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safeblad
Joined: 17 Jul 2006
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 Posted: Sun Oct 28, 2007 7:58 pm Post subject: 24% of Living Geniuses from Britain |
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Recently it has been getting harder and harder to reconcile my feelings of British pride with my increasing disgust at chav culture, anti-social behaviour and the like ( see the thread about pissing on dying people).
So this is welcome news and definitely more than enough to stave off that nagging feeling that the country really is going to the dogs.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/10/29/ngenius129.xml
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British brains dominate list of living geniuses
By Aislinn Simpson
Last Updated: 2:25am GMT 29/10/2007
Britain has more living geniuses per head of population than anywhere else in the world, according to a new survey which reveals the country's influence on science, technology, business and the arts.
Almost a quarter of those featured in the list of 100 living geniuses are Britons, including Sir Tim Berners-Lee, who invented the world wide web, in joint first place, and physicist Stephen Hawking at seven in the list.
British artists and musicians feature heavily, including Brit Art leader Damien Hirst at number 15, poet Seamus Heaney at 26, playwright Harold Pinter at 31, Sir Paul McCartney at 58, David Bowie at 67, Harry Potter author JK Rowling at 83 and filmmaker Ken Russell at 100.
Sir Richard Branson, the head of Virgin Group, at 49, chimpanzee expert Jane Goodall, at 58, and psychologist Dorothy Rowe, at 72, also made the list.
With 24 Britons in the list, the country has generated one living genius per 2.5 million people � a higher proportion than any other country.
The list, compiled by a panel of six experts in creativity and innovation, is jointly topped by Sir Tim and Albert Hofmann, the Swiss scientist who created the drug LSD.
They are followed by George Soros, the American financier and philanthropist, Matt Groening, creator of The Simpsons and Nelson Mandela, the former South African president.
There are also some surprise entrants. Osama Bin Laden ranks at number 43, a spot he shares with Bill Gates, the Microsoft founder and Mohammed Ali, the former world heavyweight boxing champion.
The Americans have 43 geniuses on the list � one per 6.9 million people.
Creators Synectics, a global consultants firm, chose their geniuses by awarding scores out of 10 to each entrant against a number of factors: paradigm shifting; popular acclaim; intellectual power; achievement and cultural importance. The firm emailed 4,000 Britons this summer and asked them to nominate up to 10 living people who they considered geniuses.
They received back 1,100 nominations for individuals in all walks of life, more than 60 per cent of whom were either American or English. Only 60 per cent were still alive.
The panel was then charged with ranking the list in order of genius and to present a resulting shortlist of 100, who were then scored against the five factors.
Nigel Clarke, a managing partner of Synectics UK & Europe, said: "Many people argue that a genius can be defined by their contribution, where it turns conventional thinking on its head.
"I think that Albert Hoffman and Tim Berners-Lee have this in common with the great geniuses of the past.
''Both of them have, in their own way, turned the world that we live in upside down. And it may be that alone that accounts for their acclamation as the world's greatest living geniuses." |
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safeblad
Joined: 17 Jul 2006
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| Posted: Sun Oct 28, 2007 8:03 pm Post subject: |
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Top 100 living geniuses
Last Updated: 1:06am GMT 29/10/2007
1= Albert Hoffman (Swiss) Chemist
1= Tim Berners-Lee (British) Computer Scientist
3 George Soros (American) Investor & Philanthropist
4 Matt Groening (American) Satirist & Animator
5= Nelson Mandela (South African) Politician & Diplomat
5= Frederick Sanger (British) Chemist
7= Dario Fo (Italian) Writer & Dramatist
7= Steven Hawking (British) Physicist
9= Oscar Niemeyer (Brazilian) Architect
9= Philip Glass (American) Composer
9= Grigory Perelman (Russian) Mathematician
12= Andrew Wiles (British) Mathematician
12= Li Hongzhi (Chinese) Spiritual Leader
12= Ali Javan (Iranian) Engineer
15= Brian Eno (British) Composer
15= Damian Hirst (British) Artist
15= Daniel Tammet (British) Savant & Linguist
18 Nicholson Baker (American Writer
19 Daniel Barenboim (N/A) Musician
20= Robert Crumb (American) Artist
20= Richard Dawkins (British) Biologist and philosopher
20= Larry Page & Sergey Brin (American) Publishers
20= Rupert Murdoch (American) Publisher
20= Geoffrey Hill (British) Poet
25 Garry Kasparov (Russian) Chess Player
26= The Dalai Lama (Tibetan) Spiritual Leader
26= Steven Spielberg (American) Film maker
26= Hiroshi Ishiguro (Japanese) Roboticist
26= Robert Edwards (British) Pioneer of IVF treatment
26= Seamus Heaney (Irish) Poet
31 Harold Pinter (British) Writer & Dramatist
32= Flossie Wong-Staal (Chinese) Bio-technologist
32= Bobby Fischer (American) Chess Player
32= Prince (American) Musician
32= Henrik Gorecki (Polish) Composer
32= Avram Noam Chomski (American) Philosopher & linguist
32= Sebastian Thrun (German) Probabilistic roboticist
32= Nima Arkani Hamed (Canadian) Physicist
32= Margaret Turnbull (American) Astrobiologist
40= Elaine Pagels (American) Historian
40= Enrique Ostrea (Philippino) Pediatrics & neonatology
40= Gary Becker (American) Economist
43= Mohammed Ali (American) Boxer
43= Osama Bin Laden (Saudi) Islamicist
43= Bill Gates (American) Businessman
43= Philip Roth (American) Writer
43= James West (American) Invented the foil electrical microphone
43= Tuan Vo-Dinh (Vietnamese) Bio-Medical Scientist
49= Brian Wilson (American) Musician
49= Stevie Wonder (American) Singer songwriter
49= Vint Cerf (American) Computer scientist
49= Henry Kissinger (American) Diplomat and politician
49= Richard Branson (British) Publicist
49= Pardis Sabeti (Iranian) Biological anthropologist
49= Jon de Mol (Dutch) Television producer
49= Meryl Streep (American) Actress
49= Margaret Attwood (Canadian) Writer
58= Placido Domingo (Spanish) Singer
58= John Lasseter (American) Digital Animator
58= Shunpei Yamazaki (Japanese) Computer scientist & physicist
58= Jane Goodall (British) Ethologist & Anthropologist
58= Kirti Narayan Chaudhuri (Indian) Historian
58= John Goto (British) Photographer
58= Paul McCartney (British) Musician
58= Stephen King (American) Writer
58= Leonard Cohen (American) Poet & musician
67= Aretha Franklin (American) Musician
67= David Bowie (British) Musician
67= Emily Oster (American) Economist
67= Steve Wozniak (American) Engineer and co-founder of Apple Computers 7
67= Martin Cooper (American) Inventor of the cell phone
72= George Lucas (American) Film maker
72= Niles Rogers (American) Musician
72= Hans Zimmer (German) Composer
72= John Williams (American) Composer
72= Annette Baier (New Zealander) Philosopher
72= Dorothy Rowe (British) Psychologist
72= Ivan Marchuk (Ukrainian) Artist & sculptor
72= Mark Dean (American) Inventor & computer scientist
72= Rick Rubin (American) Musician & producer
72= Stan Lee (American) Publisher
83= David Warren (Australian) Engineer
83= Jon Fosse (Norwegian) Writer & dramatist
83= Gjertrud Schnackenberg (American) Poet
83= Graham Linehan (Irish) Writer & dramatist
83= JK Rowling (British) Writer
83= Ken Russell (British) Film maker
83= Mikhail Timofeyevich Kalashnikov (Russian) Small arms designer
83= Erich Jarvis (American) Neurobiologist
91=. Chad Varah (British) Founder of Samaritans
91= Nicolas Hayek (Swiss) Businessman and founder of Swatch
91= Alastair Hannay (British) Philosopher
94= Patricia Bath (American) Ophthalmologist
94= Thomas A. Jackson (American) Aerospace engineer
94= Dolly Parton (American) Singer
94= Morissey (British) Singer
94= Michael Eavis (British) Organiser of Glastonbury
94= Ranulph Fiennes (British) Adventurer
100=. Quentin Tarantino (American) Filmmaker |
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tzechuk
Joined: 20 Dec 2004
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| Posted: Sun Oct 28, 2007 8:05 pm Post subject: |
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| Define *Genius*, please? |
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Big_Bird
Joined: 31 Jan 2003
Location: Sometimes here sometimes there...
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| Posted: Sun Oct 28, 2007 8:14 pm Post subject: |
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I was also pleasantly delighted...until I read who it was who decided on the 100 geniuses. 4000 Britons - that's who! So, the results are less of a surprise then...  |
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safeblad
Joined: 17 Jul 2006
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| Posted: Sun Oct 28, 2007 8:19 pm Post subject: |
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| Big_Bird wrote: |
| I was also pleasantly delighted...until I read who it was who decided on the 100 geniuses. 4000 Britons - that's who! So, the results are less of a surprise then... |
yeah i should have edited that bit out of the story...it would have been better created that warm fuzzy feeling inside
...and switched around the places of dolly parton and morrissey |
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Big_Bird
Joined: 31 Jan 2003
Location: Sometimes here sometimes there...
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| Posted: Sun Oct 28, 2007 8:25 pm Post subject: |
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| safeblad wrote: |
| Big_Bird wrote: |
| I was also pleasantly delighted...until I read who it was who decided on the 100 geniuses. 4000 Britons - that's who! So, the results are less of a surprise then... |
yeah i should have edited that bit out of the story...it would have been better created that warm fuzzy feeling inside |
That warm fuzzy feeling felt a bit too good to be true.
| safeblad wrote: |
| ...and switched around the places of dolly parton and morrissey |
In theory they're both in the same place. Both tied (with several others) at 94 on the list. |
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IncognitoHFX
Joined: 06 May 2007
Location: Yeongtong, Suwon
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| Posted: Sun Oct 28, 2007 8:40 pm Post subject: |
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'I heard that about New Found Land, because people eat so much Omega 3...
I don't really buy that though. Either way, I love New Found Land and I think the best people in the world live there. |
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cbclark4
Joined: 20 Aug 2006
Location: Masan
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| Posted: Sun Oct 28, 2007 9:00 pm Post subject: |
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"�Since each individual produced by the sexual process contains a unique set of genes, very exceptional combinations of genes are unlikely to appear twice even within the same family. So if genius is to any extent hereditary, it winks on and off through the gene pool in a way that would be difficult to measure or predict. Like Sisyphus rolling his boulder up to the top of the hill only to have it tumble down again, the human gene pool creates hereditary genius in many ways in many places only to have it come apart in the next generation.' -- E. O. Wilson 1978
Psychologists once thought, simplistically, that genius was nothing more than high general intelligence, the capacity measured by the intelligence quotient or IQ. IQ scores of 140 and above, attained by perhaps four in every thousand youngsters, were classified as in the �genius range.' Stanford University's Lewis Terman, who was responsible for revising and standardizing the first individually-administered IQ test, the Stanford-Binet, identified some 1500 gifted children with IQs in this range and Terman's gifted group have now been followed through middle age. Most of them have led relatively successful lives but none of them, so far as I am aware, would be classified as geniuses today.
At the other end of the IQ scale, a rare few of retarded or autistic persons, known as savants, can quickly specify the day of the week on which any date in history fell or, although unable to read music, can play on the piano any composition after just a single hearing. These highly specialized abilities seem all the more remarkable in people whose general intelligence may be so low that they are dependent on others for their care and sustenance. Autistic savants are not geniuses either, of course, but these remarkable people seem to me to illustrate an important fact about the structure of mind. "
http://cogprints.org/611/0/genius.html |
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JustJohn
Joined: 18 Oct 2007
Location: Your computer screen
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| Posted: Sun Oct 28, 2007 11:10 pm Post subject: |
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"Britain home to more geniuses per capita, Brits say"
Clever ones, those Brits. |
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Keepongoing
Joined: 13 Feb 2003
Location: Korea
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| Posted: Sun Oct 28, 2007 11:13 pm Post subject: |
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Oscar Niemeyer (Brazilian) Archite
Doesn't he make hot dogs? Sorry, I am not British  |
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pest2
Joined: 01 Jun 2005
Location: Vancouver, Canada
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| Posted: Mon Oct 29, 2007 12:23 am Post subject: |
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| yeah, i was thinking they should rename this thread to, "24% of people who believe they are geniuses are british". |
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hellofaniceguy
Joined: 10 Jan 2003
Location: On your computer screen!
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| Posted: Mon Oct 29, 2007 12:34 am Post subject: |
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| If Brits were geniuses, they would not be teaching ESL in korea like the rest of us non geniuses! |
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Dome Vans
Guest
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| Posted: Mon Oct 29, 2007 12:37 am Post subject: |
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| There's less British people teaching here, than Yanks, Canucks, Aussie and Springboks. There's tons of those divs! |
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Ya-ta Boy
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Location: Established in 1994
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| Posted: Mon Oct 29, 2007 12:46 am Post subject: |
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| I agree there are fewer British people teaching here than Yanks, etc, but I wouldn't necessarily say that they are less human than the rest of us. Dome Vans, don't be so hard on your countrymen. They are as human as the rest of us, though they might not be the geniuses they think they are. |
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SPINOZA
Joined: 10 Jun 2005
Location: $eoul
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| Posted: Mon Oct 29, 2007 12:47 am Post subject: |
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Before we get too smug having a right old chuckle at silly Britons, the claim "Britain has the most geniuses per capita" is not negated by the fact that Britons made the claim.
Once we've settled on a definition of genius, Britain having the highest number per capita of such individuals is either true or false. The fact that Britons themselves made the claim has no contribution whatsoever to this truth or falsehood. |
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