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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Five
Dog Days - by Paul Nachbar
Does genius
exist?-by Quinn Tyler Jackson
TERMANology-submitted
by Dr. Greg A. Grove
Anxious Allegory-by Dr. Greg A. Grove
Five
Dog Days (Dedicated to Sherry)
by Paul Nachbar
Five Dog Days Dedicated to Sherry
One day I took myself down to the pet store in town to buy a dog.
Then I saw this litter, five pups in all, that I couldn't take my
eyes off of. They all looked like they'd grow up to be fine young
healthy dogs - a bit unusual in the pet store variety perhaps. And
so, because the tired manager of the store made me a very special
deal, I bought all five of them, put them in a big cage in the back
of my pickup and drove homeward to the farm where I live with my wife
and kids.
Having a bit of inspiration in me as well as education and not that
great a memory for many things, I decided to name them so that I'd
always remember them. And since they were all dogs, and not the sort
of creature apt to peruse a dictionary without much sense or write
a computer-program, they'd never know the difference. The first dog
I laid eyes on, the highest-jumper and loudest-arfer of the bunch
I named Genius. Yeah, a dog named Genius..hmm..why? I just thought
it would be a funny thing to do, and in this part of the world at
least, there weren't any laws prohibiting such a thing. So I just
did it.
Genius was from the start the happiest dog I'd ever seen in a long
life of seeing lots of dogs. He would run around chasing a butterfly,
a bird or the shadow of his tail for hours and hours, jump in the
air yapping away and almost never get tired. So I was glad when Genius
picked up his name right away and hoped for the best -educationally
speaking. Unfortunately, however, Genius was not really among the
world's brightest canines, at least not in terms of what we humans
usually value in a dog's education. Yes, he learned a few commands
with a bit of difficulty, but not all that many. I'd have to say "good
Genius, good boy" or "bad Genius, bad boy" a hundred hundred times
for him to change anything important regarding his behaviors and then
I was just too sick from the long effort. Still, he was one of the
funniest animals I'd ever seen this side of Disney...if his animated
dogs can ever really be said to be 'fun' for anyone this side of 15..
Of course, since I could only train one dog at a time and Genius was
an academic disappointment-I mean, for a dog- I named the second one
Moron. Not a real nice name for a dog, I guess, but being a dog, I
figured he wouldn't be able to tell the difference, would he? Well,
I don't know what Moron thought about things but he always seemed
a bit scared of me. Maybe dogs can sense what you expect from them.
No, he wasn't bad or what they call 'resistant'. Moron was the hardest
working dog you'd ever meet and he learned nearly five hundred commands,
which was more than any dog I'd heard of in these parts. Still, he
was always a damned nervous dog, though I eventually warmed up to
him and his set of talents.
Since both Genius and Moron turned out to be very odd names for these
particular animals, I decided to call the third one Average. I guess
I hoped that his style of learning would be a cross between the first
two dogs, as with people, just kind of...average. Well, I liked Average
and Average liked me and it was never more complicated than that between
the two of us. He learned most of what you'd expect a dog of his kind
to learn, maybe a bit more. But I think that if it weren't for his
brother's names, I wouldn't really remember anything much about him.
The fourth dog -I mean, in order of my training - I named Smart. I
dunno but Smart was somehow always the leader dog in all of their
games, almost never a follower. He was quick and lively and learned
well, when he wanted to. And he was both the most loyal of the lot
-I think, not yet capable of reading the canine mind - and also the
least loyal. That is, Smart was the best at stealing our food or other
tricks where he rarely got caught. He was also the kind who smiled
at you, as some dogs do, with a twinkle in their eye, barking away
half-playfully, as if to say, "Hey, guess what I'm going to do NOW?"
the choice being, I suppose, between obedience and some new prank
of his.
Now I still have my four dogs at home and the fifth one wasn't killed
or anything. But since everything seemed to be rolling uphill pretty
well in terms of their training, I named the last one Super Genius,
which I guess was a pretty big name for a dog. Of course, that would
sound pretty odd to anybody who visited us, but then again, it was
probably what many folks would call 'cute.' Maybe. Now Super-Genius
- I mean, the dog- was truly unique. Well, he did all the regular
things that the other dogs did of course. What I mean is that he wasn't
'ordinary' like the others: he had their combined complexities, so
to speak, and more.
Sometimes he was as filled with vigor as Genius and would run around
and jump and howl to beat the band; fact was, the two of them seemed
to be the best of friends at one point. And he learned as well as
Moron did, with maybe half the effort. Actually I don't remember teaching
Super-Genius any dog-tricks or commands directly, though I must have,
given my poor memory. But he just seemed to know his stuff without
really being taught. Once in awhile, Super-Genius stopped doing tricks
or useful things and even Average out-performed him, at least in terms
of my expectations. Yeah, I guess he was moody -strange in a young
dog? And then too S-G would take over Smart's 'job' sometimes, just
as if Smart let him do it, with his full permission, and he would
mind himself or pretend to mind himself, in those affairs whose details
only the dogs are really privy to. So, sometimes S-G was "the leader",
without a single yip of protest.
But what happened? Out of all these dogs, Super-Genius did one really
funny thing for a dog, I mean, at least to someone who's spent a lot
of time working with them and observing them: he looked at himself
in the mirror. He also seemed to think about himself in the mirror
or at least he angled his head one way or the other as if some stream
of self-critical or self-conscious speculation was going on. Well,
I can't prove things one way or the other, but S-G was different.
Sometimes he seemed really unhappy, would lay alone, sighing or making
small sounds for hours and hours, although he wasn't sick or hurtin
any way that I could see. And then he'd get up, go to the mirror,
turn around and walk away, go back to the mirror and -maybe depending
on something or other that I didn't notice, walk away kinda happy
or just go back to slinking around the house.
And then one day Super-Genius left the barn, I mean the heated part
where I'd been keeping all five of them. He just left somehow and
I couldn't figure it, because I thought I'd put on the usual locks
and all. And I haven't seen him since, and that's been months and
months. Wonder where he is? Wonder whether he's alive or dead? Whether
he found what he wanted...if he wanted anything beyond what I could
give him? The other dogs seemed to miss him one moment and then acted
as if it had been just the four of them all along, pretty strange
thing because usually some animals at least kinda mourn when one of
them disappears like that. Maybe he'll come back someday, I hope,
I mean...for a visit?
Autobiographical note: in my life I've owned only one dog, a wonderfully
affectionate and utterly 'useless' cocker spaniel, with the fairly
predictable name of Lady. Had to put her to sleep 21 years ago. I'm
not married, don't live on a farm or have a van -not even a car at
this point - and am not allowed to have pets in my apartment beyond
imaginary ones.
Does genius exist?
by Quinn Tyler Jackson
Today, as I was sitting eating my lunch at Earls on our weekly Sunday restaurant
lunch, I asked myself the question, "Does genius exist?" I know that
I have asked myself that question before, and I know that I have been asked
that question by others (often, by other intelligent people, sometimes, by
normals who want to stick a fork in me). But I have never had a clear
way of expressing that it does or does not ... a means of saying
what I feel that doesn't involve IQ, doesn't involve sounding
arrogant, or whatever. As I dug my fork into my seasoned mashed
potatoes, it came to me. Yes, genius exists. And this is the
"simple means of saying why" that occurred to me. Suppose we have
someone who is a genius, and someone who is a normal. We give each
of these two people the same monumental task, and an unlimited
amount of time to solve the problem, as well as unlimited access
to non-human resources. (That is -- we send them into a very
big library, but they cannot communicate with others.) No matter
how much money, no matter how much time, no matter how much we
pour into the "normal" -- instinctively, we know that this person
will come out of the library, possibly years later, no further
ahead than when they began. If we ask for detailed reasons as
to what the road blocks were, we may or may not receive an intelligent
answer in return. "I couldn't do it," or "it cannot be solved"
or "beats me." The genius, on the other hand, is not likely
to come out of the library until the problem is solved, but will have left
a detailed record of every false step, every missed guess, and every
near miss. The genius, and we know this instinctively as a society,
will approach such a monumental task with a great expectation
of solving the problem -- or, at the very least, will leave a
trail of bread crumbs in the paths of failure, so that the next
person to enter the library with any amount of genius will not
have to make the same mistakes twice. At the very, very least, the
genius will, by the end of this experiment, have written a detailed analysis
of the true problem at hand, and in having done so, contributed something
to the body of knowledge. Of course, my mental experiment may yield different
results. The genius may go mad in the library and take up origami.
;-)
TERMANology
submitted
by Dr. Greg A. Grove
Lewis
M. Terman was the American psychologist who took the original French
Simon-Binet Intelligence Test (1905) and adapted, modified, and normed
it for use in American schools (1916). Terman was a full professor
at Stanford University for many years. The following reflects his
philosophical side.
Ten
Vows of the Stanford Emerti Graduates of 1942
(Their
Ten Commandments as formulated by L.M.T.)
1)
Whatever sufferings, disappointments, and griefs beset us we will
not feel sorry for ourselves.
2)
While doing all in our power to combat the ills that may beset our
bodies and our bodies-politic, we will strive to maintain a reasonable
degree of philosophical detachment.
3)
We will endeavor to keep an open mind toward the newer trends that
appear in our respective fields of scholarship and research.
4)
We will never commit the ancient folly of condemning wholesale the
younger generation.
5)
We will not allow our minds to dwell upon, nor our tongues to enlarge
upon, our life accomplishments.
6)
We will not cultivate the illusion that our most important achievements
are probably ahead of us.
7)
We will try to keep alive such sense of humor as God in His mercy
may have endowed us with-but not by overmuch practice on our stored
up reserves of jokes and stories.
8)
We will emulate especially those members of our emeritus group who
have shown that age is no bar to zest for life and for service.
9)
We will not refuse the little services we can render, because we
are no longer equal to the bigger things we could once have done.
10)
We will never all ourselves to be beguiled by the flattery of friends
who tell us that we look as young as we did twenty or thirty years
ago.
Anxious
Allegory
by Dr. Greg A. Grove
As
summer gives way to fall there are simple lessons to be learned from
nature. Myriads of creatures fascinate and instruct. Take, for instance,
the lesson of the butterfly.
A
man found a cocoon of a butterfly. He studied it, day after day, until
one day a small opening appeared. He sat and watched the butterfly
for several hours as it struggled to force its body through the little
hole. Then it seemed to stop making any progress; it appeared as if
it had gotten as far as it could and it could go no farther.
The
man decided to help the butterfly, so he took a pair of scissors and
snipped off the remaining part of the cocoon. The butterfly emerged
easily, but its body was swollen and small, with shriveled wings.
He continued to watch the butterfly because he expected that at any
moment the wings would enlarge and expand to support the body. It
never happened. In fact the butterfly spent the rest of his life crawling
around with a swollen body and shriveled wings. It was never able
to fly.
In
his kindness and haste what the man did not understand was that the
restricting cocoon and the struggle required for the butterfly to
get through the tiny opening were nature’s way of forcing fluid from
the body of the butterfly into its wings so that it would be ready
for flight once it achieved its freedom from the cocoon.
Thus
stretching was essential to the butterfly’s survival, just as we benefit
spiritually, intellectually, socially, and physically in an environment
that stretches us to excel. Obviously, too much “stretch” or “stress”
is counterproductive; yet achievement-gain is not possible without
the stretch of self-discipline and rigor. It is this force unfurled
that shapes one’s character and forges one’s destiny. May our days
be filled with periods of symmetrical stretch for the enrichment of
ourselves and, ultimately, humanity
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