Before You Judge a Person's Intelligence by an IQ Score - Read This!

Albert Einstein is the epitome
of the high IQ sort of genius, but
something else enabled him to
transcend physicists with
higher IQ scores.

IQ is a highly over-rated measure of intelligence.

I can say this possessing a Mensa level IQ of my own. I know this is from my own experience and from considerable training in psychology at the graduate level; training which included the administration of IQ tests. IQ tests measure only two specific types of intelligence - verbal and mathematical/logical. Those who study human intelligence do not believe that verbal and mathematical intelligence is all there is to it. IQ is good for rating writers and physicists perhaps, but intelligence quotients only capture a part of the picture.

Michael Jordan's kinesthetic
genius enabled him to almost
appear to fly without wings.

IQ scores do not measure kinesthetic intelligence, for instance. It's often overlooked as a form of intelligence, except possibly by ESPN commentators. Kinesthetic intelligence is the brain's capacity to manipulate objects and execute physical skills. Coaches call a person with high levels of kinesthetic intelligence a "natural". Kinesthetic intelligence is marked by a strong sense of timing and the ability to perfect complex skills through the union of mind and body. We just witnessed a gathering of kinesthetic geniuses at the Rio Olympic Games. Kinesthetically intelligent people include not only athletes, but also dancers, surgeons, and skilled craftsmen. Michael Jordan, for instance, is probably a kinesthetic genius in his understanding of the movement of basketballs and his own body through space. If you've ever watched him drive home a dunk shot in slow motion, you'll see it. I for one could never do what Michael does. I'm not a natural. Kinesthetically, I'm a bit retarded, except possibly in a canoe. Kinesthetic intelligence can be strengthened, and may even be selective, favoring one skill over another, but there is a limit to what you can do if you don't have it.

John Williams' masterful movie scores
turn movies into something more
than just images on a screen.

IQ scores do not measure musical–rhythmic and harmonic intelligence. We've all known folk with perfect pitch and people who can't carry a tune in a bucket. Musically, I'm average because I worked hard at it as a child.  Some people on the other hand are naturals at making music, even from a very young age. I knew one little girl who performed her first solo in church at the age of two. The voice that came out of her was dead on pitch and at a volume that would have done an adult proud. She has grown up to be and accomplished singer and musician by diligent practice, but I know that she had a head start over someone like me. Some examples of musical geniuses include Mozart, Beethoven, John Williams, Paul Simon, and others whose work seems to transcend the ordinary almost effortlessly.
 

Walter Elias Disney
captured the imaginations
of generations of children
and adults.

IQ scores do not effectively measure visual–spatial intelligence. Spatial intelligence is the ability to visualize the world accurately, to modify one's surroundings based upon one's perceptions, and to recreate the aspects of visual experiences in other formats. Artists and architects, designers and urban planners possess higher levels of visual–spatial intelligence. People like famed architect Frank Lloyd Wright, artists like Leonardo da Vinci and Rembrandt, and designers and planners like Pierre Charles L'Enfant who designed Washington DC and Walt Disney who not only designed some of the most beautiful films of his day, but also laid out both Disneyland's and Walt Disney World's brilliantly conceived theme parks.

 

Ronald Reagan's ability to connect
with friends and enemies alike
fundamentally changed the world.

IQ scores do not effectively measure interpersonal intelligence.  Interpersonal intelligence is basically social intelligence or what we like to call people skills. People with higher levels of interpersonal intelligence are good at getting along with others.  Skilled diplomats like Henry Kissinger, great public speakers like Ronald Reagan and Winston Churchill, as well as great actors and actresses like Meryl Streep, Jimmy Stewart and others all have that ability to read people and deliver just the right words, body language and inflection to engage other people effectively.

20th Century Writer/
Theologian C.S. Lewis revived
a sagging Christianity
through his remarkable
ability to articulate the
logical 

IQ scores do not measure intrapersonal intelligence. Intrapersonal intelligence is self-awareness and accurate and effective forms of introspection. Great philosophers and theologians, writers and poets have this sort of intelligence.  Folk like

Locke, T.H. White, John Donne, Martin Luther and CS Lewis possess high levels of intrapersonal intelligence. These people have the ability to observe the world and then look within themselves to find meaning and purpose and to put all of that into a form that inspires and guides people towards creating their own sense of self and of purpose.

I would say, however, that John Muir did
have something special going for him
where an understanding of nature was
concerned, though his gift might have been
in the way he was able to transmit that
understanding to others as much as anything.

IQ scores do not measure naturalistic intelligence.  Whether this is an actual form of intelligence or a politically correct add-on to appease modern progressives is debatable. I personally think this last one is a made-up kind of intelligence. It was inserted into the list quite recently, I would suspect to make the guys at Greenpeace and the Sierra Club feel good about themselves. I’ll grant you that perhaps folk who work with nature might have a kind of intelligence the rest of us lack. Someone has suggested that really talented landscapers have an abundance of naturalistic intelligence. I suspect landscapers have more of a visual-spatial intelligence, though knowing what sort of plants will thrive where could be part of it. That seems more about skill and training than anything else.

 

Now, I would say, however, that "naturalistic intelligence" might be what we think of as having a "green thumb" or a way with animals. In that case I’d have to give intelligence props to gifted farmers, ranchers, botanists and even zoologists before I’d go labeling environmentalists and Greenpeace activists as possessing a particularly unique kind of intelligence. Environmental activism is more a political skill than a particular form of intelligence to my way of thinking. I would make an exception for naturalists like John Muir, however as noted under the picture to the right of Muir. Have to respect a guy who could maintain a beard that formidable in the wild.

The sudden duct-taped addition of "naturalistic" intelligence to the list of intelligences seems indicative that even intelligence is politicized these days. Psychology as a field is sadly vulnerable to politicization. They've already set a precedent back in the 80s with the sudden elimination of a whole category of what were once considered mental disorders from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (the DSM III-R), and the suppression of research into the causes and potential treatments for said condition. The American Psychological Association caved big time to political pressure then and probably will again. The inclusion of "naturalistic" intelligence as a type of intelligence is just the latest political correction. I suspect there will be more and more disorders dropped or added to the DSM and new forms of intelligence added to the list in order to make people feel good about themselves - or at the very least, less guilt-ridden. It's unlikely to matter what the science tells us in the face of the lumbering threat of political incorrectness.

I fully expected President Obama to suggest to the APA that they recognize Quranal Intelligence - the ability to interpret the Quran correctly - as a specific form of intelligence. The the National Institute of Mental Health can take on a new goal for itself - to make Muslims feel good about themselves. NASA's director has already taken that on as one of the agency's primary goals.

It wouldn't have surprised me. With President Biden being recognized as a true genius by his progressive sycophants as the smartest president ever, the APA may soon have to add a new type of intelligence - Lingual Incomprehensibility Exegesis (LIE) or the ability to translate dangerous Marxist claptrap into undecipherable word salad on the fly and hide what you're really trying to say. Should soon be an officially recognized form of intelligence if they follow the path of "naturalistic" intelligence. 

Just sayin'.

Tom King © 2016
If you'd like to see a video version of this blog, check it out below. It's my first vlog, so be patient with me. I'm still learning how this stuff works.

In Search of a Peach Along the Broken Road

Sheila and I singing with Jack Allen at the nursing home
before God smacked me upside the head...

.

I'm a mess tonight. I know my Sweet Baboo is coming home from Louisiana, but I'm worrying anyway and will till I get her home. Except for a quick trip home, she's been gone for three months. I lent her to someone who needed her and they nearly broke her. The song below really hits me in the heart. When I was a teenage kid, I just knew that my heart was out there wandering around looking for me too. I used to sit in the top of trees and wonder where she was and what she was doing and why I couldn't find her. And boy howdy did I ever walk that proverbial broken road. I used to sing that John Denver song, "She Done Stomped on my Heart" a lot and I sang it with feeling let me tell you.

Pastor Mike Hansen forced his way into my VGA dorm room after one of my old girlfriends broke up with me and sat me down and told me this. "Tom," he said, "God has someone who is your match. He's already picked her out and if you'll just let Him, He's going to send you a real peach." Pastor Mike was absolutely right. 

Unfortunately,I'm kind of a bull in a China shop relationship wise and girls were terrifying to me. There was even a rumor floating around the Girls Dorm at SWAU that I was, you know, "Not the marrying kind," and not in a good way. Truth was I was scared of them.

Sheila actually had to ask me to sit with her on the bus to Bible Camp where we eventually got together. She asked me mainly because she wanted someone to play guitar with and I was too chicken to suggest it. She had no evil designs on me. It was really cool not to have any expectations - just two friends making music. We'd already been playing on Sabbath afternoons at the local nursing home where we worked. So we had 8 months of guitar playing together already. So it was just a friendly invite and completely unthreatening for Mr. Chicken. I'd never met a girl like her before. No games. No manipulation. Just says whatever she thinks. I loved that.

In fact, like me, she'd just gone through a breakup only hers was with a fiancee. She was looking for company. We even got invited to sing one of her songs together at one of the meetings. I think God was hinting, but I was still too dim to get it. We talked a lot that weekend. We'd both been hurt pretty badly and we wound up feeling sorry for each other which actually helped.

Even then, by the time the weekend was over, we were on the bus going home and still wondering if we should get back with our exes. Turns out God had other plans. We experienced the moment differently. To me it felt like God had smacked me on the back of the head and said, "Pay attention, boy. This one right here beside you is the one. I love this girl and I'm giving you the job of taking care of her. Got that?" All that went' clearly through my mind.

Sheila meanwhile was seeing visions of she and I and our kids and our family like a sort of vision. We impulsively grabbed each others' hands and have been hanging on to each other for dear life ever since.

And she's coming back home to me on Sunday!

God is very good to me, even when He's whacking me upside the head to get my attention.

© 2016 by Tom King

Illuminati, Bilderbergs and Truthers, Oh My!

I had posted a link from a friend to a video of a supposed CGI mistake where the wing of the second plane on 9/11 appears to disappear behind a building in the background. Turns out the building was in the foreground. The video has been taken down everywhere it was posted and conveniently lost by the perpetrators of the "no planes his the towers" conspiracy theory. They make me so tired.

A 9/11 Truther friend of mine posted the above video on my personal Facebook page and dared me to "Dispute this!" I've "disputed" it several times and more than once now with this same guy, who seems to think that if he shows me this over and over, I'll become a Truther too.  So I'm going to put this "dispute" up on the old blog and that way I can just post a link and not have to waste my time with this utter nonsense.

The video shows a supposed CGI error in film of the second plane striking the second tower on 9/11.  The left wing of the plane apparently passes behind a distant building - something the author of the above video says indicates that the CGI guy screwed up when he made this "false flag video" that the government apparently used to prove the Twin Towers collapse was real. Of course they made a mistake which this sharp-eyed guy was able to spot from his basement bat cave caught, thus proving that the Twin Towers collapse wasn't caused by two 70 ton airplanes full of fuel and passengers striking the building at 4 or 500 plus miles per hour.

Never mind that more than 100,000 random people saw the second plane hit the second tower in real time and millions more watched it on TV. Apparently our all-powerful government (you know the ones that couldn't keep Hillary's emails out of the hands of the Russians), can somehow make us all see something that didn't really happen. No matter that it would have taken another 100,000 people, several TV networks, thousands of on the ground reporters, cops, and firefighters to pull off the deception. Not to mention that they had to talk Osama Ben Laden into taking credit for it. This strikes me as kind of a big conspiracy to have to keep silent.

Note the "building" isn't a building at all but
part of the building that was in the foreground
between cameraman and the plane and Tower 2.

And you want to prove it was all fake with this video? Okay, let's take a look at your case. The camera man is standing on the ground when the plane passes over on an oblique path toward Tower 2. Next notice the building with the facade in the foreground of the shot. If you check a map (or the photo I have thoughtfully included at the right) you will see that the dark sticky up piece of building is not actually behind the plane at all as the truther says it is. It is part of the building in the foreground and is, in fact, not very large at all. It is not a skyscraper in the background. From the spot where this was photographed, the "building" they are talking about is ACTUALLY IN FRONT OF THE PLANE AND IT'S LEFT WING!"

I wrote that bit in all caps because Truthers' eyes seem drawn to that sort of thing.

Once you realize that the "building" is actually a smaller part of the building with the facade in the foreground, it makes perfect sense and the perspective jumps into place. You can clearly see that the plane is behind a projecting part of the roof of the foreground building situated between the camera guy in the street and the plane passing overhead.

That's a big airplane too. The camera angle is deceiving, but the truth is that the airplane wing was clearly behind the "building", which wasn't a background skyscraper after all, but only part of a closer building.

Now what was that you said?  "You can't argue with the truth," I believe it was. Not that any of you truthers will change your minds. It's too terrifying for you to think a handful of Al-Qaeda nut jobs with box cutters could kill you and several thousand others over donuts at your desk. It has to be a giant government conspiracy, otherwise you won't be able to walk down a street without worrying that some terrorist is going to shoot you and several dozen random people standing nearby just for the heck of it. That kind of world is just too scary to live with. You can hide in your basement and continue to be "not worth the powder it would take to blow you up" and feel secure. With crazed random terrorists who might shoot you because they don't like your Prince T-shirt? Not so much!

Sorry to tell you, people, but you do have something to worry about. Man's capacity for evil is great and it doesn't take a lot for one of these monsters to do a lot of damage. That's why we open carry in Texas. We figure it's easier to shoot them before they get too far into it, than it is to concoct some conspiracy later to explain why it had to be a false flag government operation because it killed so damned many people.

DISPUTED!

© 2016 by Tom King