IQ

During lunch at school, I like to spend time in the library reading, or on a computer taking IQ tests. The students there must think I’m strange to be taking IQ tests all the time. I don’t know why I like doing them, they’re just fun. Like puzzles, they challenge your mind to find the missing pieces. Unlike puzzles, they offer more variety, making them more fun. Plus, that ego boost when you get a high score is always good.

Some of the online tests are so inaccurate that I can’t take them seriously. On some you can randomly click on answers and still have your result be higher than 100. The most popular one is a true-false test that will tell you you’re IQ is 150, yet you could get a “highly above average” score of 110 just be randomly clicking the answers. Tests like that should be banned from the internet. The better ones have at least 5 possible choices per problem and aren’t culturally biased. These tend to be exclusively visual or mathematical, and I usually to do better on them. 

The average score on all the tests I’ve taken is about 130. I can usually see a pattern on all but one or two problems on any given test. And since these tests are pretty short, I wouldn’t be surprised if my IQ was too high for standard testing. The highest score I’ve ever gotten is 180, on this really cool interactive one that was most challenging. There were shapes on this test that actually moved and changed color- one problem had a whole grid of them.

I understand that one’s IQ is not the greatest indicator of intelligence, but I do think it’s the closest we’ve come to testing logical abilities. It should be called LQ, not IQ, for logicality quotient. IQ makes it sound like it’s the only true indicator of how intelligent you are, when really it’s only testing your analytical skills. The thing is people have different skills that make them smart. I’m sure there’s a social or emotional IQ test out there that I would probably fail miserably. My EQ would probably tell me I am emotionally retarded.

Pi

I just saw one of the coolest movies I've ever seen.  Watching it with someone like Julie made it even more special.  The movie's called Pi, in reference to the math term.  It's about a math savant, who can calculate massive sums in his head at will, and his search for a pattern in nature that will help him predict things like the stock market.  He's not doing this because he's greedy, but because finding that pattern will glorify him as the man who discovered the secret inner workings of the universe.

It reminded me of Einstein's fabled search for the Grand Unified Theory of physics.  A genius whose sole purpose in life was finding the most elusive thing man can know.  Unlike Einstein, it drove him mad, even when he seemed to solve it.  Interestingly Einstein was a Jew, just like the savant in this movie.  There's a scene where he's abducted by Jewish extremists who treat him like the Messiah, trying to get him to tell them the name of God, which is really just a long string of numbers identified by a pattern in the Torah.  There must be something about Jews that makes them feel they are capable of discovering God through science and math.  I've heard my father is like is this as well.  It would be interesting to meet him.

2001 Mariners

It was quite a year for baseball, as far as stats go.  Our Mariners won 116 games, tying the record for wins in a season, but not in winning percentage.  They tied the 1906 Cubs for most wins, however that team only lost 36 games compared to our 46.  Their winning percentage was off the charts, at a staggering .763.  That’s the kind of percentage you see among the top records in basketball on any given season.   Anyways, the Mariners are heavily favored to win the World Series.  If they don’t, the city is truly cursed.

The acquisition of Ichiro Suzuki from Japan was the main reason they won so many games.  Ichiro won both Rookie of the Year and the MVP award, a feat he only shares with Fred Lynn.  Other unforgettable achievements this year are Barry Bonds hitting 73 home runs and Randy Johnson striking out 392 hitters.  I’ve yet to see those two face each other.  My money would be on Randy winning that battle.

Systema Encephale

The bass rings out as the cornerstone, 

Strong in stance, rooted within, 

Penetrating deep into the earth. 

Sinking deeper, a prison for the feet, 

Clutching, digging, denying, justifying, 

Materializations forming, grudges solidifying, 

Exploding the voice, letting it all out, 

Sending it plowing through the undertow. 

Water erodes the stone, rinsing down 

Into the Saturnine margin, crumbled lead 

Alchemized into golden tendons, solid, 

Steady as a mountain, muscles stabilized,   

Legs firmly planted in the fertile soil. 

 

Sands shifting, the tides unstable, 

Hormones brewing a storm, movement 

Swarming under the moonlight,  

Breaking open the gates of tedium. 

Sexual healing bleeds the faith,  

Flooding the landscapes of silence, 

Fertilizing emotion and flora,  

Patience toppled by the moody night. 

Wait it out, resist the temptation, 

Lock your hands in ovaries secure, 

Lest the roaring waters toss you ashore. 

 

Power erupts, the will summons, 

Flex of navel the action ignites, 

A solar synthesis ionizes the form. 

Seedy parasites consume the energy, 

Pilfering the vault of blood within, 

Taking, sucking, vandalizing spirit, 

Until all that furious strength runs dry. 

Shame consumed, torso wilted, 

Summer slipping, decisions empty, 

Erased from the congregation, 

Appetite subverted, a scream burns through, 

Incinerating the leeches, destruction 

Redirected from compassion released. 
 
Up in the heart it radiates, 
This holy energy, sedating the pain 
Wrought from a soul neglected, 
Trampled on, hung out to dry. 
Embracing hope, the grief is sorted, 
Strung out in tiles of recollection, 
Dampened by dusk's early light. 
Reality charted the illusion of pain 
Relents, tendrils of loving care 
The dawn undresses, coiling up, 
Engaging empathy, feeling alive 
In this womb, this body, this vessel, 
Parabola's isocline the lungs embalm.  
 
Sound splits into pieces, breaks apart, 
Toppling temples of friendship, 
Love, every relationship built on words. 
The voice gets lost, strapped in  
Umbilical tape, a fetal prism atrophied, 
Isolation withdrawn from an equation. 
The body recoils, struggling to find 
A new source for creative release, 
Until the bubble bursts, the dam crumbles, 
The math configures a new combination 
Gathered from vibrations of understanding. 
Temple rebuilt, silence fumigated, 
Blame subdued, the pieces reassembled, 
Divided houses draw together again. 
 
Third eye bludgeoned, the mind tamed, 
Intuition faltered, disoriented by the symbols, 
Archetypes shifting through the golden sieve, 
Blindness spreading from a pineal burial. 
Sorting through the shadow, confusion 
Denies this calculation, once clearly seen. 
In a storm of information the spiral appears, 
Infinitely powerful, supplying the imagination 
Courage to crucify the lemma, to bathe 
In the beauty of possibilities, enchantments 
Cast in a red and yellow progression,  
Through sequential numbers, yielding a stairway. 
Up we rise, to the supreme entity, 
Our life’s goal, shedding masks and darkness, 
Our will goaded by the randomness of dreams. 

 

Memories erased, reflection conceded, 

Curiosity diverted, knowledge retracted, 

Hollow-boned, understanding only the self, 

The emptiness calling, a dogma deranged. 

Analysis fractured, a lunar secret reveals 

One lotus unfurled, in the uterus of the mind, 

Consciousness blooming, a stellar signal,

Calling us skyward, home to the source, 

An orbital meditation in the iolite void. 

The light lifts us out, nursing hope and reason, 

Making visible the one true mind, everything 

Imagined, all spirits reconciled in holy union, 

Rising in ascension through the endless meridian, 

Steadfast approaching a sacred crescendo.