Tag Archive for 'intelligence'

Not so surprising: study confirms men marry their mothers

Published on May 7, 2008 in Society. 0 Comments Tags: , .

Did the statement “men marry their mothers” start out as one of those old wives’ tales? Or was it evidence based from the start? A new study out of the University of Iowa shows

that nearly 80 percent of high-achieving men who were sons of mothers with college degrees married women with a similar education.

And 62 percent of men whose mothers had graduate degrees tied the knot with a graduate degree holder.

So meeting his mother, will likely show you just what he thinks of your intellect. . .

On a positive note, since young women are increasingly more degreed than men, the generation of men they raise could be setting the bar that much higher for their own marriage matches. With each progressive generation, smart women will stress less about finding an equal partner because men will increasingly want a brainy babe versus one looking for her M.R.S. (not that there’s anything wrong with pursuing an M.R.S. if you’re so inclined).

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The future of creativity, education, and intelligence

Published on February 21, 2008 in Education. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

Every year, innovators and progressive thinkers get together to talk about BIG ideas that can change the world at a conference called TED (stands for Technology Education and Design). At some point soon, I hope to be able to afford the $6000 sticker price of membership, as well as a career trajectory that makes me an a worthy applicant. In the interim, I’m just the glad the’ net allows leaks of inspiration from that annual event.

Sir Ken Robinson gave a great presentation in 2006 regarding creativity, or the lack thereof, in education and the way we define intelligence. It’s a 20 minute talk worth listening to. If you don’t want to listen–he’s got great delivery– you can read his talk here.

To encourage you to stick around, here is one of my favorite quotes from his talk:

Now, I don’t mean to say that being wrong is the same thing as being creative. What we do know is, if you’re not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never come up with anything original. If you’re not prepared to be wrong. And by the time they get to be adults, most kids have lost that capacity. They have become frightened of being wrong.

And we run our companies like this, by the way, we stigmatize mistakes. And we’re now running national education systems where mistakes are the worst thing you can make.

His talk is inspirational and full of salient anecdotes that make you think.

I believe our only hope for the future is to adopt a new conception of human ecology, one in which we start to reconstitute our conception of the richness of human capacity. Our education system has mined our minds in the way that we strip-mine the earth, for a particular commodity, and for the future, it won’t serve us.

We have to rethink the fundamental principles on which we’re educating our children. There was a wonderful quote by Jonas Salk, who said, “If all the insects were to disappear from the earth, within 50 years all life on earth would end. If all human beings disappeared from the earth, within 50 years all forms of life would flourish.” And he’s right.

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Drop Dead Brilliant Celebrities

Published on February 3, 2008 in Education and Entertainment. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

I stumbled across this morning’s CelebrityCowboy post on “15 Celebrities Who Are Actually Smart.” The first 14 are old news, but check out number 15:

this Swedish actor and director has an IQ of 160 putting him up there with some of the smartest people in the world. In addition to being a graduate of Sweden’s Royal Institute of Technology, [he] also has is Master’s in Chemical Engineering from the University of Sydney and was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to M.I.T. – he only lasted at M.I.T. for two weeks however, as he left to pursue a career in show biz.

Yes, I’m going to make you click through to find out who it is. Any guesses before the answer is delivered?

Never in a million years would have guessed that one.

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