Monday, August 12, 2019

The 1%

I have written nearly 6400 posts, so we have now reached the 1% most popular, starting from #61-65.

Eastern Dialects. American language maps endless fascinate me. Update:  I did not include a link to Aschmann's site, which provides a larger version of the map, for even more fun. November 2010.

Speaking of maps, Diversity is our Strength. April 2013

Other Victims. Many of the greater victims of scandals are invisible. October 2017

Church Music.  I was opinionated, and it was controversial. I'm still right and you're all wrong. July 2015.

The Outsiders. Since I wrote this in July 2008 there is more to say about the author and the topic.  The comments are irritating, including my own.  I subsequently wrote in depth about William James Sidis, and I believe that series will be highlighted further along in the countdown.

It was perhaps inevitable that Grady Towers would gravitate to the subject of Sidis. Grady qualified for the next society up, the Mega Society, for those with one-in-a-million IQ, cutoff 176. He had been a prodigy himself, almost completing a PhD in Anthropology at age 20, but by the time I knew him (via journal and correspondence), he was usually homeless, working odd jobs across the Southwest, writing on borrowed typewriters and sending mathematical proofs - usually number theory - to whoever would have them. As I had been out of touch with the high-IQ societies for years at that point, I did not know about Grady's bizarre murder, and subsequent conviction of his killer. Going through old correspondence earlier this year I found I still have my letters from Grady in the 1980s.

2 comments:

Christopher B said...

Speaking of maps, Diversity is our Strength.

Real Diversity is a whole bunch of people who look different and speak exactly alike.

Texan99 said...

C.S. Lewis hated the church music of his time, which I guess was mostly the 1940s-50s. I always wondered why, since it was clear to me that it had a long way to go before it hit bottom. Is this really like complaining that modern hymns don't measure up to Bach? All I know is, it's the rough equivalent of replacing the altar cloth embroidery with My Little Pony.