Read Online Let's Be Less Stupid: An Attempt to Maintain My Mental Faculties by Patricia Marx - Free Book Online Page A

are often gassed with ethylene. Tomatoes, apples, and pears produce the hydrocarbon, which is why putting bananas in a bag with any of these fruits accelerates the ripening process. Thus the banana that hung out with the tomato is the ripest.

Killer Quiz

    It’s time to test your assassination literacy. If you can’t figure out the directions to this quiz, deduct twenty-five points from your IQ.

ASSASSINATEE: Julius Caesar
    ASSASSINATOR:
(Two answers accepted)
    ASSASSINATEE:
    ASSASSINATOR: Charlotte Corday
    ASSASSINATEE:
    ASSASSINATOR: Gavrilo Princip
    ASSASSINATEE:
    ASSASSINATOR: Ramón Mercader
    ASSASSINATEE: Lee Harvey Oswald
    ASSASSINATOR:
    ASSASSINATEE: Robert F. Kennedy
    ASSASSINATOR:
    ASSASSINATEE: Martin Luther King
    ASSASSINATOR:
(Alleged; two answers accepted)
    ASSASSINATEE: John Lennon
    ASSASSINATOR:
    ASSASSINATEE:
    ASSASSINATOR: Dan White
    ASSASSINATEE:
    ASSASSINATOR: Kristin Shepard (played by Mary Crosby)
     
    Bonus question: Who didn’t kill Gerald Ford?

ANSWERS:
    ASSASSINATEE: Julius Caesar
    ASSASSINATOR: Marcus Junius Brutus, Gaius Cassius Longinus
    ASSASSINATEE: Jean-Paul Marat
    ASSASSINATOR: Charlotte Corday
    ASSASSINATEE: Archduke Franz Ferdinand
    ASSASSINATOR: Gavrilo Princip
    ASSASSINATEE: Leon Trotsky
    ASSASSINATOR: Ramón Mercader
    ASSASSINATEE: Lee Harvey Oswald
    ASSASSINATOR: Jack Ruby
    ASSASSINATEE: Robert F. Kennedy
    ASSASSINATOR: Sirhan Sirhan
    ASSASSINATEE: Martin Luther King
    ASSASSINATOR: Thought to be James Earl Ray or Loyd Jowers
    ASSASSINATEE: John Lennon
    ASSASSINATOR: Mark David Chapman
    ASSASSINATEE: Harvey Milk
    ASSASSINATOR: Dan White
    ASSASSINATEE: J.R.
    ASSASSINATOR: Kristin Shepard (played by Mary Crosby)
    ANSWER TO BONUS QUESTION:
    Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme

My Brain Goes to Gym Class (But at Least It Doesn’t Have to Play Dodgeball)
    D o I seem smarter than I did in chapter five? Since then I’ve spent untellable hours in front of my computer, challenged by earth-shattering problems like which tiles on the matrix were momentarily highlighted, how to maneuver a penguin through a constantly rotating maze, and how many more drills I must complete before I am smart enough to date Harold Bloom. If it were not for these distractions, dumb ol’ me could have finished writing chapter eleven by now.
    Remember when video games were considered the pastimes of sketchy children, whose addiction, if leftunchecked, could lead to a life of crime and poor eyesight? Now we call these games
brain exercises
and hope and trust that our digital exertions will make us as mentally agile as preteens wielding M27 assault rifles in Call of Duty: Black Ops II. They—the games, not the guns—are to mental health what kale and juice cleanses are to nutrition.
    “Improve your brain performance,” beckons one online cognitive training website, “and live a better life.” “Achieve up to 1500% increase in brain function,” is the come-on from a “learning enhancement” outfit. Let’s be honest: Wouldn’t it be great if I could prescribe a regimen of computer workouts I’d devised and guarantee that if you played them ten minutes a day, you’d never ever have any mental boo-boos as long as you live and that you’d always remember the name of that lady you keep running into on the elevator? With more baby boomers reported to be afraid of losing their minds than of dying, the worried well—and also a few who aren’t doing so hot—spend more than a billion dollars a year on brain fitness. I’d be so rich! Er, what I mean is that helping others turn back their cognitive clocks would bring me immense joy.
    Do these programs really work? Define
work
. Never mind. Nobody can agree on that anyway. What is beyond arguing about is that these games make youbetter at these games. Keep practicing Leap Froggies, and sooner or later you will become a pro at getting all the brown frogs to the rocks on the right side of the screen and all the green frogs to the rocks on the left side. OK, but what if