OCR Text |
Show This Week bj Arthur Brisbane Average Intelligence It Is Constitutional Two Big Diamonds Terrific Earthquake During the war conscripted millions mil-lions were subjected to "intelligence tests," and you learned with anxiety that the adult American has an average intelligence of a twelve-year-old child. Now, to cheer you, the Bureau of Education says that is a mistake. mis-take. Only about three million adult Americans have twelve-year-old in telligence, not many more than enough to cover all those who think they understand moaey and know what the government ought to do about it. Forty million adult Americans have seventeen-year-old Intelli- gence, ten millions average about twenty-three-year-old intelligence. The question is: What IS a twelve-year-old intelligence? At the age of twelve, Newton probably knew more about mathematics, intuitively, in-tuitively, than many modern teachers teach-ers of mathematics know. As for music, Mozart at tht. age of four played well, at seven he composed and gave concerts at royal courts. There is no real intelligence standard, and a., we are all only 12,000 years from the late stone age, what we call "highest intelli gence" will seem amusingly ignorant ignor-ant a few million years hence. President Roosevelt is glad to learn from Mr. Cummings, United States Attorney General, that his monetary plan for a less expensive dollar and more expensive gold is nnnotitntinnai. Tt. is constitutional. also, for the government to take any gold that citizens may have and pay them at the old twenty dollar-an-ounce price. It is per haps advisable for Congress to pass a law indorsing the money plan and the Attorney-General's deci sion. The Constitution says some: thing about confiscation "without due process of law." Legislation by Congress will fix that. When anything good is found, a gold strike, or anything of that kind, it is wise to bunt around for more. Twenty-six years ago, at Elands-fontein, Elands-fontein, twenty miles from Pretoria In Soutb Africa, there was discovered discov-ered the huge Cullinan diamond, biggest ever known. The Transvaal Trans-vaal Government gave it to Edward the Seventh, twenty-six years ago Several stones were cut from that Cullinan diamond. The biggest, the "Star of Africa." is now in the British royal scepter. The next i,.( io in the British crown They add to King George's royal majesty. Recently somebody, convinced that where you find one big dia mond you might find another, has found in a loose stone, not far from the spot where the Cullinan was found, two very large diamonds one weighing 500, the other 726 carats, the bigger stone perfect and flawless. The finder has refused $375,000 "contemptuously" for these two pieces of almost pure carbon The northern part of India, close to the foot of the Himalaya Moun tains and gigan ic Mt. Everest, re ports the worst earthquake thai the world has seen for years. Mosl disastrous, perhaps, in destruction of lives since the Lisbon earth quake that caused many to lose their faith in Providence because of crowds killed in the churches where they had taken refuge. Two thousand are reported killed in India, the streets of one city filled witb ruins and dead bodies. A thing new in earthquakes, water is reported spouting from the earth through great fissures, adding flood to the earthquake's terror. The Himalaya Mountains are far away, and lists of dead im press ua little. But that water spurting from the ground high into the air, is impressive. It re minds us of the marvelous safety in which we travel, usually, on this earth, whirling a thousand miles an hour on its axis, traveling through the ether at absolute zero, with the blood in our bodies, on which life depends, maintaining the same even temperature at the Equator or at the North Pole. You read of Jimmy Wedell, Hying Hy-ing from Texas to Baltimore taking a little baby, Sue Trammel, with her father, mother and grand mother, for an emergency operation on the child's brain. Thanks to the skill of Dr. Walter B. Dandy, of Johns Hopkins, the obstruction that threatened her life was removed from the baby's brain, and she is back in Texas with her family, well and happy. A great combination, a flyer like Wedell, an airplane able to go 100 miles an hour, and a surgeon like Dr. Dandy, with courage and sci ence, to operate. Mr. Wedell will want to knnu about the report from Langlej Field that an airplane has beer designed by responsible engineerF to travel 544 miles an hour, 120 miles faster than the present speed record. Plane3 for overcoming air resisiance are expected to give the extra speed. ' (.1953. br King Future! Syndicate, to'-) |