What does "smart" mean, anyway?

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When I was in my 20s, I took the test for Mensa. It was actually two standardized IQ tests, given on the same day. To qualify for membership, you have to score at or above the 98th percentile on one of the tests. I scored above the 98th percentile on both -- and on one (don't ask me which one -- it was 40 years ago), I scored above the 99th percentile, which also qualified me for membership in Intertel. In short, I am what used to be called "smart". When my kids were in school, it was called "gifted and talented", or just "gifted". 

Please miss me with your comments about how IQ tests are biased bullshit. There has been a culture-fair alternative IQ test available since 1949, although not everybody agrees that it's actually culturally fair. I suspect that complete fairness will require each culture to create its own IQ test -- a herculean task. 

But to be honest, I think some in the sniffy crowd are just mad that they're White but didn't make the cut. That's a culture-based response, guys. Americans are so obsessed with the idea that Everybody's! Equal! that they're suspicious of anyone who has superior abilities (unless those abilities can be monetized by some promoter, but I digress). And they're sure as hell not inclined to help anybody who thinks faster than they do.

But here is the thing: Differences in cognitive ability are real, and they don't exist only on the low end of the scale. 

Which brings me to the new concept -- or new to me, anyway -- that giftedness is better defined as a form of neurodivergence. Like, say, autism or ADHD. Here's a Venn diagram developed by a therapist that attempts to show how the traits of giftedness, autism, and ADHD overlap. 

A free, more readable PDF version is available here.

I have mixed emotions about this concept. On one hand, the traits that the author associates with giftedness mostly seem to tally with my experience (she says right on the diagram that it's not meant to be a diagnostic tool, and she emphasizes elsewhere on her blog that not everybody in these categories has every trait). For instance: I do "skip thinking", aka logical leaps; I developed the concept of fairness very young; I prefer precision in expression; I make connections across domains (the Pipe Woman Chronicles being one example); I need time alone; and so on. Plus psychology has always interested me -- it's one of my many wide-ranging interests, to use another trait from the diagram.

On the other hand, giftedness-as-neurodivergence feels like a way to lump smart people together with the weird kids. Remember what I said earlier about how Americans view anyone of above-average intelligence with suspicion? Labeling gifted people as neurodivergent could give "normal" people an excuse to hand us a ticket for the short bus.

Do you think that's an exaggeration? Take a look at this blog post, in which the author attempts to argue that labeling someone "gifted" is a way to whitewash ADHD and/or autism: "'Gifted' is autism/ADHD/neurodivergence with the crusts cut off to make it more palatable to neurotypicals, slicing away anything that makes things hard and leaving only the child's strengths to praise and enjoy." She also blames the "gifted kid" label for the "social isolation" that some gifted adults experience. 

Did I feel socially isolated as a gifted adult? Well, yes. Why do you think I joined Mensa? For the dubious prestige of it? Nope, it was to meet other people with whom I could have a conversation on my level. And if you believe that statement makes me some kind of superior asshole, I refer you to that culture-based bias against intelligence that I mentioned in the third paragraph.

Anyway, the point this blogger misses is that not every gifted person is ADHD and/or autistic. Some of us are just ... smart.

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Not for nothing, "neurotypicals" can exhibit traits on that Venn diagram, too. 

The definition of "neurotypical" tickles me. According to Oxford Languages, it's "not displaying or characterized by ... neurologically atypical patterns of thought or behavior." In other words, you can't define it with precision without knowing every possible neurodivergence -- which we seem to be busy labeling. At the rate we're going, I can envision a time (there I go again with the giftedness traits: forseeing problems!) when the pool of neurotypical people will become vanishingly small. And then what Margaret Mead once said will really be true: "Always remember that you're absolutely unique -- just like everyone else."

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This post was prompted by a recent conversation with a friend I'd met in Mensa. As we talked, I remembered that I'd hated geometry in high school because doing proofs seemed pointless to me -- and then I realized why: My brain moved so fast through the steps that it was stupid and annoying to have to write them out. In short, I was bored. Giftedness or ADHD? You decide.

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These moments of possibly neurodivergent blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. Make sure you're registered to vote -- and then do it!

On demons and rattlesnakes and other things best left alone.

I took another unscheduled week off from the blog last week. (Did ya miss me?) I had a friend visiting for the week, so things last weekend were a little hectic.

It's too bad, too, because I had a topic all ready to go and everything. But it might even be better for this week, since today is the fall equinox in the Northern Hemisphere -- some Pagans call it Mabon -- which means we're progressing into the dark half of the year. Our attention may be turning not just to pumpkin spice everything, but toward ghosts and goblins and things that go bump in the night. Like, say, demons.

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Why am I using a graphic of a rattlesnake when I just said demons, you ask? I'm getting to that. 

My go-to Druid priest, John Beckett, recently wrote a post on Patheos about the Pagan view of demons. You can read his post here, but basically he says that demons exist in many cultures and religions around the world, not just in Christianity, and they take on different roles in other cultures and other religions than they do here in the West. But in general, he says, "demons are spiritual persons who are generally antagonistic toward humans." He says it's possible to do magical work with them, but it's best to do it from a place of mutual respect. Starting off, as many old texts advise, by puffing yourself up as a "mighty sorceror" and demanding that a demon appear and do your bidding is probably not going to end well for you.

I mean, think about it. Say you're a spiritual person, kinda crabby in general and an introvert anyway, especially when it comes to interacting with humanity, and some human gets hold of your name and insists that you appear before them and do whatever they want you to do. I sure wouldn't be inclined to play nice with the idiot. Would you?

This put me in mind of the way sane humans ought to treat rattlesnakes and other critters that can hurt us: treat them with respect, and don't rile them up if you can help it.

After all, snakes aren't evil. A rattlesnake in your path is just a snake doing its snake thing. Leave it alone, and you'll be fine. Same holds true for demons.

But Christianity has scared us into worrying about demons -- specifically, about being possessed by one. (Not to get political, but MAGA world has been freaking out, ever since Vice President Harris won the Democratic nomination for president, over the idea that she is a demon whose election would usher in the Apocalypse.) Beckett says the number of cases of actual demonic possession is pretty small historically, and we're talking centuries here. So the odds are that if someone is calling someone else a demon, they're just trying to scare you.

To sum up the Pagan view of demons: Yes, they exist. Yes, you can make one mad enough to give you trouble. But no, they're not going to possess you for funsies. Give them a lot of respect and a wide berth, and you'll be fine. Just as you would a rattlesnake.

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Fair warning: I may end up taking next weekend off from the blog, too. We'll see how it goes. I just don't want anybody to think the demons got me if I don't do a post next Sunday.

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These moments of reassuring blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. Check your voter registration here! I just did!

Laundry improvement, bit by bit.

Lynne Cantwell 2024

I was very much hoping to give y'all a before-and-after report on the redo of my laundry closet this week, but we'll have to settle for a before-and-during.

It all started when I looked up the manufacturing dates for all the major appliances in the condo I bought in 2021 and realized they were all seriously old. So I began replacing them all with new machines. This fall, it's the washer and dryer's turn. 

Ever since I first used the old machines, I'd hated them. The washer was a top loader whose lid opened the wrong way for the closet configuration, and the dryer never heated up enough to suit me. Built in 1997, they still worked, but I felt justified in getting rid of them on the grounds of annoyance alone. 

Lynne Cantwell 2024

That towel on the floor was there to block the draft from the dryer vent.

The closet clearly hadn't been updated in many years -- maybe since before these machines were installed -- so the plan was to donate the beasts to Habitat for Humanity, thereby clearing out the closet so I could paint, get rid of the wire shelf in favor of something nicer, and redo the flooring (whoever installed the Saltillo tile in the bathroom stopped at the threshold to the laundry closet) before the new machines arrived.

Pickup of the old machines went off without a hitch. Demolition consisted of taking down the wire shelf (which, as it turned out, was pulling itself out of the wall anyway) and pulling up some suspicious-looking duct tape from the vinyl sheet flooring. I was worried that somebody had duct-taped over a floor drain, but it was just a hole in the sheet vinyl; if there had ever been a floor drain there, it was covered in plywood, and I wasn't inclined to undo the whole floor to find out. Instead, I patched the hole with a piece of peel-and-stick tile and called it good.

Then I painted the closet a sunny yellow. Well, it was supposed to be a sunny yellow -- it's more like an aggressively cheerful yellow. Pulled off the baseboards, put down some of the leftover luxury vinyl plank flooring from last summer's water leak mitigation, painted the baseboards black to match the frame around the closet doors, reinstalled the baseboards, touched up the baseboard paint from the reinstallation, capped off the dryer vent (I'll explain below), installed a piece of quarter-round to finish off the edge along the Saltillo tile, caulked (I suck at caulking -- please make a note), installed a fun new switchplate cover, and it was done. All I needed were the new machines. 

The yellow color in this pic is off. See the one below.
Lynne Cantwell 2024

Then I got a message from the vendor: delivery of the new machines is delayed until mid-October.

It would be an understatement to say that the thought of hauling my laundry to a laundromat for the next six weeks dismayed me. But then I remembered how I'd done laundry while I lived in that tiny apartment near the plaza during the pandemic shutdown, back when we had a coin shortage so I couldn't get quarters for the coin-op machines in the apartment building. 

So call me crazy, but a week ago today, I went on Amazon and ordered a teeny washing machine. It was delivered Thursday. The Amazon delivery guy, bless his heart, even brought it up my miserable stairs for free. Take that, Best Buy! 

Lynne Cantwell 2024

The little box on the bench by the door contained a dolly for the teeny washer -- a necessity in the apartment downtown where I had to store the washer at the foot of my bed and roll it into the bathroom to wash clothes, but not as critical here, as this washer fits in the laundry closet with lots of room to spare.

It works just fine. I even went ahead and moved into place the little rustic cabinet I'd bought for the closet a few weeks back. Tigs seems to like it. 

Lynne Cantwell 2024

For the new machines, I decided to go with compact units, largely to make sure that they'd fit in the closet. The dryer will be a ventless condenser dryer, hence why I capped the vent in the wall (although it was also a strategic move to keep a certain curious kitty cat from seeing where the tube would lead). The new machines will be a lot smaller than the elderly ones I got rid of. But I figure they'll feel luxurious after this teeny machine: 1.38 cubic feet of washer, plus draping all the wet stuff over a drying rack, compared to 2.4 cubic feet of washer and an electric dryer? Yes, please!

I sold the teeny washer I had downtown when I moved here, and I'm figuring on doing the same thing with this machine when the new washer and dryer finally arrive. But I might keep it, just in case.

There's more to come with the closet: I have a pendant light on order (the lighting in there has always been stupid); I want to rig up a taller and deeper countertop for the cabinet; and I'm going to need either an upper cabinet or a shelf, plus a lint bin and a place to hang my octopus. I've put off all that 'til the washer and dryer are in. So as I said, this is a before-and-during instead of a before-and-after. Stay tuned.

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Yes, the little sign at the top of this post is destined for the laundry closet, whenever everything else is installed.

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Oh hey, I should update y'all on the sleeper sofa. Pickup of the broken one and delivery of the new one both went off without a hitch. Here's the new one:

Lynne Cantwell 2024

At least something is going right...

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These moments of bloggy home improvement have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. Make your voting plan now!

The ongoing demise of the old journalistic hegemony.

 

One of the most interesting sidebar stories to come out of the Democratic National Convention last month -- to me, at least -- was about complaints from mainstream journalists that they were kind of given short shrift this year. In their view, the Harris campaign gave preference to social media influencers: meeting with them separately; giving them opportunities for access to the candidates at the same time that mainstream outlets were complaining that the candidates hadn't given any interviews yet; and so on.

Asawin Suebsang covered the convention for Rolling Stone, and he wrote about this kerfuffle last week: 

Much of what I witnessed and heard about during my time in Chicago reinforced my preexisting beliefs that far too many so-called elite members of my profession — national political media scribes who fancy themselves as speaking truth to power, but more often just speak words to financially destructive Google algorithms — are mollycoddled hogs who are doing everything they can to fail to meet the enormity of this moment.

"There were times," he goes on, "I thought I had been teleported back to 2010, when we as an industry were debating how to treat bloggers." And he relates how "multi-lanyard-wearing, sweat-flecked envoys of the U.S. media elite berat[ed] the lowest-level convention volunteers to let them into their seats at once" when security cut off access to the press section due to overcrowding on Thursday night: 

I would be naming names at this point, if I could tell you with certainty who any of these people were, other than the fact that their respective demeanors suggested that they were accustomed to bellowing: "Do you know who I am?"

All this, he says, in an atmosphere where "much of the mainstream political press has been (correctly) programming its audience to believe this year's race is not a normal presidential election, and then too many in that media elite get upset when the public points out that they're covering it like a normal presidential election...".

Amen, brother, amen.

Alert hearth/myth readers know of my journalistic background, and of how I've been gradually coming around to the realization that the business has changed radically since I last sat before a microphone to deliver the news. I mean, I knew the business was changing; that's a big reason why I got out. But the coverage of Donald Trump from 2015 on has made it abundantly clear to me that journalists now see themselves as stars first, deliverers of eyeballs to advertisers and ad dollars to shareholders second, and purveyors of truth third, if at all. Here we are, at another inflection point in the history of our country -- the third election in a row in which democracy is threatened with extinction in the United States -- and these people in my previous profession are all butthurt about their privilege.

Honestly, it doesn't surprise me that the Harris campaign is stepping around them to get its message out. Political influencers command huge audiences, and they're inclined to give favorable coverage to the campaign -- unlike the mainstream folks, who call it hard-hitting journalism when they fall for every made-up controversy promulgated by the other side.

About that: I saw a comment not long ago, although I don't remember where now, from someone in the news business who was asked why journalists aren't talking about Trump's age and obvious decline, the way they did President Biden's. The newsperson's answer? The Democrats have to make an issue of it first -- then they'll cover it.

That's utter bullshit. In no universe ever has a real journalist passed up a story because nobody else was talking about it.

I'm appalled at the state of political journalism today. C'mon, you guys -- do better. Our nation's continued existence -- as well as your continued relevance -- depend on it.

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These moments of bloggy journalistic exhortation have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. Stay safe! And be sure to vote!