This is my first blog.
A possible motivation is to try out the catharsis of the occasional brain dump / rant.
My name is Gizzard. Gizzards are ducks' muscular stomachs. And believe me they are very tasty. I always find a stupid pleasure in gauging English people's reactions when I boast of loving the bloody things. Maybe writing this here will help me stop this cretinous habit (the boasting, not the eating).
So here is my name. One of the first things that came to my mind when trying to find an alias, really. Yes I think a lot about food. I am not what you would call a foodie though. I believe people mistake me being French and talking about food (and wine) with actually being a kind of connoisseur or expert. I just enjoy food, without having any sort of refined tastes. And I am a bad cook.
This reminds me that a book I really liked is The Debt To Pleasure written by John Lanchester. The narrator is a meticulous writer and cook, and the creeping story is interleaved with receipes. I recommend it and am not going to spoil it for the unlikely reader who would surprisingly choose to give it a go.
A question that really bugs me
This has been on my mind for a long time - what is intelligence or rather who is intelligent? When I was younger, in academia intelligence seemed to have an objective meaning, which could basically be measured by a weighted ratio of grades obtained to effort. So I was considering myself quite intelligent, and other people seemed to agree. I had a very quick mind when it came to maths (as in logical reasoning not multiplying big numbers) and Ancient Greek translation - compared to my classmates anyway. (I was rubbish at many other things, for example German vocabulary learning). I was watching closely my results to effort ratio, making sure that my results were above others and my effort minimal - it actually worked quite well for me when I was studying maths (physics and chemistry were also part of the course and I was hopeless at them though).
And then... Crash.
In real life this definition doesn't seem to hold. I don't know. Contrary to what I had always assumed intelligence and success (professional, financial and otherwise) do not seem correlated. Intelligent people don't necessarily get rich or have good jobs. Rich/powerful people don't always seem particularly intelligent. Intelligence seems subjective. I am not sure IQ is an objective measure - if you do lots of IQ tests you do them better and better anyway. (I wouldn't dare testing my IQ for fear of having to admit that I am at best average). A while ago I read about EQ (I think) - emotional quotient. Ability to adapt to a given situation. It may be more relevant to potential for success in life, but then it seems to fly in the face of many brilliant academics who excel in their own specialty. These would not be qualified as "intelligent" anymore.
So what do you think? The question of intelligence is one of my quests. I have been raised in the (naive?) idea that "intelligence" (academic success which I redefined myself with the ratio explained above) was the key to the higher spheres of the world.
And here I am.
