October 8, 1997
Welcome to the Curmudgeon's Rant.
Those of you who know what a curmudgeon is will realize the irony of beginning the rant with a pleasant greeting. Those of you who don't should:
In any case, the deplorable condition of our educational system, with its consequent erosion of the national vocabulary and ability to use the language, are not the subject of my rant today. Instead, I have chosen a more vulnerable (although admittedly less significant) target:
If you have not explored any of these, feel free to do so. It may be worth a good laugh, but little else, as the results vary so widely from site to site as to make them extremely suspect. For this reason, I will not give you links to any sites; any search engine will do that for you, and I'm not in the business of making your life easier for you. (However, I will suggest that you visit my new online pal Anne at her really cool Pimped-Out HomeSlice Page. Visit early and often. It was her page that inspired me to conduct this experiment, so any blame should go in her direction. Thank you.)
In any case, on with the show.
I started out with the idea of re-affirming my faith in my own brilliance. This is something I find it valuable to do periodically, as it then reinforces my belief that it's valid for me to pass judgement on absolutely anything, and allows me to do things like writing the Curmudgeon's Rant. But I digress.
At the age of about 12, I was tested, fairly comprehensively, to determine the presence or lack of brain. At that time, I clocked in at 156. I was curious to learn if extensive reading and some education had counter-balanced the effects of the many toxins I have ingested in the intervening years. With that in mind, I fired up my search engine and hied myself to the first site.
This one offered a 3-5 minute evaluation of intellectual potential. Although I felt the accuracy of this test was liable to be similar to that of the 'science' of phrenology (time to dig out that dictionary again!), I was conducting this experiment on work time, so perhaps quicker was better.
One of the factors taken into account in evaluating the score was time, so I zipped through the questions as quickly as possible. Upon receiving my test results, I discovered that I was rated at 148. According to their scale, this made me a 'genius'. Not bad, but I thought I could have been quicker, and that might have effected my score. So, I took the test again.
Imagine my surprise when my score came back as 128! Was it really so stupid to go back and re-take the test, more quickly, knowing the answers in advance, that it lowered my score into merely the "way, WAY above average" section? Did they perhaps combine my two test times? In either case, I decided the test was bogus and unreliable. On to the next one.
The next test was also time-dependent, but more comprehensive; 38 questions, with 13 minutes to answer. However, one problem immediately arose: there did not seem to be any kind of timer, and they asked you to enter your own time for computation purposes.
Now, if they are smart enough to be testing my intelligence, they should also realize that I will almost certainly lie to get a higher score. This rendered the test suspect right off the bat.
However, I took it and, just to throw off the scorers, entered the correct time. Test results ..... 168!!!!
Of course, I liked this test much better, and saw no necessity to take it again. So, on to the next one.
The next site operated out of Czechoslovakia, but was administered in English ... sort of. There were no preliminary instructions, no indication of whether time was to be considered in scoring, and the instructions in the test itself had apparently been translated into English, via some unknown third language, by the guy who came in to shampoo the carpets and happened to have once visited his cousin in New Jersey, picking up a smattering of the language while there. (Why pick on New Jersey? Because I can. Besides, have you ever been there?)
Just to take an example: "In each line, there is missing last but one picture". What exactly does this mean, if anything? Are these the same people who translate stereo assembly manuals from Japanese into English? But that's a subject for another rant.
In any case, I struggled through the language barrier and cheap-former-Soviet-bloc graphics to the end of the test. Result: 128!!!! Gaagh!! Let the trade embargos commence. So, dragging my wounded ego behind me, I went on to another test site.
The last site told me that there was no time limit, that it tested potential, not ability to work under pressure, and that I could use a pencil, paper, ruler, calculator or, apparently, anything else I liked to complete it. I scorned such crutches, of course, and embarked upon the test.
It was thorough, and took me about half an hour to complete. I put careful thought into each question, weighing my responses carefully. I went back and checked through and re-evaluated, wanting to be sure that I was completely certain of each answer. The final result ... 148. Just like the first test I took.
At this point, thoroughly disgusted with the whole process, I threw in the towel. (Besides, it was time for lunch.) So, this begs the question: What was learned?
