Does being 5'9" make me a genius?

[via Taller people are smarter: study - Yahoo! News]:

"As adults, taller individuals are more likely to select into higher paying occupations that require more advanced verbal and numerical skills and greater intelligence, for which they earn handsome returns," they wrote.

For both men and women in the United States and the United Kingdom, a height advantage of four inches equated with a 10 percent increase in wages on average.

I saw a documentary about Howard Zinn the other day and noticed how freakishly tall the man is. If he's supposed to be smarter than the rest, why isn't he, like, the president or sometin' ...

And if 5 inches above the average American (I had no idea gringos were so short ... 5'4"?!?), why is it that I am not a millionaire? And why am I missing $10.

I don't know ... I feel ... short-changed.

Eye-wink


liza's picture

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Green's picture

I'm 5'4" and I suffer

I'm 5'4" and I suffer everday in school .. i.e. with girls and speeches etc.. sucks..


JJ Ross's picture

I'm nearly two inches um,

I'm nearly two inches um, smarter, than Liza but I had the opposite problem in school from the last comment: I've been this tall since I was ten or eleven years old!
Somehow it didn't feel quite that smart when there was no one for a girl to dance with . . .
Smiling


liza's picture

YOU'RE SIX FEET TALL!

WHOA!

You know ... some homeschoolers here in NYC happen to be kids who are just too tall for the age. Like the daughter of a past co-worker, she was 10 and was already 5'9". It must be so harsh to be that tall at such a young age. I grew my last 2" in college. I was 5'7" though for a long while (since, I think, 14-15).

I just saw new "The Producers" and Uma does look like an Amazon next to Broderick and Lane (or Happy and Stumpy?)

I am actually one of the shortest on my father's side of the family.


JJ Ross's picture

It was worse

back in 1969, when I felt alone in my height with no cultural role models except maybe Rhoda the Robot, who later morphed into a statuesque Catwoman.

But the times they were a'changin' ( Bob Dylan was short btw) and today's towering homeschool girls at least have gorgeous tall tennis players like Lindsay and Maria on tv. We've been enjoying them at the Open this week, although I grudgingly admit they seem kinda ditzy, which doesn't do much for our theory about superior height and intelligence, at least as applied to the female of the species!

Another aside - Julie Newmar apparently lied about her height (and intelligence) back when I REALLY could have used her honesty! Or the execs and flaks lied for her to make her sound less freakish? Fan sites say 5'10 or 5'11, but this seemingly authoritative-looking tv bio episode says 6'2! Way back then! It's scheduled to air Sept 14-15, maybe I'll watch, feet hanging over the end of my couch . . .

"I'm magnificent! I'm five feet eleven inches and I weigh one hundred thirty-five pounds, and I look like a racehorse. . .
"Tell me I'm beautiful, it's nothing. Tell me I'm intellectual - I know it. Tell me I'm funny and it's the greatest compliment in the world anyone could give me.''


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But I will say that it’s past time for men of color who consider themselves allies to women of color, who recognize that their freedom can’t come at the expense the women who share their history, to meditate on and interact with the words, the ideas, the actions of the women of their communities. It’s time for them to contemplate something deeper and more profound than “rape=bad”–it’s time for them to look at their own roles in the creation of “race=male,” and why it is that every woman of color I have read, talked to, interacted with, watched, heard of, all have an extremely thoughtful critique of various issues like Tookie Williams, Leonard Peltier, hip hop, Abu Ghraib, suicide bombers, lynching, etc etc etc–and yet most men of color don’t even know that Latinas, black women, and Native women are ALL disproportionately imprisoned compared to their white counter parts. Or that Asian women are committing suicide in frightening numbers. Or that our work around rape extends well beyond a “no means no” campaign. Or that the women men do organize with have all probably been on some type of harmful birth control at one point or another. And they’ve all also probably carefully weighed their words at some point or another–considered how they could say something in the “right way”.

It’s time for men to contemplate this in meaningful, thoughtful and transparent ways, with other men of color, with boys of color, with the men that call us bitch, cunt, vendida, traitor, thundercunts, ho’s, nappy headed, ugly.

It’s time to push this thing to the next level, to put your money where your mouth is.

It’s time to push this to the next level, so we ALL can be free.


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