HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 2011-02-03, Page 5THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 3, 2011. PAGE 5.
Who do you reckon is the smartest
man who ever lived? King Solomon
has a pretty good rep in the Wisdom
Department. Signor da Vinci was a veritable
mental giant and Shakespeare was certainly no
dummy. The 19th century British philosopher
John Stuart Mill was quick off the blocks – by
the age of 10 he was reading Plato and
Demosthenes – in the original Greek. Closer to
our own time, Mr. Einstein was undeniably
impressive.
But all things considered, I think I’d have to
give the nod to Mr. William James Sidis.
The movie Good Will Hunting was loosely
based on his life, but Hollywood, comme
toujours, goosed the truth and rouged the
details until the cinematic product bore little
resemblance to the flesh and blood original.
There was no need for that. The real life of
William James Sidis was sufficiently
remarkable to stand alone.
Sidis was born in Boston, Massachusetts in
1898 and it wasn’t long before the Sidis
household realized they had a child prodigy on
their hands. He learned to spell in English at
the age of one, moved on to French and
German by the age of four. By the time other
children were starting kindergarten, the child
was speaking and reading Russian, Hebrew,
Turkish and Armenian as well.
He wasn’t merely a language whiz, he
excelled at maths too. Care to know what day
of the week Caesar was assassinated or the
Siege of Troy began? Little Billy Sidis could
tell you. He could name the day of the week on
which any historical event occurred thanks to
complicated system he came up with. At the
age of five.
Three years later at, yes, the age of eight,
Sidis applied for entrance to the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology. He scored an unheard-
of 100 per cent on the entrance exam. He
entered Harvard at the age of 11 and graduated
with first class honours before he was old
enough to legally drive a car. By 20 he
was a mathematics professor at Texas Rice
Institute where he taught Euclidian
geometry, non-Euclidean geometry and
trigonometry.
Oh, yeah…he was drop-dead good, but there
was a dark side to Sidis’ blazing
accomplishments. Putting a brain like his in a
normal human body was like welding a Ferrari
engine onto a roller skate. Sidis had his first
nervous breakdown at 12. He recovered – sort
of – but he was walking a fine line from then
on. The professorship didn’t work out. “I’m
not much of a teacher,” Sidis confessed. “I
didn’t leave – I was asked to go.” The same
year he got fired, Sidis was arrested for
participating in a violent demonstration and
sentenced to 18 months in jail. Influential
friends kept him out of prison and he was
shipped off to a sanatorium.
For the rest of his short life (he died of a
cerebral haemorrhage at the age of 46),
William Sidis lived pretty much in obscurity.
He held only menial jobs and became a self-
proclaimed ‘peridromophile’ – someone with
a fascination for streetcar transportation.
Indeed, Sidis collected streetcar transfers as a
hobby.
Newspapers and magazines love these ‘How
the Mighty Have Fallen’ stories. In 1937 the
New Yorker published a long piece on him
under the title “Where Are They Now?” It
described the one-time child genius as a lonely
and largely forgotten down-and-outer eking
out his days in a tiny “hall bedroom in
Boston’s shabby South End”.
Down, maybe – but not out. Sidis sued the
magazine for defamation and won.
In fact, the Sidis story isn’t a simple riches-
to-rags morality tale. He spent the last half of
his life in anonymity but he was far from
enfeebled, he was a writing machine. Under
pseudonyms like Frank Folupa, Barry
Mulligan and William Edward Beals Jr., Sidis
wrote treatises on everything from cosmology
to American Indian history; from
anthropology to transport system theory. He
invented a language (Vendergood) and a
grammar to go with it. He predicted the
existence of Black Holes in space decades
before astrophysicists confirmed it.
Was he a genius? And then some. He had an
intellect that ranged wider than Leonardo da
Vinci. Most of us are lucky to have an I.Q.
north of 100. Experts estimate Albert
Einstein’s was 168.
William Sidis was somewhere between 250
and 300.
And yet he wound up, if not a failure,
certainly not bathed in glory and adulation.
An intellectual named Richard Hostadtler
once said: “No one who lives among
intellectuals is likely to idealize them
unduly.”
I think the humourist Josh Billings said it
best. “Some folks are wise,” said Billings,
“some otherwise.”
Arthur
Black
Other Views Too smart for his own good
While I don’t watch a ton of television
I’d say that I watch enough. Maybe
even a little too much at times. So
who’s to blame for this? Is it the cable
company? Is it Sony? It must be the guy who
invented the couch; it’s his fault.
Of course not. It’s my fault.
Now that was easy. Or was it?
Because people seem to have a real problem
admitting that things are their fault, it’s always
someone else’s and the television that I should
or shouldn’t be watching is Exhibit A.
Recently I watched a documentary on
underage prostitutes in the U.S. which listed
classified websites like Craigslist and
Backpage as the “Wal-Marts” of the sex trade.
At “John School”, a counselling program for
men convicted of prostitution-related crimes,
one man was interviewed about what landed
him in John School.
Despite having been caught red-handed with
a prostitute, this man said that by checking
these websites several times a week, he was not
to blame; the websites were. Had they not
existed, he wouldn’t have done it, he said.
And this ridiculous statement is just the tip
of the finger-pointing iceberg.
Shows like Hoarders, Heavy and My Strange
Addiction are rife with people deciding that
they’re not to blame for something or another.
Some reasons are a lot more legitimate than
others. They range from understandable to
downright laughable.
Like the aforementioned “John”, people are
excusing their indulgence in everything from
prostitutes to fast food to drugs due to their
availability. Because something’s made
available to them, these people seem to think,
they are no longer responsible for making the
decision to say yes.
Sure, it makes sense if they’re children. Even
dogs, when fed, know when they’ve had
enough and can back away from the dish, even
if there’s some food left. They don’t eat until
they’re sick simply because the food is there
waiting to be eaten.
A woman who was featured on a recent
episode of Hoarders had similarly ridiculous
reasoning behind allowing her home to slip
into such a state of disrepair that it was full of
over 50 cats who now used the entire home as
their litter box, which she refused to clean, and
was so full of junk that she had to sleep atop
boxes. She said that her father was always very
neat and organized, so perhaps her behaviour
towards a home he had bought for her was a
form of rebellion against him.
Not only is that stupid, but where I come
from, that’s just downright ungrateful.
Don’t even get me started on My Strange
Addiction. This is a show that features people
who insist on wearing furry animal costumes
in public, people who are married to a sex doll
and people who eat everything from toilet
paper to couch cushions to laundry detergent.
Everyone goes through hardship and
everyone has their own way of dealing with
that hardship, but many people (at least those
being focused on by television) are choosing to
lean on a crutch while pointing fingers, as
opposed to working through the hardship like
the majority of the world.
A note I posted on my mom’s fridge features
a quote that reads, “It’s not what you achieve in
life, it’s what you overcome”.
It’s sad to think that in some circles the
growing sentiment of, “don’t look at me; he did
it” is eclipsing the power of hard work,
redemption and seeing the light at the end of
the tunnel that can come from overcoming
adversity and living to tell the tale.
Don’t look at me...
I’m a fan of George Carlin and I think he hit
the nail on the head when he said that
coveting our neighbours’ material goods is
what drives our economy.
But what happens when material goods
don’t really exist anymore?
I consider myself blessed to be part of a
unique generation, one that has witnessed the
rise of the personal computer, the creation of
numerous storage mediums, and the
subsequent death of those storage mediums.
I may be jumping the gun on that last one,
but I’m sure my prophecy will come true.
I remember getting my first DVD player, it
was the future to me. I started building a
collection of DVDs.
Then I got my first BluRay player and
thought we definitely had it now, high
definition movies. Batman never looked so
dark and gritty.
Fortunately, BluRay players can still play
DVDs, but now I find myself wondering –
when will all these discs be passé.
The new wave, digital editions, doesn’t
really sit well with me.
Part of why I picked print journalism was
that I still enjoy the tactile feeling, and the
incorruptibility of paper copy.
The same can be said for storage media like
DVDs or CDs – you can lend them to
someone, they have a physical presence.
Unfortunately, for tactile individuals like
myself, technology is getting away from this.
It started for many people, as many
technological advancements of the last decade
have, with music.
Whether you bought your music straight
from a digital distributor like iTunes or bought
CDs, there was usually some digital
component to the music.
Companies have put emphasis on the digital
market with services like Steam – a ‘digital
store’ similar to iTunes you can buy video
games from – and Apple’s App Store, a recent
release from the trend-setting company that
allows users of all their platforms – computer
owners, iPad owners and iPhone/iPod users to
buy software designed specifically for that
gadget through their computer.
Whether because this development enables
immediate purchases or because it is part of
the green movement, it is the way that
companies are leaning right now.
The consequences of this kind of
commercial paradigm shift could be
staggering. While it does make music more
accessible and marketable, it is going to cause
many problems.
First off, this isn’t the best way to combat
people illegally downloading software, movies
and music.
For me, I don’t mind paying for physical
products because I like opening them.
I like having them, and not having to search
through a hard drive to have them.
Second; yes it will save someone money, but
not the people buying them.
Imagine, for example, a Compact Disc.
In my mind, there are many stages in the
production of a product. While the following
may not be completely accurate, I would
imagine the number of people/companies is
fairly close.
To produce a compact disc, a musician first
records several tracks.
The tracks are then mastered, remixed, and
prepared for the CD.
That musician’s record label produces
media to go with the track, like a cover for an
album and information inside. Some will also
be advertised.
A factory produces the raw components
(paper, plastic, etc.) necessary for the next
stage of development.
A factory produces the CDs and cases and
prints album liners.
A person (or a company) ships the CDs to a
distribution centre.
The distribution centre then ships it to a
store, be it a music store or a big box store or
an electronics store.
An employee of said store then unpacks and
stacks the CDs.
Another employee (or the same one) is then
paid to show customers where it is and explain
what the product is.
Each one of those jobs (after the CD is
produced) happens innumerable times in many
countries.
Now, compare that with the production of
digital music.
The artist records several tracks.
The tracks are remixed, mastered or
prepared for distribution.
A small amount of media is prepared for a
website and possibly an iTunes web.
The product is made available digitally.
This cuts the production, shipping and
point-of-sale companies and the employees
therein.
A balance needs to be found between digital
distribution and physical products, and I think
we’ve gone past it.
This process of distributing media may be a
lot greener, but no one will have the green to
buy anything because of the jobs lost from this
switch.
Shawn
Loughlin
Shawn’s Sense
Carlin had it right with goods
Denny
Scott
Denny’s Den