My friend Tom can build a house, install the wiring and plumbing, not to mention pour the sidewalks and landscape the yard. He cannot, however, fill out a check to pay for it without misspelling something. I, on the other hand, can write a love sonnet, compose a crime novel and fill out checks to my heart's content, but can't properly operate a screwdriver. Does this mean one of us is stupid? They say some people, like Gina Davis and Albert Einstein, are geniuses because they have high IQ's, but have they ever built their own homes or written a novel? We wold hardly call them dummies if they haven't, so I have to wonder what is intelligence? Is it something we can measure across the board by giving one test to everyone, or should it work more like a sliding pay scale taking considerations for personal background and awareness? Should we idolize Einstein for his theory of relativity or is that irrelevant? And what about Tom and me? Are we unintelligent because his participles dangle and my factors are factless? How do we measure smarts?
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