I've Been Walking The Streets At Night...

I found this interesting article in the New Yorker, written by a recent guest on The Colbert Report, Malcolm Gladwell, about the Flynn Effect, which describes the way I.Q. scores have increased over the past years, and how it seems to say more about the limitations of the test itself rather than the mental retardation of our ancestors that backwards score projections might suggest. Ironically, while trying to emphasize how much smarter we aren't these days, he quoted this sentence from Flynn himself: "If the everyday world is your cognitive home, it is not natural to detach abstractions and logic and the hypothetical from their concrete referents." A painful brainful. And IQ tests apparently measure how "modern" we are, rather than how smart. My problem is, I just don't get the point of pointing this all out. It's very interesting research, but first off, I think he's being a little too apologistic, naive, and P.C. when he assumes that most people would agree with there being some vast difference between the descriptors "more likely to advance, technologically and scientifically" and "intelligent." That smart vs. dumb actually describes a different quality than civilized vs. primitive. Aren't those synonyms? Seems like he should be talking about "clever," or "crafty." And secondly, fuck an IQ test anyway! I live in an arrogant top-notch, so fresh, so clean, modern society, and I've never been required to take one; in my experience they're a fucking joke, some free quiz on the internet that doesn't mean shit anyway! As far as I'm concerned it's disproving astrology, big whoop. Do people actually use these tests for something scientific? It only seems to matter when you're wanting to classify someone as ward of the state or not, technically insane rather than criminally guilty, etc, and if it really comes down to it, I'll give anyone the benefit of the fucking doubt anyway if the result's them being confined to a mental hospital. Committed and jail seems about the same to me: pretty damn horrorshow. If anything, jail should be more like a mental hospital anyway, if the goal is anything more than retribution. Eh, I'm just blathering on at this point. In any case, I don't want to give the impression I didn't enjoy the piece. The Colbert interview started fun but it cut him a little short for a show with supposedly no writing. Last I heard Viacom wasn't making any deals just yet, maybe I'm out of date.

Portishead set a date, don't be late, it's probably going to be something great. Third, though? I mean, I guess they already burned their one self-titled album, but Dummy was such a perfect name to go with the depressed, numbed out sound back when it was fresh.

We finished the first season of Deadwood, very enjoyable. Superior dialogue. Endless sardonic knife fights. The curious, "ad-hoc" process of the town coming together. How suffering is in everyone's faces at all times and the different ways the various characters deal with it. The fates of Kristen Bell's character and her brother, shit! Everytime I'm expecting a cliché they manage to pull crazy ivans. These premium cable networks just pump this shit out, and it just seems like there's an awfully high ratio of quality - there should be more total stinkers per true gem.

Well, the Aussie Open was a little anticlimatic. Jokey put the hurt on Federer, guess I'll start calling him "Chokabitch." My favorite match was Baghdatis-Hewitt, just an awesome struggle to the end, and I was sad Layton didn't make it any further than he did. There was plenty of auxiliary drama. Freakin crazy eastern Europeans.