The cake-taker so far is from Marc Abrahams, editor of the Annals of Improbable Research, whose photo is from London’s Hunterian Museum showing the flayed lower intestinal tract of Thomas Thurlow, Bishop of Durham in the late 1700s.
In the late 1700s Thurlow consulted Dr. Hunter, who discovered an unusually large and incurable tumor, and Bishop Thurlow soon died. The doctor somehow acquired the relic and, being a curious fellow, preserved it for future study in his museum.
According to BoingBoing’s editors, the museum series “was triggered by an awesome photo of a mummified Ice Age bison on display in Fairbanks, Alaska.” The attached link connects to the University of Alaska Museum of the North website photo of Blue Babe, familiar to the museum’s visitors, some of whom take advantage of the museum’s free family passes available at our public libraries.
It’s true, the museum passes provide free admission for curious families, up to two adults and four children.
Curiosity’s a trait I prize, having literally learned it at my mother’s knee. She read to me throughout my early life, and when I hit elementary school she acquired a set of science books for youngsters through which we explored everything from outer space to prehistoric animals.
My mother’s a curious person, in the best possible sense, and is my ideal woman: cute as a button, happy, intelligent, humorous, volunteers all over town, including UAF’s museum, and is always deeply interested in and pursuing a variety of topics. Being inordinately lucky in life, I got a girl just like the girl who married dear old dad, and then I helped spawn three more.
However, I turn 60 soon, have collected a lot of concussions playing football, and have never been known for my sharp memory. How will I keep up with the wonderful women in my life?
An answer appeared in a NY Times article last month by Patricia Cohen titled “A Sharper Mind, Middle Age and Beyond.” The line that grabbed my attention was Margie Lachman, a Brandeis University researcher, saying, “Education seems to be an elixir that can bring us a healthy body and mind throughout adulthood and even a longer life.”
She goes on to cite evidence that “a college degree appears to slow the brain’s aging process by up to a decade.” Lachman is a lead investigator for “the Manhattan Project of middle age, an enormous study titled Midlife in the United States, or Midus,” with the same 7,000 subjects being tracked over decades of time.
Cohen reports human intelligence is made up of numerous faculties that work together in different ways that can be broken down into two types. “Fluid intelligence” is composed of “abilities that produce solutions not based on experience, like pattern recognition, working memory, and abstract thinking, the kind of intelligence tested in I.Q. examinations. These abilities tend to peak in one’s 20s.”
All’s not lost! “Crystallized intelligence … refers to skills that are acquired through experience and education, like verbal ability, inductive reasoning, and judgment.”
Consequently, another leading researcher, Richard Nesbett, states, “Older people make more use of higher-order reasoning schemes that emphasize the need for multiple perspectives, allow for compromise, and recognize the limits of knowledge.”
“Most important,” Cohen adds, “they discovered that despite a decline in fluid intelligence, complicated reasoning that relates to people, moral issues, or political institutions improved with age.”
Moreover, Dr. Lachman found people middle-aged and older can “make up for educational disadvantages earlier in life. Everyone who did more to challenge their brains — reading, writing, attending lectures or completing word puzzles — did better on fluid intelligence tests than their counterparts who did less.”
Few places provide richer grounds for getting educated than your public library, also known as the people’s university.
And as Moshe Arens noted, “Anyone who stops learning is old.”
Greg Hill is director of Fairbanks North Star Borough libraries.
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