Fading creativity

As IQ inches upwards, creativity is sagging, according to this Newsweek article:

Like intelligence tests, Torrance’s test—a 90-minute series of discrete tasks, administered by a psychologist—has been taken by millions worldwide in 50 languages. Yet there is one crucial difference between IQ and CQ scores. With intelligence, there is a phenomenon called the Flynn effect—each generation, scores go up about 10 points. Enriched environments are making kids smarter. With creativity, a reverse trend has just been identified and is being reported for the first time here: American creativity scores are falling.
Why is this happening? The article suggests some possible reasons. "One likely culprit is the number of hours kids now spend in front of the TV and playing videogames rather than engaging in creative activities. Another is the lack of creativity development in our schools."

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Mel Gibson and the Problem of Public Privacy

So Mel Gibson has been exposed (once again) as an intolerant, sexist, abusive person. A recording of a phone conversation with his former girlfriend is now Out There on the internet and one can listen to Mel spill molten verbiage into her earpiece while she calmly refutes his charges. All I can wonder is, So what? What business is this of ours? This is private stuff. People lose control. Between each other, with strangers, but more often with those closest, people have moments when the mouth ill-advisedly opens and vileness falls out. The question is, does this define us? Are we, in fact, only to be defined by our worst moments? That would seem to be the case for people like Gibson. The reason, I think, is that for most of us, the Mel Gibsons of the world have no business having shitty days and acting like this. For most of us, there is just cause for having these kinds of days and attitudes, because for most of us the world is not our oyster and we do not have the luxury of squandering time, friends, and money. Mel Gibson is wealthy and famous and, at one time, admired. He ate at the best restaurants, appeared on television, gave interviews, has his picture on the covers of magazines. Is seen with other people, regularly, who fall into that category of Those Who Have It Made.

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Time to really focus on the banks

At The New Republic, James K. Galbraith argues that "The financial crisis in America isn't over. It's ongoing, it remains unresolved, and it stands in the way of full economic recovery."

To restore the rule of law means first a rigorous audit of the banks and of the Federal Reserve. This means investigations—Representative Marcy Kaptur has proposed adding a thousand FBI agents to this task. It means criminal referrals from the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, from the regulators, from Congress, and from the new management of troubled banks as they clean house. It means indictments, prosecutions, convictions, and imprisonments. The model must be the clean-up of the Savings and Loans, less than 20 years ago, when a thousand industry insiders went to prison. Bankers must be made to feel the power of the law in their bones.
I agree with much of what Galbraith says, although he wants to give the ratings agencies a free pass, which is, in my view, outrageous. If the ratings agencies had bothered to inspect even a few loan files, they would have seen the exploding ARMs triggered by 2 or 3 year teaser rates and the scant or non-existent documentation. A huge percentage of subprime loans were guaranteed to fail. It add insult to injury that the ratings agencies are successfully (so far) invoking the First Amendment to defend their incompetence and fraud.

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Affordable Failures

Much like Erich's recent "Lecture to myself", I've had a few things go wrong lately. I am also able to be philosophical about it. Tire Patch Kit I've had 3 flat tires in the last week. One was on a dolly that had left the factory with patched inner tube last year. The patch failed, and I was unable to get another patch to hold after 3 tries. So I went to the hardware store, and was told that a replacement tube had to be ordered. So back home and to the internet. The replacement tube is in the mail to my house for a little less than the hardware store sells other ones. Another was a bicycle tire that patched pretty easily. The third was a tubeless wheelbarrow tire that was slightly off the rim. These are a bear to refill once empty. I am currently stretching the tire across the outside of the rim in the sun so that it will hold to the inside of the rim in a couple of days, allowing me to fill it. The left rear pedals on our tandem bicycle stripped out this week, so I had to replace the pedal and crank. The left "Captain's" crank is a specialty item that had to be special ordered by length and tooth count. Fortunately, I saw this coming, and had the parts on the shelf before the pedal fell off. The vent hood over my stove, a must-have for us non-centrally-air-conditioned folks, finally died. The motor hums, but won't turn. It had a good life; well used for two decades. It is a non-standard size that had to be ordered from the factory. Back when I got it, that meant going through a specialty kitchen store. Now, I ordered it direct online via a local hardware store to be delivered to my house for less than it cost me in 1990. I'm not particularly looking forward to the half-day job of dismounting the old and installing the new. Even if it does actually fit. My laser printer has been getting streaky. This is a problem for MrTitanium, who prints bar-coded labels every day. I tried just replacing the toner kit with a factory original unit (instead of my usual after-market bulk refill). It cost four times as much, but did fix the problem (whew). I recently found out that, due to a paperwork mix up, we have to pay a lawyer five grand to hand us some inheritance money that my parents had already paid a lawyer more than that to prevent it from having to be paid now. As with parking tickets, it is simpler and cheaper to pay it. And we recently got three parking tickets in one stop that were arguably contestable. All during a brief stop between picking a used car up from the seller and dropping it off at the inspection site. One ticket was for expired plates. The next for expired inspection. And one for being in a handicapped spot. That last, most expensive one may be our fault. The back foot of our car occupied the front foot of a 30' long handicapped space on a tree lined residential street. My wife didn't see the rusty little blue sign facing rearward as she parallel parked in front of the car fully in the space in the rain. The car behind the car behind us occupied a foot or two of the handicapped space, as well. But it didn't get a ticket. Let that be a lesson to you; always remove the plates when you buy a car! A couple of months ago I had to get a couple of crowns (that I wrote about as To Tell the Tooth). This was my first expensive dentistry since my wisdom teeth were yanked in college. But back then I was covered by insurance. I pay out-of-pocket for all dental work these days. But we have the wherewithal to deal with these nuisances of modern life. This Wednesday (from Woden's Day) it seems that Woden/Wodan/Wotan/Odin likes me. I suspect that tomorrow (his son Thor's Day) will be the same. Or is it more proof that Gods smile on those who disbelieve in them?

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