Beyond I.Q.

I.Q. (intelligence quotient) ... we're all familiar with the concept. It is measure of raw intelligence.

But, is it a good predictor of how "smart" someone really is? We're all familiar with the stereotype of a "geek" who can multiply two seven-digit numbers in his head, but doesn't know enough to come in out of the rain. Ben Franklin said, "Jack was so smart he could say 'horse' in seven languages, but so foolish that he road a cow into town."

We call that ability, the one that says, "come in out of the rain," "common sense." Another word for that is "wisdom." You don't even have to be particularly "smart" to be wise. Sometimes all you need is a bit of experience ... "last time it rained, I got soaked to the bone, and caught a bad cold ... so this time, I'll go inside when it starts raining."

Perhaps, when it comes to our leaders, we need to stop focussing so much on I.Q. and instead look at their W.Q. (wisdom quotient). Rather than ask what grades they got in Econ 510 at Harvard, we need to ask do they balance their checkbooks at home and can they keep to a household budget. Maybe how many languages they speak is less important than how often they stick their foot in their mouthes.

We have eleven months before we have to choose our next set of leaders, I think it would be wise of us to listen more to WHAT they say and less to HOW they say it. Maybe next round we can have at least a few who either know what they are doing, or at least enough not to screw up things that they know nothing about.

Buz

We've Been Framed

It's an old cop story. The police have a suspect that they are "just sure" committed a crime, but they don't have any solid evidence, so they plant some evidence on him and arrest him. The end of the story goes one of two ways ... (1) his defense attorney is able to prove that the evidence was planted and the case is thrown out of court and the police are shamed, or (2) he is convicted, but then, the police later find the true perpetrater, and when he is brought to justice, the person who was framed is exhonorated, and again the police are shamed.

It would appear that the same has been done with scientific data regarding human caused climate change. Evidently there have been some who are so sure that this is happening, but they just don't have any supporting evidence, so they framed us. (Un?)fortunately, the fact that things have been tampered with has come out. And they have been shamed.

If this were a police show on TV, it is time for the judge to throw the case out. However, this may not be the case here. In the U.S. we have always stood on the principle that a person is innocent until proven guilty. Similarly, in scientific endeavors, the burden of proof of a theory initially rests with the person or group that proposes a theory. Even as proof mounts up, it still only takes a small amount of proof to the contrary to disprove a theory (i.e. if you claim that all cars are Fords, you can count Fords all day, but all I have to do is show you one Chevy.) It seems that the interim leader of the group in East Anglia, Peter Liss (his predecessor stepped down due to the apparent falsification of evidence) believes:

"LISS: [...] I think it’s very hard to be a denier. And in some sense, you might say it’s really up to the deniers to explain why it is when we’re pumping so much greenhouse gas into the atmosphere, why it wouldn’t have such an effect. [...]"

which sounds to me a lot like "we JUST KNOW you are guilty, but we can't prove it ... so it is up to you to prove you are innocent."

What I tell my friends is, "if it wasn't for global warming, we'd be sitting on a glacier by now."

Buz