT BACK ON THE HORSE, HE GOT BACK ON THE SAME COURSE IN THE SAME PLACE, AND HE PROCEEDED TO BREAK RECORDS, FLYING SUPERBLY. BRIAN: AS YOU KNOW, OUT HERE WITH THE CIA IS LOCATED, AND DOWN IN THE SOUTH PART OF VIRGINIA IS LANGLEY AIR FORCE BASE. THE REASON I BRING IT UP IS THE LANGLEY NAME WAS BIG BACK THERE. YOU CRIED ABOUT HIM IN YOUR BOOK AND YOU MAKE THE POINT THAT WILBUR AND ORVILLE WRIGHT DID THIS THING ON PRIVATE MONEY, AND THAT LANGLEY HAD FEDERAL MONEY, AND IT DIDN'T WORK. DAVID: WILBUR ONCE SAID THERE ARE TWO WAYS TO TRAIN A WILD HORSE. ONE OF THEM IS TO SIT ON OFFENSE -- SIT ON A FENCE, TAKE NOTES, THEN WRIGHT A PAPWRITE A PAPER ON HOW YOU TRAIN A HORSE. THE OTHER WAYS TO GET ON A HORSE AND RIDE, AND THAT IS HOW THEY WENT ABOUT THEIR PROJECT. LANGLEY SAT ON THE FENCE AND WATCHED THE HORSE. SAMUEL LANGLEY WAS THE HEAD OF THE SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION.

58:32 of the video - actually if you tap on the spot in the transcript it takes you to the video and starts from that point.

Pretty cool the way they set up their site.

A...

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We need to get George on C-Span...

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I saw both episodes last night, the first about Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, the second about the Wright Brothers and Glenn Curtiss. I had not been aware of the intense rivalry and patent dispute between Curtiss and the Wrights. There is more about it at the link to Curtiss. Very interesting that the U.S. government, with FDR while Assistant Secretary of the Navy having a leading role, and the advent of WW I resolved it.

The next episode(s) is next Monday, so maybe all will be on a Monday. National Geographic link.

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Jobs had genius. Never saw genius in Gates. Both were ruthless CEO's. One built his company on hardware, the other on software. Gates had the additional luck of time and position and while not a genius was an extremely smart CEO, so I'm hardly saying brains weren't involved. The iPhone has made Apple the biggest company in the world. This is simply not sustainable except through the quality of the brand name. While it may go on to be a trillion dollar company, that'd be the top if the top isn't already in. That dividend puts a good floor under its market value, so unless there's a general market collapse buying some stock isn't a bad investment. It's the kind of stock one buys hand over fist if there is a collapse if you've got the cash and the nerve. That's one good way to make money in the stock market these days--start by raising cash. Momentum is another, but that's become increasingly risky. General market momentum after more than six years seems more and more to have been played out. You can buy deep value any time. Knowing how to find that value is difficult.

--Brant

the days of debt are ending so get out of debt; debt is to America as alcohol is to Days of Wine and Roses

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Jobs had genius. Never saw genius in Gates.

In what way was Jobs a genius in your view? I say marketing for sure. I say Gates was a marketing genius as well. Job's partner Steve Wozniak was far more genius technical-wise than Jobs. I don't know about Gates' technical genius, but he had plenty of help in that from others, e.g. Paul Allen.

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Jobs had genius. Never saw genius in Gates.

In what way was Jobs a genius in your view? I say marketing for sure. I say Gates was a marketing genius as well. Job's partner Steve Wozniak was far more genius technical-wise than Jobs. I don't know about Gates' technical genius, but he had plenty of help in that from others, e.g. Paul Allen.

It started with the iPod and culminated in the iPhone now about a decade old. The executives at Blackberry couldn't understand what they were looking at and they were looking right at it when Jobs made the first presentation in 2007. Yeah, Jobs was charismatic, but the iPhone made the charisma work. Gates was a plodder but lucky for him he didn't manage to sell the operating system to IBM. That would have been like Jobs trying to sell the iPhone to Blackberry. So IBMs stupidity in spite of his own, enabled Gates to keep going in the right direction for Microsoft.

My idea of genius starts with results, not how smart someone is. The world is filled with extremely smart people but all very smart people and geniuses are dumb in many ways which is necessary for get-down-to-it focusness. At some point of brilliance and genius the mind goes off on its own leaving what we may call "balance" in its wake. Not always. Euler and Einstein come to mind. There are even some of genius who don't have the brilliance of tremendously raw brain power. Genius to me requires character, if not being a character too. Thus we see Jobs' genius through the iPhone and the Wrights' through the airplane. I see Nathaniel Branden's through his sentence-completion technique. Ayn Rand's through her story-telling. Pasteur's through the germ theory and understanding of infectious diseases, Gatling through his Gatling Gun. John Galt--well, that's fiction but he needed something or we'd not think of him as one reading that novel nor been impressed by that speech which was Rand's way of ginning up the content through intellectual, literary and moral context, which was genius too, but there--that's the second time I said it about her.

Above all genius involves creation, although not all creation qualifies as genius, and there's no way to be much more than subjective about what is and isn't, for unlike IQ there's no possible objectification, just one's opinion.

Now, when one starts talking about genius with qualifications like "marketing genius," it's watering down the idea. A true genius like William Shockley sees quite well different levels of genius. He described himself as second tier. He was probably right about that. My own Father had almost 60 IQ points on Shockley. That made my Father an IQ genius--I'm no such thing myself--note the "IQ" watering down the idea--(my family knew Shockley pre-WWII so came to know his IQ which was mid-130s [he was a lot smarter than that, however]). My Father revealed true creative, prescient literary genius when he was in college and wrote his "Cat Philosophies." Then he gave it up. Lack of character and properly respecting his own brains. the "Cat Philosophies" is extremely difficult to read for while all about cats, seemingly, it literally foretold the Holocaust, something no one, including my Father, really understood as to what was coming. This was pre-Nazi ruling of Germany. I'm sure I have it somewhere around, but I'd have to go looking for it.

--Brant

true Nathaniel Branden story respecting how smart he thought he was: In 1976 someone in his NYC psychotherapy group, not me, asked him if he ever felt inferior meeting someone smarter than himself. NB: "I've never had the privilege." Or, he thought Rand didn't have more brains than himself. According to the metric I've used here both were geniuses. It's truly likely he was smarter than Rand and he thought so, but in terms of what they respectively created she was the bigger and more accomplished genius and I base this on what each had done, not simple brain power--and, as far as I can tell, Tesla was the greater genius than Edison, and smarter too

my estimations of people's genius rely mostly on others' estimations and are thus no better than second-hand, but I think I do pretty well with the categorizations

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Just heard this fellow interviewed and he mentioned both those CEO's and how "hands on" Jobs was knowing the "working floor" of the business at a visceral level.

Jack Mitchell is Chairman of the Mitchells Family of Stores (Mitchells/Richards/Marsh and Wilkes Bashford), a three-generation family business that operates men’s and women’s specialty stores in Connecticut, New York and California that are nationally renowned for their personal service touches and strong relationships.

Reminds me of a number of Atlas figures...Dagny, Reardon, Francisco, Wyatt...



Jack himself has been recognized as one of the top ten retail visionaries of his time by the Daily News Record, one of the most widely read retail trade publications in the country.

After completing a B.A. at Wesleyan University in 1961 and an M.A. at the University of California-Berkeley, Jack joined the family business. Under his leadership, the Mitchells Family of Stores have become well known for employee engagement and longevity and providing exceptional customer service and high quality merchandise in an exciting, friendly and visually dynamic atmosphere. Jack is an active leader on the floor, listening and learning along side his brother Bill, wife Linda, his three sons and three nephews.

http://www.hugyourcustomers.com/index.php/who-is-jack-mitchell/

My first rule when we are hired to organize an election day operation, or, build a field organization is to not be "known" to the existing HQ's staff and volunteers.

I join as a volunteer.

If the contract is for an entire campaign, I spend a few days taking public transit and just walking a few critical E.D.'s because the map is not the territory.

Additionally, hearing what folks talk about at the local breakfast spots, or, happy hours gives you a chance to understand at a visceral level this particular community at this particular juncture and what concerns it.

Hugging your customer so to speak.

Smart family.

http://www.hugyourcustomers.com/

A...

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My idea of genius starts with results, not how smart someone is. The world is filled with extremely smart people but all very smart people and geniuses are dumb in many ways which is necessary for get-down-to-it focusness.

You would probably like an article in last Month's Skeptic magazine, by Carol Tavris, "Gadfly: The Persistent Myth of the Mad Genius" (PDF).

A couple of brief extracts, underlining 'self-discipline, tenacity, organization, calmness, and strong self-image':

Having a high IQ, the technical definition of "genius," doesn't explain much either, even if there is a strong genetic component to it. Genius, unlike cream, does not inevitably rise to the top; success depends more on drive and determination.

...

At the heart of genius lies hard work, motivation, and persistence.

I see Nathaniel Branden's [genius] through his sentence-completion technique.

I'd love to hear more about this. His website has examples, but I don't connect the procedure to genius, let alone as a singular creation of Branden. You've earlier mentioned the process, as 'cathartic/abreactive,' but I don't understand that.

Above all genius involves creation, although not all creation qualifies as genius, and there's no way to be much more than subjective about what is and isn't, for unlike IQ there's no possible objectification, just one's opinion.

I have an IQ of around 140. The only thing that has provided me is a means to skip through school, and perhaps an ability to retain information better than average.

Here's a brief example of Sentence Completion from the Branden site:

Week 1

If I bring more awareness to my life today…

If I take more responsibility for my choices and actions today…

If pay more attention to how I deal with people today…

If I boost my energy level by 5 percent today…

Week 2

If I bring 5 percent more awareness to my important relationships…

If I bring 5 percent more awareness to my insecurities…

If I bring 5 percent more awareness to my deepest needs and wants…

If I bring 5 percent more awareness to my emotions…

Week 3

If I treat listening as a creative act…

If I notice how people are affected by the quality of my listening…

If I bring more awareness to my dealings with people today…

If I commit to dealing with people fairly and benevolently…

If I treat listening as a creative act ... I can be a more effective presence on Objectivist Living.

my estimations of people's genius rely mostly on others' estimations and are thus no better than second-hand, but I think I do pretty well with the categorizations

It's a term much misused. I think you put the proper caveats in place.

If I commit to dealing with people fairly and benevolently ... I will get prizes for myself.

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You gave examples of sentence stems, not sentence completions. I've not the time now to go into detail about sentence completion technique except to say metaphorically sentence complete is a wheel--Branden didn't invent sentence completion--while the sentence-completion technique is more than one wheel plus axle plus cart plus horse or another animal to pull it. Oh, yeah; there's someone driving it.

--Brant

sentence completion by itself is near worthless free association--the technique is structured

(You've more IQ than I do--while I've never been tested and given the results, I have a pretty good idea of it--my immediate family is parents and four siblings and the average IQ is/was about 150. Assuming 130 for my brother and I, Mom was 149, Dad 189--these were tested when they were late teenagers--sister 165, sister 140. The 165 married an astrophysicist and had real brainy children. When she was a little girl she sat in back of the class and taught herself to read and write backwards and upside down out of boredom. I love brainy people and wish I had more brains except more brains would cause a shift in my life's interests and I'm committed to using what I have. More than mere brains, I love competent people. Competence is my gold standard. Creativity comes next. The former bases out the latter to amount too much. This gives me an extremely high regard for Jews. I didn't know a Jew from a hole in the ground until I moved from Tucson to New Jersey for the last two years of high school and 1/3 of my classmates were Jewish. I thought I had found human heaven. They came with a big dollop of decency too. Decent kids are hard to find. They're too busy being adolescents. Presumably getting Bar-Mized at 13 is a true wake up call to adult responsibility. Adolescence is artificial and designed to maximize learning in lieu of baby making, thus for future productivity, but the Jews have a better way and make their kids sweat away in school all day. An uneducated Jew is practically a contradiction in terms, so Jews strive to avoid the [shameful] contradiction. [More rant from the master of rant.])

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You gave examples of sentence stems, not sentence completions. I've not the time now to go into detail about sentence completion technique except to say metaphorically sentence complete is a wheel

The stems for sentence completion were taken from the Branden page I cited. He introduces the examples of stems on the same page. Excerpt:

INSTRUCTIONS FOR SENTENCE COMPLETION PROGRAMS
Sentence completion is a technique I have developed in my clinical practice that can be used to facilitate self-understanding and personal growth. The essence of the sentence completion procedure is to start with an incomplete sentence, a “sentence stem,” and to keep adding different endings, between six and ten, with the sole requirement being that each ending be a grammatical completion of the sentence.
I use sentence completion in therapy, where clients complete sentences orally. I have also developed multi-week, written sentence-completion programs that can be done at home. In each week of a program, you are given a block of four to six stems. Every morning, you write completions for all the stems in this week’s block. At the end of the week, you reflect on your answers for the week and perform another completion exercise to help you solidify what you have learned. The next week, you move on to the next block of stems in the program.
Suppose the first stem in this week’s block is:
To me, self-responsibility means…
In the morning, before proceeding to the day’s business, write this down in a notebook or on the computer, then, as rapidly as possible, without pausing for reflection, write as many endings for that sentence as you can in two or three minutes – never less than six, and ten is enough. Do not worry if your endings are literally true or make sense or are “profound.” Write anything, but write something.

You've more IQ than I do--while I've never been tested and given the results, I have a pretty good idea of it--my immediate family is parents and four siblings and the average IQ is/was about 150. Assuming 130 for my brother and I, Mom was 149, Dad 189--these were tested when they were late teenagers--sister 165, sister 140.

Your father's score was really strikingly impressive. From my understanding, the bell curve of IQ scores flattens out past 140-150, which would make your dad one in a thousand among the folks who test to the 'right' of the curve. Here's an illustration from the Wikipedia page on IQ. The caption is "Normalized IQ distribution with mean 100 and standard deviation 15":

500px-IQ_distribution.svg.png

More than mere brains, I love competent people. Competence is my gold standard. Creativity comes next.

I am sort of like you. I prefer the company of intelligent people, and I prefer the output of intelligent people. And I like the intelligence to be associated with ability to think things through in a systematic and critical way. Beyond a basic intelligence, I appreciate those who have great aptitude for explaining their reasoning. The cut-off valve for me is the perennial "How do you know if/when you are wrong." Intelligence allied to self-awareness plus problem-solving chops always gets my vote.

If a person can't spell out how they will know when they are wrong, intelligibly, I consider them fools, despite any score they might achieve.

At the Wiki article, some contributor worked extra-hard to try to adequately represent a theory of intelligence based on different aspects or types of the general G. I'll post a lengthy excerpt, simply because the aspects tie in with how intelligence can act, and how it can be competent in a given array or aspect. Here's a link that goes to this section, on Cattell–Horn–Carroll theory.

In CHC theory, a hierarchy of factors is used; g is at the top. Under it are ten broad abilities that in turn are subdivided into seventy narrow abilities. The broad abilities are:

  • Fluid intelligence (Gf) includes the broad ability to reason, form concepts, and solve problems using unfamiliar information or novel procedures.
  • Crystallized intelligence (Gc) includes the breadth and depth of a person's acquired knowledge, the ability to communicate one's knowledge, and the ability to reason using previously learned experiences or procedures.
  • Quantitative reasoning (Gq) is the ability to comprehend quantitative concepts and relationships and to manipulate numerical symbols.
  • Reading and writing ability (Grw) includes basic reading and writing skills.
  • Short-term memory (Gsm) is the ability to apprehend and hold information in immediate awareness, and then use it within a few seconds.
  • Long-term storage and retrieval (Glr) is the ability to store information and fluently retrieve it later in the process of thinking.
  • Visual processing (Gv) is the ability to perceive, analyze, synthesize, and think with visual patterns, including the ability to store and recall visual representations.
  • Auditory processing (Ga) is the ability to analyze, synthesize, and discriminate auditory stimuli, including the ability to process and discriminate speech sounds that may be presented under distorted conditions.
  • Processing speed (Gs) is the ability to perform automatic cognitive tasks, particularly when measured under pressure to maintain focused attention.
  • Decision/reaction time/speed (Gt)reflects the immediacy with which an individual can react to stimuli or a task (typically measured in seconds or fractions of seconds; it is not to be confused with Gs, which typically is measured in intervals of 2–3 minutes). See Mental chronometry.

Modern tests do not necessarily measure all of these broad abilities.

I'll bet your dad would have tested as exceptionally gifted in all these aspects, Brant.

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Dad was the big brain on campus at Antioch College in 1930. They let him in without a high school diploma. He was already expert with Greg shorthand and high speed typing. He typed other students' papers, I think for pay. The dean called him in. He was allowed to type their papers but was told to stop correcting their mistakes--the grammar and spelling. I still envy his ability with the language. He never did much with math but spent his youth reading all the classics. ("Dosty was nothing if not deep." That was our shared view of the speech of The Grand Inquisitor in The Brothers Karamozov.)

His Father was an Adventist minister and they had some terrible fights over Adventistism ("If you take away my faith, John, I won't have anything!") Dad had gone (or went) to the Library of Congress and found out how phonied up the writings of Sister White were. And that she was a plagiarist. My Father could be a very unpleasant and arrogant man. He was an anti-Semite, anti-war, American Firster nationalist. The government made him fly from Tucson to Washington in the middle of WWII to testify about his pre-war activities. He was almost one of the defendants in a famous WWII sedition trial.

I'll always wonder if his father-in-law spiked that. Irving Brant had a lot of influence with the Roosevelt Administration. He once just asked to speak with Roosevelt for five minutes and got his man nominated to the Supreme Court. He was a personal friend of the Secretary of the Interior and Olympic National Park, just south of you, was essentially his creation respecting its borders. Irving had someone brief Roosevelt, so on his visit there he just sat in his car while the Forest Service tried to give him a BS briefing. Roosevelt kept interrupting with knowledgeable questions. Roosevelt loved that.

I always liked that Irving was a personal friend of D.L. Chambers who published almost all his books. These were trophy publishing efforts. I don't think they made Bobbs much money. He even got Bobbs to publish his not so good novel, Friendly Cove. All this and Chambers didn't want to publish The Fountainhead. So you had this American Firster railing against Roosevelt on the podium in Madison Square Garden while his father-in-law was sort of at the same time testifying before Congress supporting Roosevelt's attempt to pack the Supreme Court. Irving was a New Dealer, classic mid-western socialist and early on conservationist all his long life. His daughter got pregnant and Dad did the honorable thing and married her. She was beautiful and he was exceedingly handsome. They lived in the Village in Manhattan until they were compelled to move west for the sake of another baby's respiratory health.

Thus, I was born in Tucson in 1944 but ended up with little contact with my Father until I was 16. He was a newspaper reporter in Tucson for most of the war but his drinking caught up with him. After two days in jail for a DWI he took his cane to a police officer on the street. Mom got word to get him out of town, so he went back east where his mistress who became my step-mother was waiting. She got her law degree and passed the NY bar on first try all the while working full time for the Department of Justice--you can't do that today--and it almost killed her when she got double-lobar pneumonia but was saved by the "miracle" of penicillin. She eventually became what is known now as an Immigration Judge working out of a Federal building in lower Manhattan overlooking the construction site of the World Trade Center. One of her fellow judges ordered John Lennon deported, overturned on appeal and then dropped by the government. The deportation order was technically correct and since Immigration Judges are employed at will even though at the highest GS level (15) they have little or no discretion, unlike a true appointed judge who is all but king in his realm. The guy who ordered the deportation was a Lennon fan. Interestingly, Sherley was the only Special Inquiry Officer (Immigration Judge) who wasn't Jewish. Anyway, she retired in 1971 or 1972 for health reasons and died after 12 years of fighting cancer in 1975.

I'm going on and on with this sort of stuff for it imparts a true historical feel for those times all those years ago. It's also personally interesting to me. For instance, that famous Jefferson quotation inside the dome of the Jefferson Memorial--"I have sworn upon the altar of god eternal hostility . . . . (full caps)"--Secretary of the Interior Ickes asked my grandfather for some Jefferson quotes for the Memorial and that's one he came up with. And that's why it's there. My grandfather told me this when he took me to see it in 1960. I was 16 and spent a few days running around Washington on my own including up the steps of the Washington Monument twice. Ran once and walked once. Years later my brother was a personal friend of Bruce Babbitt, also Secretary of the Interior. It's a small world but still it was all coincidence. That friendship went back decades.

(The Jefferson quote reads better in the original context it was ripped from, a letter to Benjamin Rush.)

--Brant

Edited by Brant Gaede
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I am getting old, Brant. I have a hard time parsing big blocks of text without paragraph breaks. What a great comment, otherwise. This is what I get as payoff at Objectivist Living. Real people, complicated events, thoughtful expositions, food for thought.

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Here ya go, William. My Boy Scout duty of the day!

Dad was the big brain on campus at Antioch College in 1930. They let him in without a high school diploma. He was already expert with Greg shorthand and high speed typing. He typed other students' papers, I think for pay. The dean called him in. He was allowed to type their papers but was told to stop correcting their mistakes--the grammar and spelling. I still envy his ability with the language. He never did much with math but spent his youth reading all the classics. ("Dosty was nothing if not deep." That was our shared view of the speech of The Grand Inquisitor in The Brothers Karamozov.)

His Father was an Adventist minister and they had some terrible fights over Adventistism ("If you take away my faith, John, I won't have anything!") Dad had gone (or went) to the Library of Congress and found out how phonied up the writings of Sister White were. And that she was a plagiarist. My Father could be a very unpleasant and arrogant man. He was an anti-Semite, anti-war, American Firster nationalist. The government made him fly from Tucson to Washington in the middle of WWII to testify about his pre-war activities. He was almost one of the defendants in a famous WWII sedition trial.

I'll always wonder if his father-in-law spiked that. Irving Brant had a lot of influence with the Roosevelt Administration. He once just asked to speak with Roosevelt for five minutes and got his man nominated to the Supreme Court. He was a personal friend of the Secretary of the Interior and Olympic National Park, just south of you, was essentially his creation respecting its borders. Irving had someone brief Roosevelt, so on his visit there he just sat in his car while the Forest Service tried to give him a BS briefing. Roosevelt kept interrupting with knowledgeable questions. Roosevelt loved that.

I always liked that Irving was a personal friend of D.L. Chambers who published almost all his books. These were trophy publishing efforts. I don't think they made Bobbs much money. He even got Bobbs to publish his not so good novel, Friendly Cove. All this and Chambers didn't want to publish The Fountainhead. So you had this American Firster railing against Roosevelt on the podium in Madison Square Garden while his father-in-law was sort of at the same time testifying before Congress supporting Roosevelt's attempt to pack the Supreme Court. Irving was a New Dealer, classic mid-western socialist and early on conservationist all his long life. His daughter got pregnant and Dad did the honorable thing and married her. She was beautiful and he was exceedingly handsome. They lived in the Village in Manhattan until they were compelled to move west for the sake of another baby's respiratory health.

Thus, I was born in Tucson in 1944 but ended up with little contact with my Father until I was 16. He was a newspaper reporter in Tucson for most of the war but his drinking caught up with him. After two days in jail for a DWI he took his cane to a police officer on the street. Mom got word to get him out of town, so he went back east where his mistress who became my step-mother was waiting. She got her law degree at NYU in the evening and passed the NY bar on first try all the while working full time for the Department of Justice--you can't do that today--and it almost killed her when she got double-lobar pneumonia but was saved by the "miracle of penicillin". She eventually became what is known now as an Immigration Judge working out of a Federal building in lower Manhattan overlooking the construction site of the World Trade Center. One of her fellow judges ordered John Lennon deported, overturned on appeal and then dropped by the government. The deportation order was technically correct and since Immigration Judges are employed at will even though at the highest GS level (15) they have little or no discretion, unlike a true appointed judge who is all but king in his realm. The guy who ordered the deportation was a Lennon fan. Interestingly, Sherley was the only Special Inquiry Officer (Immigration Judge) who wasn't Jewish. Anyway, she retired in 1971 or 1972 for health reasons and died after 12 years of fighting cancer in 1975.

I'm going on and on with this sort of stuff for it imparts a true historical feel for those times all those years ago. It's also personally interesting to me. For instance, that famous Jefferson quotation inside the dome of the Jefferson Memorial--"I have sworn upon the altar of god eternal hostility . . . . (full caps)"--Secretary of the Interior Ickes asked my grandfather for some Jefferson quotes for the Memorial and that's one he came up with. And that's why it's there. My grandfather told me this when he took me to see it in 1960. I was 16 and spent a few days running around Washington on my own including up the steps of the Washington Monument twice. Ran once and walked once. Years later my brother was a personal friend of Bruce Babbitt, also Secretary of the Interior. It's a small world but still it was all coincidence. That friendship went back decades.

(The Jefferson quote reads better in the original context it was ripped from, a letter to Benjamin Rush.)

--Brant

(I did some very minor editing in the quoted text.)

Edited by Brant Gaede
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I am getting old, Brant. I have a hard time parsing big blocks of text without paragraph breaks. What a great comment, otherwise. This is what I get as payoff at Objectivist Living. Real people, complicated events, thoughtful expositions, food for thought.

At least five complements. Of course I had to quote you, not leave it on the other side!

--Brant

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I wasn't aware of her. There is a Wikipedia article about her. It doesn't appear she was a co-inventor. How many minutes into the C-Span interview is the part about her?

Orville was a bit of a putz...

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Via the National Geographic link you can watch full (past) episodes using your participating TV provider subscription.


However, the online video of Hearst vs. Pulitzer was cut short at the end. As I recall the episode on TV, it showed how Pulitzer resolved the strike with the newsboys. He didn't lower the price of the newspapers to the newsboys like they wanted, but he agreed to buy back all papers the boys didn't sell.

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