Other than the word pasteless, I like it. In fact it would be good even if you dropped the last line. I would think it a blessing to savor as new the smell of a rose, rediscovering things that delight the senses, and forget the pain and worry of just a moment ago. It is hard, but some good and joy comes from it as well.
Isn't it a form of pastel? Without pastels? without color?
Unable to paste? without paste?
LOL....Microsoft Word and my standard dictionary does not have such a word as pasteless.

Zodiac,
You said that you refer to facts, and that I just state what I wish were true. You also said to show you proof that a study can be found to support any assumption. I will be fair, and offer proof of what I believe the studies show, as well as some studies that proport to support what you have to say. From what I have gathered, the studies you seem to have based your assumptions on have been refuted by later studies. I will provide links here, for those who wish to study this further.I assure you that as soon as you read one statement and are sure it has the facts, you will find another that contraindicts it.
http://www.lrainc.com/swtaboo/taboos/wsj_main.html
http://www.vdare.com/misc/rushton_iq.htm
http://www.lrainc.com/swtaboo/taboos/tbc01.html
http://www.ship.edu/~cgboeree/intelligence.html **
http://www.mensa.org.uk/mensa/global/resource.html
http://www.tip.duke.edu/resources/parenting_tips/instruments.html
http://www.biology.duke.edu/rausher/lec23_05.html
http://www.biology.duke.edu/rausher/Kamin.pdf
http://www.alumni.tip.duke.edu/newsletter/2002june/article04.html
http://www.volkmar-weiss.de/table.html
http://www.post-gazette.com/regionstate/20010610giftediqsidereg8.asp

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Over-educated would not include teaching a man to fish.
Over-educated or educated past his intelligence level is more like giving some idiot, with an IQ of 75 and an 18th century idealogy, the means, plans, and instruction/education to make nuclear reactors and warheads. He has no ability to grasp the responsibility or concequences inherent in such information. He will use it as a neanderthal would be expected to: with lack of planning, judgement and wisdom. He may be able to understand how to put one together and how to use it, but he can not grasp the analytical reasoning one should have in order to be entrusted with the use of such information. This would be a clear example of educating a man past his intelligence level. With the results being easy to guess.

I never said I was raised on welfare, only that my mother was on welfare while pursueing her masters. There is a difference. And I wrote, in loosely-poetic form the change I believe should be taken, from hand-out to hand-up, by those wishing to do so.

I love Ayn Rand, and daresay I've read more of her, and more thoroughly, than you have. But I've come to see most of her ideas as kinda silly and simplistic, or at the very best limited to an antiquated "captains of industry" view of things.
Okay, you said her IDEAS were simplistic. I stand corrected. ( I made the assumption one would think her simplistic, if her ideas were seen as simplistic.)
and continuing off topic...yes, I agree that she did not value non-industrialists as much as I would have liked her to. She did give value to the 'little' things people do, in Atlas Shrugged, when the great characters grew food,etc. in their hidden place.

And no amount of your "It's obvious I've been talking about the very best knowledge on the subject..." can refute what I see with my own eyes. If you stated there were a thousand studies stating that dogs don't exist, should that make anyone disbelieve their own eyes? I have seen what I have seen. I have seen, with my own eyes, what others have seen and pointed out to me. I will never let 'education' deny what my own intelligence shows me. And I believe in looking at things people state as fact, weighing what I know about the subject, exploring it further if there is a discrepancy, and coming to my own conclusion based on the facts I gather. I submit this is an intelligent manner with which to educate ones self.
I am done with this conversation.

Academically and intellectually gifted children are identified throughout student populations, among the poor and uneducated, and from homes where the parents are illiterate. This I know to be a fact. I have been involved in gathering stories of children that far exceed their circumstances. An AIG teacher and services coordinator identified a pocket of AIG children, within rural NC, who were African-American, many performing below grade level, and from homes far below the poverty level. Every study you seem to believe would counter the situation I just stated. I believe that it is not a matter of high intelligence not existing in the population. I think that the problem lies in the fact that no one is really looking! I have personally seen SO many situations and people that go against what you state. Have I (and others) been, seemingly against all odds, finding high IQ’s among the poor? Do we identify those who somehow beat the ‘odds’, ‘averages’, and ‘findings of studies’? If you start with an assumption, then you can find a study somewhere to support your statement.

We called our 'smoker's hill' the same! LOL

I read a bunch of those books... Flowers for Agernon was one of my morbidly favorite books of all time.
And LawnMower Man..whew...it's wild. I like them both...though i am not sure how they relate to this topic...I don't see the connection to educating past inteligence level....?

"When money buys power and presidents, when people buy into the belief that intellegence belongs to the wealthy, and when people no longer feel they have control of their own destinies, then Democracy, as powerful as we know it capable of being, will fail to be what it should be."
Perhaps you did not read clearly? Sees you are taking things out of context.

I promise I will scan through and find the passage if you trly want me to...I have been on a re-read-A-thon of all her stuff, so I am not sure where it is, but I believe in Fountainhead, and then resaid again in Virtue of Selfishness, I think.
Crap...I ALWAYS mispell it...that, and carress...caress...see?!
Mispelling things speaks to lack of education or motivation to be careful,it does not indicate lack of intelligence. (I admit I had to go back, take out the E again, and put in the I!)
I believe the statement is more about educating someone beyond their capacity to understand the responsibility one should assume, when one has risen in power and position because of the education he has been afforded. With great knowledge comes great responsibility. Intelligence refers to the innate ability to process and use the education one gains in a way that benefits one's slef and others. Educating a person beyond his ability to understand the responsibility that comes with increated knowledge leads to people of power who do not deserve to be in power, who do not know how to apply the knowledge they have, and who often do more harm to themselves and others than they would have had they not risen beyond a level they could fully undertstand.
(The current president kinda exemplifies my point.)

Contrary to what is posted here, she said as much, indeed.
I have read, some several times: Fountain Head, Atlas Shrugged, Anthem, The Virtue of Selfishness, Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology (Expanded 2nd. Edition, and am currently waiting on a copy of Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, so that I may have a copy for my library, and to read again....thank you very much.
She wrote from her perspective and time...one must always take that into account when reading authors from a different time period than one lives in. There was nothing simplistic about her. She was very concrete, and not very compassionate. I think if she lived in our time, and had had the gift of time, she would have grown and expanded her philosophy to better reflect what could be learned from the time of her death until now.
That aside...she was an owesome writer, who did what no one else had done: formed heroic characters, and formulated a new philosophy to base her characters on. She was astoundingly intellegent...and one can embrace certain of her principles, without embracing them to a fanatical degree.

I did not know the quote belonged to him,
and what is the difference, indeed.

No, next time I promised to put it in a form that could loosely be refered to as poetry. I just did not want to continue the discussion within the string of someone else's poem, where the discussion started. I did a no-no , apparently, by posting this as a poem, but since I did, we are discussing the subject here.
See, I didn't KNOW the rules, because I too am without good fortune and money, therefore I have less intellegence (on average), than wealthier people...or so Zodiac has informed me. I guess we all need to get more money if we want our IQ's to rise, then we could be inventors and innovators:)

Surely, one can embrace the quote and say that it sums up one's own thought. I was simply saying that I agree with the quote.

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