There is no doubt that Langley and NSA are "on some lists." My kids take after their mom - they sit on their behinds in front of a computer too much to be any good running around in mountains carrying real guns. But the mind works just fine.
I now confess to a female weakness - I like self-help books. The Gallup organization published a book recently, "Now, Discover Your Strengths" (just typing the title makes me blush with embarrassment) based on studying two million people over a 25-year period. The purpose was identifying people's strengths, so they could concentrate on them instead of on their weaknesses. They identified 34 dominant psychological themes and the purpose of the book is to allow you to discover which of those themes is dominant in oneself. You have to buy your own copy of the book and there is a code inside the cover, and you take the test online and it scores your top five themes.
My top theme is "Strategic", which is a mental ability which can't be taught, they say. I always called it "thinking around corners" and "thinking in levels", and I knew some people could do it and some couldn't. The first time I realized this was when my 10th grade science teacher gave us a pop quiz at the beginning of class, and it was one question: "If Alpha Centauri is 4 light years away, and the speed of light is 186,300 miles per second, how long does it take for light to reach us from Alpha Centauri?"
Everyone in the class but me started calculating. I was sitting in the back of the class, and just looked at her and smiled. I wasn't as smart as some of the people in class, and I am terrible at math, but the solution was plain.
Most of us on the thread can do it, which is probably why we're here. |
