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I’m absolutely in awe. While I’m sure the headline is absolute sensationalist bullshit, what the kid is doing is absolutely remarkable and I’m infinitely jealous of his brain.
Did you follow the link to the youtube page his mom put up? She’s watching Ellen, and he poses a question to the camera that is so far beyond my ability to understand, I felt like the kids I used to teach, assuming they were capable of understanding how simple they were.
What intrigues me is that they say he has Aspergers. Which is marked mostly by an inability to recognize social cues, and reactions, etc. I wonder how it’s possible to diagnose it and differentiate that from just being so insanely smart as to not WANTING to recognize those cues or other, more stupid people’s reactions.
That’s a good point Kev. He’s functioning on an impossible level that it’s entirely possible that he just looks down on these social cues as we would look down on ants marching in a line. I think I would have a problem bowing down to a 12 year old as an overlord, though.
Jeff said:I think I would have a problem bowing down to a 12 year old as an overlord, though.
You clearly don’t have kids yet, right?
Foreshadowing?
-- Wipe to the not-too-distant future --// Jeff is surrounded by screaming, filthy kids, smacking him in the face, bouncing on him, and generally destroying the house
// Jeff turns to camera, gives a baleful look, shrugs. Queue sad trombone.
Why do my kids have to be filthy?
All kids are filthy.
Truth. We had Kev’s kid over for a weekend and despite being one of the most well-behaved, polite kids I’ve ever met, we were finding blue marshmallow handprints for weeks.
Well that’s more your wife’s fault for giving her blue marshmallow goo. At least if it were just the normal, every daykid filth it would blend in to any normal earth tones contained in most houses.
This is true. I have no idea why the hell she bought squeezable marshmallow.
We still have the unopened package of the pink squeezable marshmallow in our candy drawer.
Yes, we have an entire large drawer in our kitchen filled to the brim with nothing but candy.
This kid went on Glenn Beck and it was one of the most painful things to watch. I get the impression, from their choosing to go on Beck and from some of the youtube comments, that his parents are right-wing religious nutjobs. Man oh man are they going to be disappointed when this kid reads the bible and decides it’s all bullshit.
It’s not even just the bible thing, since despite my own disdain for religion I think you can be plenty of smart and still have faith in your life if you so choose. But if they are wingnuts of the Beckian variety it’s less the religious aspect as it is the complete and utter disdain that his minions have for science and facts in general that would probably create the bigger conflict for this kid.
Truth. Hell, one of the most brilliant people I know, my professor from Rowan Darren Provine (who if you’ve ever seen my facebook wall before, you’ve seen posts from) is a devout christian. But he’s also a smart christian and finds it absurd that any christian would refuse to believe evolution, global warming, or any of the bullshit Beck throws out there.
So yeah. Poor kid. The asperger’s is gonna make life hard enough. But being smart with stupid parents? Eesh.
A great critical response to just how bright this kid really is: http://theness.com/neurologicablog/?p=3062
TL;DR: he’s obviously brilliant, but he’s very immature in the conclusions he’s reaching.
I actually had not fully watched the video or read much on this beyond the basic “Kid is a genius, has aspergers, etc.”. But reading that article which says he’s questioning the validity of the big bang theory and the theory of relativity, and also hearing that his parents are likely fundie wingnuts, it makes sense. He’s probably so off the charts ridiculous smart, but combine that with the immaturity of age, lack of social skills and what is probably a susceptibility to his parents looniness if in fact they are these young earth religious types.
I’m surprised no one has commented on the “bacon air” ad on the right hand side of the article:
http://newsfeed.time.com/2011/03/31/who-asked-for-this-you-can-now-buy-bacon-air/?iid=nfmostpopular