I made some progress over the weekend on one of my digital paintings, but it's slow going on that kind of image. Even so, I am nearly done with the figure and have "just" the background to do. Augh! Such images take forever to finish. I am also still aiming for a relatively quick painting of a werewolf for Halloween though.

I want you, my watchers, to know that I am sorry aboout not posting as many completely new pics as I would like to be, though I try to at least post some reworkings and oldies you might not have seen before, but I have had a crazy life lately and there just hasn't been much time for art stuff accordingly. If only I could explain...

Between concentrating on quality over quantity, and working and worrying, complete images have not always been worked out as consistently as I would like. I had to work all last weekend, stayed late at work most nights during the regular work week, and have had other worries as well. I'm not complaining, my life is like a dreamy paradise in comparison to that of many people, perhaps most people, but it has been tricky lately. I will do what art that I can in the meantime though and try to stay economically and physically healthy at the same time.

Well, a Nobel science prize winner supposedly made casual mention of his belief that Africans are of inherently inferior intelligence for genetic reasons while recently promoting his new book. He denies some of what he was quoted as saying now, but among the comments he supposedly made was the suggestion that employers have found that black employees perfom less well due to lower intelligence etc. He also essentially went on to say that blacks are hornier than other races.

I'm very offended by such talk. I mean, I'm MUCH hornier than most of my black friends, and proud of it!

I won't add to the condemnations the wacky old scientist has gotten heaped on him since supposedly making such comments, others have said whatever needs to be said about it better than I might manage. Also, I have said in the past here that I dislike how racial discussions tend to take over everything in both the media and the Online world, so I will try to avoid letting it take over my journal by not getting into it much here.

But one of the reports I have read on the subject also made mention of how intelligence ratings have been a controversial part of science during modern times in general, with some believing that IQ tests are a good indicator of future success in life, and others disagreeing or even discouraging such studies. For me, this is an interesting set of conflicting ideas.

I can see why it would be a tricky subject. During the nineteenth century, the various scholars working in new fields like sociology quickly went about affirming the superiority of their own various races and cultures, with the "science" behind such claims being rather questionable. In one now infamously lame test of intelligence, African skulls were compared with caucasion ones by seeing how much sand one set of skulls could hold compared to the other in order to determine small differences in brain mass. Regardless of whether such a test would actually tell you much about intelligence or not, later tests showed that the original tester's objectivity in deciding that Africans had smaller brains was not even accurate to begin with.

That experiment is now used in classrooms to show how objectivity is hard to attain while working towards conclusions if you are not careful about how the proverbial grains of sand are shifting in your specimens. Shift a few grains here, and subconsciously shift a few more grains there, and there you are, you get the results you wanted or expected...but are those results accurate?

The problem with being objective with race, nationality, or culture based scientific studies is that, so much is at stake, that everything from the funding sources to the motives behind the "science" gets confused together and becomes suspect. People desperately want to believe in one version or the other of the tale, and stereotypes take such root that they sometimes overcome real science. So how can you trust anyone's particular set of sand grains?

But, since seeing the world caught up in an inferno of destruction largely due to this very issue being taken to the battlefield during World War II as aryans fought partly in an attempt to prove their supposed superiority, have we moved TOO far away from considering racial differences and differences in intelligence in general? It's a reasonable question, though I don't know the answer. Merely studying something shouldn't be bad, as knowledge is not an inherently bad thing. I just wonder if humans can be trusted to not abuse such knowledge and make false assumptions based on it.

Again putting aside the racial element though, isn't intelligence getting a tad overrated anyway? No, really, hear me out on this.

I think it's reasonable to test the intelligence of children as a very general educational system aid, but assuming that a child's intelligence is really going to determine their "success" in life seems a pretty big jump to me.

Is not the Intarweb full of bitter geek people who, for all their intelligence and over-education, have fallen flat on their faces in the game of life and now exist first of all as Internet trolls, and only secondly as members of society? Seems that way to me. I hear 19 year olds making grand and intelligent statements all the time on the Intarweb, yet ten years later, they are often still stuck working a help desk somewhere while trying to scrape enough cash together to survive another year. Intelligence and success don't always go hand in hand.

One of my relatives on the other hand...well, she is not the sharpest pencil in the box, though she is just smart enough to realize her raw intelligence is a bit limited. But she has plenty of common sense, good instincts and a toughness that those Net geeks only have in their dreams. So she makes more money than most. Not that money is a sole measure of one's worth either, but if that's what those articles about intelligence tests mean by "success", then I guess she is successful enough, cause she is pretty much rich, making loads of dough each year working for a major corporation.

This is not to say that raw intelligence does not have value too, of course it does. Sometimes you need someone who can do complex problem solving and think on their feet. But you also need people who can execute on some of the decisions such people make and have certain other qualities that make the overall operation work. Without such people, you may not even get very far, no matter how intelligent some of your other staff members happen to be.

Yet the way people talk of intelligence, you would think being smarter is all that matters. I mean, "smart" is used like a synonym for all things good sometimes, as if simply being smart will make you right, and righteous too. Even some of the geek intelligensia I have encountered online, who generally think of themselves as being politically and socially liberal, nonetheless favor intelligence tests as part of the voting process. Is this the revenge of people who read sci-fi magazines and think themselves very bright?

These assumptions about the primary importance of intelligence just don't always ring true. History is full of very intelligent villains, and more well meaning smart folks who, for all their intelligence, helped lead their societies to some of their darkest days. Intelligence isn't everything, yet we obsess on it, debate it, and make declarations about whole cultures and races based on assumptions about it alone. I think this is a mistake. Humans are social creatures with very complex interactions and interdependencies. We need more than just those things characteristic of having a high IQ in order to survive.

In other news, as it turns out, OMG! Dumbledore is so gaayyy! The Harry Potter slash writers were right all along! Just keep on believing in your dreams, you crazy teen girl slash fiction authors.

[link]

Well, back to business and art. I really want to have that Halloween image ready in time.

Rave