Mental Floss- Genius Instruction Manual Read online

  mental_floss

  GENIUS INSTRUCTION MANUAL

  edited by Will Pearson, Mangesh Hattikudur, and John Green

  CONTENTS

  PREFACE

  STARTING OFF LIGHT: HOBBIES AND EXTRACURRICULAR ACTIVITIES YOU MIGHT WANT TO TAKE UP

  HOBBIES AND EXTRACURRICULAR ACTIVITIES YOU MIGHT WANT TO AVOID

  14 SENTENCES ABOUT 14 SHAKESPEARE COMEDIES

  TELEPORTATION

  RELATIVITY

  THE GENIUS GUIDE TO ACQUIRING PETS

  BUILDING A NETWORK: FAMOUS GROUPS OF GENIUSES

  HOW TO DRESS LIKE A RIGHT-BRAINED GENIUS

  RICH GENIUS, POOR GENIUS: SOME FINANCIAL DOS AND DON’TS FROM THE ANNALS OF GENIUSIA

  A CONFEDERACY OF DUNCES: THE BUSINESS & SCIENCE EDITION

  A CONFEDERACY OF DUNCES: THE ARTS & LITERATURE EDITION

  PATRON GENIUSES

  GENIUSES AND PANCAKES

  YOUR MODEL MATH GENIUS: GEORG CANTOR

  SOME THINGS TO KNOW ABOUT THE AWARDS YOU’RE SOON TO WIN

  TIME TRAVEL

  IF IT’S TOO LATE FOR YOU: THE SCIENCE EDITION

  IF IT’S TOO LATE FOR YOU: THE ART & LITERATURE EDITION

  CORRESPOND LIKE A GENIUS

  PEACE: TREATIES EVERY POLITICAL GENIUS NEEDS TO KNOW

  GREEKING HAVOC: IMPORTANT GREEKS WHO CHANGED EVERYTHING

  PLAGIARIZE LIKE A GENIUS

  15 ARTISTIC GENIUSES AND WHAT THEY DID THAT WAS SO FANCY

  EXTREMELY SHORT SUMMARIES OF 31 WORKS OF LITERATURE

  SOME ECONOMIC LAWS TO KNOW

  WAR: 9 BATTLEFIELD GENIUSES AND WHAT THEY CAN TEACH YOU

  MODERNISM VS. POSTMODERNISM

  GLOBAL WARMING

  HOW TO DRESS LIKE A LEFT-BRAINED GENIUS

  ECCENTRIC GENIUS OR JUST PLAIN CRAZY?

  NUCLEAR REACTIONS

  BINARY NUMERAL SYSTEM

  PATRON GENIUSES II: ELECTRIC(ITY) BOOGALOO

  TIMELINE: EUREKA! MOMENTS TO REMEMBER

  ROCKET SCIENCE IN A NUTSHELL

  HOW TO GO CRAZY LIKE A GENIUS

  HOW TO DRESS LIKE A POLITICAL GENIUS (DEMOCRATICALLY ELECTED VS. DICTATOR)

  IF IT’S TOO LATE FOR YOU: THE MUSICAL EDITION

  HEISENBERG’S UNCERTAINTY PRINCIPLE

  ENOUGH ABOUT YOU: THE GENIUS GUIDE TO CELEBRATING YOUR OWN GENIUS

  IF YA GOTTA GO: DYING LIKE A GENIUS (LAST WORDS)

  SPILLING THE DIRT ON SOME BRILLIANT CLASSICAL COMPOSERS

  HOW TO LOVE LIKE A GENIUS

  OPEN-HEART SURGERY IN 7 EASY STEPS

  STRING THEORY

  SOME PITFALLS YOU’LL REALLY NEED TO AVOID

  THE HUMAN GENOME PROJECT

  SPELLING FOR GENIUSES: 9 WORDS THAT HAVE DECIDED THE NATIONAL SPELLING BEE

  YOUR MODEL LITERARY GENIUS: MARK TWAIN

  GREAT SAVANTS IN HISTORY

  VOCAB FOR GENIUSES: UNCOMMON WORDS WORTH KNOWING

  WHAT GENIUSES KNOW ABOUT EVOLUTION

  25 ISMS TO KNOW

  YOUR MODEL SCIENCE GENIUS: ALBERT EINSTEIN

  ABOUT THE EDITORS

  OTHER BOOKS FROM MENTAL_FLOSS

  CREDITS

  COPYRIGHT

  ABOUT THE PUBLISHER

  PREFACE

  A few months ago, the mental_floss staff got into a discussion of how we might save the world. But as people who basically only enjoy sitting around and having discussions, we figured we were ill-equipped to—you know—actually do anything. We weren’t exactly going to cure cancer, or fix poverty, or even build DeLoreans that travel back in time and allow us to save millions of lives by explaining to the year 1931 that, as it turns out, Adolf Hitler would not make a very good leader of Germany.

  But still, we wanted to make a difference. If we could only save the world, we figured, we could make a lot of money and become very famous. And then, one day, it occurred to us: What this world needs is more geniuses. Just look at all the things geniuses have done so far: Tesla and electricity; Newton and physics; Einstein and relativity; Shakespeare and iambic pentameter; Ernest Hemingway and cats (see p. 23). Imagine what a wonderful world we might have if genius were available to everyone! And so we decided to create a single, slim volume that would make its readers brilliantly, searingly smart. Surely this book would change the world for the better. And also sell a lot of copies.

  So we called up some geniuses we know and asked them to write the book. That’s when our troubles started. One by one, every Poindexter in our Rolodex refused the task: Stephen Hawking was way too expensive; Bill Gates claimed he had a world to run; Gabriel García Márquez wanted to focus on fiction; Albert Einstein, we were sad to learn, is deceased.

  And so it fell to me. I’d like to say that I got the gig because I’m the most brilliant among my colleagues, but I’m afraid the opposite is true: My lack of genius when I began this book was so profound that my job had become insecure. In fact, I was put on genius book duty in the hopes that by taking readers from Normal to Genius, I myself might go on the same journey. And that’s precisely what happened to me. A few short months ago, I didn’t know my Xeno from my Zero, my fusion from my fission, my Troilus and Love’s Labour Lost from my Merry Wives of Windsor. And now, having finished the book, I can tell you with authority: I am still not a genius.

  But I can totally fake it. Relativity? No problem. String theory? Check. The ins and outs of major isms? Heck yes. In fact, I know the isms so well that I’ve created one of my own:

  geniusishism

  A difficult-to-pronounce ideology, which holds that feeling like a genius and looking like a genius is about 94% of being a genius.

  That is my solemn vow: Careful reading of this book will either make you a genius, or else it will make you geniusish, which according to my calculations is basically just as good. So, go ahead and dive in. The brilliant topics enclosed should have your mind bouncing around like a giant genius pinball, hitting one unpredictable revelation after another. After all, what does your understanding of teleporting have to do with the romantic strategies of various eggheads? And what’s that got to do with the intricacies and efficacies of various genius dress codes? Nothing, except you’re going to be a whole lot smarter after this wild ride, so buckle up and enjoy it. And while you’re at it, tell your friends to enjoy it. And also, their friends. Because the world needs saving, cancer needs curing, climate change needs addressing, and quantum mechanics needs refining. And you, future genius, are just the person for the job.

  STARTING OFF LIGHT: HOBBIES AND EXTRACURRICULAR ACTIVITIES YOU MIGHT WANT TO TAKE UP

  (If you’re serious about this whole Genius Thing)

  * * *

  Chess

  Although genius chess players occasionally suffer from some problems (noted chess master Bobby Fischer, for example, had all the silver fillings in his teeth removed so the KGB would stop transmitting radio signals through them), quite a lot of geniuses have enjoyed chess, including:

  Early in his career filmmaker Stanley Kubrick, supplemented his income largely by hustling chess players in New York’s Washington Square.

  Ludwig van Beethoven, a chess fanatic who was friends with the man who invented the Turk, the world’s first chess automaton. A cupboard-shaped contraption that appeared to be a robot but was actually controlled by a skilled player hiding inside it, the Turk beat many of the greatest luminaries of the 18th century, from Napoleon to…

  Benjamin Franklin, who once said, “The game of chess is not merely an idle amusement…for life is a kind of chess.”

  Play an Instrument

  Not all geniuses go in for music, of course. Samuel Johnson was once told that a particular violin piece was very difficu
lt. “Difficult, do you call it, Sir?” Johnson replied. “I wish it were impossible.” But the irascible Dr. Johnson aside, a great many geniuses played an instrument in their spare time, including:

  Beginning when he was about 6 and ending when he was 13, Albert Einstein took violin lessons. A lot of us can say that, of course, but Einstein actually stuck with the instrument, and enjoyed playing at parties well into his old age. You’ve never partied until you’ve partied with physicists. Their partying force (f) equals the mass (m) of bodies on the dance floor times the acceleration (a) of the DJ’s beats, if you know what we’re saying. (For the record, we don’t really know what we’re saying.)

  Benjamin Franklin, who, it is quickly becoming clear, found time to do everything. Franklin played the viola and also invented an instrument he called the glass armonica, which produces music in much the same manner as rubbing a wet finger on a wine glass.

  Before he became chairman of the Federal Reserve and was acclaimed for his brilliant economics mind, Alan Greenspan was a professional jazz musician, playing saxophone and clarinet in jazz clubs in New York’s Greenwich Village in the 1950s. In fact, Greenspan attended the world-renowned Julliard School before getting a Bachelor of Science degree from NYU’s School of Commerce.

  Drinking

  Now, we’re not going to advise that you drink. Drinking can be very bad for geniuses (witness the poet Dylan Thomas, who died at the tender age of 39 soon after noting: “I’ve had eighteen straight whiskeys; I believe that’s the record”). We’re just saying that quite a lot of people who enjoy a good drink seem to end up geniuses, including:

  Noted comic genius and part-time philosopher W. C. Fields said, “A man’s got to believe in something. I believe I’ll have another drink.”

  It’s probably no coincidence that Tennessee Williams wrote so brilliantly about alcoholics (see, for instance, the character Brick in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof ). A lifelong alcoholic who wrote all of his plays while drinking, Williams liked to work early in the morning, and usually had his first martini down by 8 a.m.

  Widely considered the best dancer of her era, Isadora Duncan (1878–1927) was known for her long string of love affairs and for her absolute inability not to spend money the moment it was given her. Being perpetually short of cash and an alcoholic tends to lead to poor decisions: According to her biographer, Duncan sometimes mixed cologne with the last dregs of various wine bottles to cop a buzz. So if anybody ever offers you a cocktail called “The Isadora,” you’re well advised to pass.

  HOBBIES AND EXTRACURRICULAR ACTIVITIES YOU MIGHT WANT TO AVOID

  * * *

  Sports

  Those seeking the bright lights of political genius might be well-advised to play sports (Teddy Roosevelt was a boxer; Gerald Ford an all-American football player; George W. Bush a cheerleader at Andover), but your standard geniuses tend to be miserable at sports. Nuclear physicist Robert Oppenheimer, for instance, was so embarrassed by his lack of physical fitness that not only did he opt out of sports as a child, he also refused to climb stairs at his school. Man, if only Robert Oppenheimer had been in school with us, we might not have been picked last for kickball.

  Opium

  So how come drinking made the list of hobbies to acquire and opium’s stuck on habits to avoid? Maybe it’s because while drinking kills you and everything, it doesn’t nip your genius in the bud quite like opium tends to.

  You might argue that Samuel Taylor Coleridge benefited from opium, since his masterful, but unfinished, “Kubla Khan” was originally conceived during an opium dream. But Coleridge lost decades of potential productivity to the drug. He rarely left his house, was perennially near suicide, and couldn’t finish a poem to save his life.

  If you need further proof, just consider that there was only one way to be a Brontë sibling and not succeed: Opium. Branwell Brontë, the ne’er do well brother of Anne, Charlotte, and Emily, was a promising young poet until he became irrevocably addicted to opium. (Fans of the young Branwell’s writing included none other than the aforementioned S. T. Coleridge.)

  * * *

  Catching Tuberculosis

  * * *

  Probably the number-one pastime of geniuses throughout history has been “getting tuberculosis.” Maybe it’s because geniuses tend to congregate together and tuberculosis is easily transmitted through coughing and sneezing. Or maybe it’s just that geniuses tend to be a bit less robust than most of us. Regardless, budding geniuses such as you should be particularly grateful that most strains of TB can be effectively treated with antibiotics. Examples of the brilliant and tubercular include Paul Gauguin, Mozart, Alexander Graham Bell, and Frederic Chopin.

  Oh, and also pretty much every 19th-century writer. Seriously: Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Lord Byron, Anton Chekov, Stephen Crane, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Franz Kafka, John Keats, Edgar Allan Poe, Robert Louis Stevenson, Henry David Thoreau, Jane Austen, and all five Brontë sisters.

  * * *

  While there’s no record that Sigmund Freud ever smoked or ate opium, it’s well established that he used the opiate cocaine on many occasions. Back in the good ole days of psychology, when psychologists intentionally gave their patients malaria to treat syphilis and jammed ice picks into the eye sockets of people suffering hysteria, cocaine was regularly prescribed as “a euphoric.” In fact, Freud’s “research” into cocaine led him to prescribe the drug to a friend addicted to morphine. It didn’t work: The friend merely switched addictions to cocaine, (which eventually proved fatal and he died any way).

  Although she’s mostly famous for the children’s book Little Women, Louisa May Alcott’s novel Work features a female protagonist addicted to opium eating and gambling. Alcott lived by the maxim that you should write what you know—she herself was addicted to the opiate laudanum.

  Alchemy

  Although it’s no longer in fashion, seeking a way to turn lead into gold used to be the way for geniuses to pass their lazy Sunday afternoons. And boy, was it a bad idea. Aside from the risks posed by soaking toxic lead in a series of randomly selected toxic chemicals, alchemy took valuable time away from the real work of such geniuses as Isaac “Gravity” Newton, Thomas “Catholicism’s Greatest Theologian” Aquinas, and Robert “Despite my funny last name I managed to become the first modern chemist” Boyle.

  14 SENTENCES ABOUT 14 SHAKESPEARE COMEDIES

  * * *

  And now for something lighthearted and fun. Shipwrecks, traitors, rape—that sort of stuff. Okay, so Shakespeare’s comedies aren’t always funny. But they’re generally less bloody than his histories and tragedies. Although the bard’s reputation rests largely on the brooding stuff (the Macbeths and Hamlets), you’ll need to know the comedies if you truly want to impress with your obscure knowledge. And, let’s face it, every genius needs some familiarity with the undisputed heavyweight champ of literature. Not long after Shaekspeare’s death in 1616, Ben Jonson wrote, “He was not of an age, but for all time!” Indeed, lunchtime, dinnertime, downtime, even naptime (for all our aspiring pre-school geniuses trying to make a good impression); sprinkling in a little Shakespeare always goes a long way. And so:

  The Comedies

  A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Complicated interconnected plots don’t lend themselves to single-sentence summaries, but basically this girl Hermia and her boyfriend Lysander try to elope while fairy king Oberon and his estranged fairy wife fight and a bunch of low-rent traveling actors rehearse a play, and then eventually everyone lives happily ever after despite a brief scare, when Oberon’s wife falls in love with a guy with a donkey head.

  All’s Well That Ends Well: Helena, who’s gorgeous but from a low-rent family, gets to marry her dream man, Count Bertram, who enjoys her company so little that he immediately heads off to war, desperately hoping he’ll die before he has to return to Helena; but Bertram ends up not dying, making the play one that ends happily, but doesn’t end particularly well (AWTEW is one of Shakespeare’s le
ast-regarded plays.)

  As You Like It: A duke (who’s never given a proper name) is unseated from his duchy, whereupon he moves to the forest for a while until the duke’s traitorous son is saved from a lioness by the duke’s loyal servant, which leads to no fewer than four weddings, and the duke’s return to dukeness.

  Cymbeline: So poorly regarded that some scholars think Shakespeare wrote it as a joke, Cymbeline stars Posthumus (that’s his name), who gets kicked out of a kingdom for secretly marrying the king’s daughter, which leads to a series of events so convoluted that in Act V, Scene IV, the god Jupiter descends from heaven and orders everyone to shut up and explain what’s going on, which everyone does, whereupon the play ends with no deaths, making it a comedy.

  Love’s Labour Lost: Three men who’ve just sworn off girls happen across three attendants to a beautiful princess, and sure enough they forget their swears.