A good read

I love this old picture of Molly. Looks like she found a good read!

Yesterday I went to the inaugural meeting of the new non-fiction book club that my friend Sam has started. At my prompting, we all read the hilarious AJ Jacobs book, "The -Know-It-All: One man's quest to become the smartest man in the world".

The most interesting part of the discussion that ensued had to do with the nature of intelligence. What makes us smart? Is it retention of fact? The ability to synthesize information into well-informed opinion? Being able to read people and situations well? These were all forwarded as possible sources of intelligence, but as a group we had a hard time pinpointing the true essence of intelligence. I found this pretty interesting.

Another interesting discovery: we all named someone we found to be incredibly intelligent, and out of seven of us, not one of us came up with a woman. Seven women gathered and not until we had all chosen did one of us realize that our list was entirely composed of men. Hmmm. For the record, my candidate for Mr. El-Supremo-Smart-Pants was Tony Blair. Not exactly inspired, but if you listen to him speak during Question Time in the British Parliament, boy...can that guy talk! And not blabby, useless chatter like me. Smart talk.