There's a new essay by Paul Graham, whose essays I almost always enjoy. He tries to define wisdom as distinct from intelligence: wisdom is broad, knowing the right thing to do in many situations, while intelligence is narrow, being unusually good at a particular thing. Two different ways of measuring ability--the average versus the maximum of a ( Read more... )

So lehser's grandmother will be coming to live with us, this spring if things go according to plan. We worry, naturally, about all kinds of things, including whether our new house (built c.1895) will be comfortable for her. Now we learn that we couldn't have done better, having just read about the trendy "Reversible Destiny Lofts" in TokyoLet's ( Read more... )

I just read with interest Participation Explains Gender Differences in the Proportion of Chess Grandmasters on the blog Pure Pedantry. It's a discussion of the research article Sex Differences in Intellectual Performance: Analysis of a Large Cohort of Competitive Chess Players by Chabris and Glickman ( Read more... )

Well, there's a big catalpa tree in the backyard of our new house. I like catalpa trees--the little cones of white flowers in the spring, the dinner-plate-sized flat leaves in the summer, even the foot-long bean pods in the fall. So I told my father happily that we had a big catalpa tree, and he said blankly, "Who on earth would want a catalpa