 |
| San Fernando, October 2008 |
There was a surfeit of discussion about the not-so-singular quality of
intelligence this past weekend, as though we were threatening to lose the keys to it forever. Not sure that any of it was recovered. I was most amused by the former national fishwrap of record's op-ed on "
The Neuroscience of Your Brain on Fiction" which goes so far as to suggest that reading books is good for you--which I'm sure we could have never guessed without abundant research on the matter. (It also included that ridiculous New York moniker "published novelist" in describing an otherwise unknown academic Torontoan--the phrase's subtext, of course, is that only books stemming from New York commercial mills may be good for you, a dutiful servicing of one of NYC's most notoriously faltering industry groups). It was also said in the same jovial fishwrap that there are "
benefits of bilingualism" and as an example the author cites the ability of babies exposed to two languages to de-Pavlov themselves from certain expectations when watching a screen. (The real intelligence here may be in not subjecting babies to screens at all--or even in teaching babies to learn at least
one language well). Also of interest to the dallying souls here may be the
Wall St. Journal piece "
My secret to getting sober" which is of course not a secret at all once presented in the
WSJ, though there may be things in it of value to those who read only for opportunities to bash. Finally, my oft-time City Hall and sometimes lunch associate
Ms. Cortez Lopez, a devoted Tao wanderer (in fact, I noted the sagacious display on the left while meeting her for lunch in the City of San Fernando in October 2008) retweets that
"The sage keeps her wisdom to herself, while ordinary people flaunt their knowledge"--a dictum of Chuang Tzu, which
may make it difficult to identify sages but also flies in the face of
general fishwrap punditry, where such would-be flauntings by obviously
ordinary people are on display daily.
