What kind of genius are you?

A great story by Daniel Pink in Wired about two type of creatives.

What Kind of Genius Are You?
A new theory suggests that creativity comes in two distinct types – quick and dramatic, or careful and quiet.
By Daniel H. Pink

In the fall of 1972, when David Galenson was a senior economics major at Harvard, he took what he describes as a “gut” course in 17th-century Dutch art. On the first day of class, the professor displayed a stunning image of a Renaissance Madonna and child. “Pablo Picasso did this copy of a Raphael drawing when he was 17 years old,” the professor told the students. “What have you people done lately?” It’s a question we all ask ourselves. What have we done lately? It rattles us each birthday. It surfaces whenever an upstart twentysomething pens a game-changing novel or a 30-year-old tech entrepreneur becomes a billionaire. The question nagged at Galenson for years...

...Now, however, Galenson might have done something at last, something that could provide hope for legions of late bloomers everywhere. Beavering away in his sunny second-floor office on campus, he has scoured the records of art auctions, counted entries in poetry anthologies, tallied images in art history textbooks – and then sliced and diced the numbers with his econometric ginsu knife. Applying the fiercely analytic, quantitative tools of modern economics, he has reverse engineered ingenuity to reveal the source code of the creative mind. More.

Via Accidental Creative -- one of the best sites on the Web.

New term

I don't like the term "brain fart." I like what it stands for -- not being able to remember or think of something, losing your train of thought mid sentence, etc. It happens to me. A lot.

I heard another, more refined, expression that means the same thing: brain fluff. It's more descriptive for me. I think of that airy batting that comes in stuffed toys and quilted items. That's how my brain feels on many days.

Phrase

I don't remember where I heard this. Instead of saying "use your brain," the person said "use your loaf."

I need a vacation

This fall has been nutty beyond belief, particularly at work. I sometimes feel like I've been on a merry-g0-round that has gone awry, going so fast you see only streaks of color rather than horses. It's been very interesting and often rewarding but my brain has left the building. Some examples:

• My work on the computer is scary. I cannot spell, or type. I often put my fingers on the wrong keys and many times I forget to use whole words.
  
• I forget what I'm doing many, many times a day.
• I sometimes have to clarify things more than once because I forget the gist of a project or conversation. (For me this is highly unusual.)
• I ask people to do things multiple times. I don't remember that I've already delegated the projects.
• I forget what day it is.
  
• I've forgotten my library account number. I've had it for almost six years and I've known it by heart for about as long.
  

So I'm writing things down more than ever, waiting for my blessed break which begins Friday.

Pushing the mind

I read about a person who travels a lot who, in an effort to keep pushing his mind, picks up a magazine at the airport news agent before each flight. What makes this interesting, however, is that he picks up a magazine that he would never think of reading. We all gravitate to what we like and understand. And there are things that we have no interest in. His argument is that by reading things he'd never think of reading, he pushes his mind in new directions and often gets ideas that would have likely never surfaced.

I really like this idea. Yesterday at the library I picked up an assortment of such magazines. I couldn't yet get myself to pick up Road and Track or Motor Trend. My list:

• Kiplinger's -- eyes glaze over. Involves math, shudder.
  
• Backpacker -- about backpacking, hiking and camping. I hate camping.
  
• Discover -- about science, technology and the future. I quickly glaze over and find so much of it uninteresting. I do find some easy-to-understand stuff interesting.
  
• Scientific American -- see above.
  
• Dog Fancy -- I love dogs but this magazine always struck me, due to the use of the word "fancy," as too foo-foo, too "let's put the dog in clothes!"

But first, I need to go through the pile of paper on my desk.

How children learn

"Not every kid needs to go to college." Them's fightin' words! Earlier this work on Midday Mel Levine, a neuroscientist at the University of North Carolina and the author of All Kinds of Minds, said that and many other provocative things.

He believes we should celebrate all kinds of minds. Work on children's strengths, don't continually press them to excel in things they aren't inherently good at or have a passion for. He doesn't say that if you don't like math or you're not good at it you should skip it. But he believes our education system isn't well tailored to the way many kids' brains work. He also rails against memorizing route material.

It's a fascinating, thought-provoking and often funny speech. Makes me want to be a neuroscientist!

Listen to the speech here. Click on "listen to the call-in show, even though it's not a call-in. The speech starts about a minute into it but is supreme awesomeness. He starts out by talking about how most kids don't know what the words in the pledge of allegiance means.

Great tools available at All Kinds of Minds.