Sunday morning stuff!

In the review section of the weekend paper was review of a book called “The Genius Within: Smart Pills, Brain Hacks and Adventures in Intelligence” by David Adam. There was a lot of stuff about the idea that we only use 10% of our brain, about gadgets you can now buy which stimulate the brain with low doses of electricity - something some people do in the belief that it helps combat depression and other because they believe it will help them perform better at computer games, but which strikes me as a dangerous thing to do - and about different ways to improve brain power.

It ends with a comment: What price culture if you can become talented by swallowing a pill? What strikes me is that it doesn’t point out the difference between intelligence and knowledge. Until we have that science fiction capacity to download knowledge directly into brains we will still need the teachers who recognise that their pupils might be more intelligent than they are while still imparting the necessary knowledge to help them use the intelligence well. Just a thought!

Somewhere else I read about “Lady Doritos”. I am not a great fan of Doritos at the beat of times but it seems that the company plans to launch or may indeed even have launched already a “range of female-centric snacks which were cleaner and quieter than traditional Doritos”. This was all based on research which showed women don’t like to crunch loudly in public or “lick their fingers generously.” This led to a load of online indignation about what women donor don’t like doing and incidentally gave Doritos a load of extra publicity. Maybe it was all a deliberate marketing ploy!

What a strange world! 

I have been sitting here typing and at the same time watching my son and daughter-in-law restoring order to their living-room after yesterday’s birthday party / invasion by small people. I left them to it as they were clearly taking advantage of the opportunity to rearrange the furniture. This is always quite a therapeutic activity, giving a room almost a whole new look without the expense of redecorating!

And finally, here’s a joke for my linguist friends: “Ein, zwei, drei, funf”, said the German fearlessly. I have Facebook friend to thank for that.