The Citizen, 2006-11-16, Page 5Final Thought
Any fool can criticize, condemn and
complain and most fools do.
— Benjamin Franklin
THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 16, 2006. PAGE 5.
Other Views
Stupid is as stupid does
There is, as the cliche goes, good news
and bad news on the human stupidity
front, my friends.
The bad news is, it appears we're actually
getting stupider. The good news is, we may
soon have an anti-stupidity pill to combat the
condition.
Scientists at Germany's Max Planck
Institute for Molecular Genetics claim to have
synthesized the world's first nostrum to
combat natural bone-headedness.
Maybe.
In clinical trials, the German pill has
definitely improved attentiveness and short-
term memory.
But only in fruit flies and lab mice.
Still, it's a start — and not a moment too
soon, I say. Other scientific studies indicated
that humankind's intelligence arc seems to be
flattening out, if not cratering.
This is new.
Back in the 1970s a political scientist by the
name of James Flynn became famous when he
showed that scores on IQ tests were rising year
after year — an average of three points per
decade.
By the mid-1990s that was no longer true.
Professor Flynn is still around — he's professor
emeritus at the University of Otago in
New Zealand — and he thinks he has an
explanation.
He attributes the rising IQ scores of the '70s
and '80s to the trend to smaller families. This
meant, the professor says, parents had more
time to interact with each child. Now, he
thinks perhapS we've reached our saturation
point.
"You can't really get the family much
smaller than one or two kids," he says, and
eventually people do want to relax."
Oh, we're relaxing alright — especially our
stupidity standards. Consider the tale out of
New York, where Kelly Coakley, a 23-year-old
/ office worker, is suing Starbucks for refusing
Ontario's political parties have bidden a
fond farewell to the legislature's
highest-ranking unelected official,
which is a lot more than they were able to do
for the last holder of the office.
The governing Liberals and opposition
Progressive Conservatives and New
Democrats praised Claude DesRosiers, who
has been clerk for 20 years and is retiring, as
impartial and fair-minded.
DesRosiers, although virtually unknown to
the public, had the important task of advising
MPPs who are named as Speakers, in
sometimes heated debates off-the-cuff and
later through lengthy written rulings, on
maintaining the complex, restrictive but
usually logical rules of the legislature. •
This is somewhat different from when the
last clerk retired. Roderick Lewis held the post
for 31 years, having succeeded his father,
Alex, who held it for 28 years.
The son served during the long succession
of Conservative governments, which started in
1943, and became a little too cozy with them.
The Liberals and NDP felt he gave Speakers
advice that favoured the Conservatives. David
Peterson, Liberal leader in the early 1980s,
confided to a colleague if he became premier
Lewis would be "gone tomorrow."
Peterson became premier in 1985 and a year
later announced in the legislature it was his
"sad duty" to inform it Lewis, 75, had told him
he was retiring.
But Lewis, who had never been known to
raise an eyebrow to a premier before, offered a
totally different version in the fiercest public
squabble between a premier and appointed
official in decades.
to honour a coupon for one free, large, iced
coffee.
Starbucks says it was a mistake, that the
special coupon was intended for a select
handful of employees, but somehow ended up
disseminated on the internet.
Kelly says too bad — she wants
compensation for her 'suffering' — to the tune
of $114 million U.S.
"A very conservative figure," her sleazebag
lawyer purrs, considering how "betrayed" his
client feels.
It leaves me with just one question:
whatever happened to nous?
A lovely term, nous (rhymes with mouse). It
comes originally from Ancient Greek but it's
used by Brits to describe what we call
common sense. There's not a lot'of it around
these days, but I did find a couple of nuggets.
Exhibit A: Jamie Lee Curtis.
What are the chances that the child of two
cinema megastars (Tony Curtis and Janet
Leigh) would turn out to be anything more
than a brain-dead, egocentric Hollywood brat
obsessed with breast lifts, serial rock star
lovers and collecting diamonds the size of pit-
run gravel?
Not Jamie Lee. According to a feature
article in More magazine, Curtis has turned
her back on plastic surgery and anorexic
dieting. She is nudging 50 and sees no reason
why she shouldn't have a 50-year-old body,
complete with love handles and turkey neck.
She wears her hair short because it's
comfortable and she wears a man's watch
Lewis said he never wanted to retire, but
Peterson called him and said he had to go.
The clerk said he would not leave unless the
province met his demands. He had the same
status as a deputy minister, but a smaller
pension.
Lewis wanted his pension raised from
$38,400 to a deputy minister's $60,000, plus
an extra $31,500 a year, an office and staff
while he wrote a book about the legislature,
the title of clerk emeritus and $117,000 to
cover unused vacation and sick leave.
Even some Tories felt he was asking too
much.
Lewis also played his trump card. A clause,
appropriately dubbed "the Santa clause" had
been put in the law in 1974, intended to make
clerks more independent of pressure by
politicians.
It made no mention of when a Clerk should
retire, but said he could be removed only for
cause, which was interpreted to mean he
would have to be proven physically or
mentally unable to do his job and a motion
saying this passed by the legislature.
Lewis in a delightful shedding of his stuffy
image also told treasurer Robert Nixon, who
led the attempt to remove him, "go stick it in
because she doesn't like to squint to see what
time it is.
And unlike so many Hollywood limo-
liberals, she thinks for herself.
"For years I hting out with really smart lefty
people," she says. I was this Lefty girl. But
you know what? I don't know where I stand on
abortion. I don't believe the state has any right
to decide what happens in a woman's body.
But on the other hand my life has been
immeasurably changed by being a mother to
two adopted children. I wouldn't be a mother
if someone had aborted them."
Oh dear. Someone who doesn't see a hot-
button issue in black and white.
I found one more common sense hero.
Robert Hughes is a transplanted Australian
turned famous art critic.
And he's nothing if not plain spoken. Awhile
back on a return trip to Australia he was
almost killed when a car full of thugs — all of
them with criminal records and drug habits —
rammed his- car at high speed. When he
recovered he denounced his assailants as
`lowlife scum'.
The Australian media crucified him for it.
They called him a snob and a bigot and told
him to go back to America.
Hughes' response? "I am, after all, a cultural
critic, and my main job is to distinguish the
good from the second-rate. I prefer the good to
the bad, the articulate to the mumbling, the
aesthetically developed to the merely
primitive, and full to partial consciousness. I
don't think stupid or ill-read people are as
good to be with as wise and fully literate ones,
consequently, most of the human race doesn't
matter much to me, outside normal courtesy
and the obligation to respect human rights. I
see no reason to squirm around apologizing
for this."
How insensitive! How outrageous! How
elitist!
How refreshing.
your ear."
The Liberals became scared they would be
embarrassed being seen trying to force out an
official appointed to assure fairness and
accepted most of Lewis' terms, although they
persuaded him to drop the request for extra
money for his work as an author.
The government instead agreed to pay him
$50 an hour if it called him in as a, consultant,
but he was not seen much around Queen's
Park again and died in 1998.
In a book reminiscing about the legislature
published in 1987, Lewis recalled that until the
early 1960s women visitors to the legislature
chamber were required to wear hats or place a
scarf or handkerchief on their heads, "much to
the annoyance of many."
DesRosiers says there is nothing in writing
that requires him to retire now, "but I am 64
and this is the time to leave."
He is expected to be replaced by deputy-
clerk Deborah Deller, who worked her way up
from a guide conducting tourists around the
legislature, pointing to ornate woodwork and
portraits of former premiers, to respected
administrator and expert on legislative
procedures.
This also would mean one of the few
remaining male bastions at Queen's Park
would fall. Rod Lewis would hardly know the
place.
Such good friends s ure it's only a television show, but the
remark irked me. It's the comment of an
imbecile, an affront to anyone/who sees
literature as more than just sentences strung
together for a moment's enjoyment.
Well, that may be a little over the top, but I
certainly don't understand the attitude.
Jerry Seinfeld and George Costanza are
sitting in the coffee shop discussing the latter's
recent break-up. As usual, George has
something to complain about, but for the first
time ever, it seems quite justified from my
armchair.
George has left some books at the woman's
place and fearing that he would be seduced
back if he met her again, he asks Jerry to pick
them up. Seinfeld on the other hand can't
understand why they matter so much.
"What is this obsession people have with
books? They put them in their houses like
they're trophies. What do you need it for after
you read it?"
To respond to the trophy statement I will
quote another Seinfeld acquaintance, David
Puddy, "Yeah, that's right." I wouldn't expect
everyone to understand; really I'm not even
sure I can explain why; but the sight of a shelf
full of books is something I find comforting.
And the answer to the last question is "To
read again." You keep your friends, don't you?
A circle of friends is comprised of those who
respond to specific needs. There is the one
who can offer the right words at the right time.
Or the friend who effortlessly makes you laugh
and reminds you to quit taking life and
yourself so seriously. You call one to talk,
another to play.
Likewise with books. When it's a mood for
old-fashioned mystery revisit Dame Christie's
Poirot. Step away from ' reality and scare
yourself silly in the process with Koontz's
extremely likeable Odd Thomas. Hang out
with Binchy in down time and stimulate with
Steinbeck.
I've known this almost as long as I've known
that magic. unfolds between pages. However,
it's become quite evident to me recently, how
much one's mood can affect the choice of
reading material.
Obviously new books are regularly added to
old, so I've undertaken a little project to thin
out the inventory, a re-read from A-Z with the
intent of saying goodbye to those I've
outgrown, and hope they will bring pleasure to
someone else.
It has been enlightening. The initial surprise
was when I picked up a book that I wasn't
particularly enthralled with the first time
through. It was like the new acquaintance you
encounter at the end of a bad day. You give
polite attention, but really just want the
meeting to be over. A second, meeting,
however, when you are in a more receptive
mood to their particular brand of charm and
you're captivated. Like that, this book was
now a keeper.
Then there was, the old stand-by that I've
read over and over when the mood for it
struck. I'll never get rid of it, but it was
suddenly less appealing when chosen simply
because it was next in line. It's like hooking up
with the goofy friend when it's time to get
serious. Suffice it to say the winnowing of my
stock has not been exactly successful. '
Certainly, there are few surprises when you
re-read a book. It's not, to paraphrase Seinfeld,
like when you read Moby Dick the second
time Ahab and the whale get chummy. But if I
enjoy the company of a friend, I don't expect
them to find fresh ways to entertain me. That
they were able to do so in the first place is
enough.
Clerk brought new era to Queen's Park