by A. J. Jacobs
“Ooooooooookay,” says the host. He turns to the answer board. “Puzzles involving card games.” A big fat buzzer.
I slink back to my seat. “Puzzles involving card games?” says Jamie. I don’t know what to say. My brain just froze. I was so desperate to impress, I put so much pressure on myself, I temporarily lost all ability to carry out simple mental functions. “When we leave,” asks Jamie, “can you walk out fifteen feet ahead of me?”
I
identity
I’m told it’s a good thing to know thyself.
Nowadays, I know myself better than I’ve known myself ever before. I’ve become quite intimate with myself. I know dozens, hundreds, maybe thousands of facts about myself that I never knew before.
I know that I’m a collection of seventy-five trillion cells, which seems like an alarming amount. (Worse, since I barely ever use the Stairmaster anymore, I think I’ve added another hundred million cells to my midsection). I’m 60 percent water by weight. I’m a bipedal mammal, a distinction unique to humans (kangaroos don’t count because their tails act as third legs). I have about a hundred thousand hairs on my head that grow at a rate of a half inch per month. My phylum is Chordata, which was a shocker. I knew my kingdom and species and probably could have come up with my class and order. But my phylum was news to me.
If I went into boxing, I’d be a junior middleweight (148–154 pounds). When I was born I had 20/800 vision—and I had gill slits in utero. When I breathe, I suck in trace amounts of fun-sounding gases like krypton and xenon along with boring old oxygen. As for my address, you can find me in the Local Group of galaxies, in a spiral galaxy about a hundred light-years across. I live on Earth, a planet about twenty-five thousand miles in circumference and tilted at 23.5 degrees. More specifically, I’m on North America, a continent supported by the Canadian Shield.
Along with 350 million other humans, I speak the English language, specifically the Inland Northern dialect (unlike those pompous British Received Pronunciation folks, I pronounce the t in motor like a d). I’m a member of the Ashkenazi tribe of Jews, which started out in what is now Germany and France (though that doesn’t make me French, mind you). I work in magazines, the first of which was the British Gentlemen’s Magazine, founded in 1731, which had the familiar-sounding motto “e pluribus unum.”
On the one hand, I like this. There’s something comforting about being defined within an angstrom of your life. The stuff that freaks me out is the biology. I haven’t thought this much about the workings of my seventy-five trillion cells since high school. I probably should be in awe at the miracle that is my life. But instead I’m terrified. Last week, I spent ninety minutes lying awake in bed, worrying about my bodily organs. Especially the heart. Mine beats at seventy beats per minute. Seventy beats per minute seems so many—not as many as canaries, with their thousand beats, but far more than elephants, with a pathetic twenty-five. It’s been going on for thirty-five years without stopping—but how many more beats can it continue without something going wrong? It’s got so many delicate moving parts—the sino-atrial pacemaker, the papillary muscle, the tricuspid valve. I stayed motionless in bed for ninety minutes with my hand on my heart, making sure it kept pumping and that I was still alive, until slowly, finally, I dropped off to sleep.
illusion
We went to the wedding of Julie’s family friend. It was a happy occasion, but one made much happier by a conversation I had with Eric’s wife, Alexandra.
Alexandra is a great woman. Julie and I have canonized her Saint Alexandra for putting up with Eric. They met while Eric was doing foreign service duty in Colombia, and when Alex moved to the United States a couple of years later, she spoke about fourteen words of English. Now, she talks fluently, despite her accent and the occasional word mangling (she thought “homely” meant pretty, which caused some problems when she complimented the neighbors on their very homely children).
Anyway, at the cocktail party, over our little plates of grilled asparagus, I was complaining to Alexandra that I’d never catch up to Eric, knowledge-wise. He has too much of a head start in that head of his.
Alexandra told me a story to make me feel better.
A couple of years ago, Alexandra and Eric went out to dinner with another couple. After their waitress took their order and left, Alexandra was all atwitter.
“That’s a Colombian accent on that waitress,” she said. “Not just that—I think she’s from my hometown of Cali.”
Eric shook his head emphatically. “That’s not a Colombian accent. That’s a Slavic accent.” After which he proceeded to give a speech about the linguistics of the Balkan states.
When the waitress came back with their appetizers, Alex said, “Where are you from?”
“Colombia,” said the waitress.
“Which town in Colombia?”
“Cali,” said the waitress.
Alex was floating on air. Eric shrugged it off.
It’s a fascinating story. Not just because Eric was wrong, which is nice, no doubt. I’m fascinated by the fact that he pooh-poohed his Colombian-accented wife on the topic of Colombian accents—that takes some cojones.
No doubt he declared the waitress’s accent to be Slavic with absolute confidence. Not a moment of hesitation. The same tone he’d use to state his eye color, or that the Battle of Hastings occurred in 1066. Now, I’m not saying that Eric doesn’t know a lot. He’s accumulated an obscene amount of data. But what about those rare occasions when he’s not sure of something? Well, he’s not going to let a little detail like that stop him.
It’s confirmation of something I’ve been toying with for a couple of months: one secret to being a successful know-it-all is extreme confidence. Just state your fact loud and proud, even if, as is the case with me, the details are often faded and jumbled up. As my friend the financial analyst once told me about his line of work: sometimes right, sometimes wrong, always certain.
The other day, someone at the office brought up twins. I had a beauty of a fact for him. “Did you know that in traditional Vietnamese society, boy-girl twins were forced to marry?” I said. “Because it was assumed they had sex in the womb.” A good story—but it was actually Balinese society. I knew it wasn’t Vietnam, but I couldn’t remember the country of marrying twins. So I just made it up. I guessed my conversation partner did not have a doctorate in East Asian obstetrics. I guessed right.
Indian Mutiny
This was a failed rebellion against the British regime in 19th-century India. The Indian Mutiny was notable for the strange way that it began. In 1857, the Brits employed Indian soldiers—called sepoys—to serve the British East India Company. But the Brits made the mistake of introducing the new Enfield rifle to their Indian troops. This gun required the soldiers to bite off the ends of lubricated cartridges. The lubrication in question? A mixture of pig and cow lard, which managed the neat trick of offending both Muslim and Hindu soldiers, who were prohibited from eating pig and cow, respectively. The Indians rose up and killed British officers, but the English put down the rebellion with biblical ferocity. To quote the Britannica: “In the end the reprisals far outweighed the original excesses. Hundreds of sepoys were shot from cannons in a frenzy of British vengeance (though some British officers did protest the bloodshed).”
First, the image of people being shot from cannons has to be one of the most disturbing things I’ve run across. But also, I noted the parenthetical remark: some British officers did protest the bloodshed. That’s classic Britannica. The EB is the single most fair, even-handed book in the history of publishing. Everything has two sides. Even the most evil deeds, the most dark-hearted people have their redeeming qualities.
The Black Death, admittedly, wiped out a third of Europe, but it also raised wages for those still breathing by opening up the labor market. You take the good, you take the bad.
Attila the Hun? Sure, he was a vicious barbarian with the decidedly uncuddly nickname of Scourge of God. Yes, he murdered his older
brother Bleda so that he could rule alone. And there’s his résumé, which includes raping and pillaging pretty much every inhabited acre of eastern Europe. Oh, and when Attila died, the saps who buried his body were later put to death so the location of his grave would never be discovered.
Fine. He’s got his flaws. And yet, and yet…you catch him on the right days, and he could surprise you. Attila “was by no means pitiless,” says the Britannica, and at banquets he was “served off wooden plates and ate only meat, whereas his chief lieutenants dined off silver platters loaded with dainties.” See? He ate off wooden plates. Would you eat off wooden plates if you had worked up a hearty appetite conquering all of Europe? Probably not.
It may not be much, but it’s something. The EB is very proper, a perfect gentleman. I imagine if it bumped into you, it would say, “Terribly sorry, old chap.” Read it for five hours a day, and you start to be brainwashed by its constant pro/con tone. Yes, you’ll think to yourself, Rush Limbaugh can be a bullying jackass, but he’s also got some fine points about the importance of patriotism and a clear speaking voice.
industrial engineering
Big news. The Britannica has inspired me to change the way I load the dishwasher. The revolution began with a passage on mass production, where I learned the most important thing is to carefully divide the operation into specialized tasks. Namely, “simple, highly repetitive motion patterns and minimal handling or positioning of the workpiece. This permits the development of human motion patterns that are easily learned and rapidly performed with a minimum of unnecessary motion or mental readjustment.”
I realized—when I was in the kitchen later that day—that I was doing some serious unnecessary motion and mental readjustment while cleaning up after dinner. I used to scrape a dish, rinse it, put it in the dishwasher, scrape another dish, rinse it, put it in the dishwasher, and so on. Crazy, I know. No specialization, no division, pure chaos.
Now, I’ve become a beautifully efficient poet of motion. Now, I scrape all the dishes using the same precise swipe of the fork. Only then do I rinse the stack. And after that, I load them all with an economy of motion.
I love it. I am trying to live up to the example of those early 20th-century efficiency experts like Frank Gilbreth, who descended on factories with stopwatches and clipboards. (By the way, Gilbreth had twelve kids, and was the inspiration for the book Cheaper by the Dozen.)
I’m telling you, my new system is faster. I may be wasting a year of my life reading the encyclopedia, but at least I’m shaving time off my daily tasks. Over a lifetime, this method may well save a full two to three minutes.
inherited traits
I’ve been reading a lot of intriguing theories about heredity recently. The ancients believed in something called “maternal impressions”—that the baby’s personality is affected by experiences the woman undergoes while pregnant (this is why Eskimo mothers eat ducks’ wings while carrying; they hope to make their babies good paddlers). Aristotle endorsed the theory of telegony, which says that an infant’s inborn traits come not only from his biological father, but also from other males who mated with the mother in the distant past. My mom once dated the great-grandson of William Howard Taft, so if I become enormously fat and start supporting higher tariffs, we’ll know whom to blame.
But today, I got a close-up lesson in heredity. It happened over lunch with my dad. Since my dad and I both work in midtown, we occasionally meet at a deli for sandwiches.
As soon as we’re seated, I start in on him. “Let me see if I’ve learned enough legal stuff in the encyclopedia to help you with one of your cases.”
Dad looks very uncomfortable.
“Just tell me one of your cases and I’ll see if I can solve it,” I say.
“How about the case of the disappearing waiter. That’s a good one to solve.”
I could have pushed him but I sensed this one was better left alone. There is that attorney-client privilege thing.
“What about nonlegal questions?” I ask him. “You have any of those?”
“How about ‘What are you ordering?’ ”
“No, like factual questions.”
Dad thinks about it for a few seconds, and comes up with one: “-What’s the most southern state?”
I pause. Is this a trick question? “Hawaii.”
“Yes. Most northern?”
“Alaska.”
“Right. Most western.”
I try to picture the map of the United States. It’s either Alaska or Hawaii.
“Alaska is the most western.”
“Good. Most eastern?”
“Maine.”
“Nope. The most eastern state is Alaska.”
What? That’s crazy talk. I give him a disbelieving scowl.
“A couple of the Aleutian Islands cross the 180th meridian. So it’s officially the most eastern state.”
Huh. I hate to admit it, but that is pretty good.
“Did you get that from the A section back when you read the Britannica?”
“I’m not sure where I picked that up,” says my dad.
I’d never pressed him about his recollections of reading the 1974 Britannica. I know he says he didn’t remember much, and the Alaska section may not have stuck with him, but there must be something he retained, right?
“I remember most of the words started with A or B,” he says.
“Come on, really.”
“Not much. A little here and there.”
Shit. That doesn’t bode well.
“I actually remember more from the World Book set I had when I was a kid,” my dad says. “I remember doing a big report on Australia. I really got into Australia, became obsessed with it. I wanted your grandfather to move the family to Australia, and he had to sit me down and explain that he was a lawyer in New York.”
This gives me a jolt. Back when I was a kid, I became obsessed with the very same island continent. I used to spend hours tracing maps of Australia with the manic single-mindedness of Richard Dreyfus in Close Encounters.
“I loved Australia as a kid too.”
“Yes, I remember,” says Dad.
I’m not sure how I feel about this information. Could there possibly be a gene that specifies adoration of particular geographical locations? Or did my dad somehow subtly influence me to choose Australia as my beloved continent? Either way, it’s left me frazzled. Along with being the smartest boy in the world, I also fancied myself completely unique. I wanted to be totally different from other humans, perhaps spontaneously generated like the primordial giant of Norse mythology formed from drops of water. Which is partly why I chose Australia—I was the only boy in my class who knew his didgeridoo from his dingo. And now, here’s more evidence that I’m not different at all. I am practically a replica.
intelligentsia
I’ve got big weekend plans. After nearly a month of waiting, I will be attending the semiannual Greater New York Mensa Club Regional Gathering in Staten Island.
I invited Julie, since spouses are welcome, but she had a previous engagement involving sitting on the couch and reading magazines. So stag it is. This will be my first Mensa convention, and I’m a bit nervous. Will they be impressed with my knowledge? Will they sense that I weaseled my way in on my measly SATs? Will they spend the whole time talking about bioethics? Will Geena Davis be there?
I did attend one other Mensa event a couple of weeks back—the Fun Friday Dinner at a Chinese restaurant downtown—but it wasn’t quite as fun as advertised. I ended up sitting in the corner and had trouble wedging myself into a conversation. The only highlight was watching one Mensan carefully arrange ice around the exterior of his bowl of won ton soup.
“Can I ask what you are doing?” I said.
“It’s to cool the soup without having to water it down,” he said.
“Oh,” I said.
“At home, I use plastic ice balls.”
“Why don’t you bring the ice balls here to the restaurant?” I said.
/> “And where would I store them at work all day?”
He was startlingly unimpressed with my intellect. He studied me, no doubt wondering when Mensa began accepting people who spent their childhood eating lead paint. But I had to give it to him: the ice trick was pretty smart.
The convention—officially called “A New York State of Mind”—will be much better, providing me with lots more quality Mensa time. I get up early Saturday morning to try to catch the Staten Island ferry, but end up waiting in the pigeon-filled terminal for two hours. I’m not even leaving New York City, and the trip will take me at least three hours. This puts me in a dark mood. I’ve already skipped Friday night’s activities and don’t want to miss more. Who the hell has a convention in Staten Island? I think. That’s not very smart. I chuckle to myself at my wit.
I get to Staten Island Hotel just in time for the Mensa pizza luncheon. It’s in the Harbor Room, a space with low ceilings, an alarmingly patterned rug, and at this moment, about forty geniuses consuming pepperoni and Almaden wine. No Geena Davis in sight.
I sit down at a round table. My fellow luncheoners are busy rehashing last night’s comedy show, which apparently didn’t go so smoothly.
“What happened?” I ask.
“It was a disaster,” says a woman wearing a denim jacket and very large glasses. “There were hecklers.”
“Mensan hecklers?” I ask.
“Yes,” she admitted. “Drunken Mensans. They were not acting in a Mensan way.”
“What’d they say?”
“They told the female comedienne that she had a nice ass. Instead of saying, ‘Nice act,’ they said, ‘Nice ass.’ ”
“Oh,” I say. I’m annoyed that I have missed crass drunken Mensans. I would have liked to see that.
“It just wasn’t very wise,” says my friend with the denim jacket and the glass lenses that could fill a submarine porthole. “It ruined the night. It was a nice evening till then.”
This wasn’t the only controversy of the Mensa convention. I learned that one genius had brought two huge Bernese mountain dogs and one of them had taken a huge Bernese mountain dump outside of the game room, which the owner allegedly had neglected to clean up. So Mensans can be as immature and irresponsible as those with just average IQs. I take a bite of pizza and mull the implications of this.