Smart is Cool Day
Saturday, October 21st was “Smart is Cool Day”, an excellent time to celebrate the gift of “smart” and to encourage us all to be the best version of ourselves. Television and movies portray smart people as weirdos with coke-bottle glass lenses and zero personality, nerds or know-it-alls, and made fun of or left out of social events. Contrary to that picture, intelligent individuals don’t all fit the stereotypical mold. They can be amusing, open-minded, and great empaths. They can, however, be socially anxious because they are more self-aware and can detect more threats. Their minds continually browse for new information and examine theories. Smart people also tend to be more logical and rational, so they are more likely to misinterpret emotional reactions and thus may have a lower EQ, Emotional Intelligence. In 1850, Sir Francis Galton (a statistician and eugenicist) and Paul Broca (an anatomist who researched the area of the brain involved with language) studied the idea of...