Meeting of the Minds (GREAT and small)

Meeting of the Minds (GREAT and small)

Yesterday evening, as per our regiment, Alvin and I were perfecting our bodies, making ourselves into 21st century Adonises--he is more in the "filling out" phase, whereas I am focusing on maintenance. As usual, the time between our sets was well seasoned with fascinating interlocution. Among the topics we graced with discussion was the "ultimate fighting championship". [If you're too lazy to click the link and read, ultimate fighting championship is basically a theoretical winner-take-all deathmatch type competition between our friends. We speculate about who would kill whom based on physical strength, hand-to-hand combat skills, aggression, and sheer murderous intent.]

So, this got me thinking of other, similar competitions we might have. One of the more interesting ones could have been titled "ultimate Weakest Link"--basically a general knowledge and trivia match. Having scored rather low in the ultimate fighting championship, I don't want to incur the wrath of my more barbarous friends by insulting their respective levels of intelligence. To forestall retribution from them, I thus make the disclaimer that the following appraisals of knowledge are Alvin's not mine. Moreover, I have organized our friends into groups, rather than using a straight ranking system (hopefully these "groups" will be more acceptable than rankings, since the former are more general and therefore harder to contest.)

Weakest Links (in alphabetical order)
Alvin
David
Linda

Fair to Middling Links (again, alphabetized)
Eddie
Sharad [I inserted him here]
Shui

Watch out, Stephen Hawkings!
Ben
Chula
JT
Pam

Although assigning people to groups was, admittedly, a very inexact science, I feel compelled to offer some explanation on the criteria Alvin used to generate these lists. (After all, we can't very well consign some people to the netherregions of stupidity, while bequeathing intellectual glory onto others without some explanation). Breadth of knowledge was a major factor, i.e. knowing alittle about diverse topics was considered better than knowing much about a few subjects. However, depth of knowledge was also taken into account. I should note that it was a close race, and some of the "fair to middling"ers could have easilly been switched with the Mensa members at the top of the chain.

If you're on the lists, please note that it was only a simple excercise designed to fill time during our workout. Fellow geniuses, continue to reach for more, and don't get complacent. If you're dissatisfied with your placement, you may contest it. Learn a foreign language, or read thru the encyclopedia, and recite your newfound knowledge to Alvin. :)

Speaking of idiodyssey [yes, I think I coined this term], I have another story from work.

I was helping my student with a reading comprehension question, and she really seemed unable to answer it. I asked increasingly easy questions to guide her to the answer, yet she resisted my best efforts. Finally I resorted to "Look at lines 22-24 again. The sentence says that the scientific experiments proved the old theory was wrong. So was the former theory right, or wrong?"

Student: "Right?"

:( Few things cause teachers unmitigated sorrow as situations such as this...