i tried to ford the river, but my oxen died

So I wanted to say something here other than wishing you the first day of the new season, but I really have nothing of importance to say.  Nothing of non-importance to say for that matter either.

All in all, life is good.  As the days grow ominously shorter, I find myself feeling much sleepier than usual and less willing to leave the house.  A mild case of self-diagnosed SAD is annoying, but it’s not the end of the world.  I just need to find things to occupy my time.

I started on making the amazing Smokin’ Jacket (mines in a navy colour) that I’ve been coveting all year, only for all nearby yarn shops to run out of my yarn, so that’s on hiatus.  I tried making a hat the other day, but as usual I’m crap when it comes to picking colours and putting them together, so I stopped as soon as I saw how bad it was going to turn out.  From now on, I’m only working with prescribed colours, those with an eye have suggested, or if I’ve seen what they look like together.

And it’s just about time for the equinox to occur.  I’m at work blogging, mostly because computers hate me and I’m reinstalling my MS Office package.  That means no email, no calendar.  Which means I have no idea what or where I’m supposed to be.

How we ever survived in an age without computers to break down, I’ll never know.

Tags: equinox, knitting, SAD, work
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Okay, so this has nothing to do with my daily life, but I came across it in my archives and decided to post it.  I’ll bet you’ll see why…

What Is Intelligence, Anyway?
Isaac Asimov

What is intelligence, anyway? When I was in the army, I received the kind of aptitude test that all soldiers took and, against a normal of 100, scored 160. No one at the base had ever seen a figure like that, and for two hours they made a big fuss over me. (It didn’t mean anything. The next day I was still a buck private with KP – kitchen police – as my highest duty.)

All my life I’ve been registering scores like that, so that I have the complacent feeling that I’m highly intelligent, and I expect other people to think so too. Actually, though, don’t such scores simply mean that I am very good at answering the type of academic questions that are considered worthy of answers by people who make up the intelligence tests – people with intellectual bents similar to mine?

For instance, I had an auto-repair man once, who, on these intelligence tests, could not possibly have scored more than 80, by my estimate. I always took it for granted that I was far more intelligent than he was. Yet, when anything went wrong with my car I hastened to him with it, watched him anxiously as he explored its vitals, and listened to his pronouncements as though they were divine oracles – and he always fixed my car.

Well, then, suppose my auto-repair man devised questions for an intelligence test. Or suppose a carpenter did, or a farmer, or, indeed, almost anyone but an academician. By every one of those tests, I’d prove myself a moron, and I’d be a moron, too. In a world where I could not use my academic training and my verbal talents but had to do something intricate or hard, working with my hands, I would do poorly. My intelligence, then, is not absolute but is a function of the society I live in and of the fact that a small subsection of that society has managed to foist itself on the rest as an arbiter of such matters.

Consider my auto-repair man, again. He had a habit of telling me jokes whenever he saw me. One time he raised his head from under the automobile hood to say: “Doc, a deaf-and-mute guy went into a hardware store to ask for some nails. He put two fingers together on the counter and made hammering motions with the other hand. The clerk brought him a hammer. He shook his head and pointed to the two fingers he was hammering. The clerk brought him nails. He picked out the sizes he wanted, and left. Well, doc, the next guy who came in was a blind man. He wanted scissors. How do you suppose he asked for them?”

Indulgently, I lifted by right hand and made scissoring motions with my first two fingers. Whereupon my auto-repair man laughed raucously and said, “Why, you dumb jerk, He used his voice and asked for them.” Then he said smugly, “I’ve been trying that on all my customers today.” “Did you catch many?” I asked. “Quite a few,” he said, “but I knew for sure I’d catch you.” “Why is that?” I asked. “Because you’re so goddamned educated, doc, I knew you couldn’t be very smart.”

And I have an uneasy feeling he had something there.

It felt appropriate because I’m trying to figure out exactly–or even vaguely–what I want to do with my life.  I like working at OHSU, but I don’t want to be a Project Coordinator forever.  I had thought about going back to school for Anthropology, but I’m not too sure about that.  I don’t know if I really want to commit to a doctorate and a life time of debt at this point in my life (which is what I’d be doing with Anth).

But what am I good at?

Tags: work
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